So I’m in my office, about a month back, and this famous guy -- I won’t say who -- comes in, sits down and asks me to kill him.

First things first:  I look at him like he’s nuts, and try to explain that I don’t offer that kind of service. Find people, yes. Make sure someone IS dead, yes.  Assisted suicide, no way -- look where it got that one guy! Sorry to waste your time…

But he stays in the chair, this one. He looks at me and insists that he KNOWS. He KNOWS I’ve done it. He KNOWS the people I’ve done it for. And he’s willing to pay -- oh is he ever.

Right about then’s when I make the decision. You see, not once has he used the magic word. He has not asked me to VANISH him.

By that I can determine that he knows enough to want my services, but doesn’t know enough to call them by their rightful name. If he did, I’d be thinking he was another clown trying to bust the operation wide open. And we can’t have that.

So I look at him, and ask him why. And he’s honest with me, which is also good. He says he’s all washed up. He hasn’t written anything good since the 70’s. His royalties aren’t enough to hold off his debts. And he does not want to spend the last years of his life as a has-been author.

So he wants very much to die, knowing that his publishers -- being the greedy bastards they are -- will at long last bring out everything he ever wrote and market the hell out of it. He wants to fix it so that his post-mortem royalties go to a charity, and the charity empties into his beneficiary’s pockets. And he -- that is, the beneficiary -- wants to have the last laugh on the people who hailed him, then laughed at him, and now don’t even remember who he was.

Maybe it’s the hard but humble look in his eyes. Maybe it’s the way his voice cracks when he talks about the publishers and how they’ve fucked him for the last thirty years. (Maybe it’s the thought of getting him in my scrapbook? Hey, I got my pride.)

So I nod, offer him a smoke and tell my secretary to lock the door and hold my calls. I’ve agreed to Vanish him. Now we just have to discuss how and when, figure out the relocation details and -- most importantly -- discuss my fee.

That takes most of the day. It’s a lot of questions, decisions and paperwork, five packs of cigarettes and a couple of drinks, deposit details (cash, of course). That and my guarantee:  I do the job, I get it done, and I keep my mouth shut like it was a matter of life and death, because it usually is.

We seal the deal with a handshake. And a week after that, he’s as good as dead.

But then, he’s NOT, even if he is… and that’s why I’m writing this one down for the books. Part of it’s insurance, in case certain people lied to me. And part of it’s just to help me make sense of it all. Because this is one confusing mess I’ve gotten myself into, here.

***

The obvious questions:   

No, I don’t advertise. As far as the world knows I’m just a PI. I handle missing persons and cheating spouses. And I keep my per diem high enough to dissuade most folks.

No, you can’t see my client list. Just ask yourself how many celebrities died young, or in stupid ways, and still have “lost” product coming out every so often. Do the math from there. 

No, it isn’t called Disappearing. Disappearing is when someone’s grabbed off the streets and gets shot in the back and dumped, somewhere. You can say you want to disappear, but you better call it Vanishing around me. Like I said, I got my pride. 

Yes, the Government knows I do this, and, yes, they’re cool with it. They Vanish people all the time, and allow certain licensed, independent operators -- such as myself -- to provide the service for a fee. As long as the Government knows what’s going on, and the Vanished individual continues to pay taxes, there’s no problem.

And no, I’m not going to tell you how it’s done. You want to be a Vanishing Act, learn the trade. Best place is one of the Alphabets -- you know, CIA, FBI, NSA, whatever.

(That’s how I learned it and did it… at least before I got compromised, gut-shot and turned loose, in that order. I ain’t bitter, but to this day I still can’t look at what’s left of my navel.)

***

Jump forward to three weeks ago. I’m cutting the story of my latest client’s sudden illness and subsequent death out of the NEW YORK TIMES. Guy got an article right above the fold. Lucky stiff.

Of course, this was planned (the illness and death, not the article placement). We figured out the details ahead of time. I hired my usual gang of helpers to make it a reality. He died quietly at home, there’s a body awaiting burial, the funeral will be in three days, and that’s all anyone -- including his nasty ex-wife -- ever needs to know.

Now, I always get three copies of the paper on a day like that. One’s to read. One’s to clip a copy for my scrapbook. The other’s to clip and send to the client, along with the bill. He’ll find it waiting for him at his new place a month after his death, after he comes out of the safehouse. And once I get paid in full, everyone’s happy.

Then my secretary says someone’s here and is insisting on talking to me. He’s using my real name, too, which means he’s probably with one of the Alphabets. So I go around to my side of the desk and take a seat, making sure my piece is within reach. And then I tell her to wave him on in, lock the door and hold my calls.

The guy looks Alphabet, alright -- black on black suit, big, thick mirror shades and a heavy, white earpiece. His hair color could be described as anything between brown and black. Even his face is nondescript, like he’s wearing some kind of mask.

He says my real name -- not asks -- and I say yes, that’s me. He asks me my relation to my latest client, and I shrug and cast a glance at one of the papers. He picks it up off my desk, reads it, and then looks at me from over the top. And I can tell his eyes are… what? Angry? Confused? Both?

“I see,” he says, and gently puts the paper back down on my desk. Then he says “I apologize for… the confusion. I’ll be in touch, soon.”

Then he turns to go, tapping his earpiece. And he says, as he storms out of my office, “Disengage counter-operation… I said disengage! DISENGAGE!”

What can I do? I pour myself a drink, go back to clipping out the article and make up my mind what to wear to the funeral.

***

It’s a week after that weirdo visits when the shit hits the fan.

One of my minders in the safehouse calls to tell me I’d better turn the TV. And I do, only to see my client holding a press conference at his new place in San Diego, right on the front steps. He admits to faking his death, and says it was all to prove a point. That and it’s part of the theme of the novel he’s just completed -- THE DISAPPEARING -- which deals with death, resurrection and how the modern media would handle it. Case in point…

Of course, I’m fucking pissed off. I start yelling down the phone, asking them how the hell they could have been so stupid as to let him leave before the month was up. What kind of minding operation were they running on my dime? I could have gotten better results from a border jail in South America.

And he’s silent for a moment, and says that I don’t understand. My client hasn’t gone ANYWHERE. He’s sitting there, right in front of him, in front of the TV. He’s almost having a heart attack. And he wants to know who the hell this impostor is and how the hell he found the house.

(He also wants to know how the impostor got hold of that manuscript he thought he’d lost, years ago, but right about then I don’t really give a shit.)

So I get on the phone with him, and do the best I can to calm him down. No, I have no idea who the hell this could be. But like I said, I guarantee my work. So he can rest assured that I’m gonna get the answers, and figure out some way to salvage our contact.

The phone’s not halfway to the desk before I’m realizing that I really don’t know what to do, here. It ain’t just the weirdo -- who’s gotta be in on this -- or the impostor, or that someone’s broken my confidence and arranged this. It’s that the world now knows that my client isn’t dead. This cat’s so far out of the bag that I don’t know how to put it back in.

But I got my reputation to consider.  And I know that I have to fix this. It’s my contract, my rules, my responsibility.

So I start making some calls, figuring that between what I learned in the Company, and who I’ve got on my side, I can make this up as I go along.

***

A couple hours and a million phone calls later, I get a sense of what the cat’s looking like. The non-death’s all over the news, but so far there’s been no mention of me or mine. The impostor is still claiming publicity stunt, and that he pulled this scam off by himself, along with his closest friends.

Me, I’d like to meet these friends, but something tells me they’re none of mine. I’ve called everyone up and down the chain and no one is missing or sounding phony, so I’m still willing to believe my people haven’t turned on me. And that is a massive relief, since I might need all of them for what might come next.

While I’m calling I’m watching the tape of the press conference, over and over. I’m looking at the impostor, talking with two plainclothes security gorillas on either side of him.

(And I’m noticing how Alphabet THEY look -- mirror shades, earpieces and nondescript faces. Just like the weirdo from the other day.)

I’m studying the fucker hard, remembering that day in my office about two weeks back. And damned if this impostor isn’t the best impostor I’ve seen. He’s got all the mannerisms down. The way he talks, the rhythm of conversation, how he answers questions and accusations with joke after joke, and the way he punctuates his jokes with a puff on his smoke…

It’s him -- it really fucking IS him. All that’s missing is the sadness and humility that brought him to my office, but I’m sure if someone really turned up the heat a bit I could even get that, too.

After that revelation, the rest of the evening sucks. Everyone keeps calling me back to tell me they got even more nothing than the call before. And with each call I’m less confident that I’ll be able to fix this without going wet.

And I really do not want to have to do that, again. 

***

Why I don’t like wetwork? For starters, it almost killed me.

This was years ago -- my last Vanishing Act for the Company. The Cold War was on, I was on the wrong side of Berlin, and it was getting hairy. So I was on my way to deal with a loose end the only way I knew how, which was with a gun with a silencer attached.

It was night and so rainy-misty-humid you couldn’t see half a block, which made it perfect for what I was doing. I figured I’d surprise the guy on his way home, pop him one in the ear and stroll away for coffee before anyone even knew he was dead.

(Pretty cocky, I know, but that was me, and this would have been… shit, I don’t know how many deaths. I’ve done my best to forget.)

I was about halfway to the target, cutting through back alleys, when someone called me by my real name. I should have kept walking, but I wasn’t thinking, so I turned around. And when I saw metal glint in the dark I knew I was fucked.

There was a muffled “thump,” and I’d been shot right through the navel -- I mean dead-bang through. I hit the wall and slid down, feeling the pain of the bullet about halfway to the ground.

That was all I COULD feel, too. I could smell my blood but I couldn’t feel it leaking out of me. My body went numb from the belly down, hand and arms put right to sleep. I could barely even look up to see who’d done it -- he was just a black shape holding a gun at my head.

Asshole didn’t bother to finish me off. I should have been killed by that one bullet alone, so he just stepped back into the rain and the darkness to let nature take its course.

And that was damn lucky, because one of my people just happened to be following after my trail. He found me sitting there, half dead and feeling no pain. I woke up in a safehouse in Berlin a week later, dazed, dehydrated and sewn up like a turkey from my groin to my tits. I had just enough time to realize what had happened and then my superiors came in to rip me a new asshole.

Like I said, damn lucky.

The Company hushed it all up, of course, but that was my last Vanishing Act for them. The way they looked at it, I’d been made -- probably because I was so cocky.

They removed me from that theatre, assigned me to a desk and had me stay there, under wraps, until I left to go solo. And I think by then they were glad to see me go. I know I was glad to be out after doing nothing but safe crap.

So no, I don’t do wetwork -- not anymore. It ain’t some moral conviction. Some people have to have their melons popped to keep them from doing something stupid, or talking to the wrong people. It’s just that I won’t be the one to do it.

See, before that night it was all some stupid game. People were just photos and dossiers waited to be shredded. But after I got tagged in return, I realized that photos have names, too. One of them was mine.

And after that I had a hard time looking down the sights at someone’s forehead without seeing my own face there, too.

***

It’s three days after that, and I am at the end of my rope. I’ve fielded three phone calls from my client, and each time he’s that much more upset that I don’t have anything to tell him yet. He’s also got a bigger, more complex conspiracy to blame it on each time, too.

Yes, it’s a conspiracy -- I have to agree. This took time to set up, talent to pull off, and a whole lot of people to make it go.  But for my client, the clincher is the new novel. He says he was writing it years ago, but burned out on a good ending and packed it away to write something else. Then, two novels later, he tried to go back to it, but it wasn’t in his writing room, anymore. It was like it’d vanished into thin air.

So who’s to blame? That changes from day to day. Today it’s the World Anti-Communist League, which hates card-carrying true believers like himself. And that’s just fucking hilarious, since the day before that it WAS the party.

(Something about back dues, but he didn’t want to get into specifics.)

So what can I do? I listen to his complaints, since I figure he’s got nothing better to do that stare at the TV and imagine who’s taking the special time to fuck him. And I make assurances -- politely as possible -- that we can still fix this.

But those assurances are starting to sound hollow -- especially to me.  Especially since, in the three days I’ve been dealing with this, I’ve been finding more questions than answers.

Like, how did this impostor know everything we’d set up for the client? He had the name, the new place, the numbers for the bank accounts and dummy accounts, their passwords. It was like he just slipped his hand into a glove.

And no, there was no way he could have had that information, yet. The details are set up within days, but the package of info is left at the new place the day the client gets there, and not one day before. And he couldn’t have gotten all the details from one of my people, because I have different people working on different things, and I’m the only one who knows everything -- and everyONE -- all along.

(What about my secretary? Hey, she’s just window-dressing. She handles my schedule and answers the phone, and that’s all I need her for.)

So yeah, it’s more than a little spooky. I’m feeling like someone’s read my mind and taken out all the relevant details, which   meant someone would have had to have gotten my files, read my notes and heard my phone calls without my knowing.

And that kind of maneuver screams Alphabet to me.

But then I make a few calls to my contacts, there, and get nothing. And it isn’t just non-denial denials or a wall of silence, either. They genuinely have no idea what the hell is going on. I can tell because they don’t try to bargain it out of me.

As if that isn’t bad enough, some of them make hints – bad hints. If someone’s running a game on me, they might have to pull out. Deny all knowledge and leave me to twist.

Even rescind my license to Vanish if I can’t get this under control…

Left with no convoluted answers, I go for the obvious one. The Alphabet who’d come into my office just before the shit hit the fan? He HAD to be involved, maybe directly. And at the very least, he probably knows more about what’s happening than I do.

So I do what any self-respecting fellow in my position should do. I make more calls, put out even more feelers and ask even more questions in the hopes that he’ll get wind that I’m looking into it. In fact, I even mention that I’d had that visit, just to get him to want to repeat the trip.

A day later, he does. And this time he’s got company.

***

I’m in my parking garage, heading from my car to my apartment, carrying Chinese and a six pack. I look down and then up, and I’m surrounded by four Alphabets, like they’d stepped out of thin air. They’re all dressed alike -- black on black, thick sunglasses and big earpieces -- and all with nondescript faces. 

The guy in front of me is the weirdo from my office. The ones to my left and right are the plainclothes from the press conference, just no longer IN plainclothes. And they don’t seem happy to have made the trip from San Diego, either.

I don’t know the one behind, but when I look at him I realize there’s a fifth guy. He’s back by my car, watching the entrance with his back to me. And something about him raises my hackles -- badly.

The weirdo speaks first, but this time he ASKS my name. When I ask him why he doesn’t remember he cocks an eyebrow behind his shades. And then he asks why I’m so interested in their client.

Now, there’s a million things I could say here. Like, ‘What the hell do you mean YOUR client?’ or ‘What’s it worth to you?’ But for all I know they’ve got me on candid camera, and I’m being recorded eight ways to Sunday. And I know enough about the layout of this place to know that if I give them what they want, they can just off me right then and there, and no one will see.

(Part of the reason I’m living there -- all the securicams are fake.)

So I hedge both bets, look confused in a fake kind of way, and insist that I don’t know what they’re talking about. And even if I did, they can’t expect me to talk about that sort of thing outside of my office. I even put down the Chinese and beer and hand the weirdo my business card -- my REAL one -- just for laughs.

One of the plainclothes snatches the card out of my hand and reads it. Then he hands it to weirdo, who cocks his eyebrow again. And that’s when the conversation gets seriously weird.

The guy right behind me asks “Irrelevant?”

The weirdo says “We need more intel.” And I’m about to make the offer to come by my office to discuss said intel, but then fifth guy, back by my car, says “Irrelevant,” too.

Right about then, my hackles come back up, again. There’s something about how he said it that scares me.

Weirdo’s really put out by this, for some reason. “I said we need more intel, here,” he insists:  “Something about this operation has been bothering me from the start.”

“Irrelevant,” the fifth guy repeats, still not turning around:  “I say Irrelevant. And if you want to prove otherwise, you’d better find that something… hadn’t you?”

Me, I’m scared shitless by that guy, but I don’t want them to know that. So I look around, shake my head and bend over to pick up my stuff. And I tell them, hey, if they want to come talk, they know where to find me.

But by the time I’ve gotten back up again, they’re gone. It’s like they all just vanished, quick as they came.

And that shouldn’t be possible -- not even for Alphabets.

The rest of the evening’s a waste. The Chinese goes right in the trash. And I’m so rattled it’s all I can do to punch the numbers on my cell to call up my government contacts, again. I’m surprised they don’t ask why I’m stammering.

I check to see if they can tell me anything else, now that I got some more to go on. But no, they don’t. All I learn from the calls is that they’re even less impressed by my weak sister shit. It’s only a matter of time before one of them puts the wrong word in the right ear, and I’m out of a job. 

So no, the beer doesn’t go in the trash. I even break into the bottle of Jack I keep for emergencies, because if this ain’t one, I don’t know what is.

***

The next morning I wake up hung over and pissed off. So of course I get another call from my client, just to tell me that, today, it must have been the fucking Rothchilds.

I’ve fucking had enough. I hang up on him, call back the minders and tell them I’m coming over -- now. I know I’m in no condition to do anything smart, but I’ve fucking had it with being jerked around and feeling helpless.

What am I gonna do when I get there? I don’t know. I can’t help but feel that there’s SOMETHING he knows that he’s not telling me. SOMETHING that can at least explain how it is that this imposter’s so damn perfect.

Of course, the minders are glad to hear it. The guy’s been driving them up the fucking walls, asking them what I’m doing, now, and begging to call me again.

In fact, I think they’re about ready to kill him, which I can probably use to my advantage once I get there, if I have to. And right about then I’m so ready to just let them do it that it’s frightening.

So you can imagine how sick I feel when I get to the safe house, and discover that someone’s beaten us to it.

The minders tell me, when I wake back up, that I took one look at our client’s body, clutched at my stomach and moaned before hitting the ground in a swoon. I don’t really remember doing that, but I can believe it. Especially because of how he died.

See, I get there about thirty minutes after I call, and they tell me everything’s just fine. He’s rung up twice that morning:  once to ask what I was doing and if he could call (answers:  “We don’t know” and “Yes, you can”) and once more for breakfast, five minutes before I got there. So all way down the basement hall to his rooms -- breakfast in hand -- I’m telling them exactly what I’m gonna be doing with that breakfast, his ass and my foot if he doesn’t tell me something useful…

But then I keycard the door open and smell blood. And I see what’s left of our client, sprawled face-up with his bathrobe splayed open, right in front of a spattered TV.

I run forward, just to see for myself that he’s dead… but there’s no question of that.

They’d shot him in the gut, first. He must have staggered backwards and fallen to his hands and knees. And he must have tried to get back up, but he got no further than halfway before the killer finished him off. One shot just above the eyebrows, and that was it.

No one’s opened the door since yesterday -- I can tell from the timestamp on the keypad. There’s only one way in and out of the hallway, and no one got past them there. No one’s shown up on the cameras at the doors. And I make damn sure my minders aren’t smart enough to know how to bypass so much as a car alarm, either.

So there is no way they could have done this -- not in the last five minutes. And there’s NO FUCKING WAY someone else could have done this without our seeing, or knowing.

But there he is – dead as dead. Blood and brain spattered on the TV. Piss and blood on his boxers. A weird smirk on his face, like he was thinking of one last, wry joke.

That and a perfect, exact first wound -- dead-bang, right in the navel.

It’s that hole in his gut that makes me lose it. When I see it, I remember that bad night, years and years ago. Only this time, I remember more.

I remember the guy standing above me, after I slid down the wall. He wore black on black, with thick sunglasses over his eyes and something in his ear. His face was cold and remote, and anonymous, like he was wearing a mask.

He aimed the gun at my head and was ready to pull the trigger again. He would have, too, but then the thing in his ear squawked, and he got a really sour look on his face.

He said one word before slipping away:  “Disengaging.” He said it in a creepy voice that’s lurked around the corners of my nightmares and bad drunks ever since, but only just then come to the front of my mind.

Well, I’d heard that creepy voice again the day before. IT HAD COME FROM THE ALPHABET BEHIND ME, BACK BY MY CAR.

So yeah, I ate the floor. You telling me YOU wouldn’t?

***

When I get back up again, I’m in total lockdown mode. I don’t care about the money I’m gonna lose, my reputation or anything like that. All I know is that if the guy who tried to kill me back in Berlin’s after my clients, he might be after me, too.

And if he can get in and out of here, and he’s got backup that knows where I am… well, everything is just fucked, isn’t it? All I can do is work backwards to cover me and mine.        

The body goes off to some people I hoped I’d never have to call again, but like I said, you gotta keep your options open. The cleaners are around within an hour to dispose of the evidence, and I make sure they and my minders don’t see one another. By the time they arrive my minders are off for a vacation, paid for right out of my pocket. They’ll never see or hear from me again, and I think they know this, but they handle it like professionals.

(And yes, I can tell from the way they take their money and leave that they’re gonna keep their mouths shut. Besides, who would want to own up to being part of this pooch-screw? Not me.)

After the cleaners leave, I arrange to have everything in the house trashed and removed that very afternoon. If I had it burned it’d look suspicious. This way it’ll just be a shell I do something else with, if I have to, and no one needs to be any wiser.

I’m on my way out to the car when my phone rings. I don’t even fucking look at the number -- I just answer.

It’s one of the Alphabets -- the Weirdo. And what he says… it still makes my head hurt to think about it.

“I want you to know that we respect you,” he says:  “And we’re sorry it’s come down to this.”

Oh, great (I tell him):  Thanks for that. Thank you SO MUCH…

“If it means anything, he no longer works for our department.”

Who?

“My colleague. The one who shot you in Berlin?”

(And that shuts me right the fuck up. The world just stops, right then. My mind shuts down all over again, like it did back at the safehouse, only this time I don’t eat the dirt. I just stand there, phone in hand, listening to the noises on the road.)

“He’d been getting… sloppy. Too many unnecessary risks based on incomplete intel, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now.”

(Again, I say nothing. It’s just me, the phone and the cars going by.)

“I can only apologize for that, and the death of your client.”

That don’t help me none, pal. (I finally make myself say):  Not a God damn bit.

“You have to believe you have my sympathies. We’re in the same business, you and I. We’re just… ahead of you. And sometimes behind.”

The same business, huh?

“The same. We just have more… options, shall we say, as to how we Vanish people. Our operations overlapped this time. I will see to it they never do so again.”

No danger of that, asshole (I say, the anger coming back) All I got is my reputation. And as of right now, that reputation is shot to shit.

“Your reputation… will endure,” he says:  “You will persevere. You will even prosper. No will ever know about this… INCIDENT but you and your friends. And they won’t talk if you don’t, will they?”

That a threat, buddy?

“No. No threats. There’s no point.”

(I’m about to say something else but he beats me to it)

“There’s something at your office, on your desk,” he says:  “Consider it compensation for the trouble, and a farewell. You do not see nor hear from me again.”

Then he hangs up. I try to call the number back just to yell at him some more, but my party can’t be reached at this time. Go figure.

So I go back to my office, all too aware that I could be walking into the biggest trap ever. But no, there’s no trap. No one shoots me. No one steps out from a corner and slips a wire around my neck. No waiting assassins. No one at all.

There is a big, thick envelope on my desk, waiting for me. Written on it are three words:  “Professional Courtesy + Bonus”

So I rip it open, knowing it could be a bomb and not really caring, anymore. Somehow I know it’s not gonna blow up… not like you’d expect, anyway.

Inside is money -- lots of it, in nice, crisp C-notes, just like I like it. It’s the exact amount my client would have owed me, plus what I just handed the minders for their vacation and the cleaners for their emergency job, and what I planned to give the “redecorators” once they were done. It’s all there to the last dollar.

There’s also a paperback book that shouldn’t exist yet. See, it’s by my client, and entitled THE DISAPPEARING. It’s even signed, to me.

I can’t NOT look, so I do. The date of first printing is next year, sometime. And that date of the paperback edition? Let’s just say it’s later.

A LOT later.

***

But that’s crazy. Can’t be real. I just had some confusion on the job. Something went sideways and I panicked, started seeing things and had a functional breakdown. Happens all the time, right?

Except that everything the weirdo on the phone told me is true. I HAVE persevered, even prospered. I didn’t lose my license to Vanish, my reputation is better than ever, and none of my Alphabet contacts have said boo about this little incident.

It’s just like it didn’t happen.

So yeah, that’s the story, and I’m sticking to it. I’m also sticking it away because I’d like everyone to keep thinking it didn’t happen. What could I say? “Something really weird happened on the job, even if it didn’t…?”

But I wrote it down to try and make sense of it… and I suppose it does, in a weird kind of way.

See, I figure if these guys are far enough “ahead” of me to be “behind” me, too, then they probably DO have more options as to how to do their Vanishings. A lot more.

And if they can just pop in and out places, too, like I saw (or DIDN’T see) them doing, then they’ve got all KINDS of options. Hell, they could look over my relocation notes, listen in on my phone calls, walk into my safehouse and pop my
client.

They could even go back a little further and steal said client’s old manuscript… and you see where I’m going with this, right?

I mean, if you were gonna Vanish, would you want to spend the rest of your life as some anonymous no one -- big money or no -- or would you want to slip into the life of someone rich and famous? Especially if you’ve got access to plastic surgery so good you could be made to look like said person?

Especially after said person arranged to be out of the public eye for a couple of weeks, and just before he got back into the limelight again, thanks to that “missing” manuscript…?

It’s so crazy it makes perfect sense, but I couldn’t prove a thing if I tried. And if there’s nothing I can do -- or SHOULD do -- about it, then I’m just gonna close the book on it. Put it behind me and keep doing what I do:  I do the job, I get it done, and I keep my mouth shut like it’s a matter of life and death. It almost always is.

But I’m gonna keep this story as insurance, and stick the number the weirdo called me from in here at the end. Maybe someday, when I’m old and tired -- or maybe needing to Vanish before someone Disappears me -- I’ll call it up and call in a favor. And maybe they’ll answer.

Hey, like I say -- you gotta keep your options open.