[550] Distance Zero

[334] [228] [900]

THE GREEN FACE of Tipper's job console screwed up whenever the elevated train lurched past his suite. He shot his smoke out into the dark and slapped the little thing to get it to scroll.
  It did. 
  A gorilla lit up, real close, getting closer, having killed his own wife eighteen hours ago, only he weighed 260 pounds and Tipper just woke up. Hadn't even poured himself a coffee. On the other hand, a drifter slept soundly in an alcove across the street thinking his crimes were forgotten—an easy fifty coins, but Tipper didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise, so he thumbed the job into the trash.
  Of course there was always the man down the hall who'd cut up a stripper from Korea town. That job never disappeared. It would have, if only the man hadn't held the door open once when Tipper misplaced his laundry card. Now it felt downright unneighbourly to run him in.
  Otherwise, the console hardly displayed worse than parking violators for a distance of two miles, somehow, and refreshing the grubby window wasn't helping. 
  So he showered. Shaved. The hulking meat tank now approaching the ground floor wasn't going anywhere; according to a memo, it wasn't so much he killed his wife, but that he'd bet his organs on a pair of jacks with the makings of a flush on the table.
  Tipper dried off and dressed and extended his hit stick, dusted it with bleach powder that made old black blood hiss and peel, rinsed the redness into the sink, and snapped it short again.
  He pulled on his gloves, locked up and waited for the elevator.
  And wouldn't you know it, his neighbour appeared in the arriving box, having dragged another stripper off the street. The man gave Tipper a nod and steered her out and down the hallway.
  Tipper checked the console. The gorilla downstairs was also armed, apparently, with something sharp.
  He sighed. Let the weight of the stick swing his arm a bit. Watched his neighbour disappear the lady into his apartment, and clicked the console to officially accept the job.
At the man's door he waited for the first muffled scream, then knocked.
  The eye hole went dark. The door opened with enthusiasm. The man grinned.
  Tipper extended the stick and lit up his jaw and followed him into the suite. When he tried to lift his head off the carpet, Tipper clubbed him twice on the top of the skull for good measure.
  "How," the woman was saying from the bed, "how did you know I was in danger?" She tucked up her pretty legs.
  "Well," Tipper said, towering over his kill, thumbing the grubby console, aiming its bleary camera to confirm his task's completion.
  He shook a splash of blood off his glistening stick, retracted the club, thumbed a payment alert off the device, and backed up to the job board.
  A brand new listing glowed—distance zero—and he almost had a heart attack. Thought for a moment he'd made the wrong move. Thought he'd been auto-listed. 
  100 coins, it said.
100 pounds, too.
  Tipper lifted his gaze and the woman scooted back a bit.
  "Well, shit," he said, and extended the club again.