The Cold

 The wind was cold, the rain was cold, and I was cold. Not that I was out in the cold wind and rain. The days had long since passed where I was the mug standing on the corner or in the lee of some doorway checking on people and their dirty little secrets. No, I was home in front of a nice fire, and a glass of overpriced whiskey close to hand. The cold I felt was internal, and no amount of liquid heat from the aforementioned glass (or even the whole bottle) was going to drive this cold away. This was a metaphysical cold, a cold that started somewhere in your stomach and spread like a cancer, like Genghis Khan's murdering hordes, like a stain from a stab wound perfectly placed to cause the most dazzling of blood splatter. It laid siege to my insides moving from stomach down to the guts, freezing things solid on its travels. It moved upwards as well to the lungs, making it difficult to fully breath, it moved east to the liver already under attack from the current bottle of whiskey, and all the other countless bottles of alcohol that had came before it. It moved west to the pancreas, laying waste to the ability to regulate blood sugar, a dangerous thing to have go tits up when you've a bottle of whiskey close to hand. This was beyond the sheep stealing cold that lead a man to commit all manners of odd crimes to get warm. This was a fatal kind of cold, the kind of cold that people dread when they throw another log on the fire, the kind of cold that leads you to cold, dark places where people don't talk above a whisper for fear of waking things better left asleep. 

 This cold had its external source, it lay on the desk opened, and read many times over to make sure there wasn't some cruel mistake. There wasn't. It was there in black and white, the things I had suspected but was too damn much of a fool to believe. Well now, thanks to someone spending some time in the actual cold, I believed them. The "report" left me very little choice. I had hired it done, as I said my days out in the cold (or the heat) had passed, and were not missed. No, these days I hired these things done by people like GI or his erstwhile "companion" Felix. Though I figured that Felix's days of unitrusively leaning against a convenient lamp post were now counted as being beneath his dignity. He had goons for that type of work. Unimaginative  goons that wrote reports that, while getting their main point across, made for some tough sledding in the reading department. I made a note to remind Felix to hire some thugs that had been to college or at least could spell words longer than 5 letters. This was one of those reports, I was in a hurry, and I chose to use Felix's resources because he had so many of them, and owed me a favor or two. You knew what you were getting when you used Felix, a straight, to the point detail of events. Presented without comment, or opinion and generally told in short sentences using small words. Sometimes these reports are exactly what you needed, sadly for me, this was not exactly one of those times. I would have to supplement this staid, listless, and lacking nuance report with something just a tad bit different. That meant finding, and sobering up GI. I sighed only one of those things was easy to do.

Of course, reading one of GI's reports had it own set of issues. When he was in a particularly expansive mood (or drunk) he would try to be as vague as possible. I had read several of his reports that mentioned elephants, peanuts, and Ferris Wheels that made me wonder if he was doing the job I had hired him to do, or was just drunk at the Circus eating fucking funnel cake and spending my coin before earning it. Others had referenced some Ape, and their cage(s), and hippos making me wonder if he had gotten lost at the Zoo, and was just taking the piss out of me for his own twisted amusement. They were at least better written than the ones Felix's goons produced, but I still despaired of his grammar. Apparently he was "all about content, and telling a good story, subject/verb agreement be damned." Sometimes, after a unusually vague report, a follow up report would arrive with the "key" which would put real names to the nicknames he so enjoyed labeling people with. I suppose that they had some sort of meaning in his head that made it worth doing, but since I never actually talked to him, it remained a mystery to me. Some things are best left in the dark. His naming system is one of those things. 

The days of finding lonely drunks with literary aspirations had also passed. I was not going to sully myself with finding GI in whichever dive bar would grant him enough credit for a night's drunk. No, I had people for that; finders are a different breed than followers. I had not yet found a follower that could compare to GI, or even to Felix's goons for that matter. Plus, GI worked cheap. You don't get to over pay for whiskey by overpaying the help.  Even when my finders were able to locate him, they never told him who he was working for, just an initial and a Post Office Box to drop his reports into when he was finished. If he ever found out he was working for me, then he would stop working for me, and I still had a use or two for him, before Felix inevitably had him shot. But until then I needed him to write something that made more sense than the report sitting before me. I made a few phone calls, and set the process in motion. It usually took a day to find him, a day to sober him up fully, and a day to convince him that he did in fact need the money. 

It was a simple enough job for someone just like him, there were details that he didn't need to know about it, they would just cloud his already suspect judgment, and I didn't need him going off half cocked and mucking up a simple job. In fact, once I had read the goon's report, I knew that I had to send GI to do the job proper like. He would not thank me for it, he can't really since he doesn't exactly know who I am, but it would be a lesson in life that he would come to appreciate. If I could have him found, and keep him sober long enough to do it. Afterwards, well afterwards, keeping him sober would be more difficult, and I don't think he would want to be found for quite sometime. I sighed heavily this would also mean talking to Felix. A task that I normally would delegate since talking to Felix is like talking to a razor. You feel shorn afterwards, and might be slowly bleeding to death from all manner of cuts you didn't know you had until you left the room. But it must needs doing, and the sooner the better as the saying goes. 

I duly made my appointment with Felix, showed up at the proper place and time, and was rewarded with Felix's presence. Reward might not be the correct word, but the cold bastard did show up on time, a quality that fewer and fewer people seem to possess these days. If 75% of success is just showing up, another 10% can be added by showing up on time. I pushed the report across Felix's desk towards him, and asked "You've read this correct? Is it true?" Felix glanced briefly down at the paper and replied "of course I've read it. Don't be fool enough to think that I let anything out of this office without fully reading it, and yes it is true enough for government work." I arched an eyebrow at that last bit, but held my tongue, because I had suspected that Felix might sometimes engage in "creative editing" with the reports I commissioned from him, and that was a close to confirmation as I was likely to get. Sometimes, direct questions can just cause confusion, especially to Felix's type of "truth tellers."  

"Well I figured as much, just nice to hear you actual come with pissing distance of telling me the "truth" Felix. Now, that we have established this is true enough" I tapped the report that Felix had slid back to me, "what the fuck should I do about it?" Felix leaned back in his chair steepled his hands together and replied in true Felix fashion "shoot him?" I sighed "Felix, that is an unattached pronoun, who is the "him" I should shoot?" Again in true Felix fashion he said "all of them, that way you know you've shot the right person." ........