“What size you wearing?”
I told her.
She asked, “Shoe size?”
I told her that too. She told me she’d be back.
I asked Hawks, “Whose place is this?”
“My husband had it when I met him.”
“Husband.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’re married?”
“Was married for a while.”
I paused. “When did you get married?”
“About eighteen months ago.”
I paused. “Congratulations.”
“Don’t you sound happy about it.”
“You kind of caught me off guard.”
“That makes two of us. Never expected to hear from you again.”
“Where is he?”
“Don’t worry yourself too much. I’m divorced now.”
“He in the business?”
“You sure are full of questions all of a sudden.”
“For what it’s worth, sorry to hear about the divorce.”
“My heart wasn’t between my legs. Not with him it wasn’t.”
“Okay.”
“He was worthless. Good-for-nothing. He made promises he couldn’t keep. Just like my daddy did. Seems like I try to get away but I keep meeting my daddy over and over. Not keeping a promise is the same as lying, if not worse. I hate men who lie whenever they breathe, and most do.”
I didn’t say anything. Part of me wished I had called her long before now.
But a grifter named Arizona had been in my heart.
Hawks said, “But at least I got this loft in the settlement.”
“Real nice place.”
“Ain’t much, but it’s mine now. Well, not really
mine
. It
belongs
to the mortgage company and thirty years of payments belong to me. I have a roof over my head so I guess the divorce wasn’t all bad.”
“Like I said, sorry to hear.”
“But the dumbass got a subprime loan, so the mortgage payments are through the roof.”
“Real sorry to hear that.”
“Whatever.” Hawks moved across the room, her boots clacking against the hardwood floor. “He was half Coharie, part Native American like me. Guess we didn’t have enough in common to make it stick. He wasn’t much in bed. Not at all. Sizewise or timewise, not much at all no matter how you hold it up and look at it. Can’t miss what you can’t feel. But at least he knew how to make a damn phone call.”
The front door slammed behind her, echoed like the report from a .38.
Yeah, part of me wished I had called her before, but another part of me told me I never should have called Hawks at all. The last part would have been the best voice to listen to.
I hurried into the living room, water dripping from my body, and grabbed my gun.
Then I went back to the shower.
Gun at my side.
Representative of Detroit or an angry ex-husband, I was ready for whoever showed up first.
An hour later Hawks was back with bags from T.J. Maxx. For a moment the name on the bag looked fake, because across the pond the store was T.
K
. Maxx. Either way, same discount clothing store. Hawks had three bags filled with clothes for me. Levi’s and a black T-shirt, a button-down collar shirt to wear over that, a light coat, socks, black Calvin Klein underwear, a pair of steel-toe boots.
The change from the money she took was dropped next to the briefcase.
She said, “There is a blue Honda downstairs. Five years old. Dent on the left rear panel.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a worthless piece of crap. Sorry like my ex-husband.”
“Okay.”
“Leave it at the airport when you finish doing whatever you came here to do.”
“Okay.”
“Send me a text telling me where you parked it.”
“I’ll call you.”
“I don’t need to talk to you. Just send a text.”
“Okay, Hawks.”
“Lock the door when you leave.”
“Okay.”
“And lose my number.”
“Okay.”
“And if I ever call you, please don’t answer.”
“Hawks.”
“Can’t stand a man who can’t keep his word. Man who can’t keep his word ain’t no man.”
Then Hawks was gone, the door once again slammed like a gunshot, her anger reloaded.
Thirteen
the killer inside me
I didn’t take
Hawks’s Honda.
I cleaned up the mess I had created and left, walked by the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, headed toward Gaylord Entertainment Center, walked down to historic Second Avenue and Printer’s Alley, changed directions a few times, and let my paranoia take me toward War Memorial Plaza and Freedom Center. When I was satisfied I doubled back and checked into the Hermitage Hotel. I needed rest, had to get off my feet. Didn’t need Hawks caught up in my drama with Detroit. And I didn’t need the drama Hawks was issuing. I’d left five thousand on her dining room table, left the money and no note, just sent her a text telling her I was gone, told her thanks. Same as I had done the last time I had seen her. One day. We had been together twenty-four hours back then.
I saw it as something pleasant that had happened, intimacy with no strings, no need to get emotional over one day of fun and one night of liquor and dancing to jazz; if we connected again, cool; if not, cool. I guess Hawks saw that night a different way.
The same way I had seen my nights with a grifter named Arizona in a different way.
Arizona had seen it as intimacy with no strings, necessary maintenance for the body.
One thought of Arizona and memories tried to take root.
Inside my room at the Hermitage I popped a B.C. Powder, washed it down with a Canada Dry, looked at my bruises. The air bag had done a number on me. I cleaned up a little more; the muddied sensation and the rage refused to let my skin go. I wiped down the gun I had, went for another short walk, the skies still ominous, headed toward one of the bridges that went over the muddy Cumberland River. When traffic was at a pause, I tossed that gun into the murky waters. I hurried back toward the Hermitage, felt naked and vulnerable. Cellular up to my ear, I made a call to Konstantin as I moved through wetness. It was a rushed call, one that cut right to the business without giving any details.
I knew they were out there. Somewhere.
Just like the man with the broken nose had been waiting for me at Millennium Bridge.
Just like the man who had attacked me in the Cayman Islands.
Just like the strawberry blonde and the red-haired man had been waiting for me on Shaftesbury.
Just like the team had been in Huntsville.
Each time they did a little better. It was only a matter of time.
Within the hour another car had been delivered to the Hermitage, one that came with wonderful options, like new hardware in the glove compartment. I moved like a man with a vendetta, trying to prove myself worthy. The sting from Death, that agony, never went away.
Same as the sting from when Hawks had tried to knock the left side of my face to the right.
A few hours later I paid a visit to an exec at Sony BMG, fulfilling that contract over on Seventeenth Avenue in Music Square, an area filled with Victorian-style mansions, students from Vanderbilt jogging in the rain, women pushing strollers, and men walking dogs under gray skies with their umbrellas held high. The customer wanted it to look like an accidental overdose, another cocaine binge. And in the end it would look just like that, the end result a heart attack, an adverse effect of ingesting too much snow. I closed that account, then drove to the Malls at Green Hills, the area that was Nashville’s Buckhead, a come-to-life fantasyland where housewives spent their days shopping and getting their nails and hair done while a full-time nanny raised their two-point-five children, staying busy while their hardworking husbands spent their extra time with escorts, clandestine meetings at the Hermitage.
I headed down to a Joseph-Beth bookstore, sat near the children’s section, not reading, just thinking that a few hours ago I was being run off the road and bullets were being sprayed into my vehicle like I was public enemy number one. Problems plagued my mind, angst and old fears rising up. For a while I looked over real estate brochures, focused on that crumbling economy to take my mind off other things. Read about the homes in Green Hills and Spring Hill. That added stress. I wanted a home. Giving myself roots had caused problems. I’d been on the move so long I had grown weary, tired of the nights spent traveling down darkened roads, sleeping in beds in Hiltons, Super 8 motels, and every type of hotel or hostel in between. I dropped the brochures, put that need aside, and watched families, saw the kids who were with their parents, kids being read to by their real mothers and their real fathers. A chill attacked me, made me wonder who my mother was, made me wonder who my father was.
X.
Y.
Z.
I put in a call to my contact at DNA Solutions. A woman. An old friend. I left her a message, told her the package was a rush job, asked her to give it top priority. I knew she would. Some old lovers were priceless.
I wanted it rushed because I didn’t know how many more sunrises I might survive.
I stared at my latte. Sipping the latte would be a big deal for me. It would be a big deal to just take one sip. As I raised the cup my cellular rang. I put the cup back down without tasting a drop. It was Konstantin. I answered with strength and confidence. Konstantin told me he was in New York, down at Park Avenue and Eighteenth, had just finished working a contract and had just crawled inside a Yellow Cab.
Konstantin told me he was calling because another job had popped up in Nashville.
I took a deep breath, rubbed my eyes, and told him, “Call Hawks.”
“Hawks turns down a lot of work. Had good work in Columbus; somebody at Victoria’s Secret was pissed at some upstart lingerie company, wanted to take out the competition’s CEO. Had three or four jobs in Buckeye territory. A Nationwide thing. A White Castle contract. She passed on them all.”
“She’s hurting for money and passing on work.”
“Her choice. To be honest, I’m beginning to become a little concerned about her.”
“I’m listening.”
“There was one at Ohio State, parent wanted to put her own kid down, kid was a major slacker and disappointment and the parent paid a mint to initiate a retroactive abortion on the boy. The kid was in his seventh year of college, living off his mother, hanging out on Buckeye Nation Lane with the college grads and the population that was gentrifying the neighborhood. I mean, the kid was a loser, but I didn’t see it as a reason to put a kid in the ground. But that was what the customer wanted.”
“Lots of people dead for no good reason. Wouldn’t be the first, won’t be the last.”
“Kid was a liberal arts major at OSU. The mother was a surgeon at McConnell Heart Hospital.”
“Familial hate. Nothing new there either.”
“Job paid well. Told Hawks there was a safe house in Short North on High Street, another at Heartsbridge condos, had whatever she needed next door to Luigi’s Pawnshop. All she had to do was walk in and walk out, no more than three days to do it all. She could’ve blown time, could’ve had a beer at the Elevator, or gone to Gaswerks and had drinks with the Buckeyes, or gone to a concert at PromoWest. Those are the kinds of things Hawks loves to do. Long story short, Hawks turned it all down.”
“Sounds like you know the area.”
“Oh yeah. Whenever I go there I go to the Mug N Brush and get a shave. Down in the college area, right before Clintonville. Great place. The guy there, he does a shave like a work of art. And if you ever want to get some tattoos, I mean real nice artwork, this guy Jeff, his work is phenomenal.”
My mind was on what Konstantin had said before.
I asked, “The kid, his mom put him down?”
“Don’t know who she used, but she had the kid euthanized.”
“How?”
“An explosion.”
“Car.”
“Just so happens there was a faulty gas line at the kid’s apartment.”
“Yeah, that will make an explosion.”
“Blew the kid into kibbles and bits. Whoever did it made it look like an accident.”
I nodded. “Cold-blooded.”
“Cold-blooded world out there.”
“Sure is.”
“And the coldest of the cold come to us cold-blooded motherfuckers to do business.”
“That they do.”
“Strange thing happened after that kid was killed in that
accident
.”
“What was that?”
“They found the kid’s mom dead. Drowned in her bathtub. Ruled an
accidental
drowning.”
“Accidental.”
“That’s what I said. Healthy, rich woman found
accidentally
drowned in her own bathtub.”
“No sign of forced entry.”
“All doors and windows were locked from the inside.”
“Suicide?”
“She had cruises and vacations in Switzerland planned.”
We paused, a lot being said in the silence.
Konstantin said, “Almost as strange as the time I sent you down to Texas to work with Hawks. She gets there and the guy who ordered the hit was found drowned in his bathtub, so there was no hit.”
“Oh, yeah. I had forgotten about that one.”
“Well, I haven’t. Then this doctor thing,
accidentally drowning
in a bathtub the same way the guy in Killeen
accidentally drowned
in a bathtub, needless to say that got me to wondering.”
Another pause.
Konstantin asked, “Have you talked to Hawks?”
“Called her.” I swallowed, pushed my lips up in a smile. “Had a problem after Huntsville.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Detroit again. An ambush that ended in my favor.”
“How did Detroit know where you were?”
“She’s good.”
“Don’t tell me the same ones from London trailed you across the pond.”