the force of the color, the echo of death.
Corvino, dressed in gray sweatpants and a white silk karate gi , was by the window, reclining on a black leather easy chair, his face serene as he tried to meditate on Billie. The day before an assignment, he would focus on the Akira. The ritual formality of the painting made it perfect to reflect on, to still the mind and help focus on what was to come—the explosion of violence required by any mission. After an assignment, however, it was the photograph of the blues singer that helped to calm him, to resolve the tensions which assignment unleashed.
No one sang like Lady Day. The fragility of her voice touched a nerve inside him in a way no other musician could. Certainly, the nature of his work, the index of his experiences, didn’t encourage levity or emotional expression. But although years of killing had stripped his responses down almost to a neutral level, she reminded Corvino that he was still a man, not a machine with a gun. Indeed, sometimes he’d wished he was like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator , an unstoppable killing machine. All his life he’d had a problem expressing his emotions. Through Billie Holiday’s voice though, that human side of him found refreshing release. She sang like an angel with broken wings, a seraph gifted with a voice of glass, for he also knew that her songs of love and life were blown from an existence forged in pain, heartbreak, addiction, and death. It all made perfect sense to him, this uncomfortable duality: beauty from suffering, joy from pain.
Shortly he’d slip her Greatest Hits album on the CD player and lie there losing himself in the alluring sways of her haunted voice. For now, however, he just wanted to stare at her, trying to rid himself of the troubling thoughts nagging him, just concentrate on her beauty, frozen and immortalized by a camera lens.
But the ritual wasn’t working. He kept seeing Mitra’s flayed body on the bed, Harris and Skolomowski on the steps, the mutilated corpses inside the drug cartel house. He couldn’t banish Panama from his mind, allow the smoky image of the blues singer to overwhelm his consciousness, until he saw nothing but the photo, nothing but her dark, sensitive, sad eyes, her thick, delicate lips. Years of Zen meditation had taught him not to waste precious energies worrying about elements outside his immediate control. But his grief and confusion were so great he couldn’t concentrate.
Mitra was dead.
And so were the others.
Not that he gave a shit about Skolomowski. His death gave Corvino a small measure of satisfaction. The bastard deserved it.
He was sorry about Harris, though. He’d been a good operative, yet his murder was inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Death was a way of life for an assassin. It didn’t matter whether you were on assignment or not; there was always the chance someone on the other side, whatever side that was—the lines were so blurred you couldn’t define them anymore—could sanction you in retaliation for something you did years ago, or for an assignment you had no involvement with. Covert operatives remained just chess pieces in an endless game of moves and countermoves. It didn’t matter whether you were a pawn or a knight—ultimately, you were expendable.
Fuck it. Take it away, Billie.
He didn’t care that he was suspended pending an official investigation. He was burning out on the killing and he’d been thinking about retirement for some time. Of course, that was easier said than done. You didn’t just put in a request and collect a pension in this game. They’d use you until you had nothing left to offer them. And even then there was no guarantee they’d allow you to live out your last years in peace. If they deemed you a security risk, you ended up in a government-owned sanitarium, drugged to the eyeballs in a cell masquerading as a private room. At best, they provided you with a suite at an anonymous country club in
Corvino, dressed in gray sweatpants and a white silk karate gi , was by the window, reclining on a black leather easy chair, his face serene as he tried to meditate on Billie. The day before an assignment, he would focus on the Akira. The ritual formality of the painting made it perfect to reflect on, to still the mind and help focus on what was to come—the explosion of violence required by any mission. After an assignment, however, it was the photograph of the blues singer that helped to calm him, to resolve the tensions which assignment unleashed.
No one sang like Lady Day. The fragility of her voice touched a nerve inside him in a way no other musician could. Certainly, the nature of his work, the index of his experiences, didn’t encourage levity or emotional expression. But although years of killing had stripped his responses down almost to a neutral level, she reminded Corvino that he was still a man, not a machine with a gun. Indeed, sometimes he’d wished he was like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator , an unstoppable killing machine. All his life he’d had a problem expressing his emotions. Through Billie Holiday’s voice though, that human side of him found refreshing release. She sang like an angel with broken wings, a seraph gifted with a voice of glass, for he also knew that her songs of love and life were blown from an existence forged in pain, heartbreak, addiction, and death. It all made perfect sense to him, this uncomfortable duality: beauty from suffering, joy from pain.
Shortly he’d slip her Greatest Hits album on the CD player and lie there losing himself in the alluring sways of her haunted voice. For now, however, he just wanted to stare at her, trying to rid himself of the troubling thoughts nagging him, just concentrate on her beauty, frozen and immortalized by a camera lens.
But the ritual wasn’t working. He kept seeing Mitra’s flayed body on the bed, Harris and Skolomowski on the steps, the mutilated corpses inside the drug cartel house. He couldn’t banish Panama from his mind, allow the smoky image of the blues singer to overwhelm his consciousness, until he saw nothing but the photo, nothing but her dark, sensitive, sad eyes, her thick, delicate lips. Years of Zen meditation had taught him not to waste precious energies worrying about elements outside his immediate control. But his grief and confusion were so great he couldn’t concentrate.
Mitra was dead.
And so were the others.
Not that he gave a shit about Skolomowski. His death gave Corvino a small measure of satisfaction. The bastard deserved it.
He was sorry about Harris, though. He’d been a good operative, yet his murder was inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Death was a way of life for an assassin. It didn’t matter whether you were on assignment or not; there was always the chance someone on the other side, whatever side that was—the lines were so blurred you couldn’t define them anymore—could sanction you in retaliation for something you did years ago, or for an assignment you had no involvement with. Covert operatives remained just chess pieces in an endless game of moves and countermoves. It didn’t matter whether you were a pawn or a knight—ultimately, you were expendable.
Fuck it. Take it away, Billie.
He didn’t care that he was suspended pending an official investigation. He was burning out on the killing and he’d been thinking about retirement for some time. Of course, that was easier said than done. You didn’t just put in a request and collect a pension in this game. They’d use you until you had nothing left to offer them. And even then there was no guarantee they’d allow you to live out your last years in peace. If they deemed you a security risk, you ended up in a government-owned sanitarium, drugged to the eyeballs in a cell masquerading as a private room. At best, they provided you with a suite at an anonymous country club in
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