The Way I Die

by Derek Haas

  Watts is here after all.

  The ranger is built like an ox, has to be pushing six foot five, and his movements are slow, a tired guy at the end of a tiring shift just trying to get his shift done, but he has to deal with whatever vagrants are left in the park.

  “Park’s closing,” he speaks in a weary voice that says he’d rather talk to otters and bears than humans.

  Head of Sales looks like he has no idea what he’s supposed to do next. He throws a look over his shoulder at his Buick as if to say “What now?” and the back door whips open, and I hope Archie sees it too, but I’m not waiting. I break from my cover and fly downhill toward the lot, moving ungainly but moving, moving over uneven ground, soft ground, moving over roots and brush and rocks and this ambush plan isn’t much of an ambush if I can’t reach my target before he starts shooting.

  He does, two shots rip through the night, light followed by sound, lightning then thunder, and the ranger cries out and drops. Head of Sales crumples, his head pitches forward and then whiplashes back because of the tendons in his neck.

  Archie has been in a firefight before. He punches the accelerator and his SUV jolts and bolts, like a racehorse bounding out of the starting gate. Another two shots ring out and spider his windshield, and Archie’s SUV lurches right and bounces over Head of Sales’s corpse before it crashes into the side of the restrooms.

  The ranger screams from where he crumpled to the ground, much louder and higher pitched than two minutes ago, a higher register, and whatever Watts’s bullet did to him took the bass out of his radio.

  Watts hasn’t spotted me and he hurries toward Archie’s SUV, all playing out in front of me as I descend the hill, avoiding trees, trying to keep my feet, and the hood of Archie’s SUV is accordion smashed like a Frank Geary building, smoke billowing from it and the driver’s door opens and Archie stumbles out.

  If he’s been shot, I don’t know. If he’s wounded, I don’t know. None of it will matter in mere moments, endless seconds, as Watts crouch-steps toward him like a soldier attacking. And he’s quick, quicker than I would have believed, and I’m not going to get there in time.

  Archie stands up straight and Watts sees he’s not Matthew Boone, he’s a thin black man instead of a stocky white man, and it is in that moment, that second of confusion, hesitation, that stops Watts midcharge and he rises from his crouch and lowers his weapon as his body catches up to his mind and I reach him.

  He doesn’t have time to process he’s been duped before I put two in the back of his head.

  He nose-dives forward and momentum sends his body bouncing across the parking lot. It finally stops, limbs like noodles swirled in a bowl, and his body stills.

  Archie’s eyes move from Keith Watts’s corpse to my face.

  “You used to be quicker,” he says.

  “Where’d he get you?”

  I drive the Buick across the bridge back toward downtown where we can drop it.

  Archie scoffs, digging into his shoulder. “He missed. This is glass from the windshield.” He pulls out a piece the size of a pebble, holds it up in the light, his fingertips bloody, then rolls down the window and tosses it out over the bridge. “That asshole targeted the ranger and the other dude before he shot at me. You see that shit?”

  “I saw it. He’s a psychopath.”

  “Well he’s a dead psychopath now.”

  We left the ranger in the lot, passed out, after keying his radio to an SOS signal so someone will come looking for him.

  The Buick keys we found in the pocket of the no-longer-aptly-named Head of Sales.

  “This should buy us at least a week. I mean, Loeb ain’t gonna rush back to his client and tell him the hit failed, so most likely, this cat in Poland thinks all systems go.”

  I nod, hold the wheel steady.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, you got a look about you. What?”

  “It just seemed easy.”

  “My shoulder begs to differ.”

  “I mean aside from Smokey Bear driving into the lot, it went according to plan.”

  “That’s why it’s called a plan.”

  “I guess.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing. You’re right.”

  “Shiiiiiiit. Now you got me unsettled.”

  We drop the car in a Safeway parking lot, and I run into the pharmacy for some Neosporin, gauze, and Band-Aids.

  A quick field dressing, and we find a bus heading to the suburbs, then steal a car out of a Walmart Supercenter by the Columbia River. Another twenty miles and as we near the safe house, a Suburban passes in the opposite direction, two people inside, and there is something familiar about the driver, though he has his hat pulled low. I don’t get a good look at him, and maybe that feeling I had is spreading like a disease because Archie seems fidgety, too.

  Smoke pours from the chimney as we round the bend and the safe house enters our view. It is still and quiet.

  Dread overwhelms me, the virus attacking the host.

  The way I die is infection.

  8

  Misery loves company, yes, but that implies misery either passively gravitates toward those who are already miserable or it attracts misery to it like a fishing lure winking below pond scum. The question is: Does misery cause company, whether subconsciously or willfully? Do miserable people want everyone around them to be just as miserable and so set about to author that misery?

  Why did I leave that drop phone with Matthew Boone? Why didn’t I hold on to it until after I was sure the threat was neutralized? Why did I hand it to him with the power on so that any hit man with a modicum of skill could ping it as soon as the incoming call was answered? Why did I assume Watts was working alone? While we were drawing Watts out, was he drawing us away from his mark?

  Did I want Boone to suffer as I had suffered?

  Does Archie see it on my face now?

  The door is locked, but this time I have a key and I bust through it to find Peyton unconscious on the floor, two holes in her outerwear but breathing. I flip her over so she can take more air into her lungs, unbutton her shirt, and work my fingers to where her freshly purchased body armor stopped the rounds. A bottle of water pours its contents on the wooden floor nearby. Peyton’s eyes open, flutter, and then focus on me. “Oh God,” she manages.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I heard a noise, stepped to the door thinking it was you, and then gunshots . . . I don’t remember.”

  “Boys! Matthew?” I yell, but there is no answer.

  Archie leaps up the stairs like a panther up a tree, faster than I thought he could move, but after a few seconds, yells out, “Nothing.”

  “They were . . . they were in the backyard. I came in to get some water . . . oh, God,” she repeats, pissed.

  I don’t have to help her to her feet. Peyton, Archie, and I spill into the backyard, calling out “Boys! Boys! Boone!” in tandem.

  I’m thinking about the Suburban we passed and I quickstep through the short grass and head into the woods, pulling out a clickable flashlight. Peyton and Archie follow, spreading out, fanning out like a volunteer cordon after a child goes missing. Peyton cups her hands to her mouth, “Liam! Josh!”

  The woods are a different kind of dark, an all-encompassing blackness except for the small area my beam penetrates.

  I see a shape sprawled on the ground, animal-like, and it’s the size of Matthew Boone, and it’s wearing what he was wearing when we left, and I wasn’t here to protect him, but as we approach, he bends his knees, his body inch-worms up, and he’s alive. His hands are bound behind him so he can’t pull his face from the dirty leaves, and I dash to his side and roll him over onto his ribs and then I slit the white cord that lashes his wrists together and pull the gag from his mouth and he is free.

  “The boys,” he croaks, and points deeper into the woods, and I’ve heard that voice before, I understand that voice, because I’ve worn his shoes, I know wha
t it’s like to lose a boy in the woods, and I’m not sure if I caused this in some way my conscious mind can’t imagine.

  You’re miserable, you’re miserable, you’re miserable, you’re miserable my footsteps tell me as I crash through the woods in the direction he points.

  The safe house recedes until it is only woods surrounding me now, 360 degrees of branches and trunks and leaves and pine needles, and then I hear a new groan in the brush, ten feet to my right, buried in the dirt where I would’ve missed it except for that sound, that grunt, that plaintive moan, just to my right.

  I spin the flashlight in that direction, and I spy a tangle of clothing and dirt and branches and it’s the older boy, Liam. He turns his face to the light and blood pours south from a gash in his cheek and he cries out now, his lungs bursting, and all around me Peyton, Archie, and Matthew Boone erupt through the woods and then Boone is on the ground next to his son, pulling him up to his chest, searching his face in the light from my beam, blanketing him with “My boy, my boy, my boy.”

  Liam wails and cries, “Josh! They took Josh.”

  A blanket, soup, and some of Archie’s Neosporin and Liam is distraught but okay. The story comes out from the three of them: Two men in black masks who knew what they were doing; they eliminated the threat from Peyton first, shot her in the chest, and left her for dead.

  Next, they went after Boone and the kids. When Boone saw the muzzle flashes inside the house, he yelled to the boys to run, and instinctively they all dashed for the woods. Next thing Boone felt was something like a brick to the back of his head and they had him tied and gagged and left him there. He thought he was going to die then, but for an unknown reason they left him behind and stalked smaller prey. Liam heard steps behind him and spun in time to see a flashlight arcing toward his face and then he was on the ground, too tired to move, and that’s the last thing he remembers before the sound of my voice calling his name.

  “Did you see them take Josh?” his dad asks, looking for some hope to cling to, but Liam shakes his head. He didn’t see anything after the flashlight cracked his face.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” his dad says, mouth drawn.

  “Are we going to call the police?” Liam asks his dad but looks at me.

  “Let us talk in the other room,” I say, and nod the adults toward the door.

  “It’s not your fault, Liam, none of this is your fault,” Boone offers his son, but there’s no comfort in it.

  The untended fire in the living room has died, reduced to a few embers glowing an angry orange.

  Boone speaks in a heated whisper. “Liam’s right. We have to bring in the cops now.”

  “And tell them what? You hired a hit man to kill a guy in the park?”

  “He’s dead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then who—who were . . .”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know ANYTHING!” he bellows.

  Archie steps between us, “Okay, okay, settle down.”

  Archie dead-eyes me like I’m the one who escalated things. He pushes me back a few steps, gently but firmly.

  Peyton speaks up, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have come inside.”

  No one answers her, no admonishment but no assuagement either.

  Boone collapses into a leather chair, buries his face in his hands. “Why didn’t they kill me when they had the chance?”

  “I’m going to find that out.”

  “How do we get him back? How do we get Josh back?” He lifts his head and his cheeks are tear-stained.

  “I’m sticking with the original plan. I’m going to find Piotr Malek, the man who put the price on your head, get him to tell me where your son is, then end him and end all of this.”

  “You’re leaving? My son is gone!”

  “The person who took Josh is working for Piotr Malek. He’s alive and will stay alive until Malek gets what he wants from you. Now we can sit here and wait for your phone to ring and hear what that is or I can be on a plane to Europe finding the shot caller.”

  “How will you find him?”

  “He’ll find him,” Archie inserts.

  Boone’s shoulders slump like the burden of holding back the dam has broken him. He tries to talk but starts sobbing, tries again, breaks again. Liam appears in the doorway, his eyes swollen and blotted, and he breaks for his old man until they are in each other’s arms and I have to turn away. I’m not sure if it’s because of shame or jealousy.

  Peyton walks to the kitchen, hugging her arms against her chest, tormented.

  Once more, I meet in Loeb’s office in the San Fernando Valley. He’s relieved to hear about Watts’s demise. He’s been checking the Portland news and saw an item about a double homicide in a state park along with an injured ranger who was hazy on the details but glad to be alive. Loeb thought either Watts or me or both of us were dead in that lot, and he decided to wait to see who showed up on his doorstep. He’s relieved it’s me, or he’s good at pretending. I explain that Malek had an alternate plan, one where he hired someone to kidnap Boone’s son while I was preoccupied with taking out his assassin. Loeb takes this information stoically, like he’s a doctor listening to a patient’s chest.

  Finally, he raises his eyebrows. “Well that’s disconcerting,” he says without sounding disconcerted. “It means he went around me.”

  “Like he didn’t trust you.”

  Loeb leans back. I can see him making calculations, accepting conclusions, discarding others.

  “I don’t know who else Malek might’ve hired. Tandem jobs can be . . .”

  “Disconcerting?”

  He looks up to see if I’m mocking him, but my expression is blank.

  “Yes. But I’ll make a promise to you,” he says in his frog’s croak. “You can ask around about my promises. I did not put a second man on this job. I would’ve told you. Piotr Malek went around me.”

  “How’s he gonna feel when he finds out his alternate approach was successful and your man is dead?”

  Loeb fidgets in his chair. His hands nip at a loose thread on his knee, a piece of invisible fuzz.

  “I imagine he’s not going to be happy with you,” I continue. “I imagine whatever deposit he made to you, he’s gonna feel like he was ripped off. I imagine Piotr Malek won’t like that feeling.”

  “What’re you suggesting?”

  “That we both have a problem. I have to go to Poland now, find Piotr Malek, put a gun in his mouth, and pull the trigger. Any way I slice it, that’s going to take some time. Just flying there and back is going to eat up days. If I get lucky, I have him in a week, but all I have is your file and that’s background, not a kill file. So I have to do my own reconnaissance, and that’s time, time, time. Something Matthew Boone’s son doesn’t have. It’s my experience kidnappers hold their victims long enough to get what they want with no intention of giving them back alive. That kid is getting dumped whether I kill Piotr Malek or not.”

  “He might be dead already.”

  “Might, but he was taken and not left dead in the woods. Malek wants something from Boone and maybe he’ll use the kid to lead him by the nose or maybe he wants a straight-up swap. I don’t care. What I do care about is getting that kid back alive at the same time I get to Malek since I can’t be in two places at once.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I’m going to ask you to put your considerable experience into finding out who he hired for the tandem job. I want you to treat it like your life depends on it. However you need to do that, you do it, and you feed the name to Archie Grant, at this number.”

  I slide him a slip of paper. “You do that, I’ll be in your debt. I take that seriously. You don’t, well, seems like you’ll be piling up enemies, and that’s not a good career move.”

  Loeb’s eyes shift to the door.

  “Call out for Bey,” I say calmly. “See what happens.”

  Loeb picks at his pant leg, but the loose fuzz is gone. In a very low v
oice, he whispers, “Are you threatening me?”

  “I am the definition of a threat.”

  “I looked you up,” he says. “I talked to people who know Archie Grant. And they don’t know you, Copeland. Someone, somewhere must’ve heard of you.”

  I lean back and keep his eyes clamped to mine. “Maybe you should consider why they don’t.”

  I abruptly stand and Loeb winces. He’s a man used to having control over people, and losing that control has made him jumpy.

  “Archie will update me with your progress.”

  “What if the boy is dead? You can’t blame me. I’ve cooperated fully. You wouldn’t be this far without me. You have to admit that.”

  “Just get me the name.”

  “London.”

  “What?”

  “Piotr Malek. He’s not in Poland. He’s in London. He lives in Clifton Villas. That’s all I know. I don’t have an address. I was going to tell you, but I . . . I’m telling you now.”

  I take a step toward him but stop myself. Instead, I nod, turn, and go.

  Loeb is either going to do what I ask and help Archie, or he’s going to burn down this office and never look back.

  Either way, I plan to see him again.

  I take a flight from LAX to London, first class, with the seats that adjust all the way horizontal. I can’t carry weapons but that’s all right, there’s a scrounger named Olmstead I’ve used who can get his hands on anything. I hired him in Paris to back up a sewer line and flush a gangster from his home. He procured a van, hazmat suits, bags of manure, and weapons, all within a day.

  An hour after takeoff, I pull my hoodie over my head, turn the chair into a bed, and sleep.

  Heathrow is a mess, as always, masses churning around elevators and coffee klatches and duty-free shops like pilgrims at the Wailing Wall. Without my guns, I feel like an amputee. My hand moves to my hip, the small of my back, my ribs, searching for my missing limb, and returns to my pocket, unsatisfied. It’s rare I’m this vulnerable.

  I negotiate the maze and hit the queue for the black cabs and am on my way to Hyde Park to rectify that feeling.