Archibald is behind a wooden desk; a single light bulb on a wire chain moves like a pendulum over his head. He is not a large man, a sharp contrast from the muscle he keeps around him. Short, well-dressed, with a fire in his eyes that matches the tip of the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He is used to getting what he wants.
He stands, and we shake hands with a light grip as though neither wants to make a commitment. I am offered the only other chair, and we sit deliberately at the same time.
“I’m a middleman on this,” he says abruptly, so I’ll know this from the get-go. The cigarette bobs up and down like a metronome as he speaks.
“I understand.”
“This is a single. Eight weeks out, like you say.”
“Where?”
“Outside L.A. At least, that’s where this cat’ll be at the time.”
Archibald sits back in his chair and folds his hands on his stomach. He’s a businessman, talking business. He likes this role. It makes him think of the businessmen behind their desks in Atlanta where he used to go in and change out the trash baskets, replace the garbage with new dark plastic linings.
I nod, only slightly. Archibald takes this as his cue to swivel in his chair and open a file door on the credenza matching his desk. From the cavity, he withdraws a briefcase, and we both know what’s inside. He slides it in my direction across the desk and waits.
“Everything you requested’s in there, if you want to check it out,” he offers.
“I know where to find you if it’s not.” It’s statements like these that can get people into trouble, because they can be interpreted several ways. Perhaps I am making a benign declaration, or possibly a stab at humor, or maybe a little bit of both. But in this business, more often than not, I am making a threat, and nobody likes to be threatened.
He studies my face, his own expression stuck between a smirk and a frown, but whatever he is looking for, he doesn’t find it. He has little choice but to laugh it off so his muscle will understand I am not being disrespectful.
“Heh-hah.” Only part of a laugh. “Yeah. That’s good. Well, it’s all there.”
I help him out by taking the case off the desk, and he is happy to see me stand. This time, he does not offer his hand.
I walk away from the desk, toward the door, case in hand, but his voice stops me. He can’t help himself, his curiosity wins over his cautiousness; he isn’t sure if he’ll ever see me again, and he has to know.
“Did’ja really pop Corlazzi on that boat?”
You’d be surprised how many times I get this one. Corlazzi was a Chicago underworld luminary responsible for much of the city’s butchery in the sixties and seventies, a man who redefined the mafia’s role when narcotics started to replace liquor as America’s drug of choice. He saw the future first, and deftly rose to prominence. As hated as he was feared, he had a paranoid streak that threatened his sanity. To ensure that he would reign to a ripe old age, he removed himself to a gigantic houseboat docked in the middle of Lake Michigan. It was armed to the teeth, and its only connection with land was through a speedboat manned by his son, Nicolas. Six years ago, he was found dead, a single bullet lodged in the aorta of his heart, though no one heard a shot and the man was behind locked doors with a bevy of guards posted outside.
Now, I don’t have to answer this question. I can leave and let Archibald and his entourage wonder how a guy like me could possibly do the things attributed to the name Columbus. This is a tactic I’ve used in the past, when questions like his are posed. But, today, the last day of the cruelest month, I think differently. I have six eyes on me, and a man’s reputation can live for years on the witness of three black guys in a warehouse on the outskirts of Boston.
I spin with a whirl part tornado and part grace, and before an inhale can become an exhale, I have a pistol up and raised in my hand. I squeeze the trigger in the same motion, and the cigarette jumps out of Archibald’s mouth and twirls like a baton through the air. The bullet plugs in the brick wall above the credenza as gravity takes the cigarette like a helicopter to a gentle landing on the cement floor. When the six eyes look up, I am gone.
CHAPTER 2
LATERAL bursts of wind prick the side of my face as I walk into my building. By the time I hear the story again, the scene in Archibald’s warehouse will have taken on Herculean proportions. There will have been ten guys, instead of three, all with their guns drawn and trained on me. Archibald will have insulted me by saying, “There’s your case, bitch,” or some other endearment. I will have danced around bullets, mowed down seven guys, and walked on water before the cigarette was shot out of Archibald’s mouth. Advertising doesn’t hold a candle to the underworld’s word of mouth.
My apartment does not reflect the size of my bank account. It is eight hundred square feet, sparsely decorated, with only the furniture and appliances necessary to sustain me for a week, the longest I stay most of the time. I do not have a cleaning service, or take a newspaper, or own a mailbox. My landlord has never met me, but receives a payment for double rent in cash once a year. In return, he asks no questions.
On my one table, I open the case carefully and spread its contents in neat stacks. Twenty dollars to a bill, a hundred bills to a band, five hundred bands in the case. This up front, triple when the job is complete. Underneath all of the money is a manila envelope. The money holds no allure for me. I am as immune to its siren’s song as if I had taken a vaccine. The envelope, however, is my addiction.
I slide my finger under the seal and carefully open the flap, withdrawing its contents as though these pages are precious—brittle, breakable, vulnerable. This is what makes my breath catch, my heart spin, my stomach tighten. This is what keeps me looking for the next assignment, and the next, and the next—no matter what the cost to my conscience. This . . . the first look at the person I am going to kill.
Twenty sheets of paper, two binders of photographs, a schedule map, an itinerary, and a copy of a Washington, D.C. driver’s license. I savor the first look at these items the way a hungry man savors the smell of steak. This mark will occupy my next eight weeks, and, though he doesn’t know it, these papers are the first lines written on his death certificate. The envelope is before me, the contents laid out next to the money on my table, the end of his life now a foregone conclusion, as certain as the rising sun.
Quickly, I hold the first paper to the light that is snaking through my window, my eyes settling on the largest type, the name at the top of the page.
And then a gasp, as though an invisible fist flies through the air and knocks the breath from my lungs.
Can it be? Can someone have known, have somehow discovered my background and set this up as some sort of a joke? But . . . it is unthinkable. No one knows anything about my identity; no fingerprints, no calling card, no trace of my existence ever left carelessly at the scene of a killing. Nothing survives to link Columbus to that infant child taken from his mother’s arms by the “authorities” and rendered a ward of the state.
ABE MANN. The name at the top of the sheet. Can this be a mere coincidence? Doubtful. My experience has proven to me time and time again that coincidence is a staple of fiction, but holds little authority in the real world. I open the binder, and my eyes absorb photograph after photograph. There is no mistake: this is the same Abe Mann who is currently Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, the same Abe Mann who represents the seventh district of the state of New York, the same Abe Mann who will soon be launching his first bid for his party’s nomination for president. But none of these reasons caused the air to be sucked from my lungs. I have killed powerful men and relish the chance to do so again. There is more to the story of Abe Mann.
Twenty-nine years ago, Abe Mann was a freshman congressman with a comfortable wife and a comfortable house and a comfortable reputation. He attended more sessions of congress than any other congressman, joined three committees and was invited to join three more, and was viewed as a rising star in his party, enjoying his share of air time on the Sunday morning political programs. He also enjoyed his share of whores.
Abe was a big man. Six-foot-four, and a one-time college basketball star at Syracuse. He married an accountant’s daughter, and her frigid upbringing continued unabated to her marriage bed. He stopped loving her before their honeymoon ended, and had his first taste of a prostitute the Monday after they returned from Bermuda. His weekdays he spent at the state capitol as a district representative; his weekends he spent anywhere but home. For five years, he rarely slept in his own bed, and his wife kept her mouth sealed tight, fearful that intimate details
