“Are you new to the church?”
“Just passing through.”
“A traveler?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry to slip in here . . .”
He waves his hand. “A church with locked doors is like screen doors on a submarine. Purposeless. My name is Dr. Garrett.” He extends his hand and I shake it. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I haven’t headed for daylight. Fuck, am I tired.
“You look young for a preacher.”
“That’s kind of you to say. But I’ve been doing this for a long time. Twenty-somethin’ years now.”
I smile weakly.
“Tell you what. I’ll let you speak to the Lord all you want. If you need me, my office is just on the other side of that door.”
He stands up, and I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I hear myself say, “Preacher?”
“Yes?”
He pauses standing over me.
“Aren’t you worried about danger coming through the door?” I hear myself saying. But the voice isn’t mine, not exactly. At least it doesn’t sound like me.
The preacher looks at me thoughtfully. “No. This place is about comfort, about sanctuary . . .”
But he stops suddenly as I stand up and grab him by the throat. His eyes change quickly, from confidence to surprise to terror. Well, that’s not right. It’s not I watching those eyes, not I pulling the pistol out of the small of my back, not I whose right hand explodes in a blur and smashes the pistol into the side of his face, smashes him again, pistol-whipping him furiously, bam, bam, bam, over and over and over . . .
“Why?” the preacher manages as he goes down between the pews.
And I don’t know how to answer the question, I don’t know why, I don’t know who this person is beating a defenseless face on a defenseless preacher in a defenseless sanctuary until that face is a mask of blood and gore.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the person who is not I mutters, and then spits on the moaning lump on the floor.
In five minutes, I am on the road again, heading west through the desert, the infinite white line of the highway sliding underneath my tires. It is not I who holds the wheel steadily, the pain in my side forgotten. It is not I with a grin on my face.
CLOUDS hang like a ceiling over downtown Seattle, low and gray and threatening. To the south, Mt. Rainier fills the horizon like a wart on the landscape. Something about it seems foreign here, wrong, like it broke away from a mountain chain and moved off to sulk on its own. This morning it is blindfolded, its peak lost above the clouds.
It is time to focus. I have yet to set up even the basics for my kill and subsequent escape. Since Positano, since I managed to crawl to the road with two bullets in me, since I somehow stole a Vespa and somehow fought off losing consciousness and somehow negotiated sixty miles to Naples in the dead of night without being stopped by the police and somehow holed up until Pooley could get to me, get a doctor to me, since that evening when I walked into a room to make a kill but instead walked into a trap where I was going to be the fall guy, since then I have put much greater thought into my assassinations. Vespucci placed importance on the psychology of the killing business, but in retrospect he paid short shrift to executing the executions. His job was to pull together a wealth of information, giving his assassins the best avenues to kill a target. But he left the actual task to his hired killers, left the method and the deed and the strategy to his men.
I had planned to get to Abe Mann at a speech he was to give in Los Angeles the day before the convention started. The only rule I had was that the kill had to be the week of the convention, but the exact time and place were left to my discretion. I knew he had plans to speak using a hundred local firefighters behind him, and I was angling Pooley to get the contact information about who arranged the “staging” of these events. Once the information was obtained, I would manipulate either the person or the list or one of the firefighters so I would be included in the event, so there would be a spot for me on the dais behind him. I knew ten different fire stations would have to send men to fill those spots and there would be little overlap in the ranks. An unfamiliar face wouldn’t be noticed, especially if I had set the table, so to speak, had the proper credentials and ID and documentation to pass myself off. I would use a Secret Serviceman’s gun.
But that plan shattered like a broken mirror when Hap killed Pooley in Santa Fe.
Hap. Of course. Hap brought himself into the equation and Hap became the solution. By taking away my options, Hap
CHAPTER 13
I am fortunate the bullet passed through my side without shattering a rib or puncturing an organ. I’m fortunate it is a clean wound and the bandages and medication have stanched the bleeding and diminished the pain. I feel better. Not whole, not one hundred percent, but better.
Now to find Hap. The supplier route to Hap failed spectacularly; that door was obviously shut, and I would have to open a new door. This time I didn’t want to kill him, just find him and follow him.
I get up, shower, redress my bandages, dress casually—black jeans and black T-shirt—and take Interstate 5 into downtown. I exit at Madison and head to the waterfront. I want to see the Pacific, to stare out at the horizon where the dark water meets the light sky. I find a metered parking space and make my way across a small patch of grass where businessmen and women lie in the sun, content to feel intermittent sunlight, if only for a few fleeting seconds.
I stand at the water’s edge for an hour. Dark water meeting light sky. It is time to finish this. To forget connecting with Abe Mann. I realize I no longer need to connect with him, we were connected long before I saw his name at the top of the page. I only need to sever the connection, once and for all.
It hits me there, watching the light and the darkness disappear into each other. The connection I need to sever isn’t the one between Mann and me. The connection I need to sever is the one holding me back.
I find a pay phone and dial a number from memory. After a brief exchange with Max, he puts me through to Mr. Ryan in Las Vegas.
“I agree to your offer.”
“You will let me represent you? Exclusively?”
“You have your Silver Bear.”
I hear an exhale through the line, like he is allowing himself a moment for this to sink in. It is a rare moment of emotion for a stoical man, and it pleases me.
“I am very happy. You will not regret this.”
“I’m sure I won’t and I am happy as well, Mr. Ryan.”
“Call me William. We are partners.”
“William.”
“You are finishing a job now?”
“Yes. It will be finished by the end of the week.”
“And after, how soon would you like to work again?”
“Give me two months.”
“Where would you like to work?”
“The Northeast, preferably.”
“Is that your home?”
“Yes, Boston.”
“Ahhh. There is a lot of work in New York right now.”
“That would be fine.”
