hadn’t been around her throat two hours before.
“I overreacted,” he told her. “But it was such a surprise to see you standing there… it was like a violation, I guess. I really apologize for that.”
“For trying to kill me?” she whispered as she tried her best not to raise her voice.
“That wasn’t me. I promise. I was stressed out and off my game. I was seriously in shock. Nobody’s ever thought to catch me before and I guess I hadn’t prepared for it mentally. I saw you standing down there and an animal part of me took over. But I’m okay now. I see it now.”
Inexplicably, she softened and he pounced on it like a cat with a ball of string. “I love you, honey. That’s never changed. You mean more to me than anything. You tell me to stop, to get out, to drop this business and leave it in the sewer, then I will. We’ll just move away and be done with it.”
And she believed him.
We sat on a stoop on Warren Street for hours while Carla laid it out for me. If she forewent details, I grilled her to fill them in. If I thought she was holding back, I turned up the heat. That laser sight on her chest would disappear for a time, then reappear at various intervals, so it stayed omnipresent in her mind. But I couldn’t have pried half this information from her if she hadn’t wanted to talk, hadn’t needed to talk. I don’t believe most of it, especially the parts where she presents herself in the best possible light. But the kernels of truth are there, and it is those kernels I can make pop.
“And instead of asking him to quit, you joined him?”
“Not at first. God, no. But you’re right, I didn’t ask him to quit either. The money was insane, and the job kept him busy. I just put my hands over my ears, hear no evil, see no evil, you know?”
“So when did you start working tandem?”
She gazes at her feet and that laser pinpoints her chest. Dark circles have formed around her eyes now, and her face has gone pallid, as if unburdening herself of this story has discarded her soul with it. “I don’t know. Years ago. He asked me if I wanted to help him out once and I guess I said yes. He figured he could charge more for two of us. So I ran interference and helped move a mark into place, but I
… I never had the stomach for it.”
“Uh huh.”
She doesn’t bother looking up to see the doubt in my expression, content to leave half-truths hanging in the ether like wisps of gossamer.
“You’ve worked at least one job that I know of on your own since you guys split.”
“I have bills to pay.”
She blows out a long breath.
“Look, you going to let me go now?”
“I need you to tell me where to find your husband.”
“Oh… that’s right. You want to hire him for a tandem.”
I don’t say anything. She picks at a piece of gravel on the pavement, crushes it into chalk between her thumb and forefinger.
“All you gotta do is give me one piece of information I can use to find him…” I point to that laser sight on her chest, “and you’ll never see that dot again.”
“The truth is…” and for this she looks up, clapping her hands together to wash the dust off. “The truth is… you’re going to have a very hard time finding him.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“Because Doug’s dead.”
CHAPTER NINE
Their last assignment together was the one Archie brokered. Did my name come up during that job? Did Archie mention me casually and Spilatro pounced on the name and came up with a plan to lure me out? Why would he want to?
The answer probably lies in the same reason I turned Archie’s office into ash. I knew if those files were left behind, vultures would descend on them to pick over the pieces. There is value in those files, the same value Archie told Smoke about in a prison cafeteria. Information. I’ve pulled a lot of jobs over the years, some extremely prominent, some that changed the political landscape of this country. If someone knew where to find me, he could broker that information to the relatives of my marks who were looking for atonement. Maybe Archie mentioned he worked with me, and maybe Spilatro turned that into a job for himself, sold my name to the highest bidder while he promised he would be the instrument of revenge.
So why did Carla think Doug Spilatro was dead?
When I was a kid at Waxham Juvey in Western Mass, there was a board game we could check out as long as we played it in the library. It was called “Mousetrap,” and it involved building an elaborate, Rube Goldbergian machine to catch a mouse. A crank rotated a gear that pushed an elastic lever that kicked over a bucket that sent a marble down a zig-zagging incline that fed into a chute and on and on until the cage fell on the unsuspecting mouse. But over the years, a few of the plastic pieces went missing and the trap wouldn’t spring. We used straws and toothpicks and toothpaste caps to fill in the blanks, rigging it so the cage would drop. The mouse didn’t know the real pieces weren’t there, and it didn’t matter as long as the trap sprung.
I think Spilatro has built his own mousetrap. Psychologically, he takes no pleasure in the kill itself; in fact, it repulses him. So he’s thrown all of his passion, all of his expertise, into building elaborate killing machines, elaborate mousetraps. With a living, breathing target, the machine has to be able to contract or expand or adapt based on the movement of the prey. He can build miniatures and plan to his heart’s content, but at some point toothpicks have to replace plastic pieces.
So the question is: how much has Spilatro been thrown off of his plan to kill me? Was I supposed to die in the construction accident that claimed Smoke? Was I supposed to get caught in the crossfire at Kirschenbaum’s house, trapped between the bodyguards and the police? Or am I still scurrying my way through the mousetrap, tripping a rubber band instead of a crank?
And one more thing: Carla referred to Spilatro as a Silver Bear, even though he takes no pleasure in the actual kill. My first fence taught me that to do what I do, to live with what I do, I have to make the connection to my mark so I can sever the connection later. I have to get inside his head, exploit whatever evil I find there, so I can continue to the next job. What I’m missing from all this, what I still don’t know, is why Spilatro singled me out. What connection do we have?
Carla and I move from the stoop on Warren Street to a coffee shop around the corner. I tell her she doesn’t have to worry about getting shot, that I just want to hear the rest of her story, but my words don’t seem to lift any weight off her shoulders. She sits like a prisoner in the corner of a cell, with no hope of rescue. I know Risina is out there watching, and I wonder if she can see the effects the killing business has on its participants.
“The last job. The one you did for Archie. Tell me about it.”
“Archie?”
“Archibald Grant. He was the fence.”
“Oh. Yes, Archie Grant. I only talked to him on the phone.”
“You never met him face-to-face?”
“I didn’t meet anyone except for K-bomb. And he, I only met once.” She holds up one finger. “He came to me after the job you’re talking about, when I was still trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna do now that Doug was gone. I never knew the fence’s name before that. I didn’t even know what a fence was, to tell you the truth. He just showed up and asked me if I wanted to continue working. I’ll be honest, I’ve only pulled a couple of jobs on my own. Today’s call came in from a third party and I thought it was weird and my antenna went up, but I showed up anyway because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. Should’ve known…”
“Yeah, well, here you are. If it makes you feel better, I’d’ve gotten to you one way or another.”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Tell me about that last tandem job. I want to hear every detail.”
“You have to understand, Doug only told me the bare minimum to keep me involved. I was the flash of light,
