call him back from a different line.
“Very well. I’ll try to dial you in the next day or two.”
I decide to flush the quail if he’s not going to attempt it. “And what do you want in exchange?”
“Not a thing. I have a new outlook on life. I am trying to be accommodating to my friends and rely on providence to reward me with good fortune.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You are a cynic then. I understand. But my actions will turn you into a believer.”
“Okay… well, I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Yes, soon.”
We hang up. If he’s going to work out his personal issues on my behalf, I’m happy to accommodate.
Carla is in her late thirties, and looks the opposite of most female plugs I’ve encountered over the years. Professionals are always trying to get close to their marks in order to make the kill in private and get the hell away after business is done; as such, most of the women I’ve seen in this line of work are gorgeous. They work their way inside on the mark through suggestions of sex and pounce when the target is at his most vulnerable. By the time the mark figures out he’s been conned, his bodyguards are outside the door, his pants are around his ankles, and his day is about to be ruined. Many a target has been popped at night, but not discovered until the next morning, naked, in bed, blood-dry.
Carla isn’t talking too many men into the bedroom. She’s dressed like she’s used to towing around a couple of kids: knock-off designer jeans and an unflattering print shirt bearing a vague pattern of stripes. She’s dowdy, about thirty pounds overweight, and has a face that wouldn’t launch any ships out of Troy.
I smile when I spot her. She wouldn’t stand out in any room, on any block, in any crowd, on any stage. She doesn’t just blend into the background, she is the background. I almost didn’t pick her out, even though she’s the only woman walking down Warren Street at this time of morning. Her expression is neutral, as bland as her wardrobe and as unassuming as her gait. I like her already.
I approach Carla from behind so she’ll have to turn. I want to see how she moves, see if I can spot where she keeps her weapons.
“Carla?”
She turns slowly, deliberately. Her eyes fix on my chest, unchallenging. Her voice is wheezy, like a trumpet with a faulty valve. Nothing about her is inviting.
“You Walker?”
“That’s right. Let’s move where we can talk.”
“You got an office around here?”
“I like to walk and talk.”
“You got muscle?”
“Just me.”
“You must be new to this.”
“I… how long I’ve been doing this is none of your business.”
She doesn’t respond, just follows beside me as I head up the street toward the river. I think she’s bought my newbie act, though I’m not certain.
I talk just above a whisper, “You work tandem with a hitter named Spilatro?”
“Why’s it matter?”
“I might need a two-fer and my client wants a team who’ve worked well together in the past.”
“Fsssh.” The trumpet hits another false note as she blows out a disappointed breath. “I don’t team anymore.”
“You guys have a falling-out?”
“Why’s it matter?” she asks a second time.
“Just making conversation.”
“Now I know you haven’t been doing this long.”
She stops in the street and this time lifts her eyes all the way to my face. “You got a job? Give me a file and let me know when you want the account closed. Otherwise I’m going to walk in that direction, you’re going to walk in that direction, and if we see each other again, we won’t be shaking hands.”
During this, her face doesn’t pinch or blacken. She just says it plainly, like we’re discussing the Tribeca weather.
“All right, don’t tighten up. I was just trying to get a feel for your style…”
“What you see is what you get,” she says.
“Fair enough. Let’s stop right here.”
She obeys and folds her arms, impatient. I change tactics, hardening.
“We’re going to have a conversation about Spilatro and you’re going to tell me everything you know about him, or you’ll be dead at my feet before you can take a step away. Your choice.”
This ambush catches her flush, off-guard. She blinks and swallows, not sure how control could have flipped so quickly.
Then her right eye flutters as a red laser shines into it, and we watch together as a small pinprick of red light slowly moves down her face until it stops square in the middle of her chest. Risina is high up on a rooftop working our own loose version of a tandem. Carla doesn’t need to know that the red laser comes from an office pointer rather than a gunsight.
I hold my hand up. “If I raise a finger, you drop. Nod if you understand.”
It takes her a moment to focus on me, and when she does, it is through defeated eyes. She nods. Her gaze flits back to the red dot on her chest.
“Who are you?”
“What’s it matter?” I say, using her words. “What do you know about Spilatro?”
“He…”
“Speak up.”
“He brought me into this business.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I… uh…” She shakes her head slowly, like she can’t believe what she’s about to say. “I was married to him.”
That’s unexpected.
“Start from the beginning.”
It doesn’t take long for the words to gush out of her like water from an overturned hydrant. I have the feeling Carla has been waiting a long time to tell her story, to get things off her chest. Most likely, she hasn’t had anyone to talk to about what she does for a living. She just needs someone to whom she can confess her sins, both personal and professional, and I’m the first man to ask for it. That’s unexpected, too.
For the first six years of their marriage, Carla Fogelman Spilatro had no idea her husband, Douglas, was a professional hit man. She thought he worked sales for a software company that specialized in creating computer programs for brokerages. He talked about programs for tracking stocks, programs for tracking sales, programs for tracking investments, and it all seemed, well, boring. She tuned him out. She didn’t care. She worked too, as a speech pathologist for a hospital, assisting stroke patients who could no longer get their mouths around their words. It was stressful and grueling and demanding, and she came home each day exhausted, too tired to listen to her husband talk about quotas and sales leads.
Their marriage was comfortable if not comforting, and she was happy to have the television to herself when her husband went away on frequent business trips. They had no kids, confessing early in their courtship neither cared for children, and she never heard her biological clock tick the way so many other women did. Between her husband’s commissions and her speech salary, they established themselves in the upper middle class and had a nice two-story home, the customary accoutrement of couples earning their income.
Her husband had one quirk. Miniatures. He had a basement full of miniatures-airplanes, trains, cars. In fact, he built elaborate cityscapes, with model skyscrapers and model traffic congestion and model construction equipment and sometimes little model pedestrians walking the model streets. She didn’t mind him down in the basement, building his tiny worlds; she figured having him home when he was in town was better than having him out at bars or running around the way some husbands did. Besides, she could watch her shows while he was
