It was not the first time they had done this: Andy was the action, Spanky the wheels. As far apart in looks and personality as they were, they made it work. They were professionals. They were better than that.

What a hack-job it had been.

Andy the hit man was in every way the cold bastard you could imagine: lean and tall in body and face, deep vertical creases along the sides of his mouth, a neat buzz cut of gray hair, always shaved, always in a suit. He never cracked a smile. The guys did not dare to give him a nickname: he was just Andy. If he was not so damn good at killing people, he would have sold mortgage insurance.

The usually unfazed Andy was leaning against the passenger window, his head resting on a loose fist. He looked overused, like old furniture. The lights of the passing traffic revealed his face from time to time, his unnervingly pale eyes staring in the dark.

Seeing Andy like that made Spanky nervous. He was nervous by nature: if Andy was the bird of prey, he was the street rat. One of the many reasons that made their team-up unlikely. Spanky had the face of a teenager and often reacted like one, despite being in his thirties. He was neither very competent nor a great mind, but he was clever enough not to screw up with the wrong people. This and the right amount of cowardice had made it possible for him to stay alive and trusted, longer than most scum in his line of work.

Spanky was also anxious about the way the job had gone, even with Andy saying the screw-up was not theirs — and certainly not for them to clean up.

Spanky wore a suit, in a attempt to match his partner, and if he only had the bow-tie to go with it he would have been ready for a high-school dance. He swallowed with difficulty and let the first few shirt buttons come undone. The warm summer night surrounding them was brewing a storm: just another thing to add to the kid’s already high voltage.

He was often the first to talk.

“So, about the dumping ground”, he said, “same old?”.

“There’s new building works in the lower part of Herring Cross, no guards, no cameras”, replied Andy.

“Sounds like an invitation, ey?”

“Well, we’d better get there before it turns into everybody and your neighbor’s burial ground”, said Andy flatly.

Spanky was channeling the stress through small talk, as usual.

“You got that right”, he said. “Mind you, I wouldn’t miss the neighbor too much. The pig still can’t seem to clean up! It doesn’t take that much of a human being to avoid littering everything including your empty bottles in the main hall, now does it? Damn retard…” Spanky thought a bit, looking for an adequate comparison. “It’s like he’s a trash can himself, except he leaks.”

Without listening, Andy felt a pause in the monologue. “Mm hmm”, he said. “Say, why don’t you pull over so we can grab my emergency bottle and have a drink?”

Spanky was not one to discuss orders. He drove into the unlit parking lot and cut the gas. Still, he was intrigued by the man’s attitude. He grabbed the gin after Andy had a good long sip and nodded. “Didn’t know you had it in you”, he said. “You’re full of surprises”.

Still staring at nothing, Andy said: “Never on the job. Usually…” He wiped his face with a bony hand, eyebrows raised in what was dangerously starting to look like an emotion. He quickly fell back on his usual stone face. “Well, I guess we earned that one”, he concluded.

That was still a long way away from saying things were all right.

“You sure we don’t risk getting an earful, coming back like this? The story is gonna make some noise, by the looks of it”, inquired Spanky after another run of the bottle.

“You saw the same thing I did, Spanky”, replied Andy. “That one shot is not on our hands. We did not touch the weapon nor the guy, he just committed suicide. We’re not some kind of brain matter cleaning charity, for god’s sake.”

“Then why are we giving the wifey a ride? We didn’t do her either, for all I know”, said Spanky.

“Because that was the plan, Spanky”, said Andy. “We do the job. We don’t improvise, we don’t give up. Even when things go apeshit like this.”

Spanky frowned. “I don’t like this. They were waiting, you said. Husband even skipping his shift. It feels like a setup”, he said. He got a sudden idea and asked: “Say, shouldn’t we give the guys a warning? If there is someone talking, it could bring trouble on everyone, right?”

“Yeah”, said Andy. “That’s assuming we weren’t sent there by the very people who gave them a heads up. Because either we got a pretty stupid mole, or they are thinking of using our mistakes to make a little clean-up on their own side.”

Spanky thought on that one a bit longer than usual. Now that was a decent reason for anyone to worry. He tried pushing the thought away and a detail of the strange evening came back to him. He doused it under another mouthful of gin.

“Who the hell shoots his own wife by mistake anyway?”, he said, genuinely shocked. “Bloody suburbs!”