Snow fell on the cold concrete of Manhattan’s streets. Gusts of wind tossed up ice and slush hurling it at old brick apartments as cars drove by, the wind howling as they passed. An early morning haze rose from the floor shrouding the city in a hoary fog. A black Buick Roadmaster sat on the corner in front of an Italian restaurant, which bared the sign OUT OF BUISNESS. The sight had become all too common in 1938, as the streets were flooded with bankrupt shops and unemployed pedestrians wandering the sidewalk. The cold bit at the skins of the children who were malnourished and ill dressed to face the winter.

From the top of an old apartment building stood a man gazing down at the street, watching all the “dots” scurry from place to place. From his apartment view these dots were not human, they were merely moving specs without a personality or a family; all just another object that kept New York City crowded and functioning. The man had short black hair, which emerged from the sides of his black top hat and went down passed his ears sinuously. His chestnut colored skin was shielded from the cold by a black sports jacket and navy blue pants. To his right leaned a man in a white suit with brown eyes and a face as gray and lifeless as the mist that surrounded them. And he had on his mind, a dilemma, more chilling than the icicles that hung from the window below them.

“Listen Andre” said the man in the white suit. “I’m giving you a chance to make one thousand dollars” the man paused, intently observing Andre’s dazed face. “I could give this job to any old bum and he sure as hell will take it.”

Andre’s gaze averted from the cold street floor into the man’s eyes and finally Andre spoke.

“Now won’t you tell me your name? I find it very hard to work for a man when I don’t even know his name.” On his face, Andre wore the faintest smile that seemed to mock the world around him.

“Whoever said that you were working for me?” the man said, clearly expressing an acute distaste for Andre. “Anyways, enough of this. All I want from you is a straight answer… Will you do the hit?” the man said leaning closer to Andre.

“What, do you really think that I look like I’m some sort of brute?”

“As a matter of fact you do, which is of course besides the point because any lame, unemployed drunkard like you would accept my generous offer in a flash.” the man interrupted.

“So you assumed that you could simply walk up to anyone in the slums and expect them to accept your offer…that’s quite an expectation?” Andre said mockingly as he leaned against the balcony wall.

“No, it was recommended that I speak to you in particular.” said the man. The smile faded off Andre’s face and his eyes narrowed as he looked at the man with a piercing stare.

“What?” Andre said. The simplicity and utter seriousness of his words shook the man.

“Well… It’s like this. The word on the street is that you have expressed interest in a job like this and… well, if your concern is the petty souls I want dead then let me show you something.” The man turned toward the balcony wall and peered down at the street floor issuing Andre to do the same.

“Look down at all those dots coating the street floor. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots simply vanished forever? If I offered you 40,000 dollars for every dot that disappeared, would you really tell me to keep my money or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax – that’s about the only way you can save money nowadays… You’re a smart man, you went to college…”

The wind seemed to blow through Andre as he stared at the dots below him. His adrenaline was churning and he smiled. The chance to make money was irresistible. He envisioned himself as a world-class assassin, his name striking fear into the hearts of men and women across the globe. The answer was clear. The winter wind roared, the temperature dropped, and finally Andre replied

“Yes…I’ll do it”. The man smiled victoriously and handed him a card with an address on it. The man turned to Andre and looked into his cold blue eyes. His face darkened and the man said

“See it done…”

Days passed and Andre sat locked up in his room planning his looming assassination. He felt cold, invincible, villainous, and he loved every minute of it. Andre was zealous to make sure that each little detail was planned out in a dramatic fashion. He fantasized about the assassination and pictured himself kicking in the door of his victim’s apartment and escaping before anyone ever saw his face, all without leaving the slightest hint that he had even entered the room.

After five days of planning, the time had finally come for him to break the rhythm of his meaningless life. Dressed in all black from the heels of his shoe to the ski mask covering his face, he became one with the night sky. Strapped beneath his belt buckle was a C96 Mauser Pistol while a pocketknife sat in the right pocket of his pants.

He took his first step out of his apartment into the freezing winter night and all was quiet. The only sound came from Andre’s breath, which cloaked his head in a menacing fog. The wind blew shaking the tree branches and blowing snow into Andre’s face. The chains of a broken swing swung as the falling snow danced with the wind.

He read the card that the man had given to him. His target was only four blocks away, right beside an old record store. On the bottom of the card there was little note that read:

Women with brown hair, light skin, and hazel eyes.

Likely wearing a locket around her neck.

Gets home at 11:00pm, will be in bed by 12:30am-1:00am

You only have one shot, proceed with caution.

Andre smiled. Who did this man think he was questioning his ability to succeed? After all he was Andre, no man could compare to his skill and utter ferociousness.

Dangerously confident, Andre began walking, each step drowned out by the sound of the howling wind rushing into the open sockets of his ski mask. His foot touched the sidewalk and he began walking straight, his eyes staring at the floor and his mind preoccupied with the task at hand.

Five minutes past… the street in which Andre stood looked like a barren frozen tundra with no signs of life rather than a metropolis hustling and bustling with action.

A jolt of light and a loud crash disturbed Andre’s preoccupied mind. A rare occurrence, now, accompanied by a blistering blizzard, lightning began to strike the cities cold floor. Andre’s footsteps hastened, thunder continued to crash, and snow stung his vulnerable eyes.

What seemed like hours of wandering in the unforgiving blizzard finally ended as Andre’s foot touched the front step of his targeted apartment. A chill went down Andre’s spine and he smiled.

“Highly impractical to go through the front door” he thought.

His feet rotated 90 degrees and he commenced walking along side the building. He arrived at the rear of the building and stared at the snow covered brick wall that encompassed the entire building as well as every other building on the whole block. He began to think about what that man said to him. Dots, that’s what all these people were; just dots without any personality or any uniqueness. What’s wrong with thinking of people as dots? Governments talk about the soviets, the proletariat, the people… they’re all just dots to them…why should Andre think of them any differently?

Another crash of thunder broke Andre’s train of thought. Andre spotted a flight of stairs that led to each apartment’s backdoor entrance. Andre began to amble up, the stairs creaking with each step. Lightning illuminated the night sky and the sound of thunder shook the earth as if a battle was being waged between the city that they lived in and the forces of nature.

Andre’s heart pounded as he approached his target’s apartment door. His eyes wide, he peered into the window of her apartment and saw a woman passed out with brown hair covering the sides of her face and a bottle of beer clenched in her right hand on a table. It was easier than Andre had expected, the job would be done and the poor woman wouldn’t even know what hit her.

Slowly he unsheathed his pistol from underneath his belt buckle. The wind roared, the blizzard stung, and in concurrence with the crash of thunder he pulled the trigger unleashing a single bullet that shattered the glass window and found its way into the woman’s flesh.

Not a sound, not a yell. The wind continued to howl and the thunder faded. Andre’s heart jumped while weather defying sweat dripped down the sides of his cheek running down to the base of his neck. A sick smile cut threw his mouth and clenching the pistol in his right hand, he confidently began to hack at the remaining glass wedged in the window.

Surrounded by darkness that wrapped and cloaked their vehicle, an officer sat stationary gazing at the brick apartment, which seemed to whisper words of evil into the anxious officer’s ears. A crack of glass sounded from behind the apartment complex startling the officer. His hand slithered down to the handle of his car and with a click, the car door budged open. A burst of cold air struck the officer bringing a chill down his spine as icy winds blew into his face knocking his cap off. Thunder clapped and slowly the officer placed his foot on the cold, beat up concrete.

Andre’s foot touched the wood floor of the women’s apartment. Andre paced toward the women’s lifeless body. He could now clearly see a bullet hole in the woman’s chest where blood seeped out, dripping onto the woman’s lap.

He shuffled toward the woman once more, now at arm’s distance away. He slowly reached out to touch the woman’s face until finally his fingertips met her cheek. The instant Andre’s cold hands touched the woman’s face, a chill engorged his body that was colder than the blizzard and more unnerving than the thunderstorm had been. Now a blizzard raged inside him, freezing his innards and making his body quiver while a thunderstorm brewed, aggravating his stomach and scorching his throat.

Even in death the woman’s face was beautiful and her face seemed to weep in Andre’s palm. The sight made Andre feel sick and weak, and slowly his grip on the pistol that lay in his right palm weakened until the gun dropped to the floor with a thud that made him flinch.

Paralyzed by the horrors of the actions he had just committed and captivated by the mournful face of the beautiful woman that lay dead at his hand, Andre placed the woman’s head back on the table. A blue locket lay mounted over her shoulder that hung down to the tops of her breasts. Andre recognized the locket from the description that the man had given him and at the sight of the locket, he was finally able to clarify his success.

He unlocked the locket from behind the woman’s neck and dangled it in front of his eyes, staring at its shell. He pulled open the locket delicately and Andre suddenly felt as though his throat was going to rip and his stomach was going to pop, overwhelmed by the tragic irony of the picture he saw before him, placed inside the locket.

The picture showed the bodies of a hugging young woman and young man whom he immediately recognized as the woman who lay dead on the table before him and the man who he met that fateful day at the peak of his brick apartment in the heart of a blizzard.

He placed the locket back around the woman’s neck and stood shivering. Sweat dripped down his arms, his throat ached, his head felt heavy, and tears began to trickle down the sides of his cheeks. And all in a burst of fear and loneliness, Andre began to cry out to the icy black sky that froze the tips of his fingers and made him feel cold.

A shout from inside an apartment startled the officer. He began to run through the snow, struggling not to trip and fall face first into the lake of slush and ice. With great difficulty, he made his way behind the apartment complex where the crack of glass and the shout had come from. Lightning continued to flash illuminating the distant New York City metropolis in a ghostly light. The officer noticed shards of broken glass lying outside an apartment window. Slowly meandering over, the officer approached to investigate. As he neared the staircase, a shout coming from the apartment with the broken glass made the officer jump and trip over the knee-high mounds of snow. The officer now began a frantic run toward the apartment.

Andre’s brain ached, his hands shook, his teeth chattered, and his fanatic weeping shielded his ears from the sound of the running footsteps approaching nearer and nearer. His eyes were too fixated on the woman who lay dead in the chair to have noticed the stunned police officer who peered into the broken window and who’s head shook with horror at the evil before Andre’s hand.

In one fluid motion the police officer kicked open the door to the woman’s apartment and shouted

“Get on the goddamn floor!”

Andre stood frozen with his hands down and his pistol far from his reach. His mind drowned out all shouting and threats the officer hurled at him. Without a moment’s warning, Andre turned and sprinted out of the front door in fear, not from the officer but from cold that crawled within his skin. Andre heard bullets wiz past his head that nipped peaces of the staircase that he sprinted down.

Andre quickly turned a corner into an alleyway leading back into the street, his legs trudged sluggishly through the snow. He heard footsteps behind him and tried to sprint faster but stumbled in the snow instead. A flash of lighting struck followed by two loud crashes. Andre suddenly felt a searing pain in his hip that inflamed his cold body and seemed to tear it apart in pulses of acute throbbing.

His face came crashing down into the cold sea of ice and snow.

Face down in the dark ice; Andre just lay their motionless. The policeman leaned up against the alley wall. He pulled out a cigarette and peered with disgust and pity at the body of Andre who lay on the snow motionless, tainting the snow around him red.

It was over… Andre knew it. His face stung from the ice it was pressed against and he lost all feeling throughout his body. The pain in his hip was drowned out by the cold and loneliness he felt inside.

Andre thought about the dots and how easy it had seemed to simply get rid of one. The officer halted smoking his cigarette as Andre spoke once more.

“Why did I look at her face?”