by Derek Haas
“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.”
He’s gaining momentum, picking up his natural cadence, speaking like he did in Portland, speaking like he did when he actually believed what he was saying.
“When I had my problem with your mother, some dark men made that problem disappear. You understand about dark men, I take it. I wouldn’t have dreamed that . . .”
“And Nichelle Spellman in Kansas City? And how many others?”
He lowers his eyes. “I can’t stop it. It’s like a black hole’s been pulling me in all these years. There’s no escape. Not for me. There are corrupt people who run this country. Really run it. Their interests are motivated by greed, by money. They’ll do whatever they have to do to prop me up, keep me in power. They’ll carve me in pieces till there’s nothing left but scraps for the vultures.”
His speech is gravelly now, shaken, like the words themselves have been beaten down, pummeled, and his eyes are blank, as though he’s talking to himself. “And what do you think’s going to happen after? When I win? What do you think’s going to happen when I control policy, when I’m in charge of the NSA, when I’m Commander in Chief of the whole goddamn military? You think these dark men are going to vanish? You think they’re going to let me be?
“Or do you think they’re going to be emboldened, inspirited, galvanized to push the blackness further? I can’t . . .” He shakes his head. “I can’t stop them. They won’t let me stop them. My only choice is to . . . escape.”
I keep my voice filled with ice. “You could cast them off. Force your own way.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“Buck them off your back, throw a chair through a window, escape . . .”
“No.”
“You could try. And if they hit you, rest and try again.”
“Maybe a long time ago. I’m tired now.”
“You could stay in the present, fight off the past, become a new man . . .”
“Impossible.”
“You can control your future. You can bend it to your will.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re a coward.”
“Yes.”
I look at the man before me, and he looks smaller than he did when I first entered the room. I have just one more question. “Did you know? Did you know I’d be the one coming for you?”
He searches my face through half-closed lids. “Would it help you if I said I did?”
I cross the room and am on him before he can take another breath. My fingers are on his throat and I squeeze with my left hand, my right hand useless, and our faces are inches apart but he has shut his eyes, letting this happen, and he doesn’t resist, doesn’t flinch as I close my fingers around his windpipe and then tear the skin and rip the throat out by sheer force, a grip more powerful than I can imagine, and Cox and Pooley and Dan Levine and Janet Stephens and Hap recede into the shadows, fade away, and blood is spraying that gray couch like a geyser emptying its crystal clear water and Abe Mann’s eyes shoot open and roll back and he gags on his own blood, slumping off the couch and rolling on to the floor.
I am up and through the bedroom door and the window is open and I know he wasn’t lying, maybe for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t lying, and the words he said to me about my escape were honest and right and true.
I climb the balcony and scale the final eight feet to the roof and sprint across the gravel and tar to the other side like a man being granted his freedom and it’s right there as he said it would be, an empty window-washer’s cart like a boat across Styx, and I hit the button and it lowers quickly. My shoulder aches but I ignore it and the wind picks up and blows hard into my face and I can taste a bit of salt in the air from the endless ocean to the west.
EPILOGUE
I step out of the white Mercedes van and the driver opens my door and hands me my suitcase. The hotel is as I remember it, built into the side of the hill like a natural addition to the landscape. My room is large and comfortable and I walk to the patio overlooking the town and the sea far below and I cast my eyes up the hill and across until they settle on the Cortino house.
I wonder who lives in it now. It has been six years since the bodies of Cortino, his invalid wife, and his bodyguard were found murdered in their bedroom on an early June morning. The crime slapped the sleepy town awake, sent it reeling, but the passage of time and the endless lapping of the ocean on its doorstep gently nudged the town back to sleep. I imagine the doors of the houses high up on the hill are locked at night now.
The city of Los Angeles had a similar reaction the second time a nominee was assassinated while in its care. But there was no Sirhan Sirhan to exact revenge upon, just a John Smith with a nondescript face and a pleasant voice and an ability to vanish into thin air. Two years later, the case remains unsolved, despite every effort to gain some answers.
I am here in Positano getting my mind right. It is late summer and I informed Mr. Ryan I would need a few months between assignments this time. A few months without making connections, without severing connections, just a few months to breathe and live and remember.
I have worked exclusivel
y in Europe since the Abe Mann killing, and Mr. Ryan moved to Paris to facilitate his role in my work. He has found the move from the desert to be agreeable, the law enforcement here more relaxed, the economy strong, the supply of contracts endless. I believe he is happy having a Silver Bear under his aegis, though we don’t talk about personal things. Ours is a business relationship, and things are simple.
He traveled recently to Denver, Colorado, upon my request. It is the first time he has made a file on a person who wasn’t a target. I have the file in my hand now, but I haven’t opened it. I was waiting until I arrived in this place, this town built into the side of a hill yearning to tumble into the sea. I sit heavily on a patio chair, breathe in the cool night air, and place my thumb under the seal.
The name at the top of the page is Jacqueline Grant, formerly Jake Owens of Boston, Massachusetts. The surveillance photo shows a profile of a woman stepping out of a car, hurrying across a parking lot to a grocery store. Her hair is longer than it was when I knew her and her face is a bit fuller. She looks content, or maybe I’m projecting this on to her image.
She has been married for three years. Her husband owns a restaurant. A clean, well-lighted place that serves hamburgers to locals. He is her age and treats her well. I wonder how they met. I wonder if she was unlucky with men after I kicked her in the stomach or if she swore them off until Alex Grant came into her life. I wonder if he was safe and she felt secure with him.
I wonder if she loves him.
