Dark Men

by Derek Haas

  Risina pulls up a camera and takes a picture of him. Then we leave him there to think about that water bottle just out of his reach, Tantalus with his grapes.

  This place must’ve once been some sort of manufacturing plant servicing the auto industry, but it has the look of a place run-down long before the Big Three started asking for government handouts.

  An office adjacent to the room provides a window that looks out onto the front of the building so I can spot any unwelcome vehicles approaching. Whoever owns this warehouse doesn’t keep a regular security guard here, but maybe he pays someone to come out and look around once a week or once a month, the way Bacino’s neighbor did back in Chicago. It doesn’t look like the front door has been cracked in years, and I’m happy to keep playing the percentages, but if someone does happen to roll snake eyes, I’d like to have a few minutes warning to get my money off the table.

  The room has another window on the opposite wall that faces the back of Deckman’s chair. He spent the first hour trying to tip the chair, and the second hour yelling just to yell. The next morning, he’s stiff and sore and broken. It didn’t take long.

  “You kept in your piss. I’m proud of you.”

  “Fuck you,” he croaks.

  I start to stand again, and I can see the desperation in his eyes as clear as if I can read his thoughts. I’m going to guess he’s never been tortured before, neither during the first Gulf War nor at any point in his professional life, because he doesn’t have the mettle to test his own durability.

  “Okay, listen. I don’t know why we gotta play it like this.” His voice sounds scratchy, like a rake on the sidewalk.

  “Tell me how to contact him.”

  “Okay, but listen. Here’s the thing.” His eyes ping-pong between my face and the water bottle in the chair. “You’re a dead man. You have to understand this. I say this not to be confrontational, but it’s a fact, as sure as these walls are white or that floor is cement. As sure as I can admit you know what you’re doing in tying a man to a chair. Spilatro is the smartest man I know, the smartest I’ve ever known. He thinks differently, you see? He sees the world as interconnected lines, or, or, dominoes toppling against each other . . . but he sets ’em up, you see? He cuts the lines. He knows exactly which pieces are going to fall when, because everything fits into the little designs, the patterns he creates. We’re the dominoes, man. And he’s the finger pushing ’em over.

  “He was always better than me. It wasn’t even a competition. He has this disconnect thing he can do where he just shuts it all off, any compassion, any concern for innocents, anything that stands in the way of the dominoes falling. He’s already played this out, man. You just don’t know it.”

  “If that’s true, then he gave you up like a pawn on a chessboard.”

  “Did he? I don’t know. You can’t look at the micro with him. Just the macro.”

  “So he’s expecting my call?”

  “I’m sure he is. Which is why I don’t really feel like sticking out this ‘dying of thirst’ scenario. Let’s get on with it. Give me some water and I’ll tell you how to get to him.”

  “Was he expecting me to kill you?”

  His throat bobs. “What’s that?”

  I pull out my Glock and enunciate slowly. “Was he expecting me to kill you?”

  His mouth moves to the side of his face again. “I don’t think the percentage play is to do that if you want your friend back. I’m sure that’s why we didn’t dump what’s-his name, Pistol, in the Chicago River. There’s an exchange to be made. That’s why we did it.”

  “But if I shoot you now, it’ll throw Spilatro off his game, right?”

  “If you shoot me now, your friend is dead.”

  I don’t look at Risina. I told her she’d have to see this side of me and that she might not like it. But this is the game. This is the difference between talking about it and doing it, the difference between theory and application, the difference between looking at a photo of a crime scene and having another man’s blood on your face, your hands. They brought the fight to us and that’s where the truth lies. I hope she can see the difference. There is an entire universe in the difference.

  “Maybe. All I know is if he was expecting me to take you and make an exchange, as you figure, then the best play for me is to kill you and disrupt his plans.”

  “But you still don’t know how to contact him.”

  “Then tell me.”

  His eyes dart wildly, like a wild animal that wants the food in your right hand but is worried about the left hand he can’t see behind your back.

  “If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “I thought you wanted to end this. I thought Spilatro already knew how this was going to play out. One way or another, I’m going to confront him, either pretending I have you to trade, or physically having you to trade. Like I said, I have nothing but time.

  “So we have three choices here. One, we can go back to the thirst scenario and see how you’re doing tomorrow. Two, you can give me the number and hope for the best. And three, I can shoot you and figure out another way to contact Spilatro, maybe a way he hasn’t figured yet.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you . . . he’s figured all three plays! He knows what you’re going to do. There’s no free will here. Not with him!”

  I pick up the water bottle, untwist the lid, and then take another swallow, so now the bottle is only half-full. “All right then,” I say, setting the bottle back on the chair. “See you tomorrow.”

  I only take two steps before he says, “Wait.”

  Thirty seconds later, he gives me the number to reach Spilatro. I take off the lid to the water bottle and hold it to his lips. He gulps it down in three swallows. While the bottle is to his lips, I put my Glock to the side of his head and fire once.

  I suppose there was a fourth play, the one where he tells me what I want to know, and I shoot him anyway.

  She’s in the bathroom, throwing up. I give her a lot of credit. She put up a brave face for a long time, but the reality of what I do for a living, what I’ve always done, caught up to her in this empty warehouse on the west side of downtown Detroit. I’m not going to try to talk to her through the closed bathroom door, though I have a lot to say. I do know the sooner we get out of here, the better I’ll feel. While she jerked her head at the concussive sound of the pop, her face bloodless as she saw Deckman’s head explode, and then turned on her heels to hightail it to the bathroom, I picked up the body and dragged it behind a rusted and forgotten drill press. Deckman kept his frame fit, so it wasn’t too difficult to move him. I saw the bathroom door slam shut out of the corner of my eye as I finished disposing of the body.

  I hear the water running in the sink. It hasn’t stopped running. I imagine she’s checking herself in the mirror, searching for a visible change in her face. After a moment, the door opens and she emerges, ashen.

  “I’m sorry for this,” she says, chewing on a breath mint. “I . . .”

  “It had to be done, Risina.”

  “I know. It’s just . . .”

  “We couldn’t try to transport him. The longer you keep a prisoner around, the more chances he has to disrupt your assignment. And this is an assignment, Risina. I’ve been ducking that mentally for a while, but make no mistake about it, it’s an assignment. The name at the top of the page is Spilatro. After we deal with him, we figure the rest of it out.”

  “I understand. I need to get some air, if you don’t mind, before I vomit again.”

  I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with me because she processes what I’m saying or if she’s trying to block it from her mind.

  We find the side door and the crisp air envelops us, sweeping away the smell of dust and death in the warehouse. I parked our sedan around the side of the place so it wouldn’t be visible from the street.

  Before she can open the pa
ssenger door, I move over to hold her and she submits, burying her face in my chest.

  “I was done, Risina. You know that. And then they came to us. They took Archie and penned a note with my name on it and forced me to answer it. These aren’t innocent men.”

  “I know,” she says, her face hidden. Her eyes weren’t red when she emerged from the bathroom and she’s not crying now.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Yes.”

  She reaches up and kisses me on the cheek, but it’s perfunctory, devoid of feeling. “We should leave, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She slides into the passenger seat, and I get behind the wheel, crank the engine. In two minutes, we roll away from the broken chain link gate. Another ten and we’re on the highway heading east. Another twenty and Risina’s asleep, the last forty-eight hours sapping her energy like physical blows.

  I don’t know if her attitude toward me will change now that she’s stepped behind the curtain and seen me unmasked. I told her once I was a bad man, but up until this morning, they were only words.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The blossoms have fallen off the cherry trees as we return to Washington. Discarded cotton candy mounds mark every few feet as sidewalk sweepers push the petals into piles. Trees we were admiring just a week ago now look bald and empty. It happens that quickly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  We’ve set up camp in a budget hotel on the outskirts of McLean, Virginia, near the location of the CIA headquarters. I’m looking to disrupt Spilatro’s operating method any way I can. I’ve already put a bullet in the head of his oldest friend, now I’m going to approach him in his own back yard, see if I can shake the leaves from his trees.

  “Tell me that you were going to shoot him after he gave you the number.”

  “I knew it had to be done from the moment we kidnapped him in the hotel. You can’t keep a wild dog chained to you for too long if you don’t want to be bit. I didn’t know how you’d react and honestly, didn’t want to have an argument about it. I wanted you to be a part of it, but I didn’t want you to give anything away if you knew. If he saw it in your eyes, I might not have gotten the information from him. It was a delicate tightrope—”

  “You didn’t trust me.”

  “No, that’s not it. Trust has nothing to do with it. It’s only a matter of the unknown, and as a contract killer, you have to keep the unknown at bay every chance you get. That’s the job. I didn’t know how you’d react, and I knew what needed to happen. Once I killed him, it wouldn’t matter how you reacted.”

  “Well, you should have told me anyway. You should have dealt with my reaction up front instead of catching me by surprise.”

  “I’m not going to apologize for this, Risina. I had to play the cards dealt to me.”

  She folds her arms across her chest and glares at me, grimacing.

  “I’m in this all the way with you,” she starts. “You need to be in all the way with me.”

  “I am.”

  “No. You’re lying to yourself about that. I’ve known it since Smoke died in Chicago and you saw you couldn’t protect him. He died in the worst way possible, right in front of us. And since that moment—”

  “Risina . . .”

  “Let me finish. Since that moment, you’ve known it could happen to me too. So you won’t let yourself be in all the way with me. You’ve been questioning bringing me with you from the beginning.”

  I’m practiced at keeping my face blank, but it’s as open as a book right now, and she reads it, reads that she’s right.

  Her voice catches, but she plows forward, her Italian accent thickening with every word. “So listen to me and listen carefully. I’m not going away. I’m not leaving you. And you may not be able to protect me. I might get hurt or worse, but as you say, those are the cards we’ve been dealt. If the plan is to kill someone to get us to the point we need, then tell me. If the plan is to use me as bait the way you did in Rome with Svoboda, then tell me. Jesus Christ, just tell me. Quit trying to do everything alone. We’re partners. We’re a tandem, as you call it. Just tell me.”

  “Okay.”

  She starts to protest, so sure I am going to argue the point. “Okay?”

  “Yes. You’re right. You’re right about everything. I brought you along because you were in danger the moment Smoke found us. I thought there was a better chance I could keep you safe if you were with me than if I left you behind or stashed you somewhere. I didn’t want you showing up in a photograph holding a newspaper with your mouth gagged and your hands tied behind your back, someone using you to break me.”

  “I know what you are. I know your fearful symmetry, okay? I’ve known all along and I am a part of it, yes? The same hand that dared seize the fire to create you, created me.

  “I’ve realized something about us. Something I think profound. Not because it’s a clever thought, but just because it is. You walked into my bookshop in Rome and I didn’t change you. You changed me. There is no changing you. Like a beast hibernating, you went dormant when we were on the island, but you didn’t change.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to—”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying. I want you to know you changed me, but I needed to change. Some of us don’t find out who we are or what we are until another comes along to liberate us from the cages we build for ourselves. You did that to me. You liberated me.”

  I stand up and move to her chair, hold out my hand and pull her into me. “But what if you don’t like the change? What if you discover you were happier before?”

  “I was dead before.”

  And then, as if to prove her point, she spends the next hour making us both feel alive.

  He answers on the third ring.

  “Hello?” It is unmistakably his voice, the same one I heard in the rented house in upstate New York. It has an enunciated sibilance to it that is as unique as a fingerprint.

  “You have something I want.”

  He stops breathing, presumably deciding whether he should hang up to regroup or plow forward. I’ve called him on his private phone, touched him when he thought he was the only one doing the touching. He pauses a moment, and that moment tells me everything—I have, in fact, disrupted his plan.

  “Good. I was expecting your call. I’m surprised it took you this long.”

  “You know, everyone keeps telling me how smart you are. Including you. But now I’m starting to wonder . . .”

  “Okay. Okay,” he stammers.

  Rattling him is easier than I imagined. I can picture him on the other end of the line, his face contorting the way it did when he found his wife standing next to his model of Cleveland. He doesn’t care for surprises; that part of the story was true. I wonder what miniature mousetrap he’s constructed for me and how worthless it is to him now.

  “Okay,” he says for the third time. “You come to me, and I’ll release Mr. Grant.”

  “Like a rat sniffing cheese while a steel bar snaps his neck?”

  “You’re starting to get the idea.”

  “You want to exchange me for my friend?”

  “I want you to come willingly. Your friend is immaterial.”

  “You know who else is immaterial? A soldier you used to run with. Roland Deckman. He’s gone by ‘Decker’ for the last twenty years or so.”

  Spilatro pauses, then starts laughing. There’s an undercurrent to the sound though, like a stage laugh. It’s strained, wrong. “I assume that’d be the way you’d locate me. I tried to teach him, to give him advice, but he wouldn’t listen. Some people in this game think they’re invincible.”

  “So now I have something you want.”

  “I don’t give a damn about Roland Deckman.”

  “You have twelve hours or he dies.”

  “Right.”

  “Check your phone.”

  I press “send” on the picture that Risina took when Deckman was t
ied and alive.

  “I’m not going to tell you you’re bluffing, because I don’t think you are. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through. If you kill Decker . . .”

  “What I haven’t done is given you time to think it through. Twelve hours. I’ll call you again on this phone with the meeting place two hours before. Have Archie ready to move.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Just correcting one.”

  “You’ll have to give me more time if you want Mr. Grant in one piece.”

  “Twelve hours.”

  He hesitates again. Then, “Where are you calling from?”

  “Some place close.”

  Walking to the car with Risina, I’m pleased. All conversations are about exchanging information, and when dealing with a mark, you try to get more than you give. Spilatro gave away something with his question at the end.

  He’s a government hitter all right, and he’s working for these dark men, as he said, but this job isn’t sanctioned. It isn’t authorized. He doesn’t have a support team or a gaggle of analysts helping him break it down. If he were working through proper channels, he would’ve immediately known where I was calling from, probably had it pinpointed within a few city blocks. The playing field is leveled in a way. Nonetheless, I place the phone under my right rear tire before I pull away from the hotel.

  How do you disrupt someone who thinks he can game out every move? When Kasparov played Deep Blue in their infamous chess match of 1996, he beat the machine by charging illogically at the beginning of each match, then set up random traps to capitalize on the computer’s hesitancy.

  I’m going to charge illogically at Spilatro.

  He’s made a mistake: he thinks I care about Archie Grant. He thinks the kidnapping of my friend, of my fence, is why I came back. He thinks that’s why I’m holding Decker. He thinks I actually care about an exchange.

  It was my name. He put my name on a sheet of paper and called me out. No matter who instructed him, who gave him the assignment to kill me, he’s the one who put that note where Smoke would find it. He wrote my name on that paper and the machine was set into motion. It’ll only stop moving when he’s dead.