by Derek Haas
The relationship ended abruptly when the FBI snatched up Nichelle Spellman in a bribery sting. Mann was not aware of the Bureau’s actions until after the fact. He tried to contact her on eleven separate occasions, but his calls went unanswered, unreturned. He needed her to remain silent. He needed to know she would take the fall, his name wouldn’t come up, not when he had just been elected Speaker of the House. The FBI continued to build their case and there was talk of a Grand Jury, of testimony, of things being said “on the record.”
On May 16 of that year, a week before the Grand Jury would hear Ms. Spellman’s testimony, Nichelle’s daughter Sadie was abducted directly out of her classroom. A man entered the school, telling the teacher he was from Nichelle’s husband’s office and Sadie needed to come with him right away. There was an emergency. The man seemed confident, articulate, and unthreatening, and the teacher complied without hesitation. A week later, Nichelle pleaded the Fifth to every question the Grand Jury asked her. She was distraught but resolute; she was asked if she needed more time in light of her family’s personal tragedy and she said no, this was her testimony, this was what she wanted on the record. The Grand Jury was stymied. Abe Mann’s name never passed her lips.
One month later, an undercover Kansas police officer, along with Nichelle, her husband, and her daughter, were all found dead in a snowy ditch near an abandoned airfield, shot at close range multiple times. The newspapers described it as a botched kidnapping hand-off, a sorry ending to a sad affair. The daughter’s body had shown signs of assault. No suspect was ever arrested.
I put down the papers, turning the new information over in my mind.
It seems Abe Mann has grown comfortable ordering the deaths of people. Nichelle hadn’t even talked, hadn’t given him up, and he still wanted the loose ends tied, wanted the coffin lids closed so no one would have a change of heart or a wandering tongue at a later date.
How many times had he ordered executions besides the two I know of? How many bodies are buried deep in his congressional closet? Does he take pleasure from it, acting as God, acting as one who decides between life and death?
It seems I am more like my father than I thought.
AT a table a few feet away, a man is eating by himself, obviously waiting on someone. His feet tap the floor nervously, and his eyes flit to the door every few seconds. Eventually, a harried woman comes in, two small boys in tow. I keep my head buried in the file, chewing methodically on my quarter-pounder, trying not to look up, even as the couple barks at each other.
“We said twelve-thirty. I’ve been here an hour.”
“You try packing up all their shit for a weekend with no help. None!”
“I tried calling your cell phone.”
“Well, maybe I was a little busy, did you ever think of that?”
“Well, maybe I’ll bring them back an hour late on Monday.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“Real nice, Amy. Real nice. Right in front of ’em.”
“Oh, don’t you dare get self-righteous with me . . .”
After a few more exchanges, the woman storms out, leaving the father alone with the two boys. Each of them carries a backpack, and, on their faces, shame.
I finish my lunch and take the tray to the trashcan, dumping the contents and pushing the tray onto the shelf. The grease is still on my tongue, and even as I suck my large soda dry, it remains there, resistant and defiant.
When I step into the parking lot, it is impossible to avoid the small crowd gathered in a half-circle near my rental car. I don’t want to meet any eyes, I just want to get to my car and drive away, but it is too late for that. They are looking at me, shaking their heads, wanting me to join in, wanting me to see what they see and feel the misery they feel.
The woman who dropped off her kids has stepped out of her minivan, but left the driver’s door open, the engine idling.
“I didn’t see it. It just darted in front of me.”
The brown dog lies on the ground in front of her van, his back legs broken, his eyes wild. He tries to get to his front feet but can’t, and so lies back down, breathing rapidly, mustering the strength to try again, repeating the cycle over and over.
Try, fail, rest, try, fail, rest. Try. Fail.
I make my way past the courtyard of the La Fonda, past businessmen and women finishing their lunches, and head for the ground-floor hallway, the corridor to my room.
Then the world slows, the sound drops out, everything fades to a single image, like looking through a tunnel toward the light at the other end. A single image, as in-focus as anything I’ve ever seen in my life. A man is coming out of my room, a gun in his hand, backing out, fresh blood on his face, and his eyes meet mine. I recognize him, I know him. I haven’t seen him in years, but I know him all right. I loaded his beer truck, he introduced me to the dark Italian, he brought Cox into that textile mill. I always knew that he, Hap Blowenfeld, was a killer, that he had been recruited by Vespucci before me, that the beer-truck job must have been a cover for an assignment; and in that moment, that crystal clear moment in which we were seeing each other, I took in every detail about this Hap, the one in the present, the one carrying a brand-new Beretta, the one who still weighs roughly a hundred and ninety pounds, the one who has a three-inch scar on his forehead that wasn’t there before, the one who has Pooley’s blood on his face.
And then, wham, everything speeds back to normal though it is all heightened, the colors somehow crisper, the smells stronger, and Hap doesn’t hesitate. He levels his gun at me and fires a silenced bullet, but I am moving fast now like a leopard that has spotted a predator in the jungle bigger than he. I dart back toward the courtyard as the bullet slams into the wall just inches behind my head, and I know Hap won’t follow me, he has been trained like me to blend in, but that isn’t my concern, my concern is to walk as quickly and as normally as I can back through the lobby and out to my car, the Range Rover Pooley had waiting for me in the parking lot of the Inn at the End of the Trail this morning, and maybe, just maybe I will not draw any stares, and maybe, just maybe I can spot that bastard driving off before he gets away clean.
I throw the car into gear and race around the building just in time to see a black Audi exiting onto San Francisco street, tires squealing as it passes from concrete to asphalt. Yes, finally, one fucking good thing in this terrible day, between that dog, that fucking dog with two broken legs trying to get to its feet after it careened off the front bumper of that haggard mother’s minivan and fucking Pooley, sticking around in Santa Fe when he should have been heading back East, but I told him to stay because I wanted more goddamn information, information I could have gotten myself, and I brought him into this life and because of me he’s dead, poor fucking Pooley, dealt the worst fucking hands all his goddamn life.
I didn’t have to see his body to know what had happened: Vespucci was a good fence and he had sniffed out the multiple assassins hired for this job and Hap had spotted me on Mann’s trail because he would have been doing the same thing I was doing, trying to get inside the candidate’s head, make the connection so he could sever the connection. And so he had seen me, and staked me, and he went into that room thinking it was me in there, but Pooley was waiting for me, and so got a bullet in his head when the door opened. If it wasn’t that, then it was a version pretty damn close to that, and now Hap was widening the distance between us because he was in an Audi and I had cavalierly told Pooley to get me something bigger, an SUV, thinking I had all the time in the world to make my plans.
An hour passes before I realize the Audi is gone, and I am alone.
CHAPTER 9
DARKNESS. Black darkness.
And pain.
I have checked into a nondescript hotel, and I am sitting on the bed in the darkness, listening to the occasional rumble of the big rigs as they make their way down Highway 84, and I am thinking.
Earlier, a local news channel mentioned the shooting at the La Fonda, and the dead man w
ho had checked into the hotel as Jim Singleton, but they weren’t sure of his identity. The police were investigating, but I knew the case would remain unsolved forever. The bullets in Pooley’s body and in the corridor wall would be untraceable, the weapon had most likely been destroyed, and the man I knew as Hap Blowenfeld was probably far from Santa Fe, probably already on the road to Nevada, where Abe Mann was stopping next. They might have security camera footage of both Hap and me in the lobby of the building, but they will curse their luck that neither of our faces are recognizable, we both seem to be aware of the cameras and are always looking in the opposite direction.
Why had Hap tried to kill me? For the same reason I will put a bullet in both Miguel Cortega and him. Because the end game is the death of nominee Abe Mann at the convention, and we cannot afford to have anyone else fuck up our kill. Whoever hired us wanted three killers to make sure the assignment was done right, was done successfully, but it would be one man ultimately pulling the trigger. It is part of the job, a necessary hazard of the game we choose to play; when multiple killers are hired, multiple killings are assured.
But Hap hadn’t killed me; he had killed a part of me, he had killed my only friend in this world, my brother, and for that he would pay with his life, Abe Mann or no Abe Mann.
Darkness. And pain. And Pooley.
AFTER the Levine hit, after I killed the Boston bookie and all of his bodyguards, Vespucci asked for a meeting on the top of a parking garage near the water. The weather had taken a frigid turn, and snow collected on the ground in knee-high drifts, whitewashing all of Boston. On the exposed rooftop, the snow piled up unabated, and the wind was implacable as it whipped off the harbor’s waters and slammed into us.
Vespucci was alone, bundled up in a thick parka, though he didn’t wear a hat. He stood with hard eyes, glaring at me, treating the cold like it was just a nuisance, a fly to be swatted.
“What happened?” he spat at me as soon as I approached him.
“I severed the connection.”
“Severed!” His voice rose over the wind, the contempt unmistakable. “It was a bloodbath! You killed seven of his men! You left a massacre behind you!”
“I completed my mission.”
“No, Columbus! No! You are mistaken. Your mission was to kill Richard Levine. Only Richard Levine!”
“I did what I had to do to assure the kill.”
He started to say something, then stopped, eyes boring into me. My face was red, but not from the wind stinging it. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy, dolorous.
“Columbus. You are not the right man for this line of work. It hurts me to say this. I believe this to be my fault. I did not . . . how do you say . . . counsel you as properly as I should have. I take responsibility.”
He stamped his feet, but he did not take his eyes off of me. I said nothing, waiting for him to finish what he came here to say.
“Your . . . rampage . . . has caused me some difficulty. The enormity of what you did forced the police to assign an entire task force to the investigation. And not only have the police increased their strength, but a few of the connected families in this city have also put out . . . um . . . what is it . . . feelers . . . to discover who it is that would do this to Levine and his men.”
His eyes softened. I think he saw in my face that I recognized the trouble I had caused him.
“I understand now, Mr. Vespucci. I shouldn’t have . . .”
“You shouldn’t have continued to see Jacqueline Owens after I told you to stop.”
This caused my face to flush. I wasn’t expecting him to bring Jake into this. How did he know?
“Ahh, yes. I know why you did what you did. I know these men discovered your girlfriend. And from there, could have discovered you. I warned you, Columbus. But you would not listen. Pah . . .” He spat on to the ground, like he was spitting my foolishness into the snow. “So where does that bring us?”
“I’ll make it right.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it is too late for that. I wish you the best of luck.”
He started to reach inside his coat, and in an instant, I had a pistol up and pointed at his head. The speed of my draw startled him; I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I was ready. Even in my shame, I was ready.
He looked confused for a moment, then realized where his hand was, and what it must have looked like to me. Slowly, slowly, he pulled from his inside coat pocket a large manila envelope.
“Because of what you did, they will come looking for us. This is the last time we will see each other. I hope you understand.”
With that, he dropped the envelope into the snow and walked away toward the stairwell in the corner of the lot.
THE envelope contained enough money for me to dump the apartment and move into an efficiency in Framingham, about thirty miles outside the city. The space was only about five hundred square feet; it had once been a cheap hotel, and the rooms had been converted by putting tiny refrigerators and a sink into the bathrooms. I had to buy a single burner to use as a stovetop, and it was furnished with a Murphy bed, a hard mattress that folded out of the wall.
Pooley moved in four days after I did. I spent a little money on a small car, a Honda, and picked him up at Waxham on the day he was released. He looked the same, gaunt and disheveled, but somehow healthier. The last couple of years at Waxham had been good to him. He became something of a scrounger, partnered with a few guards, and created a large market for illicit goods inside the Juvey center. Subsequently, he bought himself a circle of protection from the bigger inmates, and was treated like a boss. He left the place with over five thousand dollars stored in a coffee can buried by a guard outside the walls of the place.
“I think my cell was bigger,” he said when I opened the door to my apartment.
“It probably was.”
“You have any beer?”
“Check the fridge.”
He found a bottle and popped it open, then took a long pull. My only piece of furniture was a lopsided couch I had bought at a yard sale. Pooley plopped down on it while I sat on the floor, using one of the walls for a backrest.
“It’s good to see you.”
“You look good. You look good.”
We sat for a minute, instantly comfortable, slipping back into our empathy for each other like putting on old jackets. I told him everything, everything I hadn’t put into letters, starting with Jake mistaking me for her brother and ending with Vespucci’s dismissal of me on the rooftop of the parking garage. He peppered me with questions as I went, asking for details, for clarifications, for specifics. He honed in on Vespucci’s role in my life, and fired the inquiries like a machine gun. How much did he charge? How did he get his information? How did he meet his contacts? How many hit men worked for him? Did he do the background research on his own or did he have subordinates? How did he dress? How did he carry himself?
I tried to answer the ones I knew and guessed at the ones I didn’t. Pooley was entirely nonjudgmental throughout; in fact, he was fascinated. He asked to see my weapons, and I showed him the pistols, how the racking chamber worked, how to load a clip, how to conceal it on my body.
“I could do it,” he finally said after we had fallen silent for a while, listening to the heavy motor of a snow-plow rumbling down the street.
“I don’t know, Pooley. Killing a target—”
“No, not the killing part. I don’t have the stomach for it. But I could be your fence. Do what Vespucci did.”
My wheels were turning before he finished his sentence. “How would you go about—?”
“I don’t know. Start from scratch, I guess.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I was pretty damned resourceful at Waxham, Columbus.” He let the name out slowly, like his voice was thick with it, a smile on his face. In fact, from that point on, he never called me by my real name. Only the name Vespucci had given to me, my killing name. He continued, “I’m serious. I am detailed, I blend in
, I survive. I negotiated Juvey like a chameleon, all five-foot-nine of me; I was practically running the place before my release. I can get you the details you need to continue doing what you do. I’ll pick up where Vespucci left off. I’ll be better than him.”
“Where would you even begin to make contacts? It’s not a field that invites newcomers. ‘Hey, you look trustworthy. Wanna kill someone for me?’”
“You let me worry about that.”
“I can’t. I’ll be worried, too.”
“Whatever. Just give me six months. Between what you have and what I have, we don’t have to earn another dime for at least a year. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll have plenty of time to call it off. Start flipping burgers or packing beer trucks or whatever else it is Waxham graduates do.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. Just pulled on my beer, my back against the wall, tossing it around in my mind. Finally, I looked over at him. He was grinning, his eyes shining.
“You sure you want to go down this road?”
“As sure as you were when you dropped that sewing machine on Cox’s fucking head.”
I reached my hand over so we could clink our bottles together. “Then let’s do it.”
Three weeks later, they came for me.
“THREE men just stepped out of a Mercedes.”
“What?”
Pooley was sitting on the sofa, his neck craned, shielding his eyes from the sunlight as he peeked out the small window. He just happened to be looking out at exactly the right time.
“They’re splitting up, one out front, one heading to the steps, one moving toward the back. Black guys in suits.”
