Hawks was gone.
I asked Konstantin, “Where did she go?”
“Said she was going to sit by the pool.”
“She can’t stand being in the same room with me.”
“She’s a woman first. Don’t forget that.”
I nodded, then asked, “You have any information for me?”
“The team that was on you in London? Nothing as of yet.”
I told him about the women who had been tortured and butchered on Berwick Street.
My frown deep, I said, “They did it. They did it to get to me.”
“So one of them uses a knife.”
“Like a butcher.”
“But they didn’t get any closer to you. No problem with your family.”
“No. You helped me move things around; so far everything has been untraceable.”
“The workers could’ve been from anywhere. From London, Ukraine, Paris, Utah, South Africa. Nothing solid has come my way. Your Detroit problem, all I can find out is they say she’s out of the country. Working on getting her passport information. You can track her if she is out of the country.”
“I already found out that much, that she was out of the country.”
Konstantin tapped on the table, frustrated. “Sorry I haven’t found out more.”
“I’m making my own plans. Time to bring this to an end.”
“Well, at least tell me what type of war you’re planning.”
“I need another Cessna to transport a few things.”
“When?”
“In a week. Ten days tops.”
He nodded, not pushing it.
I let that go, slapped down on the table, smiled, and asked Konstantin, “Hungry?”
“Starving. Fix me a plate of whatever you can find in the cabinets.”
“Homestead.” I headed toward the kitchen. “You were an hour south of here.”
“We canceled a few tickets and the tornado canceled a few flights.”
“You called Hawks in, gave her some work.”
“As you suggested. I was going to call you when I got here. New job came in.”
“Where?”
“Antigua.” He took an iPod out of his inside suit coat pocket. It was one of the slim iPods that had Internet access and about thirty-two gigs of memory. “When it came in I downloaded it on here.”
I said, “Let’s eat first.”
“I have a bag of fruit. If nothing is there we’ll eat some of my honey-do list.”
“Let me check the cabinets first.”
The best I could come up with was crackers and some sort of canned chicken meat. I put that on a plate, sat it on the table, and we ate it like it was caviar.
I said, “You haven’t mentioned your health.”
“I know.”
Like me, he was afraid of dying. Not death, but the road we would take to get to that end.
They had just come up from Homestead, had done a job a mile or so from the tropical fruit stand Robert Is Here. The area he had been in was more than an hour south, not too far from a prison. His contract was connected to the job I had done earlier. I didn’t ask the details and he didn’t offer any more than that. Konstantin had been in the wetwork business for decades; his career had lasted as long as the stylish black suit and dark tie he had on. Konstantin was a man of action, not a man of fashion.
I asked, “How have you been? Don’t bullshit me.”
“Skip it.”
“Not talking about it won’t make it better.”
“I’m still here.” He nodded. “I’m still walking on top of the ground.”
“How often you taking chemo?”
“Once a month.” He smiled a broad smile. “Still popping pills. Still on top of the ground.”
I nodded, then asked, “What’s in the bag?”
“My wife made me go shopping. I come to Miami, Svetlana sends me shopping. I tell her I’m going to Homestead to put a man in the ground and she tells me to stop and get fruit when I’m done.”
He opened a bag and took out some of the exotic goods he had bought at the tropical fruit stand. He offered me a
Monstera deliciosa
and I took it without hesitating. A
Monstera deliciosa
looks like a giant green ear of corn but tastes like banana and pineapple. He had picked up carambola, mamey, lychee, atemoya, papaya, and jars of honey. His wife had given him an extensive shopping list.
Konstantin said he had been married four times, engaged a fifth time, then fifteen years ago he met the woman of his dreams when she hired him to take care of a little problem—her former spouse. People in the business said he was romantically linked to Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and a few other Hollywood starlets. Who he took to bed, who he put in the ground, he’d never say.
Konstantin asked, “Think you will ever get married?”
He said that and Arizona’s face intruded in my mind. Old memories died hard.
I said, “Doubt it.”
Something inside me fell when I answered that question.
He said, “Hawks married. It didn’t work out for her.”
“She told me.”
“She married the wrong man. She has to marry the right one.”
Then, with a smile, I asked him to power up his iPod and show me what contract had come in.
The West Indies contract was being offered at 20 percent over my normal price, and the job sounded like it was 75 percent easier than most of the jobs I’d had in my career.
Whatever was needed to do the job would be waiting at the airport, inside a rental car that was to be left in the employee lot at V. C. Bird International, a small dirt lot that would be to the right as I exited the airport. It sounded like an easy-in, easy-out deal. I knew my way around most of the island, had done a Jumby Bay contract a few years back, lured him off his private island and captured him as soon as he stepped off the ferry, left that problem swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, the rough and shark-filled waters down at Devil’s Bridge. Stayed in Jolly Harbour when it was done. This contract wasn’t as complicated.
Still, other things were on my mind.
I had to plan my own mission, had to get ready to fly to Detroit and put that problem six feet under. I told him that. Konstantin wanted me to think it out. Said I could do the Antigua job, then sit it out for a couple of days, let him see what he could find out, let him help me plan my trip back to Detroit.
I passed on the job.
Konstantin nodded, not questioning my decision.
After eating, Konstantin found a DVD on top of the television, popped it in, and took to the chair, started watching
Du Rififi Chez les Hommes
. Jean Servais. Carl Möhner. Robert Manuel. Those actors made it a true noir from the start. A film filled with gangland patois and gangsters who did horrible things, not stopping at necrophilia. Konstantin loved it because it had a brilliant heist sequence, thirty-two minutes without dialogue or a score to fill in the silence. At times noise was the enemy.
I watched the film to its end, took in its ironic wit and watched the main character driving the streets of Paris, his tense face revealing his ever-deepening agony, the pain from being mortally wounded, quarts of blood spilled in a scene that showed cinematic death, his partners dead, and as he died his one last mission was to return the kidnapped son of his dead partner to the boy’s mother.
Fin.
That seemed like it had been a message to me. A message to a man who had been kidnapped as a child. No matter who had been slaughtered, that didn’t change my issue with the kid.
He said, “I could’ve been a movie star if it wasn’t for that British actor Archibald Alexander Leach.”
“Who is that?”
“Cary Grant. His birth name. I did a screen test or two and the problem was I looked too much like him. In Hollywood every actor has to have his own name and own face. And Cary Grant already had my mug. That was my dream. That Brit was a much better actor, so I didn’t mind. He had my blessings.”
“You look like George Clooney.”
“And Clooney looks like Cary Grant.”
Konstantin yawned and stretched out on the sofa, his gun at his side.
Hawks still hadn’t returned. I was going to make a pallet on the floor, leave the bedroom to her.
Konstantin yawned. “Go check on Hawks.”
“That would be a kamikaze mission.”
“Take her a piece of fruit.”
“Want to walk down that long green mile with me?”
He chuckled.
“Do zavtra.”
“Do zavtra.”
He slipped off his pristine white patent leather shoes and closed his eyes.
Gun in one hand and
Monstera deliciosa
in the other, I went to check on Hawks.
Twenty-six
the drowning pool
Hawks was naked,
in the heated pool. Her clothes and boots were off to the side, on a chair. Her hair was thick and wet. She looked up and saw me. Stopped swimming laps.
She treaded water and said, “How long you plan on standing there gawking at me?”
“Brought you some fruit.”
“Should I tell you in which orifice to shove that phallic-shaped fruit? And it is not in your mouth.”
“Konstantin sent it.”
“Then bend over and have Konstantin shove it for you.”
“Teamwork.”
“Nothing like.”
“You don’t like me, do you?”
“I am way beyond not liking you.”
“So, where do I stand with you?”
“Two blocks from the corner of Despise and Hate.”
I undressed, walked into the heated pool.
I said, “Those extra fifteen pounds look nice.”
“I found those directions to hell. Got ’em on MapQuest. So you can go there now.”
Hawks cursed me out.
She said, “And nobody invited you to come down here. This is not a skinny-dipping party.”
I got back out of the pool, put my clothes on, turned, and started to walk away.
She called my name.
I turned around.
She asked, “Who’s after you?”
“You talking to me now?”
“Just asking.”
“Like you give a shit.”
“Well, to be honest, I really don’t.”
She swam a lap, came back, saw I was still there.
She said, “Konstantin was worried. Said you wouldn’t say. You and that ego.”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s a woman.”
“Somebody you forgot to call back?”
I rubbed my neck, struggled with my confession. “Job I did.”
“Well?”
“Hawks.”
“Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Don’t want you involved.”
“Well, you had me picking you up looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, had me bringing you medicine in a damn tornado, and five minutes ago you almost gunned me down, so I think I am entitled to a little professional courtesy here. Whether I can stand your butt or not. And I can’t.”
I sat at the edge of the pool, told Hawks about the job I had done on a winter night in Detroit. Told her how that job had almost gone south and how that had angered me. Detroit hadn’t told me about a gun her husband had kept hidden. At the time, in that moment while my heartbeat and anger were high, I had upped my price, demanded a penalty be paid. That was where the problem began.
That was back when I was trying to get a million dollars to make another woman mine.
Like many others, in that moment, I had been motivated by selfishness and greed.
I just told Hawks that in the end the penalty money I had demanded had been returned to Detroit, that I had let her live in the end and moved on, hoping that little refund and a threat would end this matter.
Hawks wiped water from her face, said, “Detroit.”
“The religious woman who wanted her husband dead.”
“That was the contract I handed you when we were in Dallas.”
I nodded. “You were busy, passed on the job.”
“That was a while back. But I remember her. Can’t forget somebody like her. She came across as the kinda person who was addicted to attention and the idea of being famous. A political Superhead. If you asked me I’d say she loved the fame more than the marriage itself. She married a famous man and used his fame to get as much attention as she could. That’s my opinion, from what I can remember.”
“I got it under control.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m going after her. In about a week it will be history.”
“What are you planning?”
“I liked it better when you weren’t talking to me anymore.”
“Jerk. This is a struggle, trying to be cordial to you. But excuse me for trying.”
She splashed water on me, did that over and over, got me wet. I pulled my clothes off and dived in the pool, dived near her. She swam away from me and I went after her. She splashed water at me and I went underwater, she did the same, swimming away, running from me until I cornered her. I pulled Hawks closer, put my lips on hers, then my tongue inside her mouth. She moaned and reciprocated.
Then she pushed me away, slapped my face, a soft slap, went underwater, swam away again, moving like a mermaid. I chased her for a while, went after her until I was tired of chasing her.
Hawks held on to her frown. “I see you’re feeling better.”
My energy was lower than I had realized. I went toward her. “Not one hundred percent.”
“That’s good to know, Mr. Mesomorph.” She moved away. “Stitches holding up okay?”
“You did a great job. And thanks for the prescription.”
We stayed in the deep end, swam for a while. Swam until she wasn’t running from me. Then we swam together. Swimming naked evolved into kissing naked. Underwater kisses, underwater touching.
She said, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
Stars overhead. Darkness in all the condo windows, at least two buildings facing the pool; I took her to the shallow end of the pool. I sucked on her breasts, sucked her nipples, and she trembled, held the back of my head, kept my mouth on her nipples, and made sounds like she was about to explode.