by Derek Haas
I heard the door creak closed followed by the soft shuffle of white tennis shoes on the concrete stairs. My heart was pounding in my ears, loud percussive blasts like an Indian’s tom-tom, TUM, TUM, TUM, TUM, TUM, as I blew out a deep breath, doing my best to regulate my breathing, then I headed up toward the sixth floor.
We both turned the corner on the short flight of twelve steps between the fifth and sixth floor. She directed a dismissive smile toward me, averting her eyes like she really didn’t want to talk to a juror or some poor lost bloke in the stairwell while she was on her way to lunch. I didn’t say anything, just looked past her, up at the next landing, my footsteps soft, my face friendly, nothing to alert her, nothing for her to worry about, just Joe Citizen pounding up the courthouse stairwell.
On the third step, she passed me, mumbling an insincere “good day.” In the half-second when I moved past her field of vision, I had the Saran Wrap roll out of the box, pulling out a sheet in the same motion, and then with the speed of a lion, I pounced from behind, wrapping the plastic sheet around her face and pulling back with enough force to jerk her off her feet.
She was so surprised, so disoriented that she couldn’t find her feet. In the next few seconds, I had wrapped the roll five times around her head as I continued to pull her backward, up the stairwell, where she would have a hard time gaining any sense of balance. Standing over her shoulder, I could see her eyes roll back, back, back, trying to find my face, trying desperately to make sense of this situation, but she couldn’t see who was doing this to her. She flailed with her hands, trying to beat my shoulders, when she should have been trying to dislodge the plastic from her mouth and nose, but I couldn’t blame her for putting up a fight, for trying to come to grips with the fact she was being suffocated by a stranger on the dingy steps of the courthouse stairwell, less than fifty feet from the courtroom over which she had presided these last eight years. When she finally stopped struggling and her eyes clouded over, I calmly left the stairwell and headed to the elevator bank. Not a soul stood in the hallway to mark my exit.
CHAPTER 6
I am a fraud and a liar. I tell myself I am conditioned, I have discipline, my mind is my possession, an object over which I have control. I tell myself I have the ability to remain in the present, that what separates me from the civilians populating God’s green earth is that I, and I alone, can shut off the past like turning off a faucet.
But the damn prostitute in the diner and then this woman who didn’t even look like Jake, not really, maybe a little in the eyes, sitting at the table next to me at Augustine’s had exposed me for the fraud I am. The faucet had sprung a leak and the leak had caused a flood of memories, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to plug the miserable thing, right here, right now. I had too much else to worry about.
I am on the road again, heading south now, toward Indianapolis and then Lexington. I am heading out of the blue states toward the red ones, and I know presidential candidate Abe Mann will spend very little time on this part of his whistle-stop tour. He will want to head west quickly, for the key electoral votes represented by Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and finally California. But he won’t get votes from these states, not a single one from any state, because he will be dead.
I drive like I walk in crowds . . . drawing as little attention to myself as possible: beige rental car, cruise control one-mile-per-hour above the speed limit, blinker whenever I change lanes. I am starting to relax, to wind down, to let my mind drift into a pleasant nothingness, when I spy Pooley out of the corner of my eye, driving a black SUV, a Navigator. He has the passenger window down and is easing alongside me. He signals with one finger, pointed toward the next exit. I immediately slow and allow him to pull in front of me, then follow him to a Shell station just off the Interstate.
“I’ve got strange news,” he says as we get out and stand next to our cars. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in days, and his eyelids droop at half-mast.
“You tracked me down, it must be something big.”
“Archibald Grant . . . your middleman who went missing . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I caught up with him at a jailhouse outside of Providence.”
“Jail?”
“Yep. That’s what took me so long to locate him. He got pinched on an aiding and abetting racket. Gonna have to serve a few in Federal . . . maybe Lompoc.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry, he didn’t roll on you.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt you can get to him.”
“What about . . . ?”
“He wouldn’t give up who hired him . . . but he said it was someone extremely close to the target.”
“Any hint he knew more than he was letting on? About my history with the mark?”
Pooley shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He’s one of these guys who thinks he’s a lot more clever than he is . . . you know what I mean? If he knew about your relation to the target, he’d want me to know that he knew . . . you see? It’d be a source of pride with him.”
I nod. “So all we know is that someone close to Mann hired an assassin to kill him.”
“Well, here’s where it gets strange, he didn’t hire just one assassin.”
My eyes flash and Pooley sees it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know and I know it’s my job to know, so go ahead and be pissed . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know how I could have missed it . . .”
“Who else is on this job?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“You couldn’t coax it out of him?”
“If he hadn’t been behind bars, maybe. But it was him and me and a sheet of bulletproof glass twelve inches thick. There was nothing I could do to be persuasive; I had no leverage. I don’t think he believes you’ll come for him over it.”
“Did you get any indication I might have a head start?”
“He didn’t say. He just said the client wanted to make sure the target got clipped and despite your reputation, the client was willing to pay for three guys.”
“Three?” I try to keep my voice even, but I can feel the rising pitch of it in my throat.
Pooley nods. “Yeah, he hired three guys to finish the job and he doesn’t care which one of you completes it. He said the one who does will get the kill fee.”
“Christ.”
“I know.”
“That’s two X factors out there I can’t be accountable for, and it only takes one to fuck everything up.”
“I know.”
“Did he tell them all it had to go down in California?”
“Sorry . . . I didn’t ask. I’ll go back . . .”
“No, fuck that. I need you to find out who the other gunners are . . . as soon as you can.”
Pooley squints in the sunlight, nodding steadily. He uses his hand as a visor to shield his eyes. “Yeah, yeah . . . of course. Of course, Columbus.”
“How long will it take you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do whatever it takes. A week, tops.”
“Okay. Meet me in Santa Fe in a week with those names. I don’t want you to tell me on the phone. Only in person, you understand?”
“Yeah, Columbus. Of course.”
He wants to say more, but he can see in my eyes I’m not in the mood for apologies. So he hops back behind the wheel of the Navigator and pulls out without a backward glance in the mirror.
BAD luck. Bad fucking luck. I feel like ramming the palm of my hand through the steering wheel, but that would be rattling and I don’t rattle. One thing I won’t do is rattle.
I should turn around and head to the jailhouse outside of Providence, bribe my way in, stick a knife through Archibald Grant’s ribs, tell him that’s what he gets for hiring three men instead of entrusting the job to one. But he was just doing his client’s bidding and if he left out a little information, what does he care? He figures one of us will probably take care of the other two, either bef
ore or immediately after the hit, so he’ll only have one angry assassin to deal with when it’s all said and done. And he figures once that assassin gets paid his kill fee, all apologies will be accepted.
I know I should quit the job, just pull a U-turn at the next exit and head back to Boston, tell Pooley to find me something else, something that doesn’t hit quite so close to home. One too many obstacles are stacking up, one too many omens, but for some reason I’m powerless to resist, powerless to put on my blinker and steer this car around, like I’m being pulled by an invisible force, a magnet, something outside of me.
I want to kill my father. I want to be the one to do it, no matter what it takes. The assignment just sped up the inevitable; I was headed on this collision course long before someone paid me. Vespucci said fate causes paths to cross that we cannot understand, but that’s not entirely correct. This path I understand perfectly. Abe Mann set me on it a long time ago, the moment he discarded Amanda B. like she was a dead animal he had run over in the street. I am his bastard, and I’ll be damned if some other shooter is going to get to him before I do.
I check into the Omni Severin hotel in the middle of downtown Indianapolis. It is one of these large luxury jobs that tries to maintain its historic feel but comes across strangely anachronistic, like it hasn’t quite made up its mind what it wants to be, and thus ends up being neither antiquated nor modern.
“I see we have you here for seven days, Mr. Smith.”
“Yes.”
“A non-smoking room? King-size bed?”
“Yes.”
The clerk, a pretty college student, I would guess, types at her computer. After a moment, she hands me a plastic key-card.
“Now, I should warn you, the final two days of your visit are when Abe Mann will be staying here, and things might get a little . . . you know . . . extra-security and whatnot.”
“Really?” I ask, pretending to be pleasantly surprised.
“Yes, sir. Coming through on his ‘Connecting America’ tour or whatever it is he calls it.”
“Are we on the same floor?”
“No . . . he’s got the fifteenth floor all to himself. Him and his people, I should say. You won’t have to worry about that.”
“Okay, great.” I give her a warm smile. “That’s something, being in Indianapolis at the same time.”
I think that’s the reaction she’s looking for, and she smiles at me cheerily as she points toward a bank of elevators and gives me directions to my floor.
When I get to my room, I turn on the television and there he is again, as ubiquitous as a celebrity. With twenty-four-hour news channels running at maximum capacity during an election year, I can expect to see candidate Abe Mann any time I flip around the dial. He’s standing in front of thirty steel workers, every minority represented, each man dressed in full blue-collar uniform and donning hard hats. Abe Mann has a hard hat on as well, and he’s talking about something he calls a “Bridge for Working Families,” shaking that palm preacher-style, like he genuinely believes what’s coming out of his mouth.
The hotel has a pretty good-sized gym, and I decide to pound out my energy on a treadmill. I’m the only one running at this hour; there’s a television in the corner showing sports highlights with the sound off, but I ignore it, just pounding my steps in place, settling into a comfortable rhythm, the only noise coming from my steady gait. I plan on running for an hour, and since I am running in place, the past has plenty of time to catch up to me.
I hadn’t meant to change, and I was too myopic to understand what was happening to me. Yes, I had killed Mr. Cox with a sewing machine in the abandoned Columbus Textile warehouse, but I had loathed Mr. Cox, and I had killed him with passion, with emotion, with hatred. When Vespucci opened the door the following morning, I could walk away the same person I was, somehow cleaner, like emerging from a baptism.
But suffocating Judge Janet Stephens with Saran Wrap on the courthouse stairwell was markedly different. It was devoid of emotion, passionless, mechanical, and therefore flawed in a way I could not yet understand. I had done everything right; I had fulfilled my obligation, studied the file, found the weakness, exploited the routine, and my assignment was successful. So what was missing?
I had met Vespucci the next day at a coffee shop at his request.
“You have a bank?” he asked over a small glass cup holding an Americano.
“Yes.”
“Close your account.” He slid me a small sheet of paper. “Go to this address when you need money. No more records, no more paperwork, no more checks. Everything will be kept in cash.”
“What will I find at this address?”
“A bank for those of us who don’t like banks. You will find you already have an account there. And in that account is fifty thousand dollars that wasn’t there yesterday.”
I leaned back, trying to mask that the sum staggered me. Vespucci knew it had, but he didn’t say anything more. For a minute, we just sipped our espressos, leaving the air between us silent.
“When do I get my next assignment?” I finally managed.
“When you are ready.”
“I’m ready now.”
“No, Columbus. You need a month to get your . . . how should I say? . . . to get your edge back.”
I opened my mouth, but then closed it while his eyes measured me. He was right. I wasn’t ready. Though I couldn’t put my finger on what was holding me back.
“This business, this business you find yourself in, it pays well but it also exacts a fee, Columbus. Do I make sense? It exacts a fee up here . . .” He tapped his head with his index finger. “The only currency by which you can pay this fee is time. You need some time so you can do what you do again.”
I nodded, but I knew he had more.
“I think it is not enough to do your job and walk away from it. I believe . . . this is hard to understand . . . I believe you must connect with your mark’s mind . . . ahhh . . .” He waved off his words as though he were displeased with them, like they had failed to communicate what he was trying to say. I waited. After a moment, he spread his hands in front of him. “Columbus, I did not give you enough lead time because it was a test to see how you would do. Typically, you will have eight weeks before an assignment must be complete. Use the time to not only know the routine of your mark, but to know what is going on inside your mark’s head, to become your mark, to really understand his . . . or her . . . motivations. Once you have fully realized the connection, only then can you fully sever the connection. Do not ask me to explain why this is so. I only know it is.”
With that, he dropped a ten-spot on the table to cover our bill, excused himself, and shuffled out of the coffee house.
JAKE could tell I had changed. She didn’t know how to ask what was different about me, why I was acting morose, so she grew frustrated.
“What did I do?” We were sitting down to dinner.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Ever since we came back from New Hampshire you’ve been acting . . . I don’t know . . . bothered by me.”
“I’m telling you this has nothing to do with you, Jake.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you want me to say? You need to drop it.” I could feel my anger rising like boiled water.
This was our first row and I discovered she wasn’t one to back down. “Drop what? How can I drop something when you won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to be dropping?”
I started to answer but she interrupted, “I’d expect this from some people, but not you. Since the day I met you, we’ve been nothing but honest with each other. That’s what having a relationship, a real relationship, is all about. You have to trust me and I have to trust you. There isn’t any other way to do it—not a way that works, that really works.”
She was right, but my hands were tied. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”
I could see her eyes soften, but she held firm. “You’re apologizing but I don’t even know what
you’re apologizing for. This isn’t communicating. This is me talking to a brick wall.”
“I said I’m sorry, Jake. I’m trying to figure some things out, but you have to believe that the problems I’m having aren’t about us. The only thing . . . the only thing I depend on each day is us. I know that’s not a satisfying answer but I need you to accept it . . . I’ll get down and beg you to accept it if that’s what it takes. But I can’t handle you going sour on me, too. I just . . . can’t. When the time is right, I’ll tell you everything.”
Whatever defenses she had melted away. “You promise?” she said, weakly.
“I promise.”
“You trust me? Completely?”
“You’re the only one I do trust on this planet.”
“I love you.”
When I answered her with the same three words, I meant them fully.
CHAPTER 7
MY next assignment was a disaster. The name on the top of the page was Richard Levine, a numbers runner on the east side. Vespucci had done his homework, but even the homework had gaping holes in it, gaping holes due to a very specific reason: I was working a job where the target knew I was coming.
Levine was a five-foot-two slight figure with chronic headaches and a short fuse. He had made a fortune working the rackets among the union workers down by Boston Harbor, and as his bank account increased, so did the list of his enemies. A cautious man, he had a regular staff of five bodyguards . . . professional guys, former cops, men who hadn’t had a chance to go soft. He lived in a large house near Beacon Hill and rarely went out any more, letting his minions work the books, deliver the payouts, and make the collections. A handful of guys were entrusted to enter his door, and all of these guys were known faces, fellas who had been on his payroll for ten-plus years. None of these men left the business either; the only way to get away from Levine was to die or disappear.
