The Silver Bear

The room was empty; a single queen-sized bed sat in its center, undisturbed. I crept in quietly, barely breathing, my senses alert like a trapped animal, listening for anything. The hairs on my arms stood up as though maybe they could pick up on vibrations in the air and shoot me a warning. Why was that door open? Why on this night? For the first time, I realized how nonchalantly I had approached this job. I had found nothing to hate about my target, nothing to exploit, and so had granted him a free pass, had woefully underestimated the difficulty of killing this man, had failed before I began. I vowed not to make that mistake again.

Cortino’s bedroom was on the same side of the house. I made my way out of the room, gun leading the way. I didn’t hate him before, but I hated him now. Hated him for giving me nothing to hate. A few more feet down the hallway, and I was standing outside the master bedroom. There was something in the air now, something pungent, but I couldn’t place the smell.

I tested the door and found it unlatched. I pushed into the room, slowly, carefully, soundlessly.

The odor of blood hit me flush in the face. There were two dead bodies in the bed, Cortino and his crippled wife propped up against the headrest, staring back at me with hollow eyes. Against the far wall slumped a third dead body, Stefano Gorgio; most of his face simply wasn’t there.

I had come to kill a man who was already dead.

It took me a second to process this when I heard a noise behind me. I spun to see a woman standing in the hallway, smiling, a gun drawn.

Fuck. She had a date she wanted the job done. June sixth. In the dead of night. She even paid for the specificity. And now she had the perfect fall guy delivered to her doorstep, a stranger holding a gun, another corpse she could leave behind. The police would have a field day.

“Pooley told me you were good,” she said. “And right on time.”

With that, she shot me in the chest.

CHAPTER 12

TWENTY minutes have passed and I realize I am alone in the cemetery in Carson City, Nevada. Whether Hap Blowenfeld or Miguel Cortega are wounded or whether they think they’d have trouble taking me, they failed to finish the job. They will regret this decision.

I struggle to my knees and the pain in my side is almost unbearable. Using the dead boy’s headstone for support, I work myself to my feet and peer around. Empty. The sky is lightening in the east; clouds like pink fingers hang low on the horizon. I need to get out of here.

I hobble toward the gate where I left my car, hoping, willing it to still be there. The sun rises above the horizon and a tombstone to my left catches my attention. It is speckled with red droplets; they catch the sun like gemstones set into a ring. I crane my neck around the marker, not wanting to lose any time but I have to look, goddammit, I have to see what made blood splatter like paint across the marble tombstone. First I see a hand, immobile, on the ground, and then a torso, and finally an unfamiliar face, still breathing.

I move closer, cautiously, until I see clearly he has dropped his pistol and is clutching a wound in his abdomen, a gut shot, the worst way to go. Somehow, he has made it through the night and is still alive.

“Miguel Cortega?”

His eyes shift to meet mine, but he makes no effort to talk. His breathing is raspy, like air whistling through a pinched pipe. Now I see he’s been hit twice, a slug in the stomach and one through his lung.

“You were working this job with Hap. Together.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Where’s he going next? Where’s he supposed to make the kill?”

Cortega just stares at me, blankly, his pupils dilating. A little pink stream curls from the side of his mouth and spills out into two tendrils down his cheek.

He’s got another hour to live, maybe more. I could put a bullet in him to put him out of his misery, but I don’t feel merciful. Fuck him and fuck Hap.

I hobble away, the pain like a hot iron pressed to my side, and am fortunate to find my car, untouched, in the parking lot.

Thankfully, roadside gas stations have evolved into full-fledged grocery stores, and I find enough bandages and anti-bacterial cream to clean my wound until I can get to a proper pharmacy. The clerk gives me the requisite once-over, but the blue ink of his jailhouse tattoos tells me he isn’t going to ask any questions or raise any eyebrows. I drive on until I find a Motel Six. I check the wound, dress it as properly as I can, turn off the light, collapse on the bed, and sleep for eighteen hours.

THE road between Lake Tahoe and Seattle is dry and barren. The eastern side of Washington is a desert, and the miles roll by plain and indistinguishable. I can only make it about two hundred miles before my side throbs so badly it threatens my consciousness, but I don’t mind falling behind schedule. The convention is still over a week away, and Abe Mann is planning to dawdle in Seattle and Portland to rest up for the big event. He isn’t scheduled to show up until the penultimate evening when he “sneaks” on stage to give a kiss to his wife after her keynote speech. This is supposed to be a surprise but is as pre-planned, practiced, and scripted as a Broad-way show. He isn’t supposed to return to the stage until the final night, when he makes the most important speech of his political career. What is unscripted, what will be a real surprise, is he won’t be returning to the stage at all.

I check into an Economy Inn in Walla Walla, Washington. It is on a strip with four other hotels just like it, way stations for the tired and dispossessed. On the television, Mann stands with the Port of Seattle spread out behind him, thousands of containers stacked like a multicolored maze serving as his backdrop. He’s talking about the need for tighter port security and stronger counter-terrorism measures and tougher restrictions on containers and more dollars invested to secure our borders. His preacher hand gesture punctuates every phrase, and his face looks properly stern, his eyes fierce and determined. He has found a topic he believes in, and it shows in his eyes. For a moment, I wonder what those eyes will look like when I kill him at close range. I wonder if I’ll get him alone, so I can tell him his killer is also his son. I wonder if he’ll even care.

A pharmacy sits on top of a hill on the opposite side of town. Without Pooley, without a middleman, I have no way to see a doctor or procure a prescription. As it is, I have to heal myself with over-the-counter medication, but I have done this long enough to know what to look for, how to up the dosages, how to dress my wound to stave off infection. I fill a basket with tubes of camphophenique, rolls of gauze, bottles of extra-strength Tylenol gel-caps, boxes of Q-tips and spools of medical tape. I am fighting a fever now, and if the clerk looks at me strangely, I don’t take notice. I pay in cash and leave quickly.

A tiny church shares the parking lot with the pharmacy. I didn’t notice it on the way in, but as I toss the bags into the car, light reflects off the stained glass and catches my eye. My mind seizes on that look on Cortino’s face as he came out of the church built into the hill in Positano. The look of peace he had somehow found inside that building and carried out with him. Improbably, I find my feet moving toward the church door.

The sanctuary is empty. No more than twenty pews divide into two columns and point toward a small riser holding a pulpit. A simple mahogany cross decorates the back wall. The afternoon light filters through the stained glass outside and bathes the room in soft ethereal light. I think about Pooley and suddenly my legs feel tired. I sit down and steady my breathing until a feeling of nausea passes. How long I rest, I can’t be sure.

“Afternoon.”

A young man stands in the aisle, awash in the light from the windows. He is dressed conservatively, with a blue shirt tucked into gray slacks.

“Afternoon,” I manage.

“Are you okay?”

“Just resting.”

“You came to the right place.”

I am hoping if I stay very still he will go away. Instead, he sits in the pew in front of me and swivels his head to face my direction.