I set the box of crackers down on the counter in front of me. There was a ringing in my ears, and I’m not sure if it was fear, or the fact I had heard the sound of truth delivered by this dark Italian in my kitchen.
“Hap saw something in you . . . saw this quality. He saw it . . . instinctively. He thought you could do this job after one conversation with you.”
“He works for you, then?”
“I have many people who work for me.” He studied me for a moment, appraising me. “I have a feeling. I have a feeling I would have found you anyway. There is a level to . . . how do you say . . . to fate? Yes? It causes paths to cross in ways we cannot understand.” He stopped, waving his hand, like he had stumbled down a dark road and now wanted to reverse direction. He handed me a manila envelope, the kind you might find in any office storage closet. A ten-by-thirteen plain manila envelope, heavy and rigid. “Read this,” he said, “then we’ll talk. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
With that, he put on his hat and shuffled toward the door.
I
spent hours poring over the contents of that envelope, exhilarated, like a person entrusted with a singular and dangerous confidence. The first sheet held a name printed in big black letters across the top: MICHAEL FOLIO. There was an address: 1022 South Holt Ave., and a description: six-two, 200 pounds, medium build, sandy hair, wire-frame glasses, no tattoos, no birthmarks. And there was more: “Michael has a facial tic that causes his upper lip to curl at the right corner. He has no relatives except a sister who lives in British Columbia, Carol Dougherty. She is married to Frank Dougherty, a plumber, and has two kids, Shawn, ten, and Carla, eight. They have not corresponded with Michael in over seven years.”
The next page gave a detailed description of Michael’s office: “He is a litigator in the law firm Douglas and Thackery. His office is on the fifth floor of a five-story office complex known as The Meadows. The firm has 25 employees. They are: Carol Santree, receptionist. . . .” This type of thing. The third page provided a blueprint of the office with a seating chart as to where exactly each employee sat. The fourth page gave a chronological list of precisely where Michael had been over the last thirty days: “8 a.m., target leaves house, moving West on Holt. He stops at Starbucks on corner of Holt and Landover. 8:15 a.m., leaves Starbucks continues west on Holt, follows until he reaches Highway 765, then turns north.”
This description continued for the next thirty pages or so. It began to dawn on me the time and energy and man-hours it took to compile the pages I held in my hands. Why would I need to know that working in his office was a junior partner named Sam Goodwin? That Michael frequently ate his lunch alone at The Olive Garden? That the route he took to get to the cleaners involved a shortcut on Romero Street? But the answer was obvious . . . so I, as the assassin assigned the task of killing Michael Folio, would best be able to plan my attack and my escape. Since I know that when he finishes his meal at The Olive Garden, eighty-seven percent of the time he uses the bathroom on his way out the door, I could plan to wait and ambush him in the men’s room stall. Since I know that he hasn’t spoken to his niece and nephew in seven years, I could pretend to be a friend of theirs and “bump” into him next to the dry cleaners. Gain his trust and get invited into his home. The possibilities were endless, but only because I had this file Vespucci had meticulously labored over.
That’s when the addiction began. I studied those pages as though I was reading scripture, each line read and read and read again until Michael Folio’s life was committed to memory. I found myself thinking of little else, waiting for the phone to ring.
WE
were eating lunch when I saw him. Jake had ordered breadsticks and salad and was picking away through her meal, while I was waiting on the pasta I had ordered.
“I’d like you to come home with me for the holidays,” she said, looking at me through the tops of her eyes.
“I thought you weren’t interested in seeing your fa mily.”
“I didn’t think I was. And I don’t know why, but they
are
my family and for some inexplicable reason I feel compelled to see them over the holidays. Maybe there’s something to be said for nature and nurture and all that sociological bullshit we studied my freshman year. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to . . . I’d understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to go?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. I just assumed you wouldn’t want to . . .”
“You still don’t have me figured out, do you?” I said.
“Every time I think I do, you throw me a curveball.” She settled into her food again, and I looked at the door, and that’s when I saw him. Michael Folio. The man from the envelope. The man who was going to die as soon as Vespucci gave the word. He waited at the hostess stand, then held up one finger, and the hostess nodded and led him toward a booth halfway between the bathroom and the table where Jake and I sat. I had purposely picked a table so I could sit with my back to the wall. That way, I would have a view of the entire restaurant.
Jake started talking again, but I didn’t hear what she was saying because a buzzing nested in my ear as I watched Michael Folio—not just a picture on top of a sheet of paper but a living and breathing human being. He sat down and studied his menu.
Jake turned her head to see what had gotten my attention. She probably thought I was staring at a woman, but when she saw a man in a suit and tie, she said, “You know him?”
I shook my head. “What?”
“That man . . . you looked at him like you knew him.”
“Did I?” I laughed. “I blanked out wondering where the hell my food was.”
That did the trick. She went back to talking about her family, and my food arrived, and I twirled the noodles around my fork and tried to concentrate, but every few seconds my eyes drifted to the breathing dead-man seated alone in the middle of the restaurant.
Finally, I excused myself and walked toward the bathroom. I had to pass by his booth on the way, and I glanced down at him as I went, but he didn’t notice. He was reading a copy of
Sports Illustrated
, engrossed in an article.
Inside the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to get my body to stop shaking. This was a new sensation; I felt electric, like a brewing storm. I splashed some water on my face, was rubbing my eyes, when the door to the bathroom opened.
I half-expected to see Michael Folio come through the door; in fact, I had planned my trip to the bathroom to coincide with the waitress bringing him his bill. But instead of Folio, it was Vespucci’s large figure who shuffled through the door. His eyes glowered at me, like they wanted to pick me up and throw me across the room.
“What’re you doing?” he spat in a hushed tone.
“Nothing. I—”
“You were to do
nothing
until I gave you the command. What you are doing here is not nothing!”
“I’m doing my homework, in case you called.”
“Homework? Don’t bullshit me.”
“That’s all I was doing.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“What? She’s just a girl I know.”
“You like her?”
“She’s just a girl, Mr. Vespucci.”
“We’ll talk about this later. Pay your bill and go home.”
I knew this was not open for discussion. I nodded, shimmied past him, and headed back to the restaurant. As I passed Folio’s booth, I noticed he was gone. Jake looked at me concerned as I approached our table.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you think it was the pasta?”
“I don’t know. We just need to go.”
She stood up, sympathy on her face. “You just head to the car. I’ll get the check.”
She drove me home while I pretended to feel queasy. It wasn’t difficult, since I was thinking about how upset Vespucci had been, how his eyes had flashed when he entered the bathroom. She dropped me off and I protested against her coming in with me . . . saying I needed to be alone and get this worked out. Reluctantly, she let me go, and I noticed it was several minutes before her car moved away from the curb.
VESPUCCI
didn’t come that night, or the next day, or the second night. I talked to Jake a couple of times and told her it was nothing but a stomach flu, that I would be fine, that I just felt weak and begged off meeting up with her for a few days. She wanted to take care of me, and I think she was saddened that I refused her succor. I think this might have raised the first questions in her mind as to where our relationship was going.
I more or less had the radio on all day, just background noise to keep me company as I waited. Which is why at first I didn’t process the report about the litigator who had been shot while sitting at his desk on the fifth floor of the Meadows Office Complex in the northern part of the city. The reporter’s words were just a dull hum when the name “Michael Folio” broke through the clutter. I leapt up like I was on fire and raced to the radio, turning the volume up as loud as it would go. The reporter was talking about another D.C. sniper, right here in Boston. Police were speculating that the bullet must have come from a neighboring rooftop and had caught the litigator just above his right ear as he sat reading a briefing at his desk. His assistant had heard the sound of glass shattering and had rushed to his office, only to find him lying facedown on his desk in a pool of his own blood. There was no more news at this time.
Just then, my door opened and Vespucci showed himself inside. He nodded at the radio, “You heard?”
I nodded back.
“Who was the girl?”
“A girl I’ve been seeing.”
“Get rid of her.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me why. You know why without me telling you.”
He dropped a new envelope on my counter and sat down on top of a bar stool.
“Mr. Vespucci . . . what I do on my own time is my business . . . now I don’t mind—”
He cut me off. “You think you are the first one to do this job? To be a professional?”
“I don’t—”
“There are reasons why I picked you. Number one.
No father and mother. Number two. No father and mother. Do I make sense? Yes?”
I stood there, smarting.
“Relationships are weakness. In this line of work, you can have no weakness. Or, I assure you, your weakness will be discovered and exploited.”
“By whom?”
“By whom?” he snorted. “I forget what a babe you are. You are now in the business of killing men. Women and children, too, if that is your assignment. When you do this job, you make enemies. Enemies in law enforcement, enemies in the families of the person you kill, enemies who are rival assassins. Yes. That’s right. I am not the only fence in this country; not even in this city. There are others who will do whatever they can to stop you from continuing to do what you do. And they will find this girl and exploit her. I promise you that.”
“She’s the first girl—”
“What? Who cared for you? Who made love to you? Bah. Let me tell you this, Columbus . . . she is nothing but a weight on your chest, pushing down on your breastbone, crushing the wind out of you. You
must
let her go. Tell her you will never see her again. I can give you no better advice than this.”
“I understand.”
“We’re in agreement, then?”
“I said I understand.”
I said it passionately, too, and he stared at me for a long time, measuring me, trying to read my thoughts. I diverted my eyes and picked up the envelope.
“What’s this, then?”
“Your next mark.”
“Will I get a chance to prove myself this time?” Vespucci stood up. “That is not up to me.”
“Who is it up to, then?”
“To God, I suppose. Study the contents of that envelope.” He made it to the door. “And forget this girl, Columbus.”
He didn’t wait for my reply as he shuffled out into the hall.
THE
name at the top of the page in the second envelope was Edgar Schmidt, a police detective. I did not get the call to kill him, but read about his death on the front page of the
Globe
three weeks later. The third envelope contained the name Wilson Montgomery, a pipefitter who had dealings with the mob. He died a week later, though I never found out how. The fourth envelope was devoted to a man named Seamus O’Dooley, a nightclub owner. He was gunned down in the alley behind his establishment.
I studied all of these files with undiminished intensity. In fact, each time I wasn’t called in to complete the mission only served to make me more focused on the next file.
But I didn’t forget the girl, despite what Vespucci ordered of me. I wanted to please him, but I wasn’t about to cast off the only part of my life that had ever meant anything. So when the holidays rolled around, Jake and I took off in her little Honda for New Hampshire.
Her family met us at the door. Her father, Jim, took my hand and warmly pumped it as he guided us into the house. In the fireplace, warm flames licked the screen that kept the embers at bay. The house was rustic, like many of the homes dotting the New England country-side, and the inside was filled with wooden Western-style furniture. A brown leather sofa took up most of the living room, and the home felt as warm as the fire. It was a home, a real
home,
something I’d never experienced.
Her mother, Molly, studied my face, a broad smile on her own, and said, “Well, don’t just stand there, Jim, grab his bag. We’re gonna put you in Louis’s room. It gets a little cold at night, but we’ll throw some extra blankets on your bed and you’ll be snug as a bug.” It seemed that once Jake’s mother opened her mouth, she couldn’t stop the onslaught of words tumbling from it.
Jake smiled and rolled her eyes when Molly wasn’t looking, as if to say “I tried to warn you . . .”