The Butterfly Lanai 2

Mr. J became an assassin by following the common route of frustrated education. He was perhaps descended from from a line of garrulous misanthropes with good aim. As a child he was involved in a car accident that took his little sister Lulabell even though she rode in a carseat in the back. A week after that while riding his bike on his paper route he witnessed another accident between a hatchback and a heavy pickup, an accident with a bloody body halfway through a windshield. The hatchback victim was a hotel employee, a gopher and a junior bellhop. His little red bellhop cap had landed in the oncoming lane and was being repeatedly run over. Mr. J often thought back to those times, St Louis 1957. He wasn't there, but that's where he thought Casablanca was set. He should have been a piano player. As a kid he loved his uncle's Victrola. He had dexterity. But instead of playing keys he pulled triggers.

Yeah, he was a clean guy, Mr. J. Fastidious, smart, and territorial, he talked louder when he felt nervous. This used to get him in trouble in elevators, so he made up his mind and took the stairs everywhere. Mr. J was in good shape. Once in Cleveland Heights he ripped a bathroom door off its hinge to get to the toilet. He had something to dump and I don't mean drugs. That job was a clusterfluster from the get-go. His assignment was a leggy blonde who was running around on her NFL allstar husband. But when he entered the hotel room using a passkey he'd reset with a magnet and a grocery scanner, Mr. J found a middle-aged man reading a Korean surfing magazine on his lap. Under the magazine something dirty was going on. That man was Mr. J's first hit. His second was "Leave Dem Bagz Ol' Hagz." He'd done a job for a producer in LA, and like everyone else Mr. J gave the producer his demo CD. The producer recorded one song with a German hiphop artist and released it in Japan. The single went to number three on the Japanese charts before Mr. J found the guy, a lacerated buffoon with one ear that was noticeably lower than the other. The reason for the contract was spite. At a street festival he met the buffoon, who claimed he knew accounting so he took the producer's books and returned them spread through guava jelly. The pressing shared the songwriting credit with Mr. J's given name, Gin Fitzwallah.