Star Whacker-01

I’m known as “Mr. Smith”. I’m what Randy Quaid calls a “star whacker”. I am a man that very powerful and influential entities contact when one of their human resources ceases to be an asset and becomes a liability, and these entities enter into a contract with me to remove that liability. I provide a desirable service, performed in a professional and confidential manner, that permits deniability to my clients and for which I receive rich compensation.

I came to my profession by a career path that is uncommon to those in my profession. Most of my peers either come organically out of a street-level background in organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia, or they come artificially out of a professional background in the Intelligence community, such as the C.I.A., and as such they possess a certain set of tells and habits that easily identify them to others.

I am one of the more unusual individuals, as I came out of a calm civilian background with an ordinary suburban community and no known ties to either the government or the criminal underworld. I have no military experience, no criminal record, and no secrets from my youth or adolescence that an interested party could use against me- nothing recorded, anyway. What I have is a decades-long study of crime, espionage, and related knowledge; I used what I learned to develop and perfect my practices. This includes the very everyday cover identity that I use to mask my operations: I am a columnist, with degrees in Journalism and Political Science, and a blogger.

My secret is the same as that of my peers: I am a psychopath. I am aware of my pathology, and I have been since I was a child. I have long since learned how to fake the empathy that ordinary people possess, through a combination of the study of body language and my time studying psychology as part of a larger self-education in theater—specifically, acting—that I undertook as an extra-curricular while in college.

Like most, I understand that I am a predator. Unlike most, I sincerely believe that my predation is for the benefit of the species. I got noticed when I successfully disappeared an embarrassing has-been celebrity that emerged from my hometown a generation before, and long-since became a laughingstock. I researched my target as I pushed behind the scenes for that target to come back for one of those ridiculous inspirational talks to high school students.

I used an acquaintance to procure the narcotics necessary to subdue my target, without his knowledge, and I then used the target’s assistant to get them introduced into the target’s bloodstream- again, without the assistant’s knowledge. When the target went into cardiac arrest while on stage, I leaped forward and began administering medical aid; I gave one of my best performances on that day, making it seem as if I were doing the procedure correctly, and kept at it until the target’s death became certain.

I received a postcard at a post office box that I rented under an assumed name three months later. Without leaving prints, I read the card; I left the card in the box, having read the instructions in it, and scoped out the location of the dead drop location. A man in an off-the-rack suit left a wrinkled brown paper bag next to the base of a tree. That night, I retrieved it; inside was a note with yet further instructions. Two days later, I retrieved from another dead drop location $1 million in unmarked, non-sequential U.S. bank notes- and a note of appreciation. By the weekend, I found myself on an audio-only Skype call with the patron that paid me.

“Please,” I said, “you may as well call me ‘Mr. Smith’ for now.”

That, reader, is how I broke into the big time of the assassination game. As for the assistant and the addict, I framed them for the celebrity’s death. After all, someone had to be blamed, so I might as well have set that up beforehand to ensure that no attention came to me. Risky, but worth it.