fashioned.
“They knew you’d given up the game, and they hired Spilatro to bring you back. He’s the cat who came up with the kidnap plan, the ransom note, the bread crumb trail that would bring you out of hiding.”
“So these men could have revenge on me for killing their candidate, their puppet.”
Archie sets down his donut. “Not exactly.”
I wait for more.
“They want you to work for them.”
I shake my head, my mouth twisted in a frown. “Do I look like I have a bump on my head, Archie? Why would I buy that?”
“Because it’s the truth. They saw the job you pulled in Los Angeles and wanted to know the man who could execute like that and walk away clean. They got beat by you, and dark men like them do one of two things when they get beat. They either fix the problem by plugging it up, or they recruit the son-of-a-bitch over to their side. Except with you, they figured best to do both.”
I don’t think my head has stopped shaking.
Archie continues, undaunted, “They went to their best hitter inside the company and said, ‘here’s your assignment. You find this Columbus and you kill him.’ But what they were really saying was ‘let the best man win.’”
“A test?”
“Something like that. Competition’s a better word. They want to run a stable with the best horses. And you just proved again you’re the best in the game.”
“And you played along?”
“After the beatdown they put on me, they drove me to what they call a ‘secure location.’ Then the real players showed up and told me the what-all. They kept me fed, let me watch TV, but they made it clear they wasn’t fucking around. Wanted to keep me alive and kicking so I could broker a deal if you bested Spilatro. And so here we are.”
“And Smoke is dead.”
His eyes cloud over. “Yeah. It’s a fuckin’ shame Spilatro did him like that. Smoke was good people.”
I sit back and fold my arms. “Call ’em over here.”
Archie gets that look on his face I’ve seen before, the one that says he forgot who he was dealing with. He wipes his fingers carefully with a napkin, then leans back and lets loose a long sigh. Finally, he cranes his neck and nods at the corner booth.
Two men wearing charcoal suits rise from the booth as they try unsuccessfully to keep their faces blank.
Archie slides around next to me, and they sit opposite.
“And the third. Call him over.”
The shorter of the two men-the one with bushy, black eyebrows that seem too large for his face-calls out to a third suited man perched at the counter. “Grayson, you’re made.”
A man at the counter slumps his shoulders, turns around, and pulls over a chair to the end of the table. The three men look approximately the same age-late forties-and all have hard eyes that indicate they’ve seen a lot of shit most people reserve for nightmares.
“You’re the dark men, huh?”
Bushy Eyebrows speaks up. “I’m Mitchells. This is Vancill. And Grayson’s at the end there.”
“You ordered all this?”
Mitchells shrugs. “I ordered your elimination. You cost us a great deal of time, effort and expense when you put our candidate in a bodybag.”
“He set it up.”
“But you killed him.”
“And now you want me to work for you?”
He smiles. “We happen to have an opening.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Mitchells sniffs the air like he just caught a whiff of something unpleasant.
“That’s warranted, so I’ll let it slide. But you’re a very smart man, Columbus, so I won’t let it slide twice. There are advantages to working for us that I know will be attractive to you. Namely, you’ll get to keep doing what you love doing the most.”
“I was out.”
“Were you?” He says this without a smile. “I’m trained to read people the way my colleagues are trained to crack code. I’ve watched your progress on this mission and before it… all over Europe for the preceding three years. Prague, Belgium, Spain, Paris. You’re a killer, you’re good at killing, and I’ll be damned if you don’t enjoy it. I don’t know any plainer way to say it.”
He doesn’t look like he’s a man who flatters as a matter of course, and if this is an attempt at flattery, it’s a clumsy one. Rather, he simply speaks the truth and says it plain. “I would’ve sought you out sooner, would’ve tried to pull you in, but you stepped off the grid after you fell for the bookstore owner in Rome. That made it difficult to find you, and it would’ve been irresponsible for me not to make sure you hadn’t lost a step once we did.”
He watches my eyes to see if his casual mention of Risina elicits a response.
“So this was all about pulling me in?”
“This was about making sure you were worth pulling in. My team here thinks you are. I think the jury’s out.”
He says it levelly, a challenge there. Then to emphasize the point, “You gonna ask about the girl?”
“You know her name. You can say it.”
“Risina Lorenzana. You gonna ask about her or you want to keep pretending she doesn’t matter?”
“You want to keep poking me until you find out the answer?” I try to match his expression, but I’m not sure I pull it off.
He settles back. The other two haven’t said a word and Archie just chews on his old-fashioned donut like it’s the only thing in the room.
“All right,” I say after a charged moment. “Let’s hear your offer.”
Mitchells folds his fingers together. “It’s simple. You take your assignments from us. You give us a break on your rate. You keep working through Archie if you want, but we’ll supplement his fieldwork with our intel. And if you get caught or captured, you put a bullet in your own head. Otherwise, your life won’t change much. You won’t be lying on a beach in a fishing village, but we won’t overwork you either.”
“And there’s no getting out?”
“You put a few years in and then we talk again. We’re not inflexible.”
“And what about Risina?”
If he says “what about her?” or cracks a smile, I’m going to leap across the table and kill him with my bare hands. But he must have told the truth when he said he was good at reading people because he adds no emotion to his voice when he says, “She’s free to go. You want to keep her in play, that’s your decision.”
“I want her to be my fence.”
Archie stops in mid-bite and looks at me out of the tops of his eyes.
“Fine,” says Mitchells.
“You trying to cut me out after all we been through? Let me tell you something…”
“Don’t get nervous. She’s going to need some better training than I could give her. I know how to close a contract but I don’t know shit about fence-work. I want you to show her the ropes.”
That seems to mollify Archie. He jabs his index finger into the table to make the point. “I’ll set her up square. I promise you that.”
I nod but I’m not ready to look him in the eye. It’ll have to be enough.
Mitchells unfolds his hands. “We have a deal then?”
“We have a deal.”
The dark men get up from the booth, including Archie, and start to shuffle away, satisfied.
Mitchells takes a step toward the door, then turns around and puts his hands on the table.
“And Columbus?”
“Yeah.”
