Dark Men

by Derek Haas

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, hon, I can’t talk right now.”

  “Are you in a meeting?”

  “Walking into one right now. I’ll call you when it’s over . . .”

  “Are you in . . .” But he hung up before she could finish the question.

  She got online and found a number for a Smith-Barney branch in Cleveland. There were three so she picked the first one and dialed the main line.

  “Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Financial . . .”

  “Yes, hello . . . my name is Carla Spilatro . . . I have to . . . is my husband Doug there right now?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Doug Spilatro with Valsoft?”

  “Hold one moment.”

  She waited, chewing that thumbnail down until she tasted blood.

  A new voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Matt Chapman, may I help you?”

  “Hi, sorry to bother you. My husband works for Valsoft and I think he has a meeting with someone in your, uh, firm. His name is . . .”

  “Don’t know any Valsoft. You sure you have the right branch?”

  Her heart beat harder. “No, I guess I’m not sure.”

  “Well, we have two other branches in Cleveland. I’ll have Melanie come back on and give you the numbers . . .”

  “Thank you . . . oh, wait. Mr. Chapman . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said you don’t know Valsoft? It’s my understanding they produce and manage the software you use on your computers?”

  “Hmm. I don’t think so. We use good ol’ Microsoft.”

  “Do all the branches use Microsoft?”

  “I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

  She had moved her teeth off the thumb and on to the cuticles on her ring finger. “Okay, sorry to bother you.”

  “No problem.”

  She looked up the Valsoft corporate webpage. It wasn’t more than a few pages, but there was her husband’s name and contact info under the “outside sales” banner. Sure, the number listed was his cell phone, but he worked out of his car most days. The corporate office’s main address was listed as Deerfield, Michigan, and she realized she had never been to Michigan, much less Deerfield. There was a main office phone number, so she picked up the phone to call again.

  Then she stopped. What was she doing? One little text from her friend saying she’d seen Doug somewhere other than where he said he was—she was certain he had said New York—and she’s running around checking on him like he’s some sort of dual-life soap opera character. She put the phone down. She’d wait and talk to him when he returned and just ask him where he went and how the meetings went.

  She plopped on to the couch but couldn’t concentrate, so she ate an entire quart of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia but still couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She flipped channels and all the networks were breaking in on the soaps to talk about a “major accident” in Cleveland. The Cleveland of it caught her eye. Doug might be in Cleveland and there was an accident there too?

  She grew up near there, in Shaker Heights, and knew the skyline well. It seemed a section of light rail track above a highway had collapsed and an RTA train hadn’t been able to brake in time. It dove over the edge and killed fourteen people. Such a random, odd event. An act of God. One day you’re riding a passenger train, maybe worried about making a meeting on time or concerned about the job interview you’re headed to or wondering whether or not you’re going to have time to pick up a snack on the way home from work and what stops you cold? A piece of track giving way and it’s bye-bye to all those plans you made. Incredible.

  A news camera in a helicopter was showing the accident under a “LIVE” banner, a bird’s-eye view of dozens of emergency vehicles surrounding the aftermath of the crash like moths circling a flame. As the chopper hovered, it settled on a particular angle, that view of God looking down from above on the carnage, and suddenly she felt as though she’d been jolted with electricity. She shot straight up on the couch and overturned her carton of ice cream as she sent the spoon clattering across the wooden floor.

  That angle. The precise angle of the news footage. She’d seen that angle before. She’d seen this accident before.

  She had gotten off her ass yesterday to do a bit of cleaning, and decided to vacuum the carpet in the basement when she wouldn’t be under her husband’s feet. The door was locked, which was odd, but she didn’t think too much about it. She knew where her husband stored his keys, even if he had never outright told her. She imagined there wasn’t a square inch of this house she didn’t know intimately, and so had retrieved the key from its hiding place and gone down below so she could surprise Doug with a clean work area when he returned from New York. Or Cleveland.

  She realized her tongue had turned to chalk, thinking about yesterday. She rose from the couch and headed to the basement door. Slowly, she descended the stairs as though she were in a dream, each step bringing her a better view of the table where Doug built his miniatures.

  From the back, it looked like any of the dozens of skylines he’d built over the years, though this one had a familiarity to it she hadn’t noticed yesterday.

  She reached the basement floor without realizing it, her eyes fixed on the model city, crafted with such precise detail. Doug had grown into an accomplished designer; how had she not noticed it before? The level of detail. The precision of the streets and buildings. The photographs pulled from the internet and attached to the corkboard on the wall to serve as blueprints for the model.

  She kept gliding around the model, following the path she’d taken with the vacuum cleaner, and her jaw dropped as her eyes led her around the cityscape.

  The track was there . . . the light rail track. The exact place where the rail had collapsed according to the news footage was also collapsed here, and a miniature train was shown draped over the broken section, mimicking exactly what had happened.

  Doug left on Wednesday. The last time he was in this basement was Tuesday night. The accident happened today? It was live, right? Or was she confused? It was all so . . .

  She felt her stomach roll over and she bent at the middle, but nothing came out. Her body reacted before her mind could catch up. What the hell was going on? Why did the floor threaten to pull her down? She fought off the urge to collapse, to faint, and raced back up the stairs toward her computer. Maybe the news was old and it was a replay and she was confused. It only took a second to confirm on CNN.com that the accident was “breaking news,” that it had happened today.

  What the fuck was her husband up to? What the fuck was he involved in?

  He came home the next afternoon. The basement door was wide open. If he was surprised about that, if he felt any moment of shame or regret about her discovery, she didn’t know. She was waiting for him when he walked down the stairs, standing with the model between them.

  “What did you do?” she barked.

  “Carla . . .”

  “Just tell me what this means!” She pointed at the model, at the collapsed miniature train. He circled around the table toward her, his arms outstretched, and she wanted to be hugged, needed to be hugged, but she wasn’t ready to let him touch her yet. She realized tears were streaming down her face and she tried to blink them away. She had barely slept, had pictured this confrontation a million times since yesterday, but the reality never lines up with the way we imagine it. “What did you do to those peop—”

  The last word stuck in her throat as his hands closed around her neck. It took her a full five seconds to realize what had happened, was happening. So sure was she that he was coming around to placate her, to comfort her, to soothe her, that she never imagined he’d try to kill her. She flopped backward into the model, his precise model, and she felt a sting of pain as her back smashed through the light rail track and crushed the rest of the miniature train.

  He was strong, much stronger than she would’ve thought. When did he get so strong? She kicked at him but her legs were on the wron
g side and she couldn’t gain any traction. Her fingers clawed at his hands but the grip was solid and his face, his horribly twisted face started to blur as tears soaked her eyes. She might have a chance for a couple of words, just a couple if she could get his fingers off her throat.

  What had the self-defense expert said in that meeting at the hospital back when they had that rapist scare? Forget the neck. Thoughts whizzed around her head at a million miles an hour. Forget your neck and go for the eyes. His eyes.

  She didn’t think about it anymore, just went hard for his eyes as she grabbed the side of his head and dug in with her thumbnails. The effect was immediate; he flopped backward, never expecting her to fight back, and she sucked in air like a swimmer coming to the surface.

  Recovering, he took a step forward and she managed to screech out: “I took pictures!” The words sounded like they had been scratched with sandpaper, but they hit her husband flush and took hold. He stopped in mid-step, his feet rooted to the ground. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to figure out his next move. Finally, he spoke. The calmness in his voice chilled her.

  “Where?”

  “Emailed to my hotmail account.”

  He started to take another step, when her words stopped him again. “Where do you think the police are going to look when I go missing? You don’t know the password to that account, but all my friends have sent and received emails from me there. The cops’ll figure out how to open it.”

  His face was flush with anger. “God. Dammit!” he spat, breaking it into two words so he could hammer the second.

  “You stay away from me.”

  “Just calm the fuck down.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you mean it, Carla. I know.” Then he moved over to a chair, sat down heavily, and rubbed his head in his hands. “Just calm down and let me think.”

  They went to breakfast. It seemed extraordinary at the time, and now even more so as she retold it to me. He told her everything. Everything. She had him by the balls, so he just came out with it. Maybe it had been weighing on his chest and he wanted to talk about it, just like she was doing now. Maybe he didn’t know how to broach the subject with her before this tipping point . . . she didn’t know. But over bacon and eggs at IHoP, he told her how he’d first gotten into the killing business after his discharge from the army; an infantryman in his unit had been taking contracts for a decade, and remembered Doug as having particular acumen for planning missions. Doug was adept at reading a map and conducting an ambush and presenting an almost geometrical strategy for accomplishing the squad’s goals. You need to raid a building? Go find Doug. You need to take out an ammo dump? Go find Doug.

  Ten years later, he was married to Carla and making eighty grand a year in middle-management sales when his old friend Decker knocked on the door and walked him through the business. Gave him the basics on fences and hits and kill fees and tandem sweeps and time commitments and hidden money and weapons caches, all one needed to know to become a professional contract killer. It wasn’t much different than planning missions in Kabul, truth be told. Said if Doug were interested, then he’d introduce him to a fence and see how they did together. Said if he wasn’t, he’d never see Decker again. It was a crossroads moment and the timing was right: Doug was bored out of his mind and looking for some spice.

  The first hit was messy and personal and upsetting. Face to face with a guy in an elevator who never saw it coming, but the blood and the matter and the splatter were enough to make Doug gag every time he thought about it. He had seen violence in Iraq, but it was mostly at a distance, and he was never the one actually pulling the trigger.

  But he liked the work. By God, he really did. It was like everything he had ever done in his life was designed to make him an effective killer: his love of statistics and science and numbers and percentages—the very things that pushed him into a computer science degree after his service—also helped him execute the perfect hit. He just didn’t like the mess. Even when he was choking her hours before, he knew he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. He was in the death business, but he didn’t like the actual killing.

  It was a paradox, but one to which he spent a month devoting his thinking time. Could he be an effective killer, but from a distance like in Iraq, where he wouldn’t necessarily need to see the kill? And in doing so, could he create a new niche in the market?

  It hit him in a flash, the way the best ideas most often do. Accidents.

  The difficult part in executing a hit is getting away after the mark is murdered. So what if there isn’t a murder? What if the death is ruled accidental? Would the client be willing to pay—possibly even pay a premium—if the hit appeared as though the mark were the victim of bad luck?

  He floated the question to the fence Decker had secured for him. The man looked at Doug like his head had sprouted antenna. So he shut his mouth, took his next assignment, and started planning.

  The mark was an Air Force colonel stationed in San Angelo, Texas. Doug didn’t know why someone wanted him dead and he honestly didn’t care. He just didn’t have much sympathy for people—didn’t value their lives; if he were being honest, he never did. Most people were assholes or stuck-up or inferior anyway. And no one lived forever, didn’t matter who you were. Why should Doug give a shit if some stranger had his ticket punched?

  He knew the colonel lived in a ratty one-story home near the base and so he rigged the building to collapse on him while he slept.

  The plan worked, the roof fell in directly on top of the mark, and Doug even added a weight set in the attic so the death would be instantaneous. Except it wasn’t. The colonel died, yes, but only after two weeks in the hospital in the ICU as doctors fought for his life. Spilatro sweated those two weeks like his own life hung in the balance. Maybe it did.

  When he showed up to his fence after the mark finally died, Doug expected to be reprimanded. But Kirschenbaum clapped him on the back and asked him when he’d be ready to go again. It turned out the client was ecstatic with the way it went down, with the way the police and the press declared it to be a sad accident.

  Kirschenbaum apologized for not recognizing what Spilatro brought to the table. He understood now the value in Doug’s killing style. He’d like to increase his fee. He was seriously impressed with the innovation. He’d like to step up their relationship. Move Doug to the top of his stable.

  Doug was pleased with himself. His father had never once complimented him like this. Nobody had.

  So that’s how he got into it and that’s what he did. He hadn’t worked in software sales in years. He was a contract killer, one of the most sought-after Silver Bears in the game. He told Carla how much money they really had, how much he had hidden away in cash, where no bank, no taxman, no creditor could get to it.

  “But what about collateral damage?” she asked him. What about the other people who die in these accidents? What about the innocents on the train in Cleveland?

  He shrugged. “People die in accidents every day,” he told her. “I don’t care about them and I don’t think about them.”

  Then he put his hands out across the table, palms up, imploring her to hold hands, as if those same hands hadn’t been around her throat two hours before.

  “I overreacted,” he told her. “But it was such a surprise to see you standing there . . . it was like a violation, I guess. I really apologize for that.”

  “For trying to kill me?” she whispered as she tried her best not to raise her voice.

  “That wasn’t me. I promise. I was stressed out and off my game. I was seriously in shock. Nobody’s ever thought to catch me before and I guess I hadn’t prepared for it mentally. I saw you standing down there and an animal part of me took over. But I’m okay now. I see it now.”

  Inexplicably, she softened and he pounced on it like a cat with a ball of string. “I love you, honey. That’s never changed. You mean more to me than anything. You tell me to stop, to get out, to drop this business and
leave it in the sewer, then I will. We’ll just move away and be done with it.”

  And she believed him.

  We sat on a stoop on Warren Street for hours while Carla laid it out for me. If she forewent details, I grilled her to fill them in. If I thought she was holding back, I turned up the heat. That laser sight on her chest would disappear for a time, then reappear at various intervals, so it stayed omnipresent in her mind. But I couldn’t have pried half this information from her if she hadn’t wanted to talk, hadn’t needed to talk. I don’t believe most of it, especially the parts where she presents herself in the best possible light. But the kernels of truth are there, and it is those kernels I can make pop.

  “And instead of asking him to quit, you joined him?”

  “Not at first. God, no. But you’re right, I didn’t ask him to quit either. The money was insane, and the job kept him busy. I just put my hands over my ears, hear no evil, see no evil, you know?”

  “So when did you start working tandem?”

  She gazes at her feet and that laser pinpoints her chest. Dark circles have formed around her eyes now, and her face has gone pallid, as if unburdening herself of this story has discarded her soul with it. “I don’t know. Years ago. He asked me if I wanted to help him out once and I guess I said yes. He figured he could charge more for two of us. So I ran interference and helped move a mark into place, but I . . . I never had the stomach for it.”

  “Uh huh.”

  She doesn’t bother looking up to see the doubt in my expression, content to leave half-truths hanging in the ether like wisps of gossamer.

  “You’ve worked at least one job that I know of on your own since you guys split.”

  “I have bills to pay.”

  She blows out a long breath.

  “Look, you going to let me go now?”

  “I need you to tell me where to find your husband.”

  “Oh . . . that’s right. You want to hire him for a tandem.”

  I don’t say anything. She picks at a piece of gravel on the pavement, crushes it into chalk between her thumb and forefinger.