I killed a man today.  It’s not like I woke up this morning and said to myself, “today seems like a good day to end a life”.  I don’t recall ever waking up and thinking such a thing.  No.  Sometimes, throughout the natural course of one’s day, these things tend to happen.  Take my day for example.  I woke up at about the usual time, had my usual breakfast, read my usual newspaper.  My day was business as usual, or as close to usual as one gets in my line of work.  I made a trip down to the docks around lunchtime to take care of some business, and enjoyed a pleasant dinner with some cherished family down in our end of town.  As evening approached, a few of my associates and I went to the speakeasy on 5^th street. 

It was a nice place, filled with dark, mahogany seats and tables, the kind of wood that makes you think, “Man, this would be a nice place to wake up, disoriented, several hours from now.”  The bar stretched along the wall on the left as one comes through the door, half the stools occupied with already nearly unconscious patrons.  Someone wailed away depressingly on an old upright piano opposite the bar, and the billiards table sat gathering dust in the back corner, as people’s priorities had shifted a bit in recent days.   It had opened prior to the prohibition amendment, and very little had changed, except maybe some of the patronage.  There was a lounge in the back for more prioritized patrons such as myself, a heavy, velvet curtain drawn across its doorway as I entered the establishment.  I sat at the bar tonight, however.  Perhaps I was in a social mood.  This particular speakeasy served us drinks at absolutely no cost, as we were the ones providing them protection for the time being.  So we drank.  I’ve never been one to drink to excess.  Something about dampening one’s mind and reflexes has never sat well with me.  I’m most comfortable when I’m alert.  

Time passed swiftly as it always seems to do.  My associates, before long, arrived at the promised land of incapacitation.  Anything to ease one’s mind, right?  I sat facing the rest of the room, watching people converse and drink themselves into a stupor.  That’s how it was every night, really.   Sometime around midnight, a large man walked in, smug-looking as most large men tend to look.  Barely anyone looked up as he approached the bar to sit down beside me. 

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” I said to him, glancing casually over as he ordered a glass.  I received merely a grunt as a reply.  I pressed further.

“New in town, I presume?”

“Piss off,” he answered in some sort of thick, European accent. 

“It would behoove you to be more open to pleasantries, my friend,” I said with a smile. 

“And it would behoove you to piss, off,” he said, emphasizing the last two words of his sentence.

“Very well.”

I finished my drink leisurely as my neighbor at the bar pounded down his, one right after the other.  I rose from my seat, nodded at the bartender, walked towards the door.  Normally I would go home, prepare for the next day, and go to sleep, but tonight things were a bit different.  Upon exiting the bar I rounded the corner and ducked into the alleyway beside the bar, standing just outside the reach of the lights lining the street.  I waited.

It didn’t take long for the man to finish up in the bar; I had timed myself well.  Everyone, at least in my experience, makes the same noises when they’ve reached their maximum capacity of drink.   I could only hear him at first, his steps staggering, his breathing heavy in some involuntary attempt to head off alcohol poisoning.  He came into view and my hand closed swiftly on his collar, and I dragged him into the alleyway out of sight.  My wire slipped around his throat.  It was over in under a minute. 

Like I said, I didn’t wake up planning to kill someone today.  What can I say?  My day was business as usual.

Ahh, that's a good story, young man, and well told.  Often, in this life, we have to do things that we did not expect.

Once, by chance, I was forced to walk out into the surf of the ocean in order to try and save the life of a whale.  I pulled a golf ball out from the blow hole of a beached whale that day.  I tell ya, I never would have thought that morning "I'm going to save a whale's life today."

Once, I actually ended up pretending to be a famous king-pin in the Nazi world, O'Brien.  I never could have predicted THAT, even ten minutes before it happened.

Once, in order to get out of a relationships, I had to start smoking, which I hated, nce I had to suggest a Ménage à troisn (with two guys!),  and fake having a second girlfriend. 

You never know what you're going to end up having to do that day.

Those men who seek the death of others only find their own demise. I regret that this man had to die, but such is the cost of disrespect. I must admit that I am impressed by your restraint in not beating this man to death with the chair he sat on. 

You did what you had to do. If anyone ever shows Disrespect its a mobsters dutie to kill him. Mobsters all over the world follow one rule Respect.