HER
name was Nichelle Spellman. She was a senior vice-president of regional planning for Captain-McGuire-Magness, a worldwide agriculture processor headquartered in Topeka, Kansas. She met Abe Mann for the first time when she spoke in front of a congressional committee formed to explore allegations of price-fixing amongst the farming conglomerates. Over an eight-year period, they met frequently, and secretly, at various functions all over the world.
Nichelle Spellman had a husband of eleven years and a seven-year-old daughter. She was moderately pretty, a little plump, with dark eyes and dark hair. She was a bit Midwestern plain, but had an Ivy League education and a gift for making people feel comfortable. In her capacity as a senior VP for CMM, she also had a boatload of bribery money.
She had started off with small purchases, pushing the envelope on what congressmen could take as “gifts”: tickets to Vegas shows, celebrity golf Pro-Ams, items that drew raised eyebrows from the ethics committee but no inquiries. Mann grew adept at hiding money, using middlemen, opening accounts all over the world. For years, the relationship grew until the amount of money exchanging hands became staggering. In return, Congress stayed out of CMM’s affairs. Special committees dissolved. Allegations dropped. Price-fixing in agriculture didn’t have the same sizzle as steroids in Major League baseball or obscenities in Hollywood, and so it wasn’t difficult to turn a blind eye. A blind eye that came with a seven-figure price tag.
The relationship ended abruptly when the FBI snatched up Nichelle Spellman in a bribery sting. Mann was not aware of the Bureau’s actions until after the fact. He tried to contact her on eleven separate occasions, but his calls went unanswered, unreturned. He needed her to remain silent. He needed to know she would take the fall, his name wouldn’t come up, not when he had just been elected Speaker of the House. The FBI continued to build their case and there was talk of a Grand Jury, of testimony, of things being said “on the record.”
On May 16 of that year, a week before the Grand Jury would hear Ms. Spellman’s testimony, Nichelle’s daughter Sadie was abducted directly out of her classroom. A man entered the school, telling the teacher he was from Nichelle’s husband’s office and Sadie needed to come with him right away. There was an emergency. The man seemed confident, articulate, and unthreatening, and the teacher complied without hesitation. A week later, Nichelle pleaded the Fifth to every question the Grand Jury asked her. She was distraught but resolute; she was asked if she needed more time in light of her family’s personal tragedy and she said no, this was her testimony, this was what she wanted on the record. The Grand Jury was stymied. Abe Mann’s name never passed her lips.
One month later, an undercover Kansas police officer, along with Nichelle, her husband, and her daughter, were all found dead in a snowy ditch near an abandoned airfield, shot at close range multiple times. The newspapers described it as a botched kidnapping hand-off, a sorry ending to a sad affair. The daughter’s body had shown signs of assault. No suspect was ever arrested.
I put down the papers, turning the new information over in my mind.
It seems Abe Mann has grown comfortable ordering the deaths of people. Nichelle hadn’t even talked, hadn’t given him up, and he still wanted the loose ends tied, wanted the coffin lids closed so no one would have a change of heart or a wandering tongue at a later date.
How many times had he ordered executions besides the two I know of? How many bodies are buried deep in his congressional closet? Does he take pleasure from it, acting as God, acting as one who decides between life and death?
It seems I am more like my father than I thought.
AT
a table a few feet away, a man is eating by himself, obviously waiting on someone. His feet tap the floor nervously, and his eyes flit to the door every few seconds. Eventually, a harried woman comes in, two small boys in tow. I keep my head buried in the file, chewing methodically on my quarter-pounder, trying not to look up, even as the couple barks at each other.
“We said twelve-thirty. I’ve been here an hour.”
“You try packing up all their shit for a weekend with no help. None!”
“I tried calling your cell phone.”
“Well, maybe I was a little busy, did you ever think of that?”
“Well, maybe I’ll bring them back an hour late on Monday.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“Real nice, Amy. Real nice. Right in front of ’em.”
“Oh, don’t you dare get self-righteous with me . . .”
After a few more exchanges, the woman storms out, leaving the father alone with the two boys. Each of them carries a backpack, and, on their faces, shame.
I finish my lunch and take the tray to the trashcan, dumping the contents and pushing the tray onto the shelf. The grease is still on my tongue, and even as I suck my large soda dry, it remains there, resistant and defiant.
When I step into the parking lot, it is impossible to avoid the small crowd gathered in a half-circle near my rental car. I don’t want to meet any eyes, I just want to get to my car and drive away, but it is too late for that. They are looking at me, shaking their heads, wanting me to join in, wanting me to see what they see and feel the misery they feel.
The woman who dropped off her kids has stepped out of her minivan, but left the driver’s door open, the engine idling.
“I didn’t see it. It just darted in front of me.”
The brown dog lies on the ground in front of her van, his back legs broken, his eyes wild. He tries to get to his front feet but can’t, and so lies back down, breathing rapidly, mustering the strength to try again, repeating the cycle over and over.
Try, fail, rest, try, fail, rest. Try. Fail.
I
make my way past the courtyard of the La Fonda, past businessmen and women finishing their lunches, and head for the ground-floor hallway, the corridor to my room.
Then the world slows, the sound drops out, everything fades to a single image, like looking through a tunnel toward the light at the other end. A single image, as in-focus as anything I’ve ever seen in my life. A man is coming out of my room, a gun in his hand, backing out, fresh blood on his face, and his eyes meet mine. I recognize him, I
know
him. I haven’t seen him in years, but I know him all right. I loaded his beer truck, he introduced me to the dark Italian, he brought Cox into that textile mill. I always knew that he, Hap Blowenfeld, was a killer, that he had been recruited by Vespucci before me, that the beer-truck job must have been a cover for an assignment; and in that moment, that crystal clear moment in which we were seeing each other, I took in every detail about
this
Hap, the one in the present, the one carrying a brand-new Beretta, the one who still weighs roughly a hundred and ninety pounds, the one who has a three-inch scar on his forehead that wasn’t there before, the one who has Pooley’s blood on his face.
And then, wham, everything speeds back to normal though it is all heightened, the colors somehow crisper, the smells stronger, and Hap doesn’t hesitate. He levels his gun at me and fires a silenced bullet, but I am moving fast now like a leopard that has spotted a predator in the jungle bigger than he. I dart back toward the courtyard as the bullet slams into the wall just inches behind my head, and I know Hap won’t follow me, he has been trained like me to blend in, but that isn’t my concern, my concern is to walk as quickly and as normally as I can back through the lobby and out to my car, the Range Rover Pooley had waiting for me in the parking lot of the Inn at the End of the Trail this morning, and maybe, just maybe I will not draw any stares, and maybe, just maybe I can spot that bastard driving off before he gets away clean.
I throw the car into gear and race around the building just in time to see a black Audi exiting onto San Francisco street, tires squealing as it passes from concrete to asphalt. Yes, finally, one fucking good thing in this terrible day, between that dog, that fucking dog with two broken legs trying to get to its feet after it careened off the front bumper of that haggard mother’s minivan and fucking Pooley, sticking around in Santa Fe when he should have been heading back East, but I told him to stay because I wanted more goddamn information, information I could have gotten myself, and I brought him into this life and because of me he’s dead, poor fucking Pooley, dealt the worst fucking hands all his goddamn life.
I didn’t have to see his body to know what had happened: Vespucci was a good fence and he had sniffed out the multiple assassins hired for this job and Hap had spotted me on Mann’s trail because he would have been doing the same thing I was doing, trying to get inside the candidate’s head,
make
the connection so he could
sever
the connection. And so he had seen me, and staked me, and he went into that room thinking it was me in there, but Pooley was waiting for me, and so got a bullet in his head when the door opened. If it wasn’t that, then it was a version pretty damn close to that, and now Hap was widening the distance between us because he was in an Audi and I had cavalierly told Pooley to get me something bigger, an SUV, thinking I had all the time in the world to make my plans.
An hour passes before I realize the Audi is gone, and I am alone.
CHAPTER 9
DARKNESS.
Black darkness.
And pain.
I have checked into a nondescript hotel, and I am sitting on the bed in the darkness, listening to the occasional rumble of the big rigs as they make their way down Highway 84, and I am thinking.
Earlier, a local news channel mentioned the shooting at the La Fonda, and the dead man who had checked into the hotel as Jim Singleton, but they weren’t sure of his identity. The police were investigating, but I knew the case would remain unsolved forever. The bullets in Pooley’s body and in the corridor wall would be untraceable, the weapon had most likely been destroyed, and the man I knew as Hap Blowenfeld was probably far from Santa Fe, probably already on the road to Nevada, where Abe Mann was stopping next. They might have security camera footage of both Hap and me in the lobby of the building, but they will curse their luck that neither of our faces are recognizable, we both seem to be aware of the cameras and are always looking in the opposite direction.
Why had Hap tried to kill me? For the same reason I will put a bullet in both Miguel Cortega and him. Because the end game is the death of nominee Abe Mann at the convention, and we cannot afford to have anyone else fuck up our kill. Whoever hired us wanted three killers to make sure the assignment was done right, was done successfully, but it would be one man ultimately pulling the trigger. It is part of the job, a necessary hazard of the game we choose to play; when multiple killers are hired, multiple killings are assured.
But Hap hadn’t killed me; he had killed a part of me, he had killed my only friend in this world, my brother, and for that he would pay with his life, Abe Mann or no Abe Mann.
Darkness. And pain. And Pooley.
AFTER
the Levine hit, after I killed the Boston bookie and all of his bodyguards, Vespucci asked for a meeting on the top of a parking garage near the water. The weather had taken a frigid turn, and snow collected on the ground in knee-high drifts, whitewashing all of Boston. On the exposed rooftop, the snow piled up unabated, and the wind was implacable as it whipped off the harbor’s waters and slammed into us.
Vespucci was alone, bundled up in a thick parka, though he didn’t wear a hat. He stood with hard eyes, glaring at me, treating the cold like it was just a nuisance, a fly to be swatted.
“What happened?” he spat at me as soon as I approached him.
“I severed the connection.”
“Severed!” His voice rose over the wind, the contempt unmistakable. “It was a bloodbath! You killed seven of his men! You left a massacre behind you!”
“I completed my mission.”
“No, Columbus! No! You are mistaken. Your mission was to kill Richard Levine. Only Richard Levine!”
“I did what I had to do to assure the kill.”
He started to say something, then stopped, eyes boring into me. My face was red, but not from the wind stinging it. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy, dolorous.
“Columbus. You are not the right man for this line of work. It hurts me to say this. I believe this to be my fault. I did not . . . how do you say . . . counsel you as properly as I should have. I take responsibility.”
He stamped his feet, but he did not take his eyes off of me. I said nothing, waiting for him to finish what he came here to say.
“Your . . . rampage . . . has caused me some difficulty. The enormity of what you did forced the police to assign an entire task force to the investigation. And not only have the police increased their strength, but a few of the connected families in this city have also put out . . . um . . . what is it . . . feelers . . . to discover who it is that would do this to Levine and his men.”
His eyes softened. I think he saw in my face that I recognized the trouble I had caused him.
“I understand now, Mr. Vespucci. I shouldn’t have . . .”
“You shouldn’t have continued to see Jacqueline Owens after I told you to stop.”
This caused my face to flush. I wasn’t expecting him to bring Jake into this. How did he know?
“Ahh, yes. I know why you did what you did. I know these men discovered your girlfriend. And from there, could have discovered you. I warned you, Columbus. But you would not listen. Pah . . .” He spat on to the ground, like he was spitting my foolishness into the snow. “So where does that bring us?”
“I’ll make it right.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it is too late for that. I wish you the best of luck.”
He started to reach inside his coat, and in an instant, I had a pistol up and pointed at his head. The speed of my draw startled him; I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I was ready. Even in my shame, I was ready.