“You didn’t kill him?” Hap asked, gnawing on his lower lip a little bit.
I shook my head side to side.
“But you wanted to.”
“Yep.”
“I’d’ve liked to get my hands on that sum-bitch.” He stared down at his hands, as though he could see it happening, what Cox’s throat would look like caught in his massive fingers, squeezing the neck until it caved in on itself.
Hap looked at me sideways. “You think you had it in you to finish him?”
“If I could’ve, I would’ve.”
Hap grinned. “I’ll bet you would. I just bet you would.”
He drove off a few minutes later, and I went to get my next assignment, feeling a slight pull in my chest.
A
week later, I had completely forgotten about my conversation with Hap when a Cadillac limousine pulled alongside me while I was walking home from work. A dark window slid down and an olive, moon-shaped face stared out at me. I thought this man must have mistaken me for someone, the way Jake had mistaken me for her brother. A fat hand extended out the window toward me.
“Vespucci,” the face said, the hand waiting in anticipation.
I shook it, unsure what to say.
Then a second face filled the window behind Vespucci’s, with a broad grin and a wink aimed in my direction. “Get in, Buck,” Hap said, as the door opened my way.
THE
car was bigger than anything I had seen before, like the inside of the empty beer trucks, and I sat facing the dark Italian and Hap. Their eyes studied my face like they were trying to read a book; what exactly they were hoping to find in my expression, I had no idea. Waxham had taught me to suppress my emotions, to make my face as blank as fresh paper, and for a long moment we rode in silence, measuring each other.
“You some kind of orphan?” the dark face asked in a thick Italian accent.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what, kid?” Hap corrected, his face urging me.
“Yes, sir,” I said, not wanting to disappoint Hap.
“Good. Dat’s good, kid. What’s your name?”
I answered him and he laughed. “You get a new name starting today. A new name when you work for me.”
I had no idea what this man was talking about.
“Work for you?”
“Dat’s right. Starting today.”
I looked at Hap, and he just nodded at me, smiling, like he had done me a great favor.
The car pulled up alongside an abandoned warehouse, a large building in a part of town I had never visited. The building took up a city block, and was probably once teeming with factory workers and sweat and life, but now just stood blank and forgotten, like an old man put to rest in a nursing home. The windows in the upper stories looked shattered, and natty birds flew in and out intermittently. On the side of the building COLUMBUS TEXTILES was printed in faded block letters.
“But first, a test,” Vespucci said. “To see what kind of . . . possibility . . . you might have.” He seemed to linger over the word “possibility” like it tasted sweet in his mouth and he was savoring it. “Let’s go.”
Inside the warehouse, dust settled over what little furniture had been left behind when the company packed up and moved. The place had once been used to make textiles, and inoperative looms and abandoned sewing machines lay dormant on the tops of forgotten tabletops. The main room was huge, like a cathedral, and a small desk had been recently pushed to the middle of the floor. On top of the desk lay a pistol.
“What is this?” I asked, puzzled, searching for answers in the faces of the men who’d brought me here. If those faces held answers, I wasn’t experienced enough to read them.
Just then, another door opened on the other side of the enormous room. Three men approached us, their hollow footsteps clomping over the concrete floor, but in the dim light of the room I couldn’t make out their features. One of the men, though, had a hauntingly familiar gait, a way of walking as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint.
“What is this, Hap?”
Then a voice I had tried to forget so many times reached out and punched me in the gut like a fist. “Yeah,” said Pete Cox, representing the middle of the trio who approached. “What the fuck is this? These two fellas promised me there was something I’d . . . want . . . to . . . see . . .”
His eyes found mine, and for a moment he was as surprised as I was. He said my name, then repeated it, dumbfounded, like he was waking from a dream. Then he looked over his shoulder at the two men flanking him, their eyes as hard as concrete. “What is this?” he repeated, weakly.
“This,” said Vespucci in a rough growl, “is a test.”
“A what?” said Cox, like he didn’t hear the man correctly.
“A test for the boy you liked knocking around so much, tough guy.”
Cox’s eyes settled on the pistol resting on the desk and he started backpedaling, his feet moving almost involuntarily. But the two men closed on him, and held him firmly by the elbows so he could no longer move.
“Hey, wait, what’s this . . . ? What’s this all about? He . . . he killed my wife. Did he tell you that?” His voice sounded shrill.
Hap spat on the ground. “He told me everything I needed to know.“
I still couldn’t find my voice . . . this clash with my past jarring me as though I’d been shell-shocked. Here was Mr. Cox, the man who had caused an enormous abyss in my childhood, standing before me. The only item positioned between us was a pistol.
Vespucci spoke. “In ten seconds, my men and I are going to leave this place and lock the door behind us. On that desk is a pistol. Somewhere in this room are the bullets that can be fired from that pistol. I will open the doors again tomorrow morning and only one of you will come out. If there are two of you standing here when I open the door, I’ll cut you both down. Only one walks out tomorrow morning.”
I looked at Mr. Cox’s face with what must have been a feral snarl and I could almost feel him reeling back, looking for an escape route.
“You must be joking. I can’t . . .” he started to protest, but every man in the room besides us turned on their heels and headed for the exits, leaving the sentence to die in the air, unfinished. We both stood silently, as two sets of doors swung shut and were bolted behind us. Neither of us flinched, nor twitched a muscle; we just stared at each other.
Then as the weight of the silence threatened to crush us, he leaped for the gun. My legs took over, and I tackled him before his hand could grip the weapon. We smashed into the desk, overturning it, and the gun skittered across the floor.
His hands went for my face, trying to claw my eyes as we both fought for leverage. He was still bigger than me, and his legs straddled mine, so I couldn’t gain my balance, while his hands continued to scratch at my face. The only thing I could do was ball my hands into fists and start driving my knuckles into his rib cage, his kidneys, one, two, three times, again and again. He may have had a weight advantage, but I had learned a great deal about dirty fighting in the exercise yard at Waxham. I must have caught him under a rib, because suddenly he gasped for breath and fell over sideways.
I sprang up, my eyes a bit blurry from the pressure, and stumbled toward the gun. He caught his breath and stood to follow, just as I scooped up the weapon.
As I held it up, he sneered, “Lot of good that will do you without the—” But before he could finish that thought, I pistol-whipped him across the face, smashing him so hard his mouth filled with blood and he fell to the floor in a heap. He started to rise, so I smashed him again, harder, putting all my weight behind it, and this time he stayed down. Faint whimpers came from his throat and quickly died in the large, hollow room.
Fuck the bullets. I headed for an old rusty sewing machine that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. It must have weighed over fifty pounds, but it seemed light as a feather as I hoisted it onto my shoulder and marched back toward the whimpering heap on the floor.
He looked up as I stood over him, gore splashed all over his lips, his gums, his teeth. “Wha-what are you doing this for?” he sobbed.
“For Pooley,” I said, and smashed the sewing machine down on top of his skull.
I
sit in my hotel room in Philadelphia watching Abe Mann outline his vision for America on television. This is how he will sit, I imagine, a few weeks from now, watching himself say the same things by rote, over and over. How he’s for working families, and lower taxes, and cutting tax breaks for the rich. How he’s for a woman’s right to choose and a stronger military and jobs staying home instead of going overseas. The same fast-food dish served up stale by politicians every few years.
His voice is throaty; it arrives from deep down in his lungs. It is one of the reasons he has been so successful in politics: he is well-practiced in
how
he speaks, even if he doesn’t believe
what
he is saying. And he has a new hand gesture: an open palm, the fingers splayed, shaking at an angle as he punctuates the key words in his speech. It is a variation on the thumb-point, or the crooked index finger. It gives him a certain authority, like an old Southern preacher at the pulpit. I find myself making the same gesture with my hand, watching him without listening, the way he does while he speaks.
The phone rings, and it is Pooley on the other end when I answer.
“What did you find?”
“Very little, so far. Archibald Grant has disappeared; no one has seen him in days.”
“Then whoever hired me has tossed his middleman.”
“Looks that way.”
My mind is racing. “What next, then?”
Pooley blew out a long breath. “I’m going to dig some more, see if I can’t find a trail from Grant to someone else.”
“You sure you want to do that?”
“Hey . . . why should you be the only one who gets to climb out from behind a desk?”
I smile. “You be careful.”
“You got it.”
I
am on the road again, back in my element, the present. I am heading to Ohio, what they call a battleground state, where Abe Mann will spend an unprecedented three days on his tour . . . Cleveland, then Dayton, then Cincinnati. Electoral votes in this state have swung an election in the past, and glad-handing is necessary and expected. I try to imagine what Abe Mann will be feeling at this point in the campaign. Fatigue? Irritation? Or will he feel renewed, as I do now? Back in the present. Yesterday behind me.
In Cleveland, I eat lunch at a restaurant called Augustine’s. It is upscale but strives to be better than it is, like a scarred woman who puts on too much rouge to cover her blemishes. The food is bland and tasteless. A young couple at a table next to me is talking about the upcoming election, and without turning my head I can hear every word they say. Or rather I can hear every word
she
says, since she is dominating the conversation.
“I consider myself socially liberal but economically conservative. Winston Churchill once said, ‘If you’re young and a conservative, you have no heart. But if you’re old and a democrat, you have no money.’ ” The man across from her chuckles. “But I’m being serious here. I feel like we pay way too much in taxes, and for what? More Washington waste?”
“So you’re voting Republican?” the man asks.
“No, I’m still undecided. I want to hear what the candidates have to say at their conventions and then . . .”
Her voice continues on and on, like a comfortable hum, and it strikes me that this woman is the same age Jake would be. Now, I know I shouldn’t turn my head, I know I definitely should
not
make eye contact, but there is something in her voice that washes over me like warm water. I stick out my index finger and clumsily knock my fork off the table, toward the woman’s voice. We both reach for it at the same time, and for a full second, we look into each other’s faces. I don’t know what she finds in mine, but in hers I see what might have been.
CHAPTER 5
MY
first paying job for Vespucci was to kill a woman. He was waiting in my apartment on a Sunday afternoon, after I had spent the day walking around the Harbor with Jake. His face was grave, serious.
“Do you know what a fence is, Columbus?” He had been calling me “Columbus” since the door swung open at the abandoned Columbus Textile warehouse the morning after I had brained Mr. Cox.
“No, sir. Not any other way than what I think it is.”
“I am a fence. A fence is a middleman. A go-between. Do you understand?”
I looked at him with what I am sure was a blank expression.
“I am hired by certain people for the purpose of assassination. They give me a target’s name. It is my job as the fence to find out as much information about the mark as I can. Then I, in turn, assign the job to one of my professionals. The professional never meets the client. That is my job. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good, Columbus. You are . . . a quick learner.”
“And I’m your professional?”
He chortled a little. “Not yet, no. You are . . . how should I say . . . an understudy, like in the theater. You will learn your role and be ready to fill a position as necessary. You will be paid only if you kill a mark. And once you’re paid,” he said, a broad smile appearing across his face, “well, then, I suppose you are a professional.”
I moved to the kitchen and took down a box of crackers from a shelf. But I only fidgeted with the box, turning it over and over in my hands like a pig on a spit.
“What if I’m not interested in being one of your professionals?’
He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with his fist, and the smile left his face. “God gave you free will. I do not presume to take that away from you. However, I have looked into your eyes, Columbus. I have seen the orphan childhood; I have felt your hands turn into fists. You are a killer. A . . . how is it . . . a natural killer. The warehouse didn’t make you a killer. You were one before you ever lifted that sewing machine above your head. I only helped show you what you are.”