for Captain-McGuire-Magness, a worldwide agriculture processor headquartered in Topeka, Kansas. She met Abe Mann for the first time when she spoke in front of a congressional committee formed to explore allegations of price-fixing amongst the farming conglomerates. Over an eight-year period, they met frequently, and secretly, at various functions all over the world.
Nichelle Spellman had a husband of eleven years and a seven-year-old daughter. She was moderately pretty, a little plump, with dark eyes and dark hair. She was a bit Midwestern plain, but had an Ivy League education and a gift for making people feel comfortable. In her capacity as a senior VP for CMM, she also had a boatload of bribery money.
She had started off with small purchases, pushing the envelope on what congressmen could take as “gifts”: tickets to Vegas shows, celebrity golf Pro-Ams, items that drew raised eyebrows from the ethics committee but no inquiries. Mann grew adept at hiding money, using middlemen, opening accounts all over the world. For years, the relationship grew until the amount of money exchanging hands became staggering. In return, Congress stayed out of CMM’s affairs. Special committees dissolved. Allegations dropped. Price-fixing in agriculture didn’t have the same sizzle as steroids in Major League baseball or obscenities in Hollywood, and so it wasn’t difficult to turn a blind eye. A blind eye that came with a seven-figure price tag.
The relationship ended abruptly when the FBI snatched up Nichelle Spellman in a bribery sting. Mann was not aware of the Bureau’s actions until after the fact. He tried to contact her on eleven separate occasions, but his calls went unanswered, unreturned. He needed her to remain silent. He needed to know she would take the fall, his name wouldn’t come up, not when he had just been elected Speaker of the House. The FBI continued to build their case and there was talk of a Grand Jury, of testimony, of things being said “on the record.”
On May 16 of that year, a week before the Grand Jury would hear Ms. Spellman’s testimony, Nichelle’s daughter Sadie was abducted directly out of her classroom. A man entered the school, telling the teacher he was from Nichelle’s husband’s office and Sadie needed to come with him right away. There was an emergency. The man seemed confident, articulate, and unthreatening, and the teacher complied without hesitation. A week later, Nichelle pleaded the Fifth to every question the Grand Jury asked her. She was distraught but resolute; she was asked if she needed more time in light of her family’s personal tragedy and she said no, this was her testimony, this was what she wanted on the record. The Grand Jury was stymied. Abe Mann’s name never passed her lips.
One month later, an undercover Kansas police officer, along with Nichelle, her husband, and her daughter, were all found dead in a snowy ditch near an abandoned airfield, shot at close range multiple times. The newspapers described it as a botched kidnapping hand-off, a sorry ending to a sad affair. The daughter’s body had shown signs of assault. No suspect was ever arrested.
I put down the papers, turning the new information over in my mind.
It seems Abe Mann has grown comfortable ordering the deaths of people. Nichelle hadn’t even talked, hadn’t given him up, and he still wanted the loose ends tied, wanted the coffin lids closed so no one would have a change of heart or a wandering tongue at a later date.
How many times had he ordered executions besides the two I know of? How many bodies are buried deep in his congressional closet? Does he take pleasure from it, acting as God, acting as one who decides between life and death?
It seems I am more like my father than I thought.
AT a table a few feet away, a man is eating by himself, obviously waiting on someone. His feet tap the floor nervously, and his eyes flit to the door every few seconds. Eventually, a harried woman comes in, two small boys in tow. I keep my head buried in the file, chewing methodically on my quarter-pounder, trying not to look up, even as the couple barks at each other.
“We said twelve-thirty. I’ve been here an hour.”
“You try packing up all their shit for a weekend with no help. None!”
“I tried calling your cell phone.”
“Well, maybe I was a little busy, did you ever think of that?”
“Well, maybe I’ll bring them back an hour late on Monday.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“Real nice, Amy. Real nice. Right in front of ’em.”
“Oh, don’t you dare get self-righteous with me . . .”
After a few more exchanges, the woman storms out, leaving the father alone with the two boys. Each of them carries a backpack, and, on their faces, shame.
I finish my lunch and take the tray to the trashcan, dumping the contents and pushing the tray onto the shelf. The grease is still on my tongue, and even as I suck my large soda dry, it remains there, resistant and defiant.
When I step into the parking lot, it is impossible to avoid the small crowd gathered in a half-circle near my rental car. I don’t want to meet any eyes, I just want to get to my car and drive away, but it is too late for that. They are looking at me, shaking their heads, wanting me to join in, wanting me to see what they see and feel the misery they feel.
The woman who dropped off her kids has stepped out of her minivan, but left the driver’s door open, the engine idling.
“I didn’t see it. It just darted in front of me.”
The brown dog lies on the ground in front of her van, his back legs broken, his eyes wild. He tries to get to his front feet but can’t, and so lies back down, breathing rapidly, mustering the strength to try again, repeating the cycle over and over.
Try, fail, rest, try, fail, rest. Try. Fail.
I make my way past the courtyard of the La Fonda, past businessmen and women finishing their lunches, and head for the ground-floor hallway, the corridor to my room.
Then the world slows, the sound drops out, everything fades to a single image, like looking through a tunnel toward the light at the other end. A single image, as in-focus as anything I’ve ever seen in my life. A man is coming out of my room, a gun in his hand, backing out, fresh blood on his face, and his eyes meet mine. I recognize him, I
And then, wham, everything speeds back to normal though it is all heightened, the colors somehow crisper, the smells stronger, and Hap doesn’t hesitate. He levels his gun at me and fires a silenced bullet, but I am moving fast now like a leopard that has spotted a predator in the jungle bigger than he. I dart back toward the courtyard as the bullet slams into the wall just inches behind my head, and I know Hap won’t follow me, he has been trained like me to blend in, but that isn’t my concern, my concern is to walk as quickly and as normally as I can back through the lobby and out to my car, the Range Rover Pooley had waiting for me in the parking lot of the Inn at the End of the Trail this morning, and maybe, just maybe I will not draw any stares, and maybe, just maybe I can spot that bastard driving off before he gets away clean.
I throw the car into gear and race around the building just in time to see a black Audi exiting onto San Francisco street, tires squealing as it passes from concrete to asphalt. Yes, finally, one fucking good thing in this terrible day, between that dog, that fucking dog with two broken legs trying to get to its feet after it careened off the front bumper of that haggard mother’s minivan and fucking Pooley, sticking around in Santa Fe when he should have been heading back East, but I told him to stay because I wanted more goddamn information, information I could have gotten myself, and I brought him into this life and because of me he’s dead, poor fucking Pooley, dealt the worst fucking hands all his goddamn life.
I didn’t have to see his body to know what had happened: Vespucci was a good fence and he had sniffed out the multiple assassins hired for this job and Hap had spotted me on Mann’s trail because he would have been doing
