Hitman Melodies Section 2

II.
He was working on a trio sonata in his studio; it was for a triple hit he was planning in October, next month. Each of the three marks was represented by one of the solo parts in the sonata. Sebastian himself was represented by the figured bass realization. The plan for the piece was this:
the solo parts expose themselves in sequence, each theme proud and confident in a different way;
however, each theme contains one false note, an illogical note, a dissonant note;
as the themes alternate, (each soloist asserting himself with a positive attitude and a winning smile), the false notes begin to multiply, and a cloud of hideous counterpoints obscures from view the individual identities of the soloists;
Sebastian used a sophisticated system of false basses (Neo-Fauxbourdon, he called it) to (subtly at first, then not so subtly) redefine the tonal implications of the bass (Cheech deSalvo);
the harmonic dynamics behind this gradual detuning of the band instigates a mass retreat, each false note clattering into and spinning off of every other false note, until the tonal acceleration drives each solo part, one by one, off a cliff.
The dance would be lovely.

Suddenly (sudden, because unexpected) the phone rang. It was Giorgio. Another job. A broad, a newspaper reporter name of Maddy High, what a byline! She's kind of a Mata Hari, a spy, a snitch. "Yeah, she actually pulled off one of your specialties, Sebastian: she went undercover and got into bed with Jackie Junior." (Jack Milano's punk teen-age kid.) "She's a real looker--got a great rack. He thinks he's some kind of Super-Stud now, ha ha." Yeah, she dove right in, primed and pumped the kid for all kinds of secret mob stuff, you know, location and time of drop, which city cops are on the take, how much Baldassario's percentage is, stuff like that, stuff that a nineteen-year-old punk would feel proud to know, not knowing that it was not worth knowing.
And it was all bullshit; none of the information dropped on her was really legally damaging, or even that annoying, since nothing would come of it. (Jackie Junior was not high enough up in the organization to know anything that wasn't already common knowledge. Also, Jackie Junior was a spoiled brat, as arrogant as he was dumb, and all the eyes of the Milano family were watching, waiting impatiently for him to grow up and stop being such dumb jerkweed.) From a business standpoint, although Maddy's intentions were bad, she had actually done no harm. And there was a funny side to it--Jackie Junior would never forget it, the ultimate sexual extravaganza of his life, snuggling every night into that overflowing bosom of the vast Cosmic Mother. In a way, she really deserved a handsome fee for services rendered. But, Jesus, the fucking broad had duped and humiliated the son of Giovanni Milano! There is no order in a world in which such a woman is permitted to live. I mean, come on, she was eating lasagna dinners at Milano's for a whole month before anybody finally put it together that she was a reporter. God forbid that any of those stupid shits should read a newspaper!

So Sebastian takes the gig, and starts researching this clever, no doubt insanely ambitious (Ambitious? She slept with Jackie Junior, for Chrissake! Need I say more?) girl. He likes her already, which is a bad sign, but it hardly ever affects the work; he likes lots of his marks; sometimes he develops short but meaningful relationships with them; in intense intimacy, he bestows upon them words of towering insight, filled with boundless affection and hope for the future; taken totally into their confidence, he courts, coddles, and befriends them right up to the moment he slices their head off with a harp string. Party on.
Now Sebastian immediately figured that the broad knew how badly she had fucked up. She knew that her primary mission, to get something meaningful on Milano, had failed. She had needed one prize plum of dirt that would both hurt Milano and save her own life, but she missed it--she was simply sleeping with the wrong Milano. Her ruse had been discovered before she could dig any deeper than Jackie Junior, and now, out on the lamb, she was screwed. She had been lucky to get out one step ahead of Jonesy and Chico, the first pair of low-budget blood hounds Milano sent over to her hotel to snatch her then snuff her; but she knew she would have to get a helluva lot luckier to keep ahead of Sebastian Chronic. Damn! Everything had depended on that one piece of evidence, that one exposed skeleton; because without it, she had no leverage to bargain for her life. It had to be there. She knew it was there. But, she has just spent a month eating Milano's lasagna under the sheets with Jackie Junior, without success, and, now that she's exposed, she knows that the only way this thing only ends is with Sebastian Chronic coming after her.
She knew it would be Chronic. Everybody connected with the organization knew about Chronic--he was a living legend. Sebastian Chronic, spare of frame and face, piercing of eye (the one covered by the angled black fedora he always wore, the other glinting like a bright marble out of the cloudy dark); his long flowing cape may have been too much Zorro and not enough Goodfellas, but any sideways sarcasm about it bought the jokester a night in the hospital and any innocent bystanders the rare treat of seeing Sebastian's reflexes put a man down in a hurricane of martial arts moves faster than lightning. If Chronic got your number you were gone. You could look forward to some extravagant entertainment first, but, ultimately you were gone. Although the only people outside the organization who knew him were a bunch of unhappy dead people, nobody in the inner circle was unaware that the terror of Milano was, in large part, due to the the spectre of Sebastian Chronic looming in the shadows ready and waiting to sing you to sleep--if you stepped out of line, if Milano pointed a finger.
Sebastian began to figure. What is this girl going to do? Would she attempt to hide, sweat it out? No way. We're talking Mafia here. They're kind of like Marines: fanatical and stupid. She knows these guys only know two paths to forgiveness: revenge or death--death of the avenger. No, she would not try to get away. She would press forward her cause and keep digging. She was a bright girl, a determined girl--plus, she didn't have any choice: her life depended on her getting something on Milano before Chronic got to her. If Milano were neutralized, Chronic's contract would be null and void, if Chronic got to her first, she would be nil and void.

Sebastian mused on the problem over a dry chardonnay. The pale liquid swirled in the long-stemmed glass like thoughts in Sebastian's transparent mind. Making contact, designing the hit--those ideas would flow naturally out of the context in which he found her, oh sweet joy of the landscape! "No nose, this stuff, but classy, I guess, at $300 a bottle. Classy, this girl. Ha! Jackie Junior's great spring romance. I wish I had the polaroids." Finding her was the immediate problem. Milano had eyes in every dirtbag corner of the city, and all exits were blocked. She could not squirm, leap, or pay her way out of their web. So, it was only a matter of time; but time was, in many ways, the name of the game. Before deleting her, Milano had to get the girl and make sure Jackie Junior hadn't let slip something valuable without knowing it. It was the flow of information they had to control, and there was a very real time factor involved. If she knew what Milano thought she might possibly know, he would have to move quickly, to avert a bad situation; but it would be ten times worse to move quickly not knowing what she knows, or what she's told somebody else she knows. They had to get her, and Milano had the power to get anybody in the world. Sebastian Chronic was not only the weirdest hit man anybody ever heard of, he was the absolute best. No matter what bullshit higher-mental ceremony attended each hit, when the deadline came, the mark was dead. "I don't give a crap about all this music baloney," Milano profoundly observed, "but I like 'em dead, and Chronic makes 'em dead."
A particle of interest rubbed up against Sebastian's enquiring mind like a cat seeking strokes: "I wonder if she'll come after me?" he thought. It was a thought whose attraction grew on him. It made sense. "If she can't hide (and she can't), and she can't run, her only course of action is to take the offensive, because she knows that's what I'm going to do. After all, this is no dumb Italiano meatloaf, this is one smart cookie." Really smart. For a month, she had fooled a bunch of streetwise assholes into thinking that she was just a high-priced hooker from downtown, who was taking a somewhat misguided sabbatical with Baby Super Stud. Never mind how she's always asking questions, how she always wears that charming little broach in the center of her magnificent cleavage, which she loves to push right up into your face (a microphone?); never mind how she was sometimes seen whispering into a pay phone, and slipping a tiny notebook into her handbag next to the rubbers. There was no reason to notice these things. Milano was king, and his crew were all comfortably ensconced in the safety of the arrogant idea that, "Nobody Fucks with Milano." This false sense of security had made them blind.
And she was lucky--for a month. "She must be a great actress," he mused over the wine. "No, now, we can't be thinking like that, because you are a pushover for great actresses." (And they for him; imagine the dramatic fascination a composer/contract killer would have for somebody whose whole life is all theatre anyway. But these relationships never lasted for more than a night, because, after all, who wants to hear the same symphony twice? She left the women with a memory of that one great night, (emphasis on "one") awash in the symphony of Sebastian Chronic's love-making, artful, as in all things. It was a memory whose singularity would be of great comfort when the lonely nights and the hard times came. A good memory is always an object of profound appreciation.) "Think how appreciative she will be when we deliver her unto the portals of Saint Peter."
However things were going to shake down, though, he mustn't underestimate her: she was weak enough to be vulnerable, but smart enough to be dangerous, and only a fool ignores a danger, no matter how slight. It was clearly going to be a duel between him and her--her and whatever resources she had at her disposal: cops? FBI? Probably not: Sebastian got the definite impression "This girl works alone. I mean, is the FBI going to align itself with some self-serving, ego-centric reporter--somebody who's been whoring around with Milano for a whole month, and who fucked up to boot? Maybe the NSA? No, this girl works alone; this is going to be up close and personal. This is a smart girl, and it is going to be a battle of wits all the way. She's going to have to put her mind into my mind, and I'm going to have to put mine into hers. And my mind says: she's going to try to get her man the way a man gets got. Should he play into it, or turn the tables on her and not do the only possible thing?" That part didn't matter anyway, because Milano wanted to see her before Chronic put her down.
So, the course is set. The players are in motion, the clock is ticking toward the time when they will have their first gambit. Now, where? If she were going to come after him, where was a good meeting place for him to find her? A public place, lots of people, but kind of low-life, so shady behavior will not be noticed? If her words were meant to murder, she would probably not want to associate herself with any of the finer things, like Alice Tully Hall, or the Met, but wait--maybe she would--get straight to the truth of the matter. Good girl! Maybe the only place in the world for Sebastian Chronic to meet the architect of his own doom is at the opera house! But when? "No time like the present," he thought, she thought. He got on the phone and reserved his regular box at the Met for that night. He couldn't wait to see that broach.