“I meant, how long has Archie been missing?”
“Not missing. Taken. There’s a note.”
He shifts to reach into his pants pocket and withdraws a single sheet of paper, folded into quarters, then hands it over without the slightest hesitation. As I unfold it, he takes another drag, squinting his left eye as the smoke blows past it, toward the ceiling.
“Goddamn, it’s nice to smoke indoors. They don’t let us do that shit in Chicago no more.”
The sheet is standard white typing paper, the kind found jamming copy machines throughout the world. Block letters, written in a masculine hand with a black Sharpie:
BRING COLUMBUS HOME. OR YOU’LL GET GRANT BACK IN A WAY YOU WON’T LIKE.
I look up, and Smoke is studying my face.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was about me?”
Smoke shrugs. “I’m telling you now.”
When I level my eyes, he puts his palms up like a victim in a robbery. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. Just didn’t know how you’d react. They ask for you and I immediately come find you. I wasn’t looking to do an investigation . . . wouldn’t know where to begin. But your name was on there clear as crystal and this seemed like a straight-up emergency, so here I am. Didn’t want you to have the wrong idea.”
“When was the last time you saw Archie?”
“I was at his place the night before . . . wasn’t unusual for us to be up ’til eleven-thirty, twelve, goin’ over all the goin’s on, but mostly talking shit, you know? I think I left around midnight, but I don’t remember looking at a clock. It was late, though.
“Next day I was supposed to meet him for eggs and bacon at Sam & George’s on North Lincoln, but Archie never showed.”
“That unusual?”
“First time ever. I knew something was up before the waitress set down the menus. He always beat me there. Always. Say what you want about Archibald Grant, but he’s a punctual son-of-a-cuss.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “So what’d you do?”
“I got up, left a buck on the table for coffee, and headed to Archie’s place. Banged on the door, but no answer. The lock wasn’t forced or nothing, so I opened it and poked my head in.”
“You have a key?”
“Yeah. Archie gave me one.” He says it defensively, but I shake him off like a pitcher shaking off a sign from the plate.
“Keep going.”
“Not a sound in the joint. Air as still as a morgue.”
“No sign of a struggle?”
“Not in the front room, no.” He leans forward, lowers his voice. “But in the bedroom, he must’ve put up a hell of a fight. Blood everywhere, lamps knocked over, mirror broke, bed knocked to shit. I knew it was bad, bad, bad. My first thought was he was dead, truth be told. All that blood. Someone must’ve stuck him and dragged the body away. But then I saw the note.”
“Where?”
“Living room table.” He tamps out another cigarette from his pack and lights it off the end of the first, dropping the original into a plastic ashtray when he’s done.
“You think the note was put there for you to find it?”
“Don’t know who else it’d be for. I’m the only one he lets into his house.”
“And you have absolutely no idea who did this or why they want me?”
“Swear on every single family member’s name, living and dead.”
As a professional killer, I have to read faces the way a surgeon examines x-rays. A purse of the lips, a downward glance of the eyes, a nervous tap of the knee, there are dozens of tells that give away when a man is playing fast and loose with the truth. Smoke is skittish, no mistake, but his voice is steady and his eyes are focused. He’s afraid of me, but he’s telling the truth.
The air is dry and stale and the cigarette smoke hangs under the ceiling like a gas cloud, thick and poisoned.
I tap the note with my index finger. “And you have no idea why they want me?”
“I hung around that place for two days, hoping someone would show up and explain things further, but not a creature was stirring, you know what I’m saying? On the third day, I went looking in that safety deposit box.”
“No one followed you to the bank?”
A look sweeps over his face like the thought never crossed his mind. His adam’s apple dips like a yo-yo.
“No. I mean . . . no . . . I don’t think so.” Like he’s trying to convince himself.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say so he’ll get back on track.
“Anyway, that’s where I found the file on you.”
“What’s your plan from here?”
Smoke shrugs as he starts on his third cigarette. “Man, I wish I knew. Like I said, Archie told me if he’s ever in a tight spot, to set out to find you. And then your name’s on this here note. I don’t know what to tell you, but you gotta admit, this qualifies as a pretty goddamned tight spot, so I did what Archie asked. Beyond that . . .”
He lets his voice spool out, joining the smoke near the ceiling like he never intended to finish the sentence.
An image pops into my head, a highway in Nevada I drove a lifetime ago. The sky was clear, the desert calm, and the blacktop was an infinite line across the landscape, a shapeless, endless mirage. Each time I’d crest a bit of a slope or round a slight bend, the line would reemerge before me, stretching out to the horizon, teasing me, sentient, like it knew I could never reach its end.
I am about to drive that road again. I knew it the moment Smoke called me by name. The real question, the one I’m not sure I want to answer: did I ever truly leave it in the first place?
Risina is folding clothes in the back room when I enter, and her face lights up when she sees me coming through the door.
“What’d you bring me?”
Then she spots it in my face, and I guess she’s believed this day would come since we first arrived.
“Someone found you.”
I nod.
“How much time do we have?”
I swallow, my mouth chalky. “We leave tonight.”
“Where?”
“I have to go to the U.S. for a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“I don’t know.”
“And me?”
“I don’t know.”
She folds her arms across her chest and raises her chin. She’s never been one to lower her eyes, and she’s not going to start now. “Tell me what happened.”
I paint the picture of Smoke, about the way he found me and what he had to say about Archibald Grant and the note left behind that called me out by name.
“You told me you were out . . . that Archie wanted you out, was covering for you, he said. I don’t understand this. His problems are not your problems.”
“I was out. I am. But he stitched me up when I needed stitching and I can’t turn my back on him.”
Risina collapses into a chair, but still she doesn’t lower her eyes.
“I want you to know . . .” I start but she cuts me off.
“Give me a moment to think, dammit.” This might be the first time she’s ever snapped at me, and I can’t say I blame her. “Can you bring me some water?”
I move to the kitchen and pour some filtered water out of a jug we keep in the refrigerator. This might be the last time I’m in this kitchen, the last time I open this fridge, and even though this place isn’t much, it has been good to us. Better not to think this way. This is no time for sentiment. Better to rip the bandage off quickly.
I return with the water. She takes it absently and drinks the entire glass without taking it from her lips. I’m not sure she even knows I’m in the room. I can see her eyes darting as her mind catches up to what I told her.
After a moment, she finally raises her eyes and focuses on me, maybe to keep the room from spinning. She blushes, blood rising in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry . . . this is new to me. I thought I was prepared, had prepared myself for something like this, but . . .”
She swallows and bites her lip. I know she is sorting her thoughts the way a contract bridge player organizes playing cards, bringing all the suits together before laying down the next play.
“Are you going to have to kill someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if once you enter this life, you don’t want to stop again?”
She’s trying to read my face, less interested in what I say than how I look when I say it. It’s a skill she’s picked up from me. I answer with the truth.
“I don’t know.”
She absorbs this like a physical blow. Just when I don’t think she’s going to say anything, she finds her voice. There is a strength there that shouldn’t surprise me, though it does.
“I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s not a question. I’m not asking for permission. I’m coming with you. You offered me a life with you and I won’t run away just because the past caught up with us.
Us
. Not you. Us.”
“Risina—”
“You can’t send me away. You can’t kick me in the stomach like you did the first girl you loved.” Her eyes are hot now. “I’m coming.”
I turn my voice to gravel. She hasn’t heard this voice from me, but I want the weight behind my words to be clear. “It’s one thing to hear these stories about me and another to live them, to see them with your own eyes. I can’t get back into this and have to worry about—”
She interrupts, fearlessly, her voice matching mine. If I thought I could outgravel her, I misjudged the woman I love. “Yes, you will. You’ll learn to do it
and
worry about me at the same time. I’m not giving you the choice.”
“You’ll see a side of me you won’t recognize.”
“Don’t you understand a damn thing I’m saying? I want to know
every
side of you. I must know! I’ve wanted
all
of you since I first met you. Not just one side or the other. Not just the mask you choose to show me.”
“And what if you hate what you see?”
“I won’t.”
“And what if you die standing next to me?”
“Then I’ll die. People do it every day.”
I start to ask another question and stop myself. There’s a reason I fell in love with Risina the first time I saw her; it’s here before me now. Defiance, ambition, determination, passion . . . the qualities of confidence. The qualities of a professional assassin. A tiger is a goddamned tiger. The beasts are born that way, and no matter how they are
nurtured
, their
nature
always emerges eventually.
“So when do we leave?” she asks.
“Now,” I whisper.
CHAPTER TWO
I
t takes us a few days to buy passports. Although Smoke failed spectacularly as a bagman, he’s not a bad fence. He’s been with Archie Grant long enough to know how to scrounge the right information, ask the right questions, navigate the world beneath the world, the one where money exchanges hands and lips stay tight.
This is all new to Risina, and she adjusts, acting normally, with just a hint of boredom, the way she must’ve negotiated competitively for a rare book. An Italian fence named Vespucci once told me, “no matter the situation, act like you’ve been there before.” Risina says little and keeps her face emotionless, neutral. Even as we’re engaged in something as simple as obtaining illegal papers, she looks like she’s done it a thousand times. Maybe she’s a natural. I won’t deny that I feel, well, proud of her. Maybe that’s irrational, but I don’t care.
In a hotel near the airport, we lie in bed, waiting on a morning flight.
“I don’t want you to get too confident. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“How do you want me to be?”
“Observant.”
She widens her eyes. “Like this?” She holds it for a moment before breaking into a smile.
“I’m serious.”
“Yes, babe. I know. You’re going to be tense and I understand that. This is the new man. The one who has to worry about someone besides himself. But when we’re alone, then I’m going to want
you
back. Not Columbus.”
She pulls close to me and buries her nose in my neck.
“I wasn’t aware this was a democracy.”
“Well, now you are.”
“As long as you understand that when we leave this room, or any room, I’m in charge. You look to me. You learn from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Risina.”
“I know you do. And I answered you that I understand.”
She sleeps peacefully, as though this is just another night in the fishing village. Maybe she’s going to be okay in this world. Maybe she’ll learn quickly and take direction and thrive. Maybe if I keep telling myself that over and over, I’ll believe it.
Chicago is warm but stale, like a mausoleum releasing hundreds of years of trapped air after the front stone is rolled away. It must be the exhaust from the traffic in the city or the wind off the lake, or maybe the smell is just in my head. My temples throb like someone is tapping my head with a hammer.
Risina sits next to me in the rental sedan—a dark blue economy car—staring out the window, smiling absently.
I let her come. She insisted, but the decision was, is, mine. I could have blown off Smoke, protested I was out, truly out, that Archie’s problems were Archie’s problems, taken Risina and fled to another isolated country, but the truth is . . . I didn’t want to. I’m like Eve staring at the picked apple, but that’s not quite the right metaphor. I’ve already tasted the apple and instead of facing banishment, I’ve been offered passage back into Eden, or into my definition of paradise anyway. But at what price? There is always a price.
“I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to protest or argue or answer. Just nod your head that you agree when I finish.”
She waits, and I can feel her eyes.
“This is my decision to have you with me. To teach you what I do. To bring you into this world. Okay? I take responsibility for it. I own it.”
She waits until I turn my head her way before she nods. Whether or not she agrees with me, I think I see understanding in her eyes. Regardless, I had to say it.
I’ve never had a charge before, and I want it defined and out in the open, as much for me as for her. I have to teach her, protect her, and lead her all at once, and I will not take these obligations lightly.
Straight from the airport, Smoke leads us to Archie’s apartment. I check the side-view mirrors, looking for patterns in the traffic behind us, but I don’t think anyone knows about our arrival. If the plan of the kidnappers was to tail Smoke and strike as soon as he found me, then they’ve done a lousy job. There’s no tail from what I can see, and I didn’t clock anyone back at the bookstore or restaurant before we left our hiding spot.