“He wouldn’t give up who hired him . . . but he said it was someone extremely close to the target.”
“Any hint he knew more than he was letting on? About my history with the mark?”
Pooley shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He’s one of these guys who thinks he’s a lot more clever than he is . . . you know what I mean? If he knew about your relation to the target, he’d want
I nod. “So all we know is that someone close to Mann hired an assassin to kill him.”
“Well, here’s where it gets strange, he didn’t hire just
My eyes flash and Pooley sees it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know and I know it’s my job to know, so go ahead and be pissed . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know how I could have missed it . . .”
“Who else is on this job?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“You couldn’t coax it out of him?”
“If he hadn’t been behind bars, maybe. But it was him and me and a sheet of bulletproof glass twelve inches thick. There was nothing I could do to be persuasive; I had no leverage. I don’t think he believes you’ll come for him over it.”
“Did you get any indication I might have a head start?”
“He didn’t say. He just said the client wanted to make sure the target got clipped and despite your reputation, the client was willing to pay for three guys.”
“Three?” I try to keep my voice even, but I can feel the rising pitch of it in my throat.
Pooley nods. “Yeah, he hired three guys to finish the job and he doesn’t care which one of you completes it. He said the one who does will get the kill fee.”
“Christ.”
“I know.”
“That’s two X factors out there I can’t be accountable for, and it only takes one to fuck everything up.”
“I know.”
“Did he tell them all it had to go down in California?”
“Sorry . . . I didn’t ask. I’ll go back . . .”
“No, fuck that. I need you to find out who the other gunners are . . . as soon as you can.”
Pooley squints in the sunlight, nodding steadily. He uses his hand as a visor to shield his eyes. “Yeah, yeah . . . of course. Of course, Columbus.”
“How long will it take you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do whatever it takes. A week, tops.”
“Okay. Meet me in Santa Fe in a week with those names. I don’t want you to tell me on the phone. Only in person, you understand?”
“Yeah, Columbus. Of course.”
He wants to say more, but he can see in my eyes I’m not in the mood for apologies. So he hops back behind the wheel of the Navigator and pulls out without a backward glance in the mirror.
BAD luck. Bad fucking luck. I feel like ramming the palm of my hand through the steering wheel, but that would be rattling and I don’t rattle. One thing I won’t do is rattle.
I should turn around and head to the jailhouse outside of Providence, bribe my way in, stick a knife through Archibald Grant’s ribs, tell him that’s what he gets for hiring three men instead of entrusting the job to one. But he was just doing his client’s bidding and if he left out a little information, what does he care? He figures one of us will probably take care of the other two, either before or immediately after the hit, so he’ll only have one angry assassin to deal with when it’s all said and done. And he figures once that assassin gets paid his kill fee, all apologies will be accepted.
I know I should quit the job, just pull a U-turn at the next exit and head back to Boston, tell Pooley to find me something else, something that doesn’t hit quite so close to home. One too many obstacles are stacking up, one too many omens, but for some reason I’m powerless to resist, powerless to put on my blinker and steer this car around, like I’m being pulled by an invisible force, a magnet, something outside of me.
I want to kill my father. I want to be the one to do it, no matter what it takes. The assignment just sped up the inevitable; I was headed on this collision course long before someone paid me. Vespucci said fate causes paths to cross that we cannot understand, but that’s not entirely correct. This path I understand perfectly. Abe Mann set me on it a long time ago, the moment he discarded Amanda B. like she was a dead animal he had run over in the street. I am his bastard, and I’ll be damned if some other shooter is going to get to him before I do.
I check into the Omni Severin hotel in the middle of downtown Indianapolis. It is one of these large luxury jobs that tries to maintain its historic feel but comes across strangely anachronistic, like it hasn’t quite made up its mind what it wants to be, and thus ends up being neither antiquated nor modern.
“I see we have you here for seven days, Mr. Smith.”
“Yes.”
“A non-smoking room? King-size bed?”
“Yes.”
The clerk, a pretty college student, I would guess, types at her computer. After a moment, she hands me a plastic key-card.
“Now, I should warn you, the final two days of your visit are when Abe Mann will be staying here, and things might get a little . . . you know . . . extra-security and whatnot.”
“Really?” I ask, pretending to be pleasantly surprised.
“Yes, sir. Coming through on his ‘Connecting America’ tour or whatever it is he calls it.”
“Are we on the same floor?”
“No . . . he’s got the fifteenth floor all to himself. Him and his people, I should say. You won’t have to worry about that.”
“Okay, great.” I give her a warm smile. “That’s something, being in Indianapolis at the same time.”
I think that’s the reaction she’s looking for, and she smiles at me cheerily as she points toward a bank of elevators and gives me directions to my floor.
When I get to my room, I turn on the television and there he is again, as ubiquitous as a celebrity. With twenty-four-hour news channels running at maximum capacity during an election year, I can expect to see candidate Abe Mann any time I flip around the dial. He’s standing in front of thirty steel workers, every minority represented, each man dressed in full blue-collar uniform and donning hard hats. Abe Mann has a hard hat on as well, and he’s talking about something he calls a “Bridge for Working Families,” shaking that palm preacher-style, like he genuinely believes what’s coming out of his mouth.
The hotel has a pretty good-sized gym, and I decide to pound out my energy on a treadmill. I’m the only one running at this hour; there’s a television in the corner showing sports highlights with the sound off, but I ignore it, just pounding my steps in place, settling into a comfortable rhythm, the only noise coming from my steady gait. I plan on running for an hour, and since I am running in place, the past has plenty of time to catch up to me.
I hadn’t meant to change, and I was too myopic to understand what was happening to me. Yes, I had killed Mr. Cox with a sewing machine in the abandoned Columbus Textile warehouse, but I had loathed Mr. Cox, and I had killed him with passion, with emotion, with hatred. When Vespucci opened the door the following morning, I could walk away the same person I was, somehow cleaner, like emerging from a baptism.
But suffocating Judge Janet Stephens with Saran Wrap on the courthouse stairwell was markedly different. It was devoid of emotion, passionless, mechanical, and therefore flawed in a way I could not yet understand. I had done everything right; I had fulfilled my obligation, studied the file, found the weakness, exploited the routine, and my assignment was successful. So what was missing?
I had met Vespucci the next day at a coffee shop at his request.
“You have a bank?” he asked over a small glass cup holding an Americano.
“Yes.”
“Close your account.” He slid me a small sheet of paper. “Go to this address when you need money. No more
