Risina shakes her head but I press the green button on the phone.
“Hello.”
“You’ve been asking about me.”
“You wanted to flush me, here I am.”
“You presume to know my intentions?”
“I know a few things. I’ll learn more.”
“I’ll help you out. Here’s a fact about me: I’m smarter than you.”
“That why you missed me outside the restaurant in Chicago?”
“Who says I missed?”
“It was sloppy.”
“Accidents are sloppy by nature. And sloppy by design.”
“And the police at Kirschenbaum’s house?”
“Now looking for a murderer who happens to fit your description.”
“Not exactly the way you drew it up.”
He chuckles, and the sound is disturbing in its confidence. “You don’t sound sure about that.”
He’s right. I don’t. Even this conversation feels like I’m being spun whichever direction he wants me to go.
“You want-“
But I cut him off in a clumsy attempt to gain control. “What’s your play?”
“I don’t-“
“Why kidnap Archie Grant? Why call me out by name?”
“You gonna let me finish?”
Is this how boxers feel as a round slips away? Right hooks coming but you’re just too slow or tired or old or rusty to get out of the way?
“Is he alive?”
“Check the phone.”
The phone beeps in my hand, an incoming text message. I click on it without hanging up the line and there is a picture of Archie holding a New York Times with a photograph of a blazing inferno on the front page-fire trucks out and about, spraying the flames down, and I have no doubt if I drive to a newsstand, it’ll be today’s paper. Archie looks defiant in the photo, a fuck you face if I ever saw one. I put the phone to my ear again.
“Satisfied?”
“Let me talk to him.”
“He doesn’t feel like talking.”
“What’s this about? Why the games? You want me, here I am.”
“You contact my wife again and I’ll blow Mr. Grant up in front of you. You’ll walk around a corner or step off an elevator and he’ll be tied up sitting in a chair. You’ll barely have time to register what is happening before parts of your friend slap you in the face.”
“Come on. You wanted to flush me? You flushed me. Let’s finish this out in the open.” Flailing. Too tired. Stumbling.
“You’ll be out in the open, Columbus. You won’t know where I’ll be.”
“Just tell me what this is about. I don’t mind spinning in circles, but at least tell me why I’m spinning.”
And right when I don’t think he’s going to say anything else, he surprises me. “Dark men.”
I’ve heard that expression once before, in a hotel room in the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, from the lips of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democratic Nominee for President, Abe Mann, moments before I killed him. “ When I had my problem with your mother, some dark men made that problem disappear. You understand about dark men, I take it… ” he had said.
He went on to tell me about the men who were the real players behind the politicians, the dark men who moved the representative’s mouths like ventriloquists, the dark men who wouldn’t let their candidates, candidates like Abe Mann, leave the game. So the Speaker of the House hired a killer named Columbus and designated himself as the target. His only escape was death, and I was his suicide method.
The dark men must not have been happy about that decision. All this time I was worried about someone in law enforcement tracking me down, but now I see my anxiety was misplaced. I killed the man I was hired to kill, but I upset the dark men who wanted him alive so they could keep pulling his strings. It seems they’ve held his death against me all these years and now they’ve hired Spilatro to exact their revenge. He went to them with my name and they said “bring us his head.” This changes everything.
Risina and I leave the house immediately, and instead of planning our next move, I just drive. The sun is heading west, dropping toward the horizon, so fuck it, I drive into it headlong, the light fierce in my eyes but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I’ve stuck to the shadows for too long and need to spend a little time with the sun in my eyes. Maybe some light will clean my fucking head.
Risina is pensive as she fights the urge to speak. Farms roll past the window, looking properly pastoral. After a moment, she pivots toward me. “What did he mean by dark men?”
“An old job. I probably upset a few apple carts.”
“So these men want revenge?”
“Yes.”
“And they hired Spilatro to kill you?”
“I think so.”
She nods. “Why him?”
“I think he went to them with my name.”
“You think Archie gave you up?”
I chew on the inside of my lower lip, and a new idea takes shape in my head.
“I don’t believe so… I think there’s a second explanation.”
“Give it to me.”
“What if these dark men work for the government? The CIA?”
“And…”
“And Spilatro was a soldier.”
“So?”
“So… what if he never left the military?”
We pull into a Hampton Inn somewhere outside the Berkshires. I switch cars at a used car lot, paying too much but not enough for the salesman to remember us. I choose a room at the inn on the first floor, in a corner with two windows and an outside door nearby in case we need to split in a hurry. I may not be all the way where I was three years ago, but I’m starting to take the smoothness off the edges.
After we make some bad coffee in the four-cup maker provided by the inn, Risina and I take a moment to sit and rest and think.
“You have that look in your eye.”
“What do you mean?”
“That same look you gave me that last day in our house before we headed to the US. You look like you want me to leave.”
“We’re entering new territory here. I’ve spent my professional life in a world I understand. A world of outlaws. Government agents are a separate entity entirely. They have resources I don’t have, access I can’t imagine. We have to work around the law… they break laws with impunity.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re in this together until the end. Spilatro knows about me. He’s probably known about me since we landed in Chicago.”
I nod. She’s right.
“If you tried to take care of this on your own, he’d find me and use me against you. There’s no sending me away. No hiding me somewhere. If you’re not watching me, then you won’t know I’m safe. And he’ll compromise you at a point when it’ll matter.”
I keep nodding.
“I love you. I’ll do whatever you tell me at this point. If you tell me to run, I’ll run. If you tell me to hide, I’ll do it. I’ll wait for you to come back to me. But it’s not the smart play, as you call it. He knows about me, and he knows
