Fiorello smiled, saying, "Sorry, Frank...no loose ends...it's just business," and pulled the trigger.

Whatever had been on Moser's mind was now sprayed over the tattered wooden door behind him. That government dude had told him, “No loose ends anywhere. It’s not safe. Dispose of all evidence,” and that’s exactly what Carlo had done.

He decided it was time to go now; that shot was bound to attract attention, and on a day like today, that was going to be dangerous. He grabbed the paper packet off the table, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and scanned the room for anything that might tie this to him. Nada. He’d been careful about choosing the location, and even the time of day. It was going to be a clean sweep on this one.

Carlo Fiorello spun on his heels and walked toward the door, opening it in a single movement.

"Hi, Carlo." the voice from outside the door said calmly.

Fiorello glanced up just long enough to see a stubby .33 handgun leveled at him. A face smiled at him from underneath a neat Fedora hat. "Bye, Carlo." The gun fired and another member of the Rivello crime family was gone. Bingo. Game over.

Heller walked away from the apartment quickly but calmly. Once he was a few blocks away, he wiped the gun, broke it down, and tossed the pieces down a storm drain and into a trash can. In this part of town, no one was going to pay any attention to this, not when everyone was glued to the radio and TV for news on how Kennedy was doing. He's as dead as ghost shit, folks, he thought to himself.

His part in today was finally done. The other members of his team would have taken care of their targets by now, too. There was no one left to tell tales, or no one anyone would believe. The rest of them? Well, they'd probably wind up 6-feet under somewhere near Terlingua. That was the plan at least.

They'd actually done it. Kennedy was dead.

Chapter 13

Their entire conversation was now obviously going in a whole new direction, and maybe Jason hoped he was finally going to get some real answers here. Hearing the Illuminati mentioned told him there was a lot more to the original story than Heller had let on.

Jason paused before he answered. "I can't say I've heard very much about the Illuminati outside of those documentaries they repeat on cable. They're like some super-secret group on a mission to control the world, right?" Jason read a lot when he had time, but conspiracy theories weren't exactly his favorite subject. He drove enough nut jobs around in his cab to hear every conspiracy theory that had ever existed, and some new ones that even crazy people wouldn’t believe.

Heller was ready with his reply a split second later. "People talk about the 'Illuminati' but really don't understand what it means. They're always portrayed as being evil, and out to destroy the world. Some of them now act and behave like that, but in the days of DaVinci and Newton, the Illuminati wanted to bring humanity out of the dark ages and into the light by using science. Organized religion was hell-bent on keeping people afraid and under their control, offering to sell them a stairway to heaven. The Illuminati, which just means 'the Enlightened', wanted to show mankind the truth, and for that, many of them were silenced with threats, or simply eliminated by the church."

The silence that followed was suddenly interrupted by Darlene returning with a tray of food for their table. Several plates of steak, eggs, and pie were planted firmly on the table in front of them, followed by a very large pot of coffee. Jason felt his stomach growl in appreciation of the fact he was going to be eating very soon. Without another word, both he and the old man started to pull their dishes off the tray and started eating.

Several mouthfuls of pie and a swallow of coffee later, Heller decided to continue his tale. He was about as eager to talk as anyone Jason had ever met. That was understandable, considering that, pretty soon, he wasn’t going to be able to talk to anyone ever again.

"When the time came where technology allowed the Illuminati to move more quickly, they, and that includes me, made bolder moves to change the world. Along the way, we got lost. Just like organized religion, we perverted the original ideas, and became bigger bastards than the very people we set out to rid the world of. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Jason. It always has and it always will. If you ever want to test the true nature of any person, then simply give them a little bit of authority and watch what they do with it. I've seen perfectly decent people commit acts of horror that would turn your stomach, all in the pursuit of the tiniest scrap of power."

Heller wolfed down the pecan pie and apple pie, stopping only for loud slurps of coffee along the way. The guy was eating like he hadn't seen real food in years. It was like watching a bear attacking a lump of venison. Truth be told, it kinda put paid to Jason's appetite, and he found himself picking at the rest of his steak and eggs instead of eating them. The sights and sounds of old people eating had a habit of doing that to him. Heller might be dying, but his appetite was as alive as any man's.

Heller had noticed that he wasn't eating. "You not as hungry as you thought?" Jason looked down and realized he hadn’t touched anything on his plate yet. For once in his life, Jason found himself lost for anything but a handful of words. "Yeah, I suppose my appetite isn't what I thought."

"Or you just had your stomach turned by the sight of some old guy eating a small mountain of pie like a savage, maybe?" Heller guessed.

Jason found himself snorting a reply. "Well, you do have a certain style of eating, Bill."

Heller sat slowly back in his chair and reached into his jacket pocket with his right hand. For a split second, Jason realized he was getting ready to grab whatever was coming out of that pocket, and, in his mind, that was a gun. He couldn't have been more wrong though as Heller produced a pack of smokes.

"Do you mind if I..?" Heller asked with a flourish of the cigarette in his hand, clearly demonstrating he didn't give a fiddler's fuck what Jason said or thought on the matter.

Jason nodded back. "Go right ahead, Bill, I quit years back, but don't let me stop your fun."

Heller closed his eyes, snicked a bright flame into existence with his worn Zippo, lit his Pall Mall, inhaled deeply, and sat back. It looked like the best cigarette in the world at that point in time, and Jason found himself feeling just a tiny bit envious of the look on Heller's face.

"I was the guy who put a bullet in Kennedy, but then, these are the little bullets that got me, Jason. The little sons of bitches." It was strange to hear Heller swear like that. It seemed out of character, but Jason figured it was best to leave it alone.

"So where were we? Ah, yes, the Illuminati and murdering Kennedy. It was no secret that the Kennedy's were a very powerful family whatever way you looked at them, and what made matters worse was that they had powerful allies. What bugged my associates more than anything else was that Kennedy wasn’t the war-monger they needed in office. Kennedy had served in the United States Navy in the Pacific, so he'd had his fill of war for life - he had no desire to send other young men away to die in pointless wars, as I've already said."

Heller went on, "By this stage, the Illuminati weren't about enlightenment anymore. They just wanted control of the most powerful army in the world, and the resources of the most powerful nation in the world. So they figured out how to take America away from Americans, using the exact same techniques used by organized religion for thousands of years. Fear."