near the Indiana border. For being so near the city, it’s a rural lifestyle, where fishermen can reel in a blue gill or a carp, and hunters can legally bag birds seeking a drink as they migrate south. For a trailer park and despite the occasional meth head, it’s not a bad life.
I left Risina and Smoke back in the city to do further research on Flagler, to see if the two of them could sift through the silt of Archie’s files and pan out any more gold. Risina was content to examine more of Archie’s work, and didn’t protest when I told her I’d like to make the run to the drop site alone. I have an ulterior motive for leaving her behind though: this is the first time I believe I might head into some violence, and I don’t want to expose her. Not yet. Whether or not the violence is going to be directed toward me or dispensed by me doesn’t make a difference.
The park is quiet and the plots for the trailers are spread out wider and more haphazard than I imagined, like someone dropped a box of matches and just left the sticks to lie as they fell. A black curtain of clouds is gathering in the north and heading this way, and I’d like to scope out the site and uncover any salient information before the skies open. Rain, so often thought of as a blessing, a life-giver, the washer of sins, is no friend to a hit man. It causes fingers to slip, vision to blur, and muddy ground to hold shoe prints in clear relief. Best to get in and get out before any complications.
Smoke had dropped Flagler’s money off at the white and green pre-fabricated home in plot number 73. He said that both times, a middle-aged woman answered the door, took the duffel bag, and closed it in his face without saying a word. It’s odd for Flagler to use such a method for receiving his kill fees… if he didn’t want to collect his money himself, why use an immobile-rather than a fluid-location? Why use the same drop site twice?
When a lion is looking for a kill without having to expend too much energy, he follows the hyenas.
I knock on the door and paste a pleasant smile on my face, ready for the inevitable glance out the nearby window. After a moment, the door opens, and the middle-aged woman Smoke described grimaces down at me. She has meaty arms and a fleshy face, but with a layer of hungry menace in her eyes, like an alley cat who has found a home and no longer has to fight for its daily meal, but still keeps its fur up all the same.
“What’choo want?”
“Flagler.”
Her eyes flash for only a moment and then she leans into the frame, looking down at me. “You ain’t gonna buy it when I tell you I don’t know no Flagler?”
I shake my head.
“I figgered. What’choo want with him?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Well, if you find him, tell him I’m looking for him too. I haven’t seen him in months.”
“How do you know him?”
“How does anyone know anyone?”
“You have a picture of him?”
“Wouldn’t that be something. No…”
“All right then.” I start to leave, waiting for her to make the next move. Before I get ten steps from the door…
“You sure you jes’ want to talk?”
I turn. “Well, I have something for him, but I’d like to give it to him myself.”
“What?”
“None of your business, ma’am.”
“Money?”
I let her digest my hesitation. “That’s between me and Flagler. If you see him, tell him I’m staying at the South Shore Inn on South Brainerd.”
I head for my car and make a show of driving off.
Less than ten minutes later, she is in an old Celica hatchback that looks like it might roll over and die at any minute. She speeds out of the trailer park, tires throwing up dirt and gravel as she maneuvers on to the highway that cuts around the lake. The car is painted white and stands out nicely against the blacktop. Even as the rain hits, I can track it as easily as an elephant in short grass.
I settle in, not sure how far she’s going to drive. She isn’t making any evasive maneuvers, happy to roll down the highway like a homing beacon. I’m content to follow the hyena.
Forty-five minutes on the road and her blinker glows red as she exits into Edison Park, not far from O’Hare. Killers often live within a stone’s throw of an airport, not just for convenience while on a job but for escape when things grow uncomfortable.
She parks in front of a hardware store, lumbers out of the Celica and hurries inside. I wait for a moment, gnawing on my lower lip. I thought she was going to break for his residence, so this detour to a retail shop has thrown me off. Does Flagler work here? Or more likely, own the place? Or is it a front for something else?
Five minutes have gone by and no sign of the hyena. I’m just going to have to go in after her. I’m starting to feel like the tables have flipped, and maybe I’m not the predator but the prey. Damn it, she just wasn’t smart enough to pull it off, to bait me into the spider’s web, was she? So why am I climbing out of my car now, exposed to the rain, heading toward the stand-alone store with the red awning marked, “Wayne’s Hardware”? Why am I in Chicago anyway, the moment someone puts my name in a note? If I’ve lost a step, I’m going to pay for it.
As I move quickly across the street, a new thought bangs around inside my head: I’m glad Risina isn’t here.
And that’s the crux of what has been dogging me since we left Manila. I’m glad Risina isn’t here.
Can I do what I do and protect her? This moment, this situation reinforces that interrogative like the question mark at the end of the sentence. Should I force her to see it my way and explain it doesn’t have to be the end for us? I know I’m not going to watch her die and I know I’m not going to leave her unprotected if something should happen to me. Not even a week into this assignment-I’m already thinking of it as an assignment, even if this is a rescue operation instead of killing someone-and the folly of the two of us working this as a tandem sweep starts to appear like cracks in a foundation. The question looms: is it better to recognize that folly now than to stand face to face with the ramifications under worse conditions?
Focus. Fuck. The hardware store has display windows in the front, the kind that let shoppers know of sale items but don’t offer a view into the store. I quickly check the sides and the back but no windows. Only a gated rear door and a rolling receivables dock allow access into the place from the back alley. The neighborhood isn’t the friendliest in Chicago and the proprietor has gone out of his way to make his shop impenetrable after hours. I guess I’m just going to have to waltz in the front goddamn door.
From the best I can gauge, the entire store is maybe three thousand square feet, but I don’t know if it has low shelves so you can see across the length of it, or high shelves like a maze, or if the cash register is in the front or the back or how many workers or customers or… goddammit, I’m just going to have to play it like it lies, get my head on a swivel, keep my eyes peeled, and be ready.
I keep my gun tucked into my back since it’s raining and I don’t know if I’m walking into a store full of customers or a fortress full of killers, but my hand is at my hip and ready.
I throw open the door and nearly bump into the hyena before I can take one step inside the store. The woman gets a panicked look on her face and bellows, “He’s here!” a split second before I wallop her in the side of the head, dropping her like a stone, but her warning’s enough, and whatever element of surprise I had evaporated with that shout like boiled water.
My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the light and I hear the distinctive rack and eruption of a shotgun, a thick BOOM, BOOM. I jerk my head straight down on instinct and paint cans explode in the spot I vacated.
A double-barrel can be effective at close range but not from forty feet and it’s a bitch of a gun to reload, and so I charge in the direction from which the cartridges were fired, my Glock leading the way, hoping I can stop him before he cocks the weapon again, and as I dash up the aisle, I just barely catch a flash of a red shirt barreling toward me, closing the distance, both of us with the same idea in mind. Before I can brace myself, he drives into me like a bull, sweeping me off my feet. We collide into a three-tiered shelf filled with paintbrushes, toppling it on top of us. I don’t know where my gun went but it’s not in my hand.
Even though the hyena came to warn him, I must’ve caught Flagler off-guard, unprepared, because his only line of defense was a shotgun and once both barrels fired, he resorted to grappling. I’m guessing she fed him the bit about someone with money asking around for him, someone who was staying at a motel nearby, and instead of
