Authors: Derek Haas
“Hello.”
“How you feeling?”
“Stiff.”
“You had a twenty-two slug in you, lodged into your rib. You want to see it?”
“No, thank you.” She spoons another bite into my mouth and I can feel the heat moving down the length of my chest after I swallow.
“Just a second.” She sets the bowl down and bounces over to a nearby door so she can stick her head into the hallway. She isn’t dressed like a nurse or a caregiver; she’s wearing a tight skirt and a half-shirt that shows off a belly ring.
“Archie! He’s up!”
So I made it here after all. I remember throwing that Lincoln book—thanks for drawing another bullet, Mr. President—and I have images of a fat finger pointing me toward daylight and a cab barreling in reverse—but everything else bleeds together like Polaroids shuffled in a deck. I wanted to make it to a pharmacy and get the things I needed but I was slipping in and out of consciousness and didn’t have a choice. I thought about Archibald and I must’ve made that decision but I don’t remember doing so. I have no idea if I drove, walked, or crawled here. I’m vulnerable now, and I’m indebted to a man who knows how to exploit vulnerability, but I’m not sure I had another choice.
My side is throbbing, but what really bothers me, what my mind keeps turning over and over as it blocks out the pain is the play Llanos made. Archibald had warned me she had picked up my scent in Chicago, and so I went to a public library with a perfect view of my surroundings. Yet, she still took her shot there, even though her chances of finishing the job were limited. Then she kept after me, long past time when she should’ve retreated. The only reason she would do that, I imagine, is the third assassin, the Czech named Svoboda, is also here. She wanted to collect the kill fee before him, or she was worried he’d come after her first. Either way, she tried to force a low-percentage play. I’m going to make that decision come back to haunt her.
Archibald pokes his head in the room and I have to squint from the glare off all those teeth.
“Back from the abyss.” His voice is as bouncy as the girl’s step. “I must say I thought it’d be a while before you knocked on my door again. I guess something up in the universe got us tied together on the same string.”
“Thanks for the patch-work.”
“I got a surgeon who likes cash money and doesn’t like paying malpractice. We got what the Nature Channel calls a symbiotic relationship.”
“You got a mirror?”
“This face? I got a house full of ’em.”
He moves off and the girl smiles at me. “Archie tells me you’re the best he ever worked with.”
“Archibald talks too much.”
“Been that way since we were five. He had half our school working for him. The teachers too. Only one he couldn’t keep up with was our mother.”
“I’d like to have met her . . . just to complete the picture.”
Archibald steps back into the room, holding a hand mirror. “That old lady taught me everything I know.”
“She’d roll over in the grave to hear that.”
So Archibald—Archie—has a sister and he thinks we’re square enough to let me in on that secret, even after I got to the Webb brothers through their mother. It’s a calculated move on his part. I showed up at his place completely helpless, exposed and dying; in return, he exposes himself, personally, to me, tying us even tighter together. Maybe the universe really does have us dangling on the same string.
I take the mirror and hold it at an angle to get a look at the wound in my side. Peeling the gauze and bandage back, I’m impressed with Archibald’s surgeon. The wound is clean and the stitches are tight and even.
“I told you,” Archibald says from the door.
“Yeah, pretty good.” The pain is awful now, throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I don’t want to know what it’s going to feel like if I cough.
“You need some Tylenol or something?” the sister asks.
“I’ll take some if you got ’em.”
“Not a problem.” She turns to go, then stops. “I’m Ruby, by the way.”
“Columbus.”
“I know who you are.”
I’ve got a laptop in bed with me, and I’m chasing down the name Alexander Coulfret. Nothing on Google except an article from 2003 listing the victims of a Paris bus crash. An Alex Coulfret is among the dead, the tragedy taking place when a train leaving the city sideswiped a stranded bus. Nothing else. One mention of a dead guy and that’s it. Whoever he is, he’s kept his name blank in a world where most names are a keyboard click away. Maybe Archibald misspelled it.
I try typing in just the name “Coulfret” and I’ll be damned. Fourteen articles from various European papers pop up, all focused on one particular incident, the murder of capitalist Anton Noel in the middle of Paris. I swallow, knowing I’ve found the right set of keys. Now, which one fits into the lock?
I click on the first article, the one I read in
Le Monde
while waiting in the train station in Naples before Ryan died giving me his warning. I scan it quickly, searching, searching . . . nothing leaps out at me and then I see it: Jerome Coulfret. A forty-five-year-old jeweler. One of two unfortunate civilians struck down when Noel’s car flipped in a Paris intersection just as they were crossing it on foot. An innocent guy, cursed with black luck, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The confrontation in the bait-and-tackle store, the shot in the library, the bullet removed from my side, they had very little to do with Anton Noel after all. It was my sloppiness, my improvisation, my botched job that led to Jerome Coulfret’s accidental death. Like I said, trouble grows exponentially when you leave more of a mess than necessary.
I’m guessing Jerome has a brother who might be a bit unhappy with the way my assignment to kill Noel went down.
I’m getting dressed when Archibald comes in and leans against the doorframe.
“Three weeks here. I was just about to ask you to get the fuck out.”
I smile. How the hell this guy grew on me, I have no idea, but he has. I can’t laugh, though, not with my ribs feeling the way they do.
“I gotta get back before the noose gets any tighter. End this thing.”
“You don’t have to tell me. You think I want two top-shelf killers figuring out I’m the one played Florence Nightingale with you? Or get on this Cole-Frett’s shit list? They might start thinking I’d know how to find you and want a word with me. I’ll pass on that, thank you very much.”
I finish and reach for my pair of Glocks. “You cleaned these for me. You thoughtful bastard.”
“Not me,” Archibald says, raising his palms as he backs out the door. “I’d say good-bye, but something tells me I’m going to see you again.” He’s down the hall by the time I emerge from the room.
Well, I have to give him a tip of the cap. I thought he’d try to lord this over me, ask me to pay off my new debt to him by shouldering some other difficult assignment. At the very least I thought he’d ask me to join him, partner with him, the same way William Ryan did after my first fence, Pooley, died. But if he wants something from me, he’s saving it for later. I wonder how long it’ll be before I hear the front doorbell jingling on that one.
When I get to the door, Ruby is there, blowing on a warm cup of coffee.
“Back to the shooting business. . . . ” she offers, her eyes merry.
“I’m just trying to keep the shooting business off me right now.”
“So I heard.”
“Archibald tells you a lot.”
“Who do you think handles most of his contracts?”
I’ll admit, I didn’t see that coming. Family members often work together on the business side of the game. But this is the first time I’ve encountered a brother and sister who are also fence and assassin. The Grants grow more interesting by the minute.
“You’re a bagman?”
“I know a little about a little.”
“Well, now I know who cleaned my guns.”
“You noticed.”
“Yes. And thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, Columbus. If I’m ever shot in the ribs in Europe, I’ll know who to come find.”
“You’ll have to find me first.”
“That’s the idea.”
“See you around.”
“I hope so.”
She takes another sip of coffee and heads back toward the kitchen.
I HAVE TWO STOPS TO MAKE BEFORE I BEGIN TO HUNT ALEXANDER COULFRET IN FRANCE.
First, I need to visit my home in Positano. I realize this is pregnant with danger—the worst mistake a man with a price on his head can make is to walk through his own front door. But I’m growing weary of looking over my shoulder, and I need to load up on supplies and check to see if my residence has, in fact, been compromised.
The second stop involves Rome and a woman with a meaningless name who I can’t get off my mind.
Positano is built into the side of a cliff, and I fell in love with it the moment I arrived here to kill a man named Cortino many years ago. When I needed a place to live abroad, it called to me just as Risina described Italy calling to her. I too found it difficult not to answer.
I bought a modest house about halfway up the hill and used it sparingly, so the locals would think of it as my second home. The long-time residents of Positano are as insular as the city itself, and I utilize their natural distrust of “summer people” to avoid forging relationships.
The sky and the sea are almost the exact same shade of color as I drive into the city on a motorcycle. I have spent my adult life blending into the background of every environment: dressing myself, carrying myself and expressing myself in ways that are the opposite of eye-catching. The motorcycle I drive is old and rusty and unmemorable, the same as a hundred bikes swarming the Italian countryside at the moment.
I park the bike near the beach, a twenty-minute walk from my front door, and start the climb. From my vantage point below, I can see the outside of my house, a beige two-story manor, perched on the side of the cliff. It looks undisturbed, and I’m not sure if that is a relief or a cause to be nervous. At least if I could pinpoint something unusual—a window shade up, broken glass—I could proceed with a plan. I have no choice but to be acutely cautious.
As a killer, I train myself to map out escape routes, no matter where I am or what I am doing. I do it without thinking, as natural and involuntary as exhaling. When I bought this house—Ryan actually did the buying, through a third party—I immediately set about renovating it, alone. The killing profession teaches you many useful disciplines; a basic knowledge of carpentry can be indispensable in a number of ways. I didn’t upgrade the fixtures in the kitchen or expand the closets in the master bedroom. The upgrades I managed were for one purpose: getting into and out of the house without being seen.
I ascend stone steps laid out for homeowners and adventurous tourists, climb half of the hill, and then break from the main path when I am assuredly alone. The pain from the wound in my side has diminished, but not completely. It throbs now, marking each step with a pinprick to my ribs. I have heard about people’s ability to compartmentalize pain, to suppress it, put it down in a hole below the line of consciousness, but fuck if I’ve ever been able to do it. My ribs hurt, and the only thing that will get me back to feeling a hundred percent normal is time.
Along a smaller trail, I can approach my house from the side, and if I squeeze in next to the wall and a dense row of evergreen hedges, I remain invisible. Near the base of the wall is a crawlspace entry. Its only distinguishing mark is a thin beige rope. I can tell from its position that the rope is undisturbed, just as I left it. I use it to pull the cover free. Before I enter, I reach my hand inside, and from memory, punch a sequence into a small alarm I installed just above the opening. A tiny beep indicates the space has been uncompromised since I last left. I take a breath and push through into the darkness.
From here, I only have to crawl a few feet to an area where I can stand, and from there, I open a hidden entrance into a laundry room next to my kitchen. The room is silent and musty, like the air has been trapped in here for months, a good sign.
After twenty minutes and a thorough inspection of each room, I am convinced the house is clear and remains undiscovered. If Leary, the Irish assassin I dispatched in Georgia, had beaten the information out of Ryan, he didn’t have a chance to follow up on it. If he has passed the knowledge of my residence to anyone else, they haven’t come calling. Yet.
I own only a few pieces of furniture, a bed, and a closet full of dark T-shirts, dark jeans and shoes. I undress, take a shower with the water turned up just below scalding, redress my wound, and then wedge as many clothes into a duffel bag as I comfortably can. A false front in the closet gives way to my weapons stash, and I load a black backpack with pistols and ammunition and extra clips. Finished, I take a look around the house, and allow myself two minutes at the back window looking down the cliff face at the black sand and the gray sea. In my head, I’m already using the words “the” instead of “my.” It’s “the” house, not “my” house.
Twenty minutes later, I am straddling the motorcycle, my duffel in the storage compartment under the seat, my backpack secure on my back. This will be the last time I see Positano, and I feel a melancholy pang in my chest. It looks as it always has: quiet and proud. I turn my head, kick-start the engine, and motor away.
An assassin’s life is marked by movement. Loiter too long in one place and you won’t be pleased with what catches up to you.
I can guess what happened.
Risina’s co-worker handed her a cryptic message when she arrived at work. “Anonymous man called. Has first edition Lewis and Clark, 1814. Must sell. Meet in St. George lobby. 9:00 P.M.”
Risina must’ve smiled, curious, intrigued. She must’ve asked Alda to describe the man’s voice, but Alda probably shrugged dismissively. The man had requested Risina specifically, that’s all Alda knew. He was just a man on the phone, and he kept everything succinct.
Risina might have called around to see if other contacts in the rare-book world had caught wind of a first edition Lewis and Clark entering the market. The lack of confirmation probably piqued her curiosity.