Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [27]
It’s been decades, and I still haven’t made one bit of progress.
“You sure there’s no saw or anything up there?”
“No, man, I looked all over. I looked up there too. Not even a bread knife. I looked for a sack, but there’s nothing except these grocery bags. Barely big enough for the dude’s head. I’ve got me a good pocketknife here, but …”
Hasan smiled at the younger man’s joke. “So if we can’t cut him up, we’ll just have to lug him out like this. Let’s just hope Ali brings an extra sack.”
“Ali’s gonna be pissed …” grumbled Murat.
“Well, fuck that. What the hell can we do about it? It’s not like we did it on purpose.”
“Yes, I want him dead. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my entire life. No matter what, you absolutely must finish him off, not just wound him. He’d know I was behind it and that would be the end of me. You will make absolutely certain that he’s dead, right?”
“Don’t you worry, Zeynep Hanım. We’ve been doing this for years.”
What a fine woman, Hasan thought to himself. If I had a woman like that, I wouldn’t even think about cheating on her. Some guys just don’t know what they’ve got. Hasan felt jealous (and he knew it) of the man who’d managed to nab this tasty side dish. As the old proverb goes, money attracts money, and one woman attracts more women; it was like some kind of law of nature.
The young woman touched the bruise on her cheek with her index finger. Hasan liked her red lipstick.
“You see what he did to me? Bastard. Abuses me just because he can. But would he ever beat his wife? Of course not; he wouldn’t, couldn’t do it. He can only get away with beating me.”
“You should break it off with him, Zeynep Hanım.” Hasan let out a heavy sigh. “The best thing for you to do is get out of here, hide somewhere far away until we’re done with this.”
“My job, my life, everything I have is here,” said Zeynep, with an audible crack in her voice. “Besides, he would find me. There’s nothing, nothing that’s beyond his reach … You don’t know him. No, he would never let me leave him. I’ve tried, I’ve told him so many times. Why do you think he beats me? He won’t leave his wife, and he won’t let me leave him …”
She reached out and took the man’s hands in her own.
“He’s the one who made me do this.”
Hasan looked down at the soft hands resting on his wrists. He felt a slight stirring between his legs.
“Just three more days and it’ll all be over,” he said, looking the woman in the eye. “I swear.”
“We gonna get a bonus for this?” Murat asked with a laugh. He scratched at his palm; the surgical gloves were making him itch, as usual. He wished he was as lucky as Hasan; the gloves never made Hasan itch. Why did his skin have to be so sensitive? The next day his palms would be covered in a rash, and they’d probably swell too. “That’s the first time I’ve knocked somebody off for free in a long time.”
Hasan snapped back to the present.
“What? Oh, right, well, let’s just pick off a few more folks on the way back and give the lady a bulk discount! You shitting me, man? This guy ain’t shit to her. She only hired us to knock off the husband. It’s just bad luck is all. Our bad luck.”
Murat glanced at the man in the bed. “More like his bad luck …”
“It’s his own damn fault. If he’d left on time, he wouldn’t have had this problem,” said Hasan deridingly. Again he slid his hand over the pistol at his waist. “This place was supposed to be empty. The man should’ve kept his word.”
“And he shouldn’t have gone pulling a gun like that, right?”
Hasan nodded. That was true too.
“I’ll tell him to meet me at the hour you say,” said Zeynep. She took a puff from her cigarette, blew the smoke out to the side.
Hasan thought what beautiful lips the woman had. So smooth, full, neither