Free Sin Eater by C.D. Breadner Page B

a grip. And he certainly shouldn’t be out here, sitting in a “borrowed” car like some kind of news-story stalker. He should be doing his goddamn job.
    He put the car in gear and slowly started away from the curb, but left the radio tuned to where it was. He knew where to find the sinners in this city, and it wasn’t hard to make his quota at all. Not that he had quotas, necessarily, but he liked to see how many sins he could let loose on the world in one day, always trying to better the day before.
    It was the only way to job satisfaction for an employee who never had to attend staff meetings or fill out a performan ce report. His job type fell into that No News Is Good News category. If the Boss never asked to see you in His office, you were doing just fine.
    And this Sin Eater had never seen the inside of his boss’s office.
    He headed for a bar in the heart of downtown, where drug deals were made and women were traded for cash by private contractors that all paid a percentage of their profit to the business owner. It was seedy, dirty, dark, and hardly resembled an actual licensed establishment.
    He parked well away from the curb directly in front of the place, and noticed the scum of the earth that were huddled in the shadows eyeing up the Jag and seeing it as however many kilos of whatever substance they craved to their very core. And yet there was no trace of real evil in any of them. They were just weak, sad, and pathetic.
    He turned back to them in the midd le of the street, and pushed into their minds all at once like a public address system. Make sure no one steals the car, I’ll pay you.
    He felt th eir agreement, and continued into the bar with no worries about anything happening to that ride.
    Inside the crowds parted to let him pass. But a flash suit and lack of BO tended to do that in places like this. He felt the women looking him over like a meal ticket, hungry in many different ways. The men were suspect, like he was a narc … or maybe even a big dealer that no one had seen before. Their unease was a tool he could use nicely, without exhausting any of his persuasive energies. Some humans were just too easy to control.
    He reached the polished wood bar as the bartender came forward eagerly, his face conveying how badly he needed good tips to pay off his child support and light heroin habit.
    A light heroin habit. The Sin Eater was absolutely delighted by oxymorons.
    “What can I get you?”
    “Your best Scotch please. A double.” He laid a fifty on the bar, and the man’s eyes went wide. “In a clean glass, if you would.”
    The man nodded, then reached under the bar for a reserve of glasses separate from the ones behind him. The Sin Eater had been here often enough to know that no dishwashers were employed during the night.
    The amber liquid put before him was bottom-shelf at best, barely above “bath tub” grade, but that was hardly the barkeep’s fault. He pushed the fifty towards him, told him to “Keep it,” and then carried his glass to a table in a far corner, sitting alone behind the beer bottles some other party had left behind that no one had bothered to clean up.
    The Scotch was harsher than he would have liked, but he sipped it slowly and surveyed the room. There was plenty of sinning going on in the biblical sense, har dee har har , but he could find none of what he was really looking for. He could pick up a man ODing in the men’s room, slumping to the floor next to the urinal, his eyes fluttering closed as his breathing became ragged.
    There was a whore up against the opposite side of the wall behind him, fucking a guy while her mind was focused solely on her next hit. The man doing her had no thoughts in his head; he was close to coming and his mind hit a blissful empty state as he did so. Dumb fuck wasn’t even wearing a condom.
    Come out, come out, wherever you are , he thought. It was only a matter of time before he spotted someone that deserved his special attentions.