Last night, Walter Nitti assassinated Britney
Spears. He took her out from a mile away with a high powered fifty
caliber rifle, then rolled over and slept like a baby. The idol of
millions of teenagers was on a hit list known only to him.
“Good
morning, Dear,” he said to his wife, leaning over and planting a kiss
on her forehead after shutting off the alarm. He rose from the bed
with no thoughts of Britney Spears. His nighttime fantasies never
intruded into his ordinary life. She just happened to be first on
the list developed by the “The Ministry,” a mysterious cabal he created.
“Take a grapefruit, Walter,” Gerda responded groggily without
opening her eyes, as he headed for the bathroom.
Walter
has never been a violent man. He’s not related to the Nitti who was
Al Capone’s enforcer. In fact, when he used to watch “The Untouchables,”
Gerda, his wife of forty years suggested that he change their last
name to Nicci. “Walter, I don’t like anyone connecting us with that
thug on TV,” she’d said.
He’d always accommodated her throughout
their marriage, but in this case, held firm. “We can’t do that, Dear;
imagine what the relatives would think. Remember how Cousin Louis
was ostracized for dropping the “i” in Longi when he opened his business?”
Gerda
soon relented especially after it occurred to her that Nicci sounded
too much like the name of a German philosopher. So Walter won one,
and continued in his accommodating ways
This morning, he showered
and shaved as usual, had the grapefruit Gerda mentioned while the
coffee brewed, and soon was off to the train station and his job before
his wife was up. Before going out the door, he called out, “I’m leaving,
Dear. Enjoy your day. Don’t forget to check the gas gauge in the car.”
He
rarely missed a day at work. They lived adequately on the salary from
his job as an accountant for Purity Dairy Products, while building
a nice little nest egg for retirement. Each summer, they enjoyed two
weeks at a rental near the beach in
Busy
at the company books that Friday, Walter was interrupted mid-morning
by Mr. Homolka, owner of the company. “This is Mister Nitti, my accountant,”
he said to the neatly dressed young man and attractive woman accompanying
him. “Oh Walter, these people are from OSHA. Just a routine
check.”
Walter stood and extended his hand, first to the man,
then to the woman. She smiled and said, “Nitti, that’s a famous name.
Are you related to Frank Nitti?”
Taken aback that this young
woman would make that connection, he stammered, “Er, oh no… n-not
related”
Seeing Walter’s discomfort with the question, the man
said with a chuckle, “Don’t worry, Mister Nitti, the FBI, not OSHA
is the agency that would have concern about that.” But Walter remained
uneasy for the rest of the morning until he had his cottage cheese
at lunch.
The discomfort returned later in the day when Mr. Homolka
popped in unexpectedly again. He seated himself in front of Walter’s
desk, leaned forward and said, “Nitti, if them pricks from OSHA come
back again, you keep your mouth shut about the yogurt filling line.”
“You
mean the accidents, the two women who lost a hand?”
“You know
what I mean, Nitti,” Holmoka said threateningly, rising and heading
out the door. Walter did know. On orders from the owner, he had written
checks for the women, which he recorded as bonuses, but were really
hush money to avoid the legally required reports and a possible plant
shutdown.
Walter closed the books for the day. Since it was
Friday, leaving the office at the normal quitting time didn’t raise
eyebrows. He would catch the five-ten train instead of the six-ten.
Gerda would be defrosting the frozen Mrs. Paul’s fish—He hoped it
would be the halibut-- and they’d have a glass of sauvignon blanc
with dinner. On the train, he tried to remember the night’s TV schedule,
but kept getting distracted by thoughts of the pair from OSHA. He
didn’t know at the time that they would find their way into his secret
life.
As a child, his mother taught him he could relax before
sleep by saying little prayers. It worked for several years, but when
he turned fourteen, “Now I lay me down to sleep” ceased to be effective.
He discovered, however, that he could use his imagination to create
scenarios in which he would beat up a bully, save a drowning playmate,
or show up a mean math teacher by solving a difficult equation at
the blackboard. He found that his heroics did wonders to help him
nod off for the night. As he grew older, completed college, and married,
he graduated to more deadly challenges.
His career as a hit man
began heroically enough. He developed an intricate and on-going fantasy
in which he was called on each night to ice an enemy spy, a vicious
criminal, a cruel tyrant, and lately, a cell of terrorists for the
CIA, or some other secret agency in another world government. Naturally,
he was paid well for the risky work. Like “007,” he had a license
to kill, but unlike James Bond, just a salary and luscious women didn’t
cut it for him. He’d become a wealthy man demanding high fees wired
to a numbered Swiss bank account to protect his identity.
Dinner
turned out to be stuffed flounder, not halibut, and after the late
news he and Gerda retired for the night. Walter went right to work
on his moonlighting job, but the action was focused on the pair from
OSHA. From a perch atop a building across the street from their hotel
room, he used an advanced listening device to overhear a telephone
conversation with
The darling of teenyboppers was
on a list of celebrities developed when his nightly campaign against
Columbian drug dealers and notorious mob figures had become boring
and was beginning to lose its effectiveness as a sedative. Walter’s
“Ministry” created the list. The twelve men forming the secret organization
had reached an almost insane disgust with the decadent state of culture,
and decided to act. That’s when Walter was summoned.
“We have
a dossier on you and think you have the credentials to work for us,”
the chairman said from the head of a long mahogany table. At the other
end, Walter watched the heavy man tap an unlit cigar nervously on
the large ashtray in front of him, and after his eyes became accustomed
to the dark room, moved them around the table. All twelve men were
well-dressed, older than he was, and wearing masks.
The chairman
went through a lengthy harangue about the despicable condition of
culture in the world for Walter’s benefit and finally asked, “Are
you willing to do something about it? Do you have the stomach to clean
up the ugly mess?”
Walter thought for awhile, realizing his answer
was critical to the awarding of the assignment, and then offered an
answer, which turned out to be the right one. “Gentlemen, I see no
faces in my targets. I pursue my contracts without emotional involvement.”
All the heads at the table nodded in approval, and the situation was
in place.
Over several nights Walter had them develop a list
of targets. He was allowed to sit in because the men wanted him to
witness the unanimity on their selections. It was an orderly circuit
of nominations followed by nods of approval or disapproval. Someone
called out:
“Do you have any questions, Mister Nitti?” the chairman
said.
“Just one, sir,” Walter replied. “I assume that the Osbournes
means all four.”
“That’s correct, and you may bill us for each
one.”
“It must be done all at once, perhaps with plastique explosives
at their mansion. It may be difficult to get that wild bunch together
in one place.”
“Mister Nitti, don’t bore us with details, just
bill us for your expenses,” the chairman interrupted, “and if you
have any questions, here’s a telephone number where you can reach
me.” He dismissed Walter with an open end contract for the celebrity
hunt without proviso.
The next day, rummaging through the magazines
in Tony’s barber shop, waiting for a haircut, he called out to the
owner busy cutting a customer’s hair. “Tony, where are all the copies
of “Soldier of Fortune?”
“I dunno, Walter. Guess Leo cleaned
out a lot of the old magazines. There’s a new copy of ‘Us’ came in
yesterday,” Tony answered.
“You gettin’ yourself ready to go
over an’ fight the war in
Gerda
spent much of Sunday on the phone to her sisters and friends, while
Walter read every section of the weighty Sunday Star, even the classified
ads for accountants. He’d been with Purity for twelve years, but never
felt secure. When she asked if he was looking for a job, he’d always
say, “You never know. You never know.”
As he got himself a coke,
he caught Gerda off the phone, and asked, “Dear, do you recognize
the black car parked across the street? It’s been parked there overnight.
I’ve never seen it before.”
“I don’t recognize cars, Walter,”
she responded as she concentrated on her address book.
Monday
happened to be Walter’s favorite day, a radical departure from the
people who thank God for Friday. He caught the train as usual, and
on the short walk to Purity noticed a car parked near the factory
that resembled the same black sedan parked across from his house.
He looked around, but saw only the usual rush of people on the way
to work.
It was a busy day for him. The company had added several
new convenience store accounts, and he had to do Dun and Bradstreet
credit checks on all of them. To get away from the work for awhile,
he went out at lunchtime for a slice of pizza. On the way back, he
noticed the two from OSHA on the street. The woman was on a cell phone
while the other waited. Does Mr. Homolka know they’re still around?
Walter got his answer when he returned to his office and the boss
was waiting for him.
“Where you been? Them people from OSHA were
back They said we have a whistle blower in our midst. Know anything
about that, Nitti?” Homolka said in his rapid fire fashion, a tone
of suspicion in his voice.
“I don’t think they’re from OSHA,
Mister Homolka. I think they’re FBI,” Walter replied, disturbed to
hear about a whistle blower.
“FBI!” the boss screamed. “You the
whistler, Nitti? Who else would know they were FBI.”
“Oh no,
not me, Mister Homolka. I…”
“You’re fired, Walter. I can’t have
any traitors in my company. You got a week to clean things up, and
then you can resign, if you want.”
“Mister Homolka!” But the
boss was out the door.
“A week to clean things up,” Walter repeated
to himself a number of times throughout the day. He left at five,
and got the five-ten. He was surprisingly relaxed on the ride home,
and said nothing to Gerda about the firing. They had liver and onions
for dinner, watched TV as usual, and retired after the late news like
any typical weekday evening.
“Goodnight, Dear,” he said leaning
over and kissing Gerda on the cheek. She turned off the nightstand
light, and Walter rolled onto his side and went to work. He situated
himself at his desk in the eastside brownstone, and unlocked the drawer
where he kept his satellite ‘phone.
“Hello, this is Walter Nitti.
I only want to report that the Spears hit came off—you probably know
that—and I must attend to a personal matter before I fly to
Walter
hung up the phone and returned it to the desk drawer, then went to
the case where he kept his hand guns. He selected a “Saturday-night
special” a purchase he made on the street with no history, exactly
the piece he needed for the job. He dressed in a black leather jacket,
donned a black watch cap, and slipped on gloves. He watched himself
drive to Purity Dairy and park across the street from the entrance.
He
watched the lights go out in the office section of the building, and
turned on the car motor when a man emerged from the building and got
into a car. He followed the car out of town and into a dark driveway
just as a light rain started. Walter knew the man lived alone in an
isolated location. The man emerged from the car and faced the blinding
headlights of Walter’s car. Walter opened the door and stepped out
“Why
are you following me and who the hell are you,” the man asked before
realizing it was his accountant who had tailed him.
“Nitti,
what the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”
Walter pulled
the hand gun from his belt, and pointed it straight at Mr. Homolka.
“Get back in the car,” he ordered, but found it necessary to move
forward, grab his arm, and force him back into the driver’s seat.
“You
crazy, Walter? Listen, we can talk this over. Maybe I was too hasty…”
“Shut
up,” came the reply as Walter held a towel to the man’s temple and
then squeezed off a round that echoed through the wet night. He opened
the dead man’s hand and pressed it around the handle and trigger of
the now empty revolver. He removed the towel, used to block the splatter,
allowing the blood to ooze normally. He carefully closed the car door.
Walter
was pleased as he watched himself drive away. The plan was good. Homolka
was the typical distraught company owner caught in a cover-up, a perfect
candidate for suicide. The two women who lost their hands were certain
to testify that Homolka paid them off for their silence, as long as
they didn’t have to return the money. Walter knew Homolka had a few
distant relatives, but was sure the company would be sold. He also
was sure nobody knew about the firing. The new owners would rely on
his knowledge of the business.
He relaxed, confident that the
whistle blower was nothing more than a way to entrap the owner; the
Feds are known to stoop to anything. Were the two people really FBI?
“Who knows?” Walter thought. “Who gives a shit,” he said audibly as
he drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
