Chapter Seven.

"Have you ever tried to pick up your teeth with broken fingers?"

-Fergus, The Crying Game The Crying Game

The next thirty-six hours (that's how assassins think-in hours, not days) were a blur. Bob Riley apologized profusely for not giving me the paperwork.

I had to give Helga credit: She'd kept medical records from the day Louis was born. He didn't have a middle name, though. How weird was that?

Louis and I settled into a sort of routine. I took him to school and picked him up afterward. We'd chat about nothing-mostly because I couldn't understand a word he said-get through dinner at a fast-food restaurant; then it would be bedtime and we'd do it all over again.

I think the kid and I were warming up to each other. But I hadn't had sex in a week, and that was a serious dry spell for me.

Since I couldn't do much about the sex with Louis around, I agreed to meet Paris after dropping Junior off at school the next day.

"This is due in eight days," Paris said.

I sighed. "I know. So let's get to it."

"Tomorrow's Saturday. Liv says you're spending the weekend with Louis." He scowled.

I slapped the table. "Listen! Do you want to do this or not? My life hasn't exactly been a bunch of roses lately! Cut me some slack or do it yourself!"

Paris leaned back. "All right. I get it. Sorry I've been pushing it. I know you've had a lot on your mind, with the kid and celibacy and all. Let's talk about it now and get it over with."

I shook my head. "Let's not. It's all I've been thinking about for the last four days. I'd rather be distracted by this crap."

Paris studied me for a moment, then nodded. He'd been my best friend since we were little kids. Hell, we'd even trained together. So he knew when to give up.

"All right," he said. "I've gone over this stuff and noticed that in the last two years our assignments have decreased by twenty-five percent."

I tapped my pencil. "Maybe there are fewer people to kill? Maybe they don't have as many assignments to hand out anymore?"

"No, I don't think so. Look at these figures." He pushed his laptop toward me. "Our workload has been steady for four thousand years. This is the first time we've had a dropoff."

"Okay. So you think we need to work on our image?"

Paris nodded. "I've come up with some ideas. Nowadays companies use branding to reinforce their status with consumers. I've been working on some logos." He slid the laptop toward me again.

"Jesus, Paris!" The screen was filled with every image of death you could imagine, but with a Madison Avenuetype spin. There were skulls, coffins, and nooses superimposed over staplers, file folders, and computers (staplers?). "I don't know about this."

"Okay." Paris pushed another key on the laptop. "How about this?"

You might think that as an assassin I'd seen everything. And up until that moment I would have agreed with you. But we'd both be wrong. Dead wrong.

There on the screen, in full color, was Grandma, dressed like the Orkin Man, holding an Uzi instead of bug spray or whatever the hell it is that they hold. She was smiling, standing next to the legs and feet of an apparently dead man. The caption read: Bombay Pest Exterminators-Discreet and Efficient Disposal of Your Problems Since 2000 BCE Bombay Pest Exterminators-Discreet and Efficient Disposal of Your Problems Since 2000 BCE.

"Are you shitting me?" I asked Paris. Maybe he was.

A hurt look crossed his face. "No. This is what I came up with."

"Jesus, Par! You can't do that."

Paris threw his pen at the table. "Well, if you'd been here to help me, I could've come up with something better!"

"If you think for one minute I'd rather have a dick malfunction, dating problems, and a new son, you're more screwed up than I thought you were!" I shouted.

Paris sank his face into his hands. "Shit," was all he said.

I took a few minutes to calm down. This wasn't his fault. None of it was. "I'm sorry." And I was, too. I'm not all bad. "You've got me all day. Let's see if we can come up with something else."

Paris looked at me, and after a moment he smiled. Good. Because this exterminator shit had to go. Especially the hard hats. Chicks don't dig hardhat hair.

Two hours later we'd come up with a sadistic play on Nike's "Just Do It," and a terrible rendition of the Vegas ads: "What happens with the Bombays stays with the Bombays." Nothing clicked. We were just ripping off the big boys.

Apparently my marketing skills were rusty. After promising Paris that I would spend the night thinking about our project, I called Gin and arranged for her to pick up Louis from school and keep him overnight (she was thrilled, by the way). Then I headed to my local public library to get some research materials.

Apparently no one writes books on marketing for mom-and-pop assassination corporations. I found stuff on selling your retail, nonprofit, Internet, wholesale, and general services companies. There was guerrilla marketing, viral marketing, and other crap, but nothing geared toward maintaining interest from the same clients, and certainly nothing on working with the CIA, Interpol, or others.

The closest I came was a book on the management of death. No kidding. Its target readership seemed to be funeral homes, crematoriums, cemeteries, etc. Apparently death was a growth industry. (Hmmm, death and erectile dysfunction. I wonder if there really is a conspiracy.) Still, I'd been here three hours and come up with nothing, so I reached for the book.

A tall redhead snatched it before I could. She literally took the book out from under me, and it was the only copy.

"Hey!" I whined. "I was going to check that out!"

The woman turned to me. "So?" She frowned and began to walk away. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It was Leonie Doubtfire! It was Leonie Doubtfire!

"Hey!" I shouted. My vocabulary had apparently abandoned me. "Wait a minute."

"Yes?" she asked a bit impatiently.

I was frozen. I didn't know what to do. She looked like a child or a woodland fairy. All of my atoms were riveted to the spot, and I couldn't move.

The redhead rolled her eyes and walked away. And I stood there like an idiot, saying nothing.

After about two minutes I uprooted myself and went back to the marketing section. I found myself in a daze, grabbing about five or six books at random and checking them out. Twenty minutes later I was sitting in my car trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

She didn't remember me! Me! Me! That had never happened before. Nope. Every woman I'd ever met remembered me. I stood out from the crowd. Women wanted me, dammit! Why didn't Leonie Doubtfire want me? And why hadn't I said That had never happened before. Nope. Every woman I'd ever met remembered me. I stood out from the crowd. Women wanted me, dammit! Why didn't Leonie Doubtfire want me? And why hadn't I said anything anything? Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I'd lost it. I'd really lost it! I'd lost it. I'd really lost it!

When I got home I opened the yellow pages to physicians physicians, therapists therapists, stylists stylists, and priests priests. My mojo, sexuality, and ego were AWOL. Obviously I needed some help.

Chapter Eight.

"I bet it was that mouth that got you that nose."

-The Boss, Lucky Number Slevin Lucky Number Slevin

Gin called the next morning, informing me (not asking, mind you) that she and Liv were taking all the kids to the zoo for the day. They must have turned me in to the Bombay hotline, because Paris called within seconds, telling me I had one hour to get over there to work. I numbly agreed to all of the above and soon found myself back at my cousin's apartment.

"Mr. Skeevy died," Paris said as he opened the door.

"Who?" The name didn't sound like someone I'd killed recently. I'd remember a name like that. Hell, in my opinion you'd kill someone just because he had a name like that.

"You know-our old gym teacher," Paris replied with a frown. He was doing a lot of that lately.

"Wow. I thought he was already dead." And I did too. Mr. Skeevy had been ancient when we were in school. I shuddered a little. He'd been a really weird dude. At more than six feet tall, Skeevy didn't take a lot of crap. He'd put in a long tour as a sniper in 'Nam and loved to bounce smartass boys off the lockers. Guess which kind of boy I was? I shuddered again, massaging my right shoulder.

He also had this unnerving habit of putting the starter pistol to his head, pulling the trigger, and shouting, "Try again, motherfuckers!" Where normal physical education consisted of dodgeball, track and field, and flag football, we played games like "Tet Offensive" and "Hanoi Hilton." Of course, that was before corporal punishment (and Chinese water torture) was banned from schools.

"The visitation's tonight. Funeral tomorrow," Paris continued.

"Don't tell me you're going!" I was kind of surprised. Skeevy was always harder on Paris. "Oh, I get it. You want tomake sure he's dead."

"Yes, I'm going. But out of respect." Paris sniffed.

"Who are you? And where is the pod that holds Paris's body?"

He rolled his eyes. "Man, what is your problem? He wasn't that bad."

My eyebrows shot up. "Not that bad? He hated us!"

"No, he hated you. You teased him."

I sat back. "He always chose you to be the prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton!"

Paris's eyes flew open wide, and I wondered if I'd awakened a repressed memory. "God. Can you be serious for, like, five minutes? You really are an ass these days!"

Okay, he had me there. I was a snarky bastard. Paris was my best friend, but I'd had the bad habit of pushing him too far lately. I needed him.

"I'll go with you. Just don't expect any tears. After all, I wanted to kill him all through junior high."

We settled down to work, Paris on his laptop, me with the binders and pads of paper. That's how I like to brainstorm. We had only a few days left to come up with something brilliant, and I had to focus.

"What about giveaways?" Paris asked. I looked down at the paper and to my shock realized I'd been drawing a picture of the redhead from the bookstore.

"What do you mean?" I asked, casually trying to scribble out the picture.

"You know, some companies give out pens. Some give out calendars. Others do those stress squeezy thingies."

"You want us to give out calendars?" Now I knew the pod people had him. Wharton grads didn't hand out shit like that. Although we could do it as a gag to piss off the Council. Maybe we could do chimps in black suits with silenced pistols.

"Not necessarily. Maybe we could do those stress thingies in different shapes?"

I could just picture that. We could give out squeezy Colt .45s, or giant cyanide pills. Riiiiiiight. Riiiiiiight.

I pushed back from the table. "Apparently we're not only out of ideas-we never had any to begin with."

Paris sighed, and I knew I'd hit a nerve. "You're right. Slogans, logos, and promotional shit don't sell what we do."

"Results do. That's the only thing people in our line understand."

He nodded. "All right. So maybe instead of coming up with some slick campaign, we should find out why our results aren't making as big an impact on our clients."

"Yes. We could do some cost analysis and research into who our competition is." Now we were getting somewhere.

"But how do we find out about the other agencies? It's not like they'd run an ad in the yellow pages or have a Web site."

Hmmmm. He had a point. But for once I felt like we were on top of this. "I don't know. We'll just have to figure it out. We still have a few connections. Let's use them." He had a point. But for once I felt like we were on top of this. "I don't know. We'll just have to figure it out. We still have a few connections. Let's use them."

"Will that be enough for the Council?" Undoubtedly he was still holding on to the idea of squeezy thingies shaped like ice picks.

"If we can provide the solution, they'll be much happier. And we'll throw in a chimpanzee calendar for fun."

That night we changed clothes and headed to Skeevy's visitation. Mom had commandeered Louis from Gin, demanding grandma time, mumbling something about me not picking him up until Sunday night. To my surprise I felt a little sad about not seeing the kid for so long, but I shook it off. After all, Paris and I could hit the bars after the visitation and maybe I'd score. Hell, maybe I could pick up a hot little relative at the funeral home.

In spite of Skeevy I'd really dressed up. A navy Ralph Lauren blazer, gold shirt, red tie, and khakis, my hair tousled, and I looked like a prep-school smoothie. Look out, ladies. Look out, ladies.

Now, I don't spend a lot of time at funeral homes (you'd probably think I would, wouldn't you?), but I didn't even know this one existed. I mean, the name Crummy's Funeral Home would stand out. If any business needed a marketing plan, I'd think this one would. Although I thought it was perfect for Skeevy.

Why in the hell would anyone use a place called Crummy's? Even engraved Montblanc pens and little squeezy caskets wouldn't help sell this place. I laughed as we approached the door, realizing someone had bigger problems than Paris and I did.