The Silver Bear

the same thing I was doing, trying to get inside the candidate’s head, make the connection so he could sever the connection. And so he had seen me, and staked me, and he went into that room thinking it was me in there, but Pooley was waiting for me, and so got a bullet in his head when the door opened. If it wasn’t that, then it was a version pretty damn close to that, and now Hap was widening the distance between us because he was in an Audi and I had cavalierly told Pooley to get me something bigger, an SUV, thinking I had all the time in the world to make my plans.

An hour passes before I realize the Audi is gone, and I am alone.

CHAPTER 9

DARKNESS. Black darkness.

And pain.

I have checked into a nondescript hotel, and I am sitting on the bed in the darkness, listening to the occasional rumble of the big rigs as they make their way down Highway 84, and I am thinking.

Earlier, a local news channel mentioned the shooting at the La Fonda, and the dead man who had checked into the hotel as Jim Singleton, but they weren’t sure of his identity. The police were investigating, but I knew the case would remain unsolved forever. The bullets in Pooley’s body and in the corridor wall would be untraceable, the weapon had most likely been destroyed, and the man I knew as Hap Blowenfeld was probably far from Santa Fe, probably already on the road to Nevada, where Abe Mann was stopping next. They might have security camera footage of both Hap and me in the lobby of the building, but they will curse their luck that neither of our faces are recognizable, we both seem to be aware of the cameras and are always looking in the opposite direction.

Why had Hap tried to kill me? For the same reason I will put a bullet in both Miguel Cortega and him. Because the end game is the death of nominee Abe Mann at the convention, and we cannot afford to have anyone else fuck up our kill. Whoever hired us wanted three killers to make sure the assignment was done right, was done successfully, but it would be one man ultimately pulling the trigger. It is part of the job, a necessary hazard of the game we choose to play; when multiple killers are hired, multiple killings are assured.

But Hap hadn’t killed me; he had killed a part of me, he had killed my only friend in this world, my brother, and for that he would pay with his life, Abe Mann or no Abe Mann.

Darkness. And pain. And Pooley.

AFTER the Levine hit, after I killed the Boston bookie and all of his bodyguards, Vespucci asked for a meeting on the top of a parking garage near the water. The weather had taken a frigid turn, and snow collected on the ground in knee-high drifts, whitewashing all of Boston. On the exposed rooftop, the snow piled up unabated, and the wind was implacable as it whipped off the harbor’s waters and slammed into us.

Vespucci was alone, bundled up in a thick parka, though he didn’t wear a hat. He stood with hard eyes, glaring at me, treating the cold like it was just a nuisance, a fly to be swatted.

“What happened?” he spat at me as soon as I approached him.

“I severed the connection.”

“Severed!” His voice rose over the wind, the contempt unmistakable. “It was a bloodbath! You killed seven of his men! You left a massacre behind you!”

“I completed my mission.”

“No, Columbus! No! You are mistaken. Your mission was to kill Richard Levine. Only Richard Levine!”

“I did what I had to do to assure the kill.”

He started to say something, then stopped, eyes boring into me. My face was red, but not from the wind stinging it. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy, dolorous.

“Columbus. You are not the right man for this line of work. It hurts me to say this. I believe this to be my fault. I did not . . . how do you say . . . counsel you as properly as I should have. I take responsibility.”

He stamped his feet, but he did not take his eyes off of me. I said nothing, waiting for him to finish what he came here to say.

“Your . . . rampage . . . has caused me some difficulty. The enormity of what you did forced the police to assign an entire task force to the investigation. And not only have the police increased their strength, but a few of the connected families in this city have also put out . . . um . . . what is it . . . feelers . . . to discover who it is that would do this to Levine and his men.”

His eyes softened. I think he saw in my face that I recognized the trouble I had caused him.

“I understand now, Mr. Vespucci. I shouldn’t have . . .”

“You shouldn’t have continued to see Jacqueline Owens after I told you to stop.”

This caused my face to flush. I wasn’t expecting him to bring Jake into this. How did he know?

“Ahh, yes. I know why you did what you did. I know these men discovered your girlfriend. And from there, could have discovered you. I warned you, Columbus. But you would not listen. Pah . . .” He spat on to the ground, like he was spitting my foolishness into the snow. “So where does that bring us?”

“I’ll make it right.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it is too late for that. I wish you the best of luck.”

He started to reach inside his coat, and in an instant, I had a pistol up and pointed at his head. The speed of my draw startled him; I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I was ready. Even in my shame, I was ready.

He looked confused for a moment, then realized where his hand was, and what it must have looked like to me. Slowly, slowly, he pulled from his inside coat pocket a large manila envelope.

“Because of what you did, they will come looking for us. This is the last time we will see each other. I hope you understand.”

With that, he dropped the envelope into the snow and walked away toward the stairwell in the corner of the lot.

THE envelope contained enough money for me to dump the apartment and move into an efficiency in Framingham, about thirty miles outside the city. The space was only about five hundred square feet; it had once been a cheap hotel, and the rooms had been converted by putting tiny refrigerators and a sink into the bathrooms. I had to buy a single burner to use as a stovetop, and it was furnished with a Murphy bed, a hard mattress that folded out of the wall.

Pooley moved in four days after I did. I spent a little money on a small car, a Honda, and picked him up at Waxham on the day he was released. He looked the same, gaunt and disheveled, but somehow healthier. The last couple of years at Waxham had been good to him. He became something of a scrounger, partnered with a few guards, and created a large market for illicit goods inside the Juvey center. Subsequently, he bought himself a circle of protection from the bigger inmates, and was treated like a boss. He left the place with over five thousand dollars stored in a coffee can buried by a guard outside the walls of the place.

“I think my cell was bigger,” he said when I opened the door to my apartment.

“It probably was.”

“You have any beer?”

“Check the fridge.”

He found a bottle and popped it open, then took a long pull. My only piece of furniture was a lopsided couch I had bought at a yard sale. Pooley plopped down on it while I sat on the floor, using one of the walls for a backrest.

“It’s good to see you.”

“You look good. You look good.”

We sat for a minute, instantly comfortable, slipping back into our empathy for each other like putting on old jackets. I told him everything, everything I hadn’t put into letters, starting with Jake mistaking me for her brother and ending with Vespucci’s dismissal of me on the rooftop of the parking garage. He peppered me with questions as I went, asking for details, for clarifications, for specifics. He honed in on Vespucci’s role in my life, and fired the inquiries like a machine gun. How much did he charge? How did he get his information? How did he meet his