“Are you kidding? I think there’s a bigger problem evolving that you need to consider.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m starting to like this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ridgefield, Connecticut is an affluent, three-hundred-year-old neighborhood settled at the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. It boasts an historic district, an art museum, a small symphony hall, and two private high schools. Some sixty miles from New York City, it’s a simple, ninety-minute train ride from the Branchville Metro North station, conveniently located in the southeast corner of town, all the way to Grand Central Station in Manhattan. And yet, it is a world away from Bedford-Stuyvesant, or “Bed-Stuy.”
Kirschenbaum lives on a knoll in a five-bedroom brick house on four private acres in Ridgefield with vistas overlooking half the county. He has no wife, no children, no ties to the real world to be exploited. His house is a fortress, and he employs a regular staff of professional bodyguards, top-shelf guys who know how to handle a weapon and don’t rattle.
There are several ways to reach a man who doesn’t want to be reached. Usually, I focus on vices since most people who dip their toes into this pool have a few secrets they want kept in the deep end. They’ll visit whores or buy narcotics or have a thing for guns or want to diddle boys, and this gives me a way to get to them. But I don’t have time to plan a successful sneak attack, and I don’t have a fence to help me figure out and explore his vices, and with Risina along for the ride, guns blazing might not be the best approach either. Navigating this world over the years, I’ve learned there’s a time to explode, loud and aggressive, and there’s a time to be supplicant, quiet and introspective.
Risina and I approach the brick columns bordering the gate leading to Kirschenbaum’s property. There is a callbox but no button to press and no cameras visible even though I know they are there.
“Tell Kirschenbaum Columbus wants to see him,” I say to the gate. “I don’t have the time or resources to go through the proper channels. I’ll be in room 202 tonight at the West Lane Inn for the ten minutes following midnight. If men come through the door with guns out, those men will be dropped. I have no problem with Kirschenbaum; I just need information.”
We turn and head down the path back to the street.
Kirschenbaum arrives on the hour and enters the room alone. If he’s trying to set a tone, trying to signal he isn’t intimidated, it works. I’m impressed. He doesn’t need an entourage, doesn’t bother with his retinue of bodyguards-he watched me on the tape at his gate and decided on this strategy, to come devoid of self-doubt.
From what I’d read about him, I knew he was tall, but his height is pronounced in person, or maybe it’s accented by the way he almost has to stoop under the low ceilings of this old rustic inn. His hair is jet-black without a trace of gray, swept back from his forehead like he’s wearing a helmet. He wears a tight navy sweater and black slacks. His eyes are pale, striking, alert. He has half of a robusto cigar jutting out of the corner of his mouth like an extension of his face, and the smoke hangs around his head like a wreath.
He stands just inside the doorway, and looks at me, seated in a wooden chair near the small table, then turns his neck without moving his body to pick up Risina, who hasn’t moved from the corner near the door. I placed her there, in his blind spot, and she has her hands behind her back, leaning against the wall. A threat but not threatening.
“Where do you want to do this?” His voice is a lower register than I would have guessed. It seems to come from somewhere near his abdomen and has a raspy quality, like a frog croaking. He talks around the cigar like it isn’t there.
“You want to have a seat?”
He heads for the only other chair in the room without nodding, sits and crosses one ankle on his knee, then folds his arms across his chest, comfortable as can be. After a moment, he takes the cigar out and holds it between his thumb and forefinger to use it as a pointer.
“She joining us?”
I shake my head.
He turns to her. “What’s your name, darling?”
That’s something we hadn’t yet discussed, and I curse myself for not thinking to do it sooner. There is an art to a fake name, and we should have decided on one a long time ago, before we entered the country. I’m hoping she doesn’t answer, but one thing I’ve learned about Risina, she rarely does what I think she’ll do. I may not have thought of a name for her, but she has.
“Tigre,” she says, not missing a beat, her accent thick.
I feel warmth rise up in my chest, though I keep my face blank. A tiger is a goddamned tiger. Since Smoke located me in that bookstore, I’ve thought I was the tiger, the hibernating predator who recognized the familiar scent of prey after a long lay-off. What I hadn’t thought about, what I hadn’t considered until just now, is that Risina, too, is a tiger. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Am I relieved she is more like me than I thought, or disappointed?
Kirschenbaum seems satisfied and spins back to me.
“You two working a tandem?”
“That’s right.”
“How can I help you, Columbus?”
“You know my work?”
“I’ve been following you since your early days with Pooley. I never met the guy but his reputation was solid. It’s too bad he had his ticket punched. You were with Bill Ryan after that?”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad about that one, too. And now Archibald Grant.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve had some bad luck with fences?” He says this matter-of-factly, and pops the cigar back in his mouth. I’m starting to understand how Kirschenbaum made such a name for himself. I feel like maybe I stepped under the ropes and into a ring, except we’re going to spar with words instead of boxing gloves.
“That’s why I’m here. Archie’s been taken.”
“I heard. That’s why you approached my gate. Where I live. With no appointment. No warning. Just walked up to my front gate.”
“Like I said, I want information.”
He spins to Risina again. “Can you get me a glass of water, honey?”
She doesn’t move, just smiles. He turns back to me, now grinning. He raises his eyebrows like he took a shot at shaking her, and no harm done. Then his face turns grave again. He’s switching tones and moods and expressions so fast, it’s dizzying.
“Information costs.”
“It always does.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know everything about a contract killer you represent named Spilatro.”
He doesn’t blink. “I know quite a bit about him.”
“That’s good. Now I know we’re not wasting each other’s time.”
“Here’s a tidbit to wet your whistle. He doesn’t do the work you think he does.”
He’s telling me this so, like any salesman dangling a carrot, I’ll bite. Instead I duck his jab…
“Do you know his real name?”
“As sure as I know your real name ain’t Columbus. And you’re originally from Boston. And your first fence wasn’t Pooley but a dark Italian named Vespucci. And…”
Fuck, is he good. He’s jabbing, jabbing, jabbing, trying to stagger me. To throw him off his rhythm, I interrupt. “And if I were here to find out what you know about me, I’d be impressed, but I’m not, so I could give a shit. I want you to give up Spilatro.”
