himself had tried to stop me.
“We don’t know if they went to her first.”
I didn’t answer, and Pooley gave up trying to talk to me. He just sagged back into his chair like the effort was too much.
I blitzed the car into Boston, and flew through intersection after intersection until finally I screeched to a stop outside of her apartment building. I left the car in the street double-parked, not bothering to look for a parking place.
“Columbus! Columbus! Take it easy, for Chrissakes. Do you know how you look? Like a maniac . . .” Pooley was shouting at me but the words weren’t registering as I took the steps on her stoop two at a time. I didn’t bother to buzz for entry; I just broke the glass door with my fist and twisted the latch from the inside, my hand sticky with blood. I flew up two flights of stairs before reaching her door.
I knocked with my bloody fist; I found I couldn’t raise my good hand, the bullet in my shoulder had rendered it useless. Where was she? Oh, God, please tell me they didn’t . . . I knocked again, pounded, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, over and over and over. Please tell me they didn’t touch her. Please tell me they didn’t. Vespucci told me to stop seeing her and I did, I stopped, I left town without saying good-bye, I didn’t phone her, I didn’t send her a letter, I was willing to let it die, but not like this, bam, bam, bam, bam, not like this, bam, bam, bam . . .
And then the door opened. Jake’s face filled the entry-way, Jake’s beautiful face, my God, she looked fine, healthy, unharmed, untouched, surprised to see me, about to be angry, but then she saw the blood on my shirt, on my hand. . . .
“What happened to you?”
She pulled me inside the apartment, her face a picture of concern. I was overwhelmed with relief, couldn’t open my mouth.
She spoke instead, “I’ve been so worried. For weeks, not a word, not a call. I didn’t know what I did to hurt you. I love you so much, I just couldn’t understand it.”
She was unbuttoning my shirt, and she gasped when she saw the wound to my shoulder. She didn’t think, just immediately darted to the kitchen and snatched up a rag, turned on the faucet, and let the water run warm.
I knew then I would have to do the hardest thing I had ever done, harder than killing a man. To end this, to make sure this was finished, to make sure they would never come for her, I couldn’t just run away and leave her behind.
She came back, holding the wet cloth, and began to clean my wound, but I grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her back.
“You have to move.”
“What?”
“You have to get out of here. Get your things, whatever you can carry with you in the next five minutes and get out of here. Go somewhere, anywhere, but get out of Boston and don’t come back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it!”
My voice must have been like a slap to her face, tears sprung to her eyes.
“I don’t understand!”
“I’m a bad man, Jake! I’m worse than bad. I’m a goddamn nightmare. You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”
“What, what . . . ?” she sputtered.
“I never fucking loved you. I’ve been using you as a fuck rag. Something to sleep with to get my mind off of all the other shit in my life.”
“What are you talking about?” Her voice was barely a whisper, a squeak as the tears spilled out and soaked her mouth.
“You think I give a shit about you? You think I haven’t been fucking twenty other girls just like you?”
“What are you talking about?” she said softer, her voice breaking.
“Now, I’ve gone and done it, too. There are people out there who want to hurt you, Jake. People I’m involved with. I fucking gave them your address and now they want to see your ass for themselves. See if you’re as ripe as I said you were. ”
She took a step back, sobbing . . .
“I can’t stop them from coming, Jake. And they are coming. I don’t know why I’m even telling you. I guess I just wanted to give you a sporting chance to get out of here.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“I don’t give a shit if you understand or not. You don’t leave today, then they come for you.”
“I love you,” she said weakly.
“You gotta leave right now.”
“But I love you!” she screamed, her voice finding a strength that surprised me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this isn’t you. I don’t know who this is, but this isn’t you. If you’ll tell me what happened, maybe I can—”
And right then I struck her, my bloody fist catching her in the jaw and cracking her cheek, knocking her down to the floor.
“Noooooooo . . .” She started to moan.
I kicked her then, hard, in the stomach. I heard my voice coming out of my throat, disconnected from my body. “This is everything you need to know, Jake. I’m not fucking around. The men I work with, this’ll just be the warm-up session. If you’re not out of Boston in the next ten minutes, they will be here themselves, do you understand?”
“Whyyyyyyyy . . . ?” She was whimpering now, the breath knocked out of her.
“Ten minutes. And you forget everything about me. You forget you even knew my name. And if I ever see you again, it’ll be the last thing you see. I promise you that.”
I threw the wet rag at her face, spun, and marched out the door, leaving her crumpled frame sobbing on the floor.
Pooley and I watched silently from a nearby alley as Jake limped to her car, threw in a pillowcase filled with possessions, turned it around in the street, and drove away.
I never saw her again.
CHAPTER 10
VIOLENCE defines all men. At some point in life’s wheel, men are tested. A spanking from dad’s belt, a slap across the face, trading blows outside a bar, a broken nose, a bloody mouth, a black eye, a gun pointed in the face, a knife jabbed underneath the ribs. A man’s reaction to violence is imprinted upon him like words on a page. He might cower, or shy away, or watch unflinching. He might rise up, or be impassioned, or be aroused. Or he might become violent himself.
And what is the antithesis of violence? Love? Kindness? And can both of these opposites, kindness and violence, Cain and Abel, reside in equal parts in one man? Or does one side battle the other like opposing armies in a long-standing war? And if so, which is the strongest?
I make my way to Nevada, wounded, though not physically, and fatigued. I am no longer on the trail of the man at the top of the page, not yet at least. I am after a different quarry. I am hunting hunters now.
Congressman Abe Mann will not be speaking in Las Vegas, wary of its unseemliness to many voters, conscious of how being photographed in the American Mecca of gambling and money and prostitution will turn off the masses. Rather, he will be making only one stop in Nevada, in the capital, Carson City, before he moves north to Washington state. His press materials will only vaguely mention Nevada, and the dinner in the capital is private and barred from the press.
I do not know Miguel Cortega’s modus operandi, but I am confident Hap Blowenfeld will be shadowing the congressman’s movements. For that reason, though not that reason alone, Hap will be the first to die.
I drive into Vegas. A man I know lives here; I hesitate to call him a friend. Pooley’s job is . . . was . . . to
