He looked confused for a moment, then realized where his hand was, and what it must have looked like to me. Slowly, slowly, he pulled from his inside coat pocket a large manila envelope.
“Because of what you did, they will come looking for us. This is the last time we will see each other. I hope you understand.”
With that, he dropped the envelope into the snow and walked away toward the stairwell in the corner of the lot.
THE
envelope contained enough money for me to dump the apartment and move into an efficiency in Framingham, about thirty miles outside the city. The space was only about five hundred square feet; it had once been a cheap hotel, and the rooms had been converted by putting tiny refrigerators and a sink into the bathrooms. I had to buy a single burner to use as a stovetop, and it was furnished with a Murphy bed, a hard mattress that folded out of the wall.
Pooley moved in four days after I did. I spent a little money on a small car, a Honda, and picked him up at Waxham on the day he was released. He looked the same, gaunt and disheveled, but somehow healthier. The last couple of years at Waxham had been good to him. He became something of a scrounger, partnered with a few guards, and created a large market for illicit goods inside the Juvey center. Subsequently, he bought himself a circle of protection from the bigger inmates, and was treated like a boss. He left the place with over five thousand dollars stored in a coffee can buried by a guard outside the walls of the place.
“I think my cell was bigger,” he said when I opened the door to my apartment.
“It probably was.”
“You have any beer?”
“Check the fridge.”
He found a bottle and popped it open, then took a long pull. My only piece of furniture was a lopsided couch I had bought at a yard sale. Pooley plopped down on it while I sat on the floor, using one of the walls for a backrest.
“It’s good to see you.”
“You look good. You look good.”
We sat for a minute, instantly comfortable, slipping back into our empathy for each other like putting on old jackets. I told him everything, everything I hadn’t put into letters, starting with Jake mistaking me for her brother and ending with Vespucci’s dismissal of me on the rooftop of the parking garage. He peppered me with questions as I went, asking for details, for clarifications, for specifics. He honed in on Vespucci’s role in my life, and fired the inquiries like a machine gun. How much did he charge? How did he get his information? How did he meet his contacts? How many hit men worked for him? Did he do the background research on his own or did he have subordinates? How did he dress? How did he carry himself?
I tried to answer the ones I knew and guessed at the ones I didn’t. Pooley was entirely nonjudgmental throughout; in fact, he was fascinated. He asked to see my weapons, and I showed him the pistols, how the racking chamber worked, how to load a clip, how to conceal it on my body.
“I could do it,” he finally said after we had fallen silent for a while, listening to the heavy motor of a snow-plow rumbling down the street.
“I don’t know, Pooley. Killing a target—”
“No, not the killing part. I don’t have the stomach for it. But I could be your fence. Do what Vespucci did.”
My wheels were turning before he finished his sentence. “How would you go about—?”
“I don’t know. Start from scratch, I guess.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I was pretty damned resourceful at Waxham, Columbus.” He let the name out slowly, like his voice was thick with it, a smile on his face. In fact, from that point on, he never called me by my real name. Only the name Vespucci had given to me, my killing name. He continued, “I’m serious. I am detailed, I blend in, I survive. I negotiated Juvey like a chameleon, all five-foot-nine of me; I was practically running the place before my release. I can get you the details you need to continue doing what you do. I’ll pick up where Vespucci left off. I’ll be better than him.”
“Where would you even begin to make contacts? It’s not a field that invites newcomers. ‘Hey, you look trustworthy. Wanna kill someone for me?’”
“You let me worry about that.”
“I can’t. I’ll be worried, too.”
“Whatever. Just give me six months. Between what you have and what I have, we don’t have to earn another dime for at least a year. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll have plenty of time to call it off. Start flipping burgers or packing beer trucks or whatever else it is Waxham graduates do.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. Just pulled on my beer, my back against the wall, tossing it around in my mind. Finally, I looked over at him. He was grinning, his eyes shining.
“You sure you want to go down this road?”
“As sure as you were when you dropped that sewing machine on Cox’s fucking head.”
I reached my hand over so we could clink our bottles together. “Then let’s do it.”
Three weeks later, they came for me.
“THREE
men just stepped out of a Mercedes.”
“What?”
Pooley was sitting on the sofa, his neck craned, shielding his eyes from the sunlight as he peeked out the small window. He just happened to be looking out at exactly the right time.
“They’re splitting up, one out front, one heading to the steps, one moving toward the back. Black guys in suits.”
Black guys. Suits. Mercedes. Three things that didn’t add up for this dilapidated efficiency in Framingham; three things that might as well have been a warning light on top of a lighthouse tower.
I didn’t need any further information. In an instant, I was up and throwing open the case that held my weaponry. Five more seconds and I had two clips popped in place, Glocks double-fisted, racked and ready. Pooley scrambled off the sofa and I tossed him two empty clips. Like lightning, he had a shell-case open and was popping bullets into the clips as though he had been doing it all his life. I would have stopped to smile, appreciate the way his fingers maneuvered the bullets into place like a piano virtuoso working the keys, but I was all business now.
I crept up to the apartment door, and crouched beside it, then brought one of my guns to the center of the door, holding it out so the barrel pointed at the wood. Pooley lay down and put his head on the carpet so he could look through the small space separating the bottom of the door from the baseboard. A shadow crossed through the sliver of light in the hallway, and then he spotted two burgundy dress shoes approaching the door.
Pooley didn’t hesitate, he nodded his head, giving me the signal to shoot, and I pulled the trigger seven times, blowing holes through the wood, the smell of gunpowder and smoke and blood immediately redolent in my nostrils.
I swung the door open and leaped into the hallway, over the bullet-riddled body of the black man who had come to kill me. He stared vacantly at the ceiling, a look on his face . . . Surprise? Confusion? I didn’t stop to puzzle over it, but headed down the corridor for the stairwell that led to the alley behind the building.
A second black man was rushing up the steps just as I reached the landing, and he fired first, catching me in my right shoulder and spinning me backward, knocking me off my feet. He came up to finish me but made the mistake of pausing for a moment over my slumped body. Pooley shot him in the head, at close range, a fountain of red mist spraying the wall and splattering my face like I had showered in blood. He hadn’t figured on me having company, hadn’t bothered to scout me, to find out if I had any surprises waiting for him. In fact, the amateurish way these shooters had already botched this contract made me think Vespucci might not have sent them. Or if he had been forced to give me up, he maybe held out, did me a favor, gave me one last professional nod. If he had been forced to hire some guys to go after me—if the connected families in Boston had gotten to that olive-skinned Italian—well, at least he sent some minor-league hitters to the plate and gave me a fighting chance.
I kicked in the door on a first-floor apartment where I knew the tenant, an electrician, worked on weekdays and wouldn’t be home. His apartment had a window facing the front of the building, and Pooley and I squatted next to it to take a look at the third shooter, who was checking his watch, stamping his feet in the cold, and looking impatiently up to my window with increasing concern.
Pooley popped the clip from my Glock, reloaded it, racked it, and placed it in my good hand. Then he cracked the window half an inch, just enough for me to wedge in the barrel of my gun. The third shooter pulled out a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, checked the address, checked his watch, checked the address again, furrowed his brow, and then . . . wham . . . my first and only shot caught him in the center of his head, shattering his nose and caving in the front of his face. He stuttered backwards, and then dropped onto the snow-covered asphalt.
Pooley and I quickly gathered my gear, everything we could fit into one large trash bag, and headed into the parking lot for my car. The third shooter still lay dead in the snow, his blood congealed like a halo around his head. The building was tucked into a small street off the main highway, where traffic was nonexistent this time of day. Luck was with us, no one had driven into the lot in the five minutes it had taken us to get up to my apartment and gather our possessions.
I looked at the dead body, and then noticed the paper still clutched in his hand, the slip he had pulled from his inside jacket pocket.
“Let’s go, Columbus. Now, before our luck changes.”
Pooley was right, I should have jumped behind the wheel of the Honda and gotten us out of there, but I wanted to know if that paper had something on it, some clue that would tell me who was trying to kill me and how I could stop it from happening again. I was only being cautious.
I grabbed the paper and sure enough, scrawled in pencil in a barely legible hand was my address here in Framingham, the target’s residence, nothing more. At least I thought there was nothing more until I flipped it over.
Scribbled on the other side in that same masculine hand was another address.
Pooley must have seen the color drain from my face. “What is it?”
“They have Jake’s address.”
I
didn’t talk. I had the Honda’s accelerator mashed to the floorboard, ripping up the highway toward Boston like a missile locked on its target. I was racing blindly, ignoring the increasing amount of pain in my shoulder, my mind focused on one thing, only one thing: getting to Jake. I wouldn’t have slowed if God himself had tried to stop me.
“We don’t know if they went to her first.”
I didn’t answer, and Pooley gave up trying to talk to me. He just sagged back into his chair like the effort was too much.
I blitzed the car into Boston, and flew through intersection after intersection until finally I screeched to a stop outside of her apartment building. I left the car in the street double-parked, not bothering to look for a parking place.
“Columbus! Columbus! Take it easy, for Chrissakes. Do you know how you look? Like a maniac . . .” Pooley was shouting at me but the words weren’t registering as I took the steps on her stoop two at a time. I didn’t bother to buzz for entry; I just broke the glass door with my fist and twisted the latch from the inside, my hand sticky with blood. I flew up two flights of stairs before reaching her door.
I knocked with my bloody fist; I found I couldn’t raise my good hand, the bullet in my shoulder had rendered it useless. Where was she? Oh, God, please tell me they didn’t . . . I knocked again, pounded, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, over and over and over. Please tell me they didn’t touch her. Please tell me they didn’t. Vespucci told me to stop seeing her and I did, I stopped, I left town without saying good-bye, I didn’t phone her, I didn’t send her a letter, I was willing to let it die, but not like this, bam, bam, bam, bam, not like this, bam, bam, bam . . .
And then the door opened. Jake’s face filled the entry-way, Jake’s beautiful face, my God, she looked fine, healthy, unharmed, untouched, surprised to see me, about to be angry, but then she saw the blood on my shirt, on my hand. . . .
“What happened to you?”
She pulled me inside the apartment, her face a picture of concern. I was overwhelmed with relief, couldn’t open my mouth.
She spoke instead, “I’ve been so worried. For weeks, not a word, not a call. I didn’t know what I did to hurt you. I love you so much, I just couldn’t understand it.”
She was unbuttoning my shirt, and she gasped when she saw the wound to my shoulder. She didn’t think, just immediately darted to the kitchen and snatched up a rag, turned on the faucet, and let the water run warm.
I knew then I would have to do the hardest thing I had ever done, harder than killing a man. To end this, to make sure this was finished, to make sure they would never come for her, I couldn’t just run away and leave her behind.
She came back, holding the wet cloth, and began to clean my wound, but I grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her back.
“You have to move.”
“What?”
“You have to get out of here. Get your things, whatever you can carry with you in the next five minutes and get out of here. Go somewhere, anywhere, but get out of Boston and don’t come back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it!”
My voice must have been like a slap to her face, tears sprung to her eyes.
“I don’t understand!”
“I’m a bad man, Jake! I’m worse than bad. I’m a goddamn nightmare. You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”
“What, what . . . ?” she sputtered.
“I never fucking loved you. I’ve been using you as a fuck rag. Something to sleep with to get my mind off of all the other shit in my life.”
“What are you talking about?” Her voice was barely a whisper, a squeak as the tears spilled out and soaked her mouth.