Certain Prey

something, it’s just chemicals. When we love something, it’s more chemicals. When we die, all the chemicals go back in the ground, and that’s it. There’s nothing left. You don’t go anywhere, except in the ground. No heaven, no hell, no God, no nothing. Just . . . nothing.”
    “That’s pretty grim,” Rinker said. She pointed a fork at Carmel. “I’ve seen people like you—philosophical nihilists. People who really believe all that . . . eventually, they can’t stand it. Most of them commit suicide.”
    Carmel nodded. “I can see that. That’s probably what I’ll do, when I get older. If I live to get older.”
    “Why not do it now?” Rinker asked. “If nothing means anything, why wait?”
    “No reason, except curiosity. I want to see how things come out. I mean, killing yourself is as meaningless as not killing yourself. Makes no difference if you do or you don’t. So as long as you’re not bored, as long as you’re feeling good . . . why do it?”
    “But you’d do it if you had to. Kill yourself.”
    “Hell, I might kill myself if I don’t have to,” Carmel said.
    “Really?”
    “Sure. For the same reason that I’m staying now. Curiosity. I can’t be absolutely one million percent sure that there’s nothing on the other side; so as long as it’s one-millionth of a percent possible, why not check?”
    “Man, that’s almost enough to bum me out,” Rinker said. “It does bum me out from time to time,” Carmel said. “But I get over it pretty quickly. I’m just an upper sort of person.”
    “Chemically.”
    “Absolutely,” Carmel said. After a couple more bites, she asked, “How about you? How do you justify all this stuff?”
    “I’m kind of religious, I guess,” Rinker said.
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. I don’t think anything really happens in this world that isn’t part of God’s plan. And if God wants somebody to die, now, if that’s that person’s fate, I can’t say no.”
    “So you’re just what . . . the finger of God?”
    “I wouldn’t put it exactly that way. It sounds too . . . vain, I guess. Too important. But what I do is God’s will.”
    “Jesus,” Carmel said. Then, quickly, “Sorry, if that offends you, I’ll . . .”
    “No, no, jeez, I hang around with Italians, for Christ’s sake. Catholics, man. Nobody talks the talk like Catholics. I’m not exactly religious that way—I mean, I used to work in a nudie bar. It’s just that I believe in . . . some kind of God. Not in heaven or hell, just in God. We’re all part of it.”
    “What about stuff like guns? Where’d you learn about that?”
    “We always had guns in our house when I was a kid, my step-dad was a hunter. Poacher, really. So I knew about rifles and shotguns. Then the Mafia guys taught me the basic stuff about handguns, though most of them don’t know a lot,” Rinker said. “I figured that if I was gonna do this—be a hit man—I’d better learn about them. You can get most of what you need from books. There’s an ocean of gun stuff out there.”
    “So you know all about the bullets and how fast they go . . .”
    “Pretty much. I don’t reload—make my own ammunition—because that would be too much of a trademark,” Rinker said. “Sooner or later they could get me on it. But factory ammo is as good as anything I could make up for my kind of work, anyway.”
    “Are the guns really special? I mean . . .”
    “Nah. Most of them are stolen, and they get passed around. I got a friend who picks them up for me, cuts the threads for the silencers. He checks them mechanically, and I fire them a few times to double-check, but basically, all my work is within ten feet or so. Up close. So I use fairly small calibers and fire several times.”
    “You carry the silencers separately?”
    “Yeah. A little plastic box with a couple of crescent wrenches and a couple pairs of pliers—if you saw them on an X ray, it’d look like a tool kit. There’s no way to hide guns, though. Not conventional guns, anyway.”
    They talked for a long time, nihilism and religion, guns and ammo, and that night, very late, as Carmel was dozing off, she smiled sleepily as she replayed the conversation. She’d gone to college with a lot of finance and law students. They’d stayed up nights studying, not talking.
    This night, she thought, was like what a lot of people did in college, a few beers with friends, talk about God and death.
    She drifted peacefully away, and may have had a dream about