of their marriage would end up sandwiched between the world report and the weekend weather on the five o’clock news.
Once elected to serve in the nation’s capital, Abe discovered a whole new level of prostitution. There were high-quality whores in New York, mind you, but even they paled in comparison to the women who serviced the leaders of this country. The best part was, he didn’t even have to make polite inquiries. He was approached before he was sworn in, approached the first night of his first trip to Washington after the election. A senator, a man he had seen only on television and whom he had never met in person, called him directly at his hotel room and asked if he would like to join him for a party. What an incredible time he had had that night. With the stakes higher, the women so young, so beautiful, and so willing, he had experienced a new ecstasy that still made his mind reel when he thought of it.
Later that year, after he had settled, he grew fond of a hard-bodied black prostitute named Amanda B. Though she argued against it, he forced her to fuck him without a condom, satisfying his growing thirst for bigger and bigger thrills. For about six months, he fucked her in increasingly public locations, in increasingly dangerous positions, with increasingly animalistic ferocity. Each fix begat the next, and he needed stronger doses to satisfy his appetite.
When she became pregnant, his world caved in. He crawled to her in tears, begging for forgiveness. She was not frightened of him until she saw this change. This change meant he was more dangerous than she had anticipated. She knew what would happen next: after the tears, after the self-flagellation, after the “why me?” and the self-loathing, he would turn. His internal remorse would eventually be directed outward; he would have been made to face his own weakness, and he would not like what he had seen. And so he would destroy that which made him feel helpless. Even in the altered state cocaine had made of her mind, Amanda B. knew this as surely as she knew anything.
But she liked the way the baby felt inside her. She liked the way it was growing, swelling her stomach, moving inside her. Her! Amanda B., formerly LaWanda Dickerson of East Providence, Rhode Island, formerly inmate 43254 of the Slawson Home for Girls, her! Amanda B.!
So she decided to hide. She knew he would come for her, and when he did, she would be gone. She had a friend back home, a john who had proposed to her when she was fourteen. He still called, long-distance and not collect either! He would take her in, would hide her from the congressman when he came looking. If she could just get to him. . . .
But she didn’t make it to Rhode Island. Instead, she ended up in the hospital, her nose bleeding, her lungs exploding, her heart beating holes into her chest. The police had found her seven-months-pregnant frame in the basement of an abandoned tenement building during a routine drug raid, a rubber cord tied around her bicep, a needle sticking out of her forearm. She was checked into the hospital as Jane Doe number 13 that day. The next day, she went into labor and gave birth to a four-pound boy. Social Services took him from her before she had held him for more than a minute.
Congressman Mann saw her for the last time two months later. Having seen the error of his ways, having re-dedicated his life to his country, his wife, and his God, he had her forcibly escorted from his front yard as she screamed louder and with more vehemence than she had ever screamed in her life. Ten days after the police report was filed, she was found dead in an alley behind a Sohio gas station, a knife handle sticking at an awkward angle from her neck. The policeman on the scene, a sixteen-year veteran named William Handley, speculated the wound was self-inflicted, though the coroner thought the circumstances of the death were inconclusive.
It took me two and a half years to put all that together. I did not ask the clay’s question of who is the potter until I had achieved adulthood, not believing I would survive long enough to care. Then, after killing my eighth mark in three years, achieving a level of professionalism few have matched, I started to wonder who I was. Where did I come from? Who could possibly have sired me? The past, for which I had held no deference, reached out its huge, black paw and batted me right in the face.
So I clawed and scratched and exercised the necessary patience and restraint, and slowly put the jigsaw puzzle together, starting with the edges and working my way toward the center. A newspaper story connected to a hospital report connected to a police record until it all took shape and became whole. Once the puzzle was complete, I decided to dismiss the past once and for all. The present would be my domain, always the present. Every time I had tried to befriend the past, it chose to have no amity for me. Well, no more. I would bury my mother, Amanda B., so deep I would never find her again. And so I would my father, Congressman Abe Mann of New York.
And then, here is his name at the top of the sheet. Seven black letters printed in a careful hand, strong in their order, powerful in their conciseness. ABE MANN. My father. The next person I am to kill, in Los Angeles, eight weeks from now.
Can this be a coincidence, or has someone discovered my secret past and put the jigsaw puzzle together as I had? In my line of work, I can take no chances with the answer. I have to react quickly, waste as little time as possible, for if this does prove to be just another assignment, I’ll have to compensate for each minute missed.
I, too, have a middleman. Pooley is the closest thing to friend or family I have, but we prefer the noncommittal label “business associates.” I take one more glance over the documents, stack everything back in the case, and head out the door.
A hotel a block away provides me with quick access to taxicabs whenever I need them. The rain diminishing, I make my way over to where the hotel’s doorman can hail me a car. The driver feels like chatting me up, but I stare out the window and let the buildings slide by outside like they’re on a conveyer belt, one after the other, each looking just like the one before it. Stymied, the driver lights a cigarette and turns up the radio, a day game, a businessman’s special, broadcasting from Fenway.
We make it to Downey Street in SoBo, and I have the driver pull over to a nondescript corner. I do nothing that will cause him to remember me; I pay a fair tip and move up the street quickly. A day from now, he won’t be able to distinguish me from any other fare.
I buy two coffees from a Greek delicatessen and climb the stoop to a loft apartment above the neighboring bakery. I am buzzed in before I can even juggle the foam cups and press the button. Pooley must be at his desk.
“You brought me coffee?” He acts surprised as I hand him one of the cups and sit heavily in the only other chair in the room. “You thoughtful bastard.”
“Yeah, I’m going soft.”
I hoist the case onto his desk and slide it over to him.
“Archibald’s?”
“Yep,” I answer.
“He give you any problems?”
“Naah, he’s all bluster. What I want to know is: who’s he working for?”
This catches Pooley off guard. Ours is a business where certain questions aren’t asked. The less you know— the fewer people you know, I should say—the better your chances of survival. Middlemen are as common as paper and ink, another office supply, a necessity to conduct business. They are used for a reason: to protect us from each other. Everyone understands this. Everyone respects this. You do not go asking questions, or you end up dead or relocated or physically unable to do your job. But those seven letters at the top of the page changed the rules.
“What?” he asks. Maybe he hadn’t heard me right. I can’t blame him for hoping.
“I want to know who hired Archibald to work as his go-between.”
“Columbus,” Pooley stammers. “Are you serious?”
“I’m as serious as you’ve ever known me.”
This is no small statement, and Pooley knows it. We go back nearly twenty years, and he’s seen me serious all my life. This breach of professional etiquette has him jumpy. I can see it on his face. Pooley is not good at hiding his emotions, not ever.
“Goddammit, Columbus. Why’re you asking me that?”
“Open the case,” I say.
