1
CASS
I came to this bar for one reason and one reason only:
To find someone who will help me kill my husband.
It’s been a long road to get here. I mean that literally, in the sense that this dark, grimy, greasy-looking bar is an hour across town from the Park Slope penthouse I’ve shared with the man of my nightmares for the last four years.
I also mean it figuratively, in the sense that it’s been, y’know,four fucking years.Do you know how many sleepless nights four years can hold?
“A lot,” is the short answer.
So.
Fucking.
Many.
Endless, horrible hours of staring at the ceiling fan revolving overhead while the pear-shaped, patriarchal prick I call “husband” snores next to me like the feral wildebeest he is.Hours spent reminiscing on how I got here, what he’s done to me, and what I am going to do to him when the time comes.
Now, tonight, the time has finally come.
I flip the visor down and check my face in the mirror. My hair is good to go. Lipstick, too. The bruise that Raymond left along my left cheekbone is hidden under two thick layers of concealer and setting powder. You’d never know it was there unless you knew where to look.
I snap the visor back up. “Okay, Cass,” I say to myself. “You can do this. You’re just a girl, standing in front of a bar full of Russian criminals, asking them to commit a felony. What’s the big deal?”
I grab my bag and get out of the car.
The thing is, I wasn’t supposed to need help. Three days ago, I had it all ready to go. Raymond’s allergy medication was swapped out for the cyanide pills I’d purchased with Bitcoin off the Dark Web. It was a simple plan. Clean and un-fuck-up-able. I’d done my research to make sure it would all go the way I wanted it to go: with Raymond gurgling and foaming at the mouth on our terrazzo kitchen floor as I stood over him and snarled,This is what you get for your sins, motherfucker.
It was one of those images I’d come back to again and again on those sleepless nights. Usually, it made me smile.
But when the moment finally came, I panicked. He was sitting at the breakfast table reading the Financial Times and eating a soft-boiled egg, little bits of yellow yolk stuck to his mustache, and I just… I couldn’t.
I froze up. I failed. I switched the pills back while he was in the shower.
Four years of planning,gone,just like that.
You learn a lot about yourself when you plot to murder someone. Like, you learn whether or not you’re capable of it.
I, as it turns out, am not.
But I’m not giving up.
This just means I need help.
How does one find help to commit the cold-blooded murder of one of New York’s wealthiest and most prominent defense attorneys? I had the same question. Neither Yelp nor the Yellow Pages were of any use whatsoever. So weird that there’s no “Hitman” section under the H’s. They really oughta fix that.
But then I found something. A lead. A way in.
It took me two months of late night Googling on a burner laptop I bought at a pawn shop in Queens, and I had to wade through someveryunsavory websites to get here.
But here I am. I’ve got fifty grand in cash in my purse and one very simple request for one very lucky fellow: help me kill the man who killed my sister.
Pretty simple, right?
Some places have a palpable dark energy about them. This is absolutely one of those places.