It takes us a few days to buy passports. Although Smoke failed spectacularly as a bagman, he’s not a bad fence. He’s been with Archie Grant long enough to know how to scrounge the right information, ask the right questions, navigate the world beneath the world, the one where money exchanges hands and lips stay tight.
This is all new to Risina, and she adjusts, acting normally, with just a hint of boredom, the way she must’ve negotiated competitively for a rare book. An Italian fence named Vespucci once told me, “no matter the situation, act like you’ve been there before.” Risina says little and keeps her face emotionless, neutral. Even as we’re engaged in something as simple as obtaining illegal papers, she looks like she’s done it a thousand times. Maybe she’s a natural. I won’t deny that I feel, well, proud of her. Maybe that’s irrational, but I don’t care.
In a hotel near the airport, we lie in bed, waiting on a morning flight.
“I don’t want you to get too confident. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“How do you want me to be?”
“Observant.”
She widens her eyes. “Like this?” She holds it for a moment before breaking into a smile.
“I’m serious.”
“Yes, babe. I know. You’re going to be tense and I understand that. This is the new man. The one who has to worry about someone besides himself. But when we’re alone, then I’m going to want you back. Not Columbus.”
She pulls close to me and buries her nose in my neck.
“I wasn’t aware this was a democracy.”
“Well, now you are.”
“As long as you understand that when we leave this room, or any room, I’m in charge. You look to me. You learn from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Risina.”
“I know you do. And I answered you that I understand.”
She sleeps peacefully, as though this is just another night in the fishing village. Maybe she’s going to be okay in this world. Maybe she’ll learn quickly and take direction and thrive. Maybe if I keep telling myself that over and over, I’ll believe it.
Chicago is warm but stale, like a mausoleum releasing hundreds of years of trapped air after the front stone is rolled away. It must be the exhaust from the traffic in the city or the wind off the lake, or maybe the smell is just in my head. My temples throb like someone is tapping my head with a hammer.
Risina sits next to me in the rental sedan-a dark blue economy car-staring out the window, smiling absently.
I let her come. She insisted, but the decision was, is, mine. I could have blown off Smoke, protested I was out, truly out, that Archie’s problems were Archie’s problems, taken Risina and fled to another isolated country, but the truth is… I didn’t want to. I’m like Eve staring at the picked apple, but that’s not quite the right metaphor. I’ve already tasted the apple and instead of facing banishment, I’ve been offered passage back into Eden, or into my definition of paradise anyway. But at what price? There is always a price.
“I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to protest or argue or answer. Just nod your head that you agree when I finish.”
She waits, and I can feel her eyes.
“This is my decision to have you with me. To teach you what I do. To bring you into this world. Okay? I take responsibility for it. I own it.”
She waits until I turn my head her way before she nods. Whether or not she agrees with me, I think I see understanding in her eyes. Regardless, I had to say it.
I’ve never had a charge before, and I want it defined and out in the open, as much for me as for her. I have to teach her, protect her, and lead her all at once, and I will not take these obligations lightly.
Straight from the airport, Smoke leads us to Archie’s apartment. I check the side-view mirrors, looking for patterns in the traffic behind us, but I don’t think anyone knows about our arrival. If the plan of the kidnappers was to tail Smoke and strike as soon as he found me, then they’ve done a lousy job. There’s no tail from what I can see, and I didn’t clock anyone back at the bookstore or restaurant before we left our hiding spot.
I’ve been inside Archie’s building a couple of times before, once after killing a couple of his rival fences, and another time after I was shot in the ribs in a Chicago Public Library. Grant hired a private surgeon to stitch me up, and his sister Ruby took care of me until I got back on my feet. That was years ago, before I quit and before Ruby took a bullet to the face and died in front of a church in Siena as I stood next to her.
The apartment is as I remember it and as Smoke described. There’s dried blood in the bedroom, the color of rust, and several pieces of furniture-a lamp, a nightstand-are overturned.
“I didn’t touch nothing,” Smoke says. “This is just as I found it.”
I scan the room, then zero in on a chest of drawers and put my finger in a smooth hole.
“Shit. Is that a bullet hole? I didn’t even see that.” He hits the word “even” to make sure I hear the truth in his voice.
“Can you help me move this?”
The back of the chest and the wall behind it have the same hole. Risina watches, fascinated.
“You got a little knife on you?” I say to Smoke.
He immediately shakes his head, but then thinks. “Hold on a second …”
He scampers back to the kitchen and Risina smiles and nods, rocking forward on her toes. “I’m impressed.”
“In this job, you have to look at a scene of violence, the aftermath, and read it like a book. I want you to try to visualize what happened in this room. On your own, no help from me.”
I hear Smoke rummaging around in kitchen drawers, but I focus on Risina. Her eyes trace the room, drinking it in, and I can see her gears turning.
“I don’t know. There was a fight, and someone was shot.”
“Not shot. I don’t think so. We’d see a different blood pattern on the floor, on the walls. When someone takes a bullet, a part of his insides usually comes out. So you’d see some other matter besides blood.”
“Then what do you think? He was stabbed?”
Before I can answer, Smoke returns holding a small kitchen knife, a screwdriver, and a letter opener, presenting all three items like a kid excited to please his teacher.
“The opener,” I say. A few minutes later and I fish the bullet out of the wall, then toss it to Risina. “That’s a. 22 slug. Look at the size of it and try to commit it to memory. It’s a low caliber round out of a small gun. An assassin’s weapon. I’ll get ahold of some other calibers so you can compare them.”
I turn to Smoke. “Archie have a. 22?”
“Yeah.”
“He keep it under the mattress?”
“Yeah.”
I lift it up, but the gun isn’t there.
“Well, he got one shot off before they fought over the pistol. I’m saying ‘they’ ’cause I’m guessing it was at least two guys.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could be wrong, but I think one held him up while the other one went to work on his face. That’s why you have the blood here, in a circle, after they broke his nose and most likely knocked him out. They held him up while his head hung. It’s hard to hold an unconscious guy still, and his head lolled a bit. That accounts for why there is so much blood on the floor. A stab wound would pour straight down and soak the victim’s clothes. A broken nose? That’s a gusher, and if they’re holding him upright, it’s just going to get everywhere.”
It’s Smoke’s turn to ask a question. “Why would they do that?”
I shrug. “They wanted information on me and the muscle went too far? They wanted to beat on him for putting up a fight, pulling a gun? Who knows? But they were careful not to step in the blood, which means the fist work happened after the initial fight. Anyway, none of this matters all that much until we figure out who’s holding Archie and why they want me.”
