In the Company of Killers

by Bryan Christy

  He stood up. He exhaled. So much death. All these years he had dismissed those who mourned a corpse in a box, while he had been mourning something far less rational, and far more destructive. While the world around him grieved death, he had grieved life.

  He hadn’t turned his back on death; he was living it, mourning every moment, chasing criminals to distract himself, grieving a light that could never be switched on again. “Mom,” he whispered. He knew that if he lay down on the bed now and closed his eyes, her red coat would appear. Her polished black shoes would walk by. He would call to her as he struggled with his shoelace, but she would not turn. In all these years, dreaming over and over again of that terrible day, she had never once paused to listen to him. She walked out of the living room, through the kitchen, and down the ramp to her death.

  He lay back down on the bed. He closed his eyes.

  He allowed himself to remember.

  * * *

  —

  He was nine years old, standing beside his father on the Atlantic City boardwalk, watching a dollar-green Cadillac convertible roll toward them. His father wore a light gray suit and dark tie. He and Sean wore their navy-blue Easter suits. The car had its top down. The governor of New Jersey, Brendan Byrne, sat on the car’s shiny trunk, his shoes on the tan leather back seat, waving. People cheered.

  “Hey, Jack, whaddaya think?” a man chewing a cigar asked Klay’s father. It had been like that all morning. Ever since they arrived, men had been greeting his father, peppering him with questions about what he thought, whether he was in. Klay was used to rough men like these. They came by the funeral home, knocked on the side door, then shuffled foot to foot, peering through the glass, never stepping inside unless invited, asking, “What horse looks good, Jack?” “Which jock you like?”—working their way around to the same question they always asked. “Jack, would you think I can borrow the box tickets, you’re not using them?”

  Today they worked their way around to different questions. Was Resorts Casino going to get its license? If it didn’t have a 24-7 license, what good was investing? Was he in anyway?

  “Are you, Jack?” they asked. “Are you in?”

  His father answered each of them the same: “We’re all in anyway, aren’t we, boys?”

  The green car pulled to a stop and Governor Byrne stepped out. Above, the sun was already hot. Seagulls flapped and cawed. He walked to a long table in front of Boardwalk Hall and took his seat. The table had blue and white bunting draped along the front, and a podium at one end with a microphone. Local politicians gave their speeches first. Bored, Tom watched a large man in a dark suit with a shaved head and dark sunglasses skim sweat off his head using a credit card. He was part of a group of Italian-looking men standing beside the boardwalk railing watching the politicians speak.

  Finally, the governor got up. Byrne was handsome, with a strong jaw and blond hair that reminded Klay of Tarzan on television. He said tax revenues from Atlantic City’s gaming industry would go to help care for senior citizens and the disabled. He didn’t use the word “casino.” He said “gaming.” He said the gaming industry would stay on the island, but jobs would go to people all over the state. When he was done talking, he picked up a pen and signed the Casino Control Act, opening Atlantic City to gaming. Then he raised his right fist high above his head and shook it. “I’ve said it before and I will repeat it again,” he shouted. “To organized crime: Keep your filthy hands off Atlantic City. Keep the hell away!”

  A brass band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The date was June 2, 1977.

  * * *

  • • •

  The lights were off in most of the building when Nicky Scalise’s black Cadillac pulled up in front of Klay Funeral Home a few weeks later. Klay had his shoes off and had been shuffling over the carpeting, building up static energy through his socks, touching his fingertip to lamps and doorknobs and casket lids, seeing which gave off the best shock. He was testing the front door latch when Scalise’s car arrived out front. He paused and watched. A man got out of the front seat and stood beside the car with his hands folded in front of him. Then the driver got out—it was the big man with the shaved head from the boardwalk. He circled the car and opened the back door.

  Scalise stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked in both directions as if checking for traffic; then he adjusted his cuffs and started up the funeral home steps.

  “Who is it, Tom?” his father called from behind him.

  Everybody in the neighborhood knew Little Nicky.

  Klay heard his father’s footsteps increase—no doubt he had seen Scalise’s car out front. “I’ll get it, son,” his father said, just behind him now.

  But Klay didn’t wait. He opened the door and let the boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City crime family into his family’s home. Klay’s first thought was that he had never seen such a tiny adult. Scalise removed his hat. He had silver hair combed straight back, the most perfectly cut hair Klay had ever seen. He wore a shiny silver suit with pointy lapels that fit him so perfectly it looked like the skin of an eel. He wore a white shirt, silver-gray tie, and dark sunglasses.

  “Nice boy,” Scalise said, rumpling Klay’s hair.

  “Good morning, Nick,” his father said, placing a hand gently on Klay’s shoulder. Scalise crossed their crimson carpet and disappeared into Jack Klay’s office.

  “Go see what your mother needs,” his father said. Then he turned and walked into his office and closed the door.

  Klay wanted to watch through the door’s keyhole the way he often did, but Scalise’s men stood beside it. So he opened a box of prayer cards and began inserting them in the slits in the oak holder. He rearranged flower baskets in the chapel, pulled flower sprays off one rack and stuck them onto another. He wiped the casket down with a chamois cloth. An hour passed. He repositioned more flower sprays. He spilled a box of prayer cards and knelt down to pick them up. He tacked photographs of people who weren’t related to the body in the chapel onto the memory board.

  Finally, his father’s door opened and Scalise emerged.

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” his father said.

  Scalise didn’t respond. He adjusted his French cuffs. He nodded curtly to his driver, who went outside to start the car. The other man crossed the lobby and took a position beside the front door with his hand on the latch. When Scalise reached the door, the man opened it. But Scalise paused. He turned and looked directly at Klay. Tom had never encountered eyes like Scalise’s. They were small and the deepest black he had ever seen. “This your boy?”

  “That’s my son,” Jack Klay answered.

  Scalise put on his hat and left.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was Christmastime now, still 1977. The kitchen smelled like sugar cookies. His mother asked if he and Sean wanted to help her pick out a tree. Klay ran into the front room to get his coat and mittens from the closet under the stairs. Sean ran upstairs to get their mother’s purse. Klay’s shoe had come untied. “We do not have untied shoes, uncombed hair, or shirttails out” was one of his father’s rules. Klay sat on a bench in front of the living room’s faux fireplace to tie his shoe. He was bent over, fumbling with his laces, when his mother walked past. She wore a red wool coat and black shoes.

  “Wait for me,” he said, his outsized fingers fumbling the laces.

  She kept walking.

  He called to her again.

  Finally he got his shoe tied. He was racing Sean down the morgue ramp to the driveway when his mother turned the key in the ignition. The explosion tore the doors off the garage. Klay and his brother were thrown into the street.

  Nicky Scalise sent white Asiatic lilies to the funeral. “My condolences to you and your remaining family,” the card read.

  * * *

  • • •

  Klay lay on the bed in Botha’s damp prison cell. He wept unt
il he had nothing left. Then he got to his feet. He was calm. He could see beyond this room, beyond the cage he’d put himself in. He had been the boy on Krieger’s buffalo hunt. Naïve to the danger standing next to him. Unarmed in the company of killers.

  * * *

  • • •

  Eliminating him was the CIA’s next logical move. Botha believed it. Why else move him to solitary, with Thabo posted outside his cell? Klay didn’t look at Botha’s laptop. He didn’t need to do research. He knew what was coming.

  He poured a glass of Botha’s cognac and waited. He did not have to wait long.

  A DIFFERENT SET OF TEETH

  Zambian Airspace

  Klay woke bound in dual shoulder restraints. Barrow sat in an oversized leather recliner across a table from him. They were in the air. Behind Barrow the private jet’s interior looked like a well-appointed home theater. The plane appeared to be empty.

  “Mistakes were made,” Barrow said, dabbing his cheek. “Possibly we should have involved you from the beginning. Hard to know. These things can go so many ways.”

  Klay had a pounding headache, a sore neck, and pain in the middle of his back. He didn’t remember anything. The swelling under Barrow’s left eye might explain his restraints.

  “We’re not renditioning you here.” Barrow chuckled, running his eyes over the jet’s zebrawood paneling. “Wanted to get that out of the way straight off. Ketamine does pack a punch, though.”

  “Fuck yourself, Barrow. If that’s even your name.”

  “It is.”

  “Good. I’ll want that for my story.”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’ll be a story here.” Barrow reached beside his seat and set a briefcase on the table. It was an old barrister-style leather bag that opened from the top. Barrow removed a thick accordion folder. He found the file he wanted, opened it, and laid a large color photograph on the table in front of Klay.

  It was Bernard’s body on an army cot. A white plastic sheet had been pulled back to make the photograph. Barrow tapped the photo with his pen. “This gentleman, not wanting all those Perseus bells and whistles on his elephants, had to go.”

  He removed another photograph. It was Simon Lekorere, the politician, dressed as he’d been in the passenger seat of Bernard’s Land Rover. His throat was sliced wide open. “Like a vacuum cleaner hose,” Barrow observed. “Collateral.”

  Another photograph. A fat man hung by a rope, eyes bulging. It was the purple Croc on the floor beneath the body’s bare foot that brought it around for Klay. The Filipino priest. Martelino.

  “Suicide. Or the look of it. Maybe he hung himself. Maybe he got hung. Your story made it a question with an answer.”

  “The priest’s dead?”

  “Very,” Barrow said. He tapped the photo. “Krieger was pleased with this one, yessir. His troublesome priest. Some lovely stuff you’ve done.”

  Klay gritted his teeth with fatigue and frustration. “What’s the point of this?”

  “Then there’s Mr. Gatt. Found him washed up on Cebu, Bobby Maxwell–style. We’re not sure how he fits in yet. Did you know him?”

  Klay looked. An obese man’s body was pale and swollen to sea-creature proportions. “I have no idea who that is. What are you telling me?”

  Barrow continued, talking as much to himself as to Klay. “Krieger dismissed your Mr. Eady at first. Called him a lackey. But Eady kept at it, didn’t he?” Barrow tapped each of the photographs. “Desperate to find his way in. Drove him crazy. Tried a couple of PR stories. ‘Angola’s New Hope.’ ‘Congo’s Christian Warriors’ . . . ” He dropped a copy of The Sovereign onto the table. “That was the first one, far as we can tell. Like a serial killer, he was cautious at first. Seeing if he had the stomach for it.” Barrow chuckled. “Turns out he did.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Klay would have stood if he weren’t trussed like an animal.

  “Vance Eady couldn’t know what your stories were worth, no market price for propaganda, so he kept trying different angles. Fiddled the books a little and convinced the board to sell your magazine at a good price. Still”—Barrow tapped the photographs—“nothing a billionaire valued. Nothing worth the ante.”

  Klay fought against exhaustion. It had been days since he’d slept. “You’re saying Vance used my stories to help Krieger and the Agency? You are the Agency.”

  “Oh, we have our part to play in this, Tom. And I’ll get to that. But this here”—he indicated the photographs—“is something else. CIA? No, sir. A rogue group of treasonous bastards, that’s what I’d call them. Some of them ours—yes. But only some.

  “Vance Eady didn’t use you to help Krieger, Tom. He used you to buy in. Terry Krieger runs a fund. Not really a fund, my people tell me, but that’s what he calls it. Or funds I guess is better.”

  “The investors are intelligence agencies,” Klay said. “I know about it.”

  Barrow’s eyes narrowed. “The buy-in for the South African was twenty million dollars. He’s dead now. She tell you about him, too? Mo Rademeyer?”

  Klay nodded slowly.

  “Vance Eady wanted into something bigger. Price, we think, is seventy-five million dollars. He didn’t have that, of course. Not even close. But he had you.”

  Klay’s mind raced as Barrow picked up the photos from the table and laid them down again one at a time. “Your friend,” he said, laying down Bernard’s picture, “the Kenyan, got in the way of Perseus’s tribal-surveillance project. Your priest here, the peace negotiator, got in the way of Krieger’s plans to buy a deepwater port. Ms. Khoza’s value you understand. Eady was making Krieger’s problems go away, earning his way in piece by piece.”

  Barrow cleared his throat. “Let me introduce myself to you properly, Tom.” He laid a thin leather wallet down in front of Klay. “I’m not working with Vance Eady. I’m hunting him.”

  Klay didn’t recognize the credentials as CIA. Only a single blackbird on a blue-and-yellow background.

  “IG?” Klay asked.

  Barrow tapped an incisor with his fingernail. “Different set of teeth. I read a story one time how it’s all about teeth. Evolution, I mean. Who we are. What we want. Cows grind, lions tear. Humans do both. Your Hungry Khoza got her teeth into something big. Something that could hurt Krieger. Tear the meat right off his leg. We still don’t know who leaked those files to her. Maybe it was local. Maybe it was his competition. A Russian named Yurchenko fits that bill.

  “We do know the cost. If it got out Terry Krieger was playing varsity for more than one team, well, that’s the kind of thing not even a presidential pardon can help with. Avoiding life in prison, or the death penalty—that would be worth $75 million to him. Yessir. Hungry Khoza’s intel put Vance Eady into a whole new class altogether.”

  “I was your bait,” Klay said.

  “You want a drink?”

  Barrow pressed a button on the arm of his chair. A door opened in the back of the plane. A large man appeared. Klay recognized him as one of the men who’d subdued Thabo to enter his prison cell. “Sir?”

  “Troy, bring Tom and me a couple of bourbons. Booker’s, isn’t it? And some picky things, nuts or something. And let’s cut him loose.”

  Troy unlocked Klay’s restraints. Barrow didn’t speak again until they had been served their drinks and snacks, and Troy had returned to the back of the plane. Then he raised his glass. “To the Confession Club,” he said acidly.

  When Klay didn’t touch his glass, Barrow set his own on the table, too. “Beginnings,” Barrow said. “Best place to start in my opinion. This whole thing begins with an accident. One of our people gets dragged by her husband to one of those Washington, DC cocktail parties nobody likes. Her husband’s a tax accountant, so it’s worse than usual. She’s had her fill of double declining balances or whatever those people talk about. She’s at the bar, getting herself another
gin and tonic, when she overhears this British fella saying how he runs a sniper operation overseas. Says he picks the targets, his man over there in Africa pulls the trigger for him. Takes out bad men all over the world, he says. Goes on and on about it. Well, she doesn’t realize it’s just some magazine editor talking metaphorically. She files a report like she’s supposed to. We put some people on it, track down your Mr. Porfle. Find out he works at The Sovereign. Figure out his assassin is you.” Barrow ate a handful of nuts.

  “I’m not an assassin,” Klay said, taking a drink of bourbon.

  Barrow’s mouth was full. He nodded. “At Langley,” he continued, “everybody’s in their silo. You come up as Vance Eady’s asset. So does Porfle.”

  To the look of surprise on Klay’s face, Barrow said, “No, no, no. It’s common. It’s the culture. First thing our people do overseas is register every foreigner they meet as an asset. You’d be shocked how many dry cleaners and housekeepers pose a class two threat to this nation’s security. Most never know they were listed. Eady’s got half the magazine down as his assets. Problem is nobody remembers Eady. Remembers? Hell, he’s been filing reports for so long, the guy who’s supposed to look at them is dead.

  “So, our people take a look. They review Eady’s file and realize we don’t know what this Tom Klay is up to. They see a possible overlap with your work and the interests of one Terry Krieger, so they send the tickler up to me, as required. Because that’s what I do, Tom. I hunt the rotten apples. I sniff them, test the soft spots, and when it’s appropriate, I . . . well, you get it.

  “I take a look at Eady’s reports and my little man goes off. You ever see that one? Edward G. Robinson? The insurance investigator with a little man inside tells him when something’s not kosher?”