Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,9
of the house. Can have that done before tonight, no problem. But actually removing the rats is going to take longer. You’ll need to fumigate.”
“Fumigate?” Baldwin threw up his hands. “I don’t have time to fumigate! Do you realize who’s coming tonight?” He pounded a fist on the desk, rattling his computer and a cup of pens. “The governor, you useless piece of shit. The governor. I can’t have rats in my house when the goddamned governor shows up, and I sure as hell can’t be fumigating. Get them out of here!”
It was just as well Ricardo was in his exterminator persona right then, because if he were playing Ricardo Torralba, he was liable to put a bullet in Baldwin’s brain just to shut him up. He hated spoiled, entitled rich assholes like this. The ones who thought natural laws could and should bend at their whim.
Sure, yeah, I can tell the rats how important you and your party are, and I’m sure they’ll move along immediately.
But Marty the Exterminator was much less aggressive than that, and hell, Ricardo knew better than to off the fucker right here like this. He was supposed to make it look like natural causes, and he still had to get out of the building. Blowing that smug face to bloody bits would be satisfying for a moment, but not with Kyle (who Ricardo didn’t actually want to kill) and cameras, not to mention the gauntlet of security measures between here and freedom, including the two huge dudes behind the desk. Like it or not—and he didn’t—Ricardo had to suffer Lance Baldwin a little longer.
He cleared his throat and kept his meek persona securely in place. “Like I said, I can seal off all their access points. The nests are probably all in the basement, and I can put out traps for any stragglers who aren’t down there. I can definitely make sure there aren’t any uninvited guests upstairs tonight.”
Well, aside from August, but your guys can shoot him if he gets in the way.
Lance wiped a hand over his face, his diamond-studded Breitling watch glittering beneath the sunken overhead lights. “For fuck’s sake.” He dropped his hand to the desk with a smack and glared at Kyle. “How is it we don’t even have an exterminator here until the day of my party? What the fuck is—”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Kyle shook his head. “We scheduled three others, but they all canceled.” Gesturing at Ricardo, he added, “His company was the only one who didn’t bail on us.”
Baldwin’s lips formed a flat, bleached line. To Ricardo, he said, “How soon can you have them contained?”
“Maybe four, five hours, depending on how many access points they have?”
Baldwin closed his eyes and pushed out a breath through his nose, nostrils flaring like an angry bull’s.
“Your guests will never see me,” Ricardo said quickly. “I’ll take care of laying traps and cutting off any access to the kitchen or areas where guests will be, and then I’ll be out of sight in the basement.”
“Fine. Fine.” Baldwin glared up at him. “But none of my guests had better so much as think there’s an exterminator on the premises.”
Kyle shifted nervously. “We’ll, um, need to put your van somewhere no one can see it.”
“Yes,” Baldwin growled, “Please do.”
“Will do, sir. We’ll—”
“Get the hell out of my office.” Baldwin waved toward the door and faced his computer screen. “Both of you.”
Kyle and Ricardo both mumbled, “yes, sir,” and got the hell out of the office.
In the hallway, once the door was shut behind them, Kyle turned to Ricardo, his face full of fury. “If one of his guests tonight so much as thinks he sees a rat or a rat dropping, my employer will sue you into oblivion. Do you understand me?”
Ricardo wanted to roll his eyes.
Go ahead. Sue my nonexistent company for not being able to perform actual magic.
But Marty just nodded vigorously. “Understood. I’ll make sure they’re gone.”
“What the fuck is that?”
August looked up from the powder he’d been pouring into a wineglass, his eyes wide with infuriating innocence. “What the fuck is what?”
“That.” Ricardo snatched the box out of his hand, read the label, and glared at his rival. “Strychnine? Really?”
“What?” August shrugged and snatched it back. “It’s supposed to look like natural causes.”
“And any pathologist worth his salt will find that on a toxicology screening, you moron.”
“Right.” August poured a bit more into the glass, then set the box down. “And by the time the toxicology screening