“That I like,” I admitted. “I don’t want to go around killing innocent people. I’m not some sick fuck.”

A smile twitched under the mustache, which itself stayed steady. “Good. You seem already to understand the basic tenet of this business, and of your craft- these individuals we target are…well, let me back up: we do not target them. Others target them, and once these individuals have been targeted, they are already dead. They are obituaries waiting to be written. We have nothing to do with their deaths, other than the trivial detail of how those deaths are carried out.”

“Because these are inevitable deaths,” I said.

A crisp nod. “Correct. These are terminal cases before we ever get on the scene. You’re a surgeon removing a tumor.”

“I just won’t have much of a recovery rate.”

That made him smile a little. “Not true-those whose lives our targets afflicted will be free from their misery. Our clients are the patients in this medical metaphor, not the targets, who would in this case be the tumors.”

“I get it,” I said. “I did okay in English.”

Did I mention he was a pretentious windbag?

“Normally, you would go in for the last few days of surveillance, and be briefed in person and in detail by your partner, who would remain to provide back-up in the event something might go less than smoothly.”

“By goes less than smoothly, you mean, gets fucked up.”

“Yes. But as I say, we have a flawless record.”

I sipped Coke. Studied him. “Only on this job, this first job, I go in alone?”

He nodded. “We’ve had a man on the scene for over a month-he’ll have left by the time you get there. You don’t have any plans for Christmas, do you?”