by Derek Haas
He should have been waiting for me to jump and then shot me as soon as I hit the ground but he didn’t and I’m up and running after him without missing a step. I’m faster than he is, and he’s going to have to make a move as we sprint across lawn after lawn, but I can tell something is wrong with him, something’s amiss. He hasn’t tried to pop a shot off at me since the spray of bullets down the stairwell, hasn’t tried to distract me or keep me at bay so he can duck between houses, and I realize I’m in luck after all; I caught Hap unprepared. He had to scramble off his father’s couch when the old man signaled him and he only had time to sprint up the stairs and grab his gun but he had been lazy and hadn’t scooped up a second clip and he’s out of bullets now.
He makes his move, and just as a young couple down the street steps out of their front door, Hap lowers his shoulder and barrels into the house. I am twenty steps behind him and the husband just looks at me and yells “Hey!” but he sees my gun out and grabs his wife and backs away and I am past him and through the front door and I am hoping the layout of this house is different from Hap’s father’s house, different than the house he grew up in, but it looks familiar, and I hear a clinking coming from a nearby doorway, a drawer overturning in the kitchen and I scramble to the sound and smash through the swinging door but he is on me before I can get into the room and he buries a knife into my shoulder.
“Hiya, Columbus!” he says with eyes filled to the brim with fire.
I fall and my gun clatters across the tile floor in the kitchen and Hap scrambles for it, but I trip him up with my good arm and he topples and I am smashing him in the ribs with my fist as hard as I can.
Ten minutes is all we have to kill each other. Ten minutes from when that young husband whipped out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 as soon as we blitzed by him into his house, so if we’re gonna do this, we need to do it now and get it finished and get the fuck out of here. Hap knows it and I know it and we’re going to fight right here to the death in this middle-class suburban kitchen because there’s no time and no other way to do it and it is and might as well be. He drives his fist into the kitchen knife handle buried in my shoulder, and fuck if I’m not blacking out but this is a goddamn hand-to-hand fight to the death and I cannot afford to go dark. Not now. Not after all I’ve done, not after I traveled from East to West, from spring to winter, from present to past to present and saw so much and gave up so much. Not now when the finish line is so close I can smell it like the salt in the air.
I open my jaws as wide as I can and bite into his side like a rabid dog and his arm that was reaching for my gun on the tile floor is forced back involuntarily by the pain and that’s all I need. I get my knees under me and leap for the gun past his retreating arm and I snatch it up in my good hand, my left hand, and flip over and point it at Hap’s head with my finger on the trigger, and I see it in his eyes. The life goes out of them like the electricity has been cut. He is defeated.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Vespucci fingered me?”
“No. He stayed true blue.”
“Then how?”
“You told me a story once. The first time I loaded truck for you.”
“What?”
“You told me you killed a kid who stole your father’s wallet. You told me you did time at Skyline Hall in Sacramento.”
He nods now, resigned. “I did?”
“Yeah.”
“I was still pretty new at this then.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I’m sorry I killed your man. I was just doing what you would have done.”
“Yeah.”
He tries to sit up straighter, but the pain from my bite makes him wince a bit. “Then I guess you gotta do what you gotta . . .”
I shoot Hap in the head at close range and his face disappears before he can finish the sentence.
Five minutes now. With a bloody arm, with a knife stuck in my shoulder, but with something else, too: resolve. I climb to my feet, open the kitchen door that leads directly to the backyard and I am moving through it, into the sunlight, blinking my eyes.
CHAPTER 16
I am the son.
The same side, the same shoulder, the same fucking arm. First a bullet, then a knife, and now my arm is virtually useless. It has turned an ugly shade of black—even against my skin it is prominent—and I’m not sure if it will ever function properly. I have it cleaned and bandaged and I hit myself with a cocktail of medications but I’m not a triage doctor and if I tried to seek professional help now I’d be out of the game.
There’s a dead man named Evan Feldman in his neighbor’s kitchen and there’s my blood splashed on that floor and they’ll be looking for a wounded man with blood type B positive trying to get stitched up at emergency rooms all over the city. I’m stuck with one worthless arm and the convention is now two days away and I have seventeen hours until Congressman Abe Mann will be alone on the twenty-second floor of the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
I am the son.
Pooley is dead and the man who killed him is dead and Mr. Cox is dead and so many others are dead and Vespucci is alive and full of regrets. I am alive, but I’m not whole.
I have seventeen hours and I’ll be damned if I am defeated now. Not after all this, not after I let the past back in and it forced me to my knees and goddammit, GOD DAMN IT, I’m losing my grip on the slippery ball of sanity floating somewhere in my head. There’s a mirror in this cheap hotel room where the clerk didn’t even look up when he took my cash and handed me a key, and my face is gaunt and pained and stretched as tight as a guitar string. I look into my own eyes and I force them to stare back at me, force them to fill up with that same resolve I’ve always relied upon, that same resolve that improbably got me out of that bedroom in Italy, that same resolve that kicked Jake Owens in the stomach in her apartment in Boston. I am Columbus, a Silver Bear, and whoever hired three assassins to kill Abe Mann the week of his nomination will not be disappointed because I am the son.
So how to get close to a man who has more security surrounding him than almost any man on Earth? How to get close to him even though I’m out of time and wounded and I have no resources at my fingertips?
And then it comes to me. The only solution, the only way to finish this. It was in front of me the whole time; it was in Vespucci’s words and in my own mantra and it is as clear to me as the sky after a storm.
I fashion a sling out of a white T-shirt and shower and make myself as presentable as possible. In the dust-caked mirror, I shave my face and check my reflection and nod, pleased. I look plain and unassuming. The injury is unfortunate, a red flag, but nevertheless I no longer look like an escaped mental patient.
I drive from the decrepit hotel on the outskirts of East Los Angeles to Interstate 10 and then off a few side streets to Grant and the front of the Standard. The hotel is modern and angular and stark in that West Coast style that emphasizes design flair over comfort. A valet parker exchanges a ticket for my keys and I enter the white lobby and get my bearings.
It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m seeking. A coterie of secret service agents huddle near a bank of elevators, stern expressions on their faces, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. A blond female whom I recognize from standing on the sides of daises in Indianapolis and Seattle is dressed differently from the security officers but shares their grave expressions. She is holding a clipboard.
I approach her and feel every eye shift toward me, sizing up my arm in the makeshift sling.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?” She studies me with a smile that looks as though it were forced on to her face under duress.
“How would I go about seeing Congressman Mann?”
She snorts and I see two of the Secret Service officers move their hands inside their jackets.
“I’m sorry. The congressman is unavailable at the moment.”
“He’ll see me.”
She looks at the agents and they nod
as if to tell her they are ready for any move I might make.
“And you are?”
“I’m his son . . .” And immediately they have me under the arm and are leading me forcefully away.
“Tell him LaWanda Dickerson’s son! Tell him that!” She looks at me queerly as I am jerked into an empty conference room off the lobby. Ten secret service officers materialize like magic and follow me into the room.
The senior officer is a man of forty or so with a bald head and hard eyes. He speaks with a higher voice than I would have guessed, like air blowing through an organ pipe, but he also speaks calmly, soothingly.
“Okay, friend. Let’s start by seeing some identification. Can you hand me your wallet?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have one.”
“No identification?”
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“John Smith.”
He smiles, showing me I’m not going to get under his skin. “Okay, John. I’m going to have the man behind you pat you down while I keep a gun pointed at your head. Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
This tells him two things. One, I’m not carrying a gun or a knife because he knows a man who is about to be patted down would gain nothing by lying about it. And two, I don’t fear having a gun on me, which means I’ve undoubtedly had experience with it before. I can see this work itself out in his mind, but he keeps his face even. He pulls out his pistol and does as he said he’d do, points it a mere foot from my forehead.
“Are you carrying a bomb?”
All the eyes in the room are riveted on me.
“No.”
“What’s wrong with your arm, John?”
“I was shot and then I was stabbed.”
“You sound like a busy man.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, John. Stand up and Larry will frisk you now.”
“Go easy on the arm.”
“Okay, John.”
I rise to my feet and the large man behind me pats me down as thoroughly as if he’s taking my measurements. I wince as he searches up my bandaged arm and under it, not going easy at all. I regret saying anything; naturally that’s where he’d search the hardest for anything untoward.
Larry nods at the senior officer and he lowers his gun. “Okay, John. You are unarmed. You may sit.”
“Thank you.”
“What is your business with Congressman Mann?”
“That’s between Congressman Mann and myself.”
“Okay, John. Would you mind if we took your fingerprints?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Great.”
A pad of ink is produced and I get my fingers ready but before they are pressed onto the moist purple pad a door opens and a female voice speaks up to a room as silent as a graveyard. “Abe wants to see him.”
The blonde with the clipboard. She chews the inside of her cheek, anxious.
The senior agent doesn’t hesitate. “That’s a negative.”
“Abe insists.”
“Negative.”
“Would you like to speak to him, Steve? Because he certainly isn’t listening to me.”
Steve nods and moves to a corner of the room, pulls out a cell phone and speaks softly. I can tell he’s arguing with my father on the other end of the line, and I wait and it soon becomes clear he is losing the argument. His face falls but then he looks at me and his eyes harden again. I can make out that he says “yes” into the phone before flipping the lid closed.
TWELVE secret service officers lead me down a hallway with Larry on my left and Steve on my right and we are moving like a hangman’s caravan toward two doors at the end of the corridor, the big suite on the top floor. We reach the doors and Steve gives me a curt “Wait here” and he enters into the room alone.
I wait for ten minutes, keeping my body neutral the way I’ve practiced for the last ten years until the doors open again and Steve emerges.
“Now, listen, John. There are going to be ground rules and if you deviate from those rules, we will not hesitate to kill you.”
I wait.
“You will enter the room and stand behind the line I’ve drawn for you on the floor. If you step over that line, Congressman Mann will ring a buzzer he’s holding, which will vibrate in my hand and I will enter the door and shoot you dead. Do you believe me?”
“I do.”
“You have ten minutes to walk out of that door. If you are still in the room after ten minutes I will enter and I will shoot you dead. Do you believe this to be true?”
“I do.”
“Okay, John. Then I’m going to let you in the room and start the clock. Please don’t raise your voice. It might make all of us a little antsy and I don’t want us to be antsy, okay?”
“Yes.”
“All right then.”
Steve opens the door and I step inside the suite.
A small foyer leads to a spacious living room. A red line of tape marks off the two rooms and I enter and put my toes on the line and there he is, after all this way, there he is sitting on a gray sofa thirty feet away, his eyes fixed on me like they are attached by a rope. He is bigger up close than he looked on all those stages and there isn’t an ounce of apprehension on his face.
“Hello. I’m Abe.”
“My name is Columbus. And I am your son.”
I say this as calmly as if I were announcing the weather.
“How do you figure, Columbus?”
“I was the baby inside LaWanda Dickerson whom you knew as Amanda B. when you had her killed your freshman year in the Congress.”
He does not look down nor away. He is very good at holding his gaze steady, a conditioned skill that has served him well.
“It wasn’t like that, son. I needed her to leave Washington and some men who were looking out for me took their job too seriously, too far.”
He stands up, keeping his hands in his pockets. “But how do you know I’m the father?”
“I know.”
“She was a professional prostitute . . .”
“I know.” I’m answering his first question.
He looks at me the way an architect looks over his final blueprints, searching for flaws, mistakes. But he finds none.
“I do, too. I can tell just by looking at you.” He exhales, heavily. “But why come now? What do you want?”
“I was hired to kill you.”
He swallows once and removes his hand from his pocket. He’s holding a silver box with a button on it. “To kill me?”
“Yes, I’m a professional killer. I’ve killed men and women all over the world. I do this because I was born to do it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He looks at his hand and back at me. “Let me ask you something. Do you think it was a coincidence you of all people were hired to kill me?”
“Someone told me fate has a way of making paths cross.”
“Yes. We just move through this world like so many puppets on strings.”
“No. Not me. I’m in control. Our paths crossed because I willed myself to get here.”
He studies me, like he’s mulling this over.
“Do you think you were lucky? To get up into this room?”
“I think luck often favors the artful.”
“So how are you going to do it?”
“I’m going to improvise.”
“Before I press this button?”
“Yes.”
He nods matter-of-factly, then takes his thumb off the button and places the silver box on the glass coffee table.
“How are you going to escape?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“No. But I got this far.”
“Yes, you did.”
“You have no idea what it took me to get here.”
“I presume your whole life, all your struggles, led to this moment.”
“Yes.”
“How much time do you have?
”
“Six minutes.”
“Then listen to me. Here’s how you’re going to escape. You kill me and then you move through that door, which leads to the master bedroom. The window is open and there are balconies going down. But there is also a balcony going up to the roof. You climb to the roof and you will find a window-washing cart on the opposite side of the building. Use the gearshift to drop at a rapid speed twenty floors to the alley below. You can be several blocks away before Officer Steve comes through that door.”
I’ve kept a poker face during this speech but I don’t understand, can’t comprehend what he’s saying. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I hired you.”
The truth rings out in the empty hotel room like a strong wind sweeping in and carrying out the fog.
“But why?”
“Like I said, I’m just a puppet on a string.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“You only have four minutes, son. It’s going to have to be good enough if you want to live.”
“But that’s just it. You don’t want to live.”
“You think I have a choice? I’m a bad person, son. I’m bad in a thousand ways. There is only one way out of this . . . I’ve tried everything else. I don’t call the shots. I can’t even scandal my way off the train. I’m not that man on television. I’m a monster.”
“Explain.”
He sits down heavily, like this confession has sapped his final bit of energy. “Three minutes,” he says, weakly.
“Explain.” I repeat through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t kill your mother. I didn’t know they were going to do . . . that. Politics . . . politicians . . . we don’t vote, we don’t make decisions, hell, we don’t even put on our own goddam shoes without someone telling us exactly what to do. Don’t you see? Too many people rely on us to feed the machine, too many people own every little part of us to let vice tether us down. Power isn’t in the big rooms in the Capitol, it’s in the shadows and the corners and the dirty space under the rug.”
