Free The Accidental Hero by Joshua Graham Page B

and literature, doesn’t mean he has the right
to take away our business.”
    Big Pete didn’t care for porn any more
than he cared for religion. He just cared about his reputation,
doing his job and getting paid for it. “All he’s doing is standing
on the corner of your smut shop, handing out flyers and talking to
anyone who wants to talk. For this, you want him dead?”
    “ You want this job or not?”
Tom said, trying wisely not to appear too challenging.
    “ Shut up,” Bill said. To
Pete: “You think he’s just saying ‘Hi, howya doing?’ to those
people? Since he started hanging out on my street, I’ve been losing
thousands of dollars every month. Business is at its all time low!
This stupid sonofabitch can’t keep his goddam religion to himself.
No, he’s gotta come and mess with my livelihood. I got a mortgage,
a family to feed. What about that?”
    Pete grabbed the envelope
and shook his head. He didn’t like whining women, but he
really, really hated whining men. “I don’t care. Why don’t you go and
complain to your wife and your two little girls about how the mean
old preacher man is taking away your fine, upstanding customers who
would otherwise enjoy all the fine porn you have to offer them?” He
slapped Bill across the head with the envelope and walked off.
“Un-frikkin-believeable.”
     
    ~~~
     
    That night, Big Pete went back to his
apartment in Hillcrest and ate his In-N-Out cheeseburger and fries.
He sat in the dark, looking out the half-closed window with
yellowing paint peeling and chipping off the frame. Big Pete didn’t
like it when there was too much light on at night. In his line of
work, he preferred the darkness and had gotten used to it. The only
light in his studio was from that annoying street lamp right
outside his window which always made it hard for him to fall asleep
at night. ‘Specially nights before a hit.
    Didn’t matter.
    He didn’t need much sleep anyway,
because the adrenaline rush from offing a target was enough to keep
him buzzed for the entire day. Cold sweat dripped from his white
In-N-Out cup, which was filled mostly with ice. That annoyed Big
Pete, but he realized that was the way it was everywhere; at Burger
King, McDonalds, Wendy’s….life. The bigger the cup, the more ice
you got. You never got as much sweet Pepsi as the supersized cup
promised. And yet, he still ordered the largest cup, every time.
Good thing he ordered a milkshake too. What the hell, right? It was
hot as hell and he’d probably lose all the weight by sweating it
out.
    This time, there was so much
condensation—probably because it was so damned humid tonight—that
he wondered if his cup was actually leaking. He lifted it up and
looked underneath.
    Odd.
    Something was printed on the
bottom.
     
    John 3:16
     
    Yeah, yeah. For God so loved the stinkin’ world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall have
everlasting life. He’d memorized this
verse as a kid in Sunday School so many times he was sick of it.
Later, John 3:16 was nothing more than that crazy man who used to
hold up that sign in the baseball games.
    “ Burger joint run by
fanatics.”
    Something troubled him,
though—couldn’t tell just what. The night before he murders a
preacher, then he sees a Bible verse. He thought of Mom, how she
raised him alone after Dad died of a heart attack. She used to take
him to Sunday school at that old Baptist church and he’d try to
annoy the preacher by looking right at him during a sermon and
picking his nose.
    Big Pete laughed at the
memory.
    He hated preachers.
    Especially Pastor Ken Lowry. He was
married but always flirted with Ma, he was always up to no good.
Nothing made Big Pete happier than when Pastor Ken got arrested for
embezzling money from his own church, and got caught in an affair
with his secretary.
    Hypocrites.
    All hypocrites.
    It made tomorrow that much
easier.
    Just then, a flash of black passed
before his eyes. If you know