Mr. Bishop
by shapcano
warning: this is grim
For nearly two decades, he had honed and mastered his craft. He constantly studied the past masters, the greatest artist currently alive and even the techniques of the rising stars. He dedicated his life to becoming the best at what he did. His devotion to his art was so all consuming that he surrendered all of the things that lesser men valued. Family, friends, fame. Every measure of success that others might use to gauge him, he ignored. He'd sacrificed his faith in God, his morality and all ethical considerations to his devotion to his art. It became, for him, so all consuming a concept that he only felt alive when in the process of creating his art, and his art was death.
He'd spent the past two weeks in the same pair of filthy trousers, the same grimy, sweat stained shirt, the same stinking set of decrepit overcoats. He'd made his home among the cardboard and cockroaches of the refuse strewn alley behind BIG Al's Authentic Memphis-style Soya-rib Pit. A constant fixture through the nightly downpours and the daily freezes. He'd developed the odor that goes with two weeks without running water or soap or razor or comb. He'd fought with Devil-rats for scraps that were indescribably vile. He'd fought with the circling voices in the air, screaming at the top of his lungs until the neighborhood kids threw rocks at "Crazy Willie" to get him to shut up. All for his art.
"Willie! Get the frag outta the street, ya fraggin loon!" Don Droze had yelled when Crazy Willie had decided, early in his second week on the block, to take a siesta in the middle of Fulton street. The Don and his gunsels had laughed like children when the wildman had doffed his decrepit cap and bowing deeply, responded "Si, Patron, si. Scuze, Patron, pardone" and meekly returned to his cardboard home. The Capo and his guards had joked all the way back to his palatial estate about the meaning of respect.
He'd hidden the next day when Don Droze returned for his daily lunch visit to "The Pines of Florence" restaurant. The gunsels charged with "givin the poor slob a couple of creds" could not find the target of their boss' beneficence, and reported their failure to the Capo who shrugged it off.
The following day, the Don witnessed Willie's terrified flight from the bodyguards intent on doing him a good turn at their employer's instructions. "Tony! Dave! Leave 'em go. Can't ya see the poor mook is terrified of ya? What are ya, stupid? Let 'em alone." After lunch, the Don had called Michael, the Pines' head waiter over to his table and asked about the hobo who lived in the alley across the street.
"Don Droze, with the greatest respect, this is a stinking bum. He does not wash. He eats from the trash can. He yells at the air. The children, they throw rocks to make him stop screaming. This is not the kind of person that is worthy of your attention."
"Excuse me, Michael, but who the frag do you think you're talking to?" The silence which followed was broken only by the sound of chairs pushing back from the table as Don Droze's boys prepared to supply the headwaiter with the answer.
"Your pardon, Don Droze. I'm deeply sorry. Please forgive me. I am an idiot. I apologize. I should never have presumed......"
"Alright, alright......Hey, what are you guys standin for? I don't hear the national anthem and I ain't finished my canoli. Siddown....Michael, stop shakin, ya jellyfish, and tell me if the other folks in the neighborhood feel the same way you do....... What is that? Another fish impression? Boys, look. First he shakes like a jellyfish and now he looks like a goddamn goldfish with his mouth workin and no sound comin out."
The laughter at the terrified waiter eventually subsided enough for the Don to dismiss the man saying "I can see what you don't want to say- that the neighborhood wants this poor shnook to hurry up and die so the next homeless slob can move in."
On his way home the Mafia chieftain devoted some thought to the wildman.
Business called Don Droze away from his daily lunch routine for the next two days. When he returned to the Pines in a downpour, Crazy Willie was again in hiding. At the end of the meal when the Don was returning to his Limo, he caught site of Willie as the madman seemed to be climbing into a flooded storm drain halfway up the street. When the Capo yelled "Willie", the madmen turned and the sound of his leg snapping was audible for a full block. In spite of wincing at that all too familiar sound, all of the Don's men noted that the loon attempted to remove his hat and bow at the Don's voice as he fell..
"Jesus! The poor slob just broke his leg! Get over there and help him." Don Droze ordered.
The wail of terror that Willie unleashed as the gunsels approached made the hair stand up on the back of everyone's neck. Fearing that he might do himself further injury attempting to escape, the Don ordered everyone to stop and with only Dave holding his umbrella, the Capo himself approached the trapped wildman.
"No, no, Patron, no, no."
"Alright Willie, I'm just going to get your leg out of that grate. Nobody else is coming. It's ok."
"Prego, Patron, no, no, no, no."
Ignoring the litany of negatives, Don Droze himself helped pull Willie out of the storm grate. When the lunatic tried to bow to the Don, and his broken leg would not support him, he fell into the Capo. This caused the gunsels to rush forward and started Willie's keen of terror again. Even when, at their boss's order, the wise guys backed off, the fetal positioned wildman had moved into a land of fear so deep that even his "patron's" words could not reach him. Fearing that any further contact might give the nut a heart attack and having some difficulty with his tremendously bad smell and the pouring rain, Don Droze pulled out a credstick with some nuyen on it and laid it next to Willie's screeching form.
With some hesitation and several backward glances, the Don and his men moved back to the limo and eventually drove off.
The excitement made it difficult for the Capo to digest his lunch and he took a number of antacids over the course of the afternoon. Canceling his dinner appointment that evening, the Don contented himself with a little rice pudding and some milk. The next morning, when Dave went in to wake his boss, he found the Don dead. The coroner eventually determined that, in spite of the fact that the abdomen showed no bruises, the cause of death was a ruptured pancreas. Unable to determine any external agency that could cause such a rupture without affecting the intervening tissue, the coroner concluded that there must have been some undetected genetic weakness in the organ and ruled death by natural causes.
"Mr. Bishop. I'm calling to congratulate you on another perfect job. We're really quite grateful. If I may ask, the method used......."
"Dim Mak"
"Ah, yes, and I trust the mage has taken care of your leg....."
"Yes"
"In the matter of payment, we are so impressed that we'd like to include a bonus...."
"Another job?" Bishop asked with the first hint of emotion creeping into his voice.
"Actually, we were considering a monetary reward, but if you'd prefer we do have another assignment pending......"
"I'll take it."
And a hint of a smile touched the artist's face as he learned of his next opportunity to create his art.
END TRANS
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