“That’s between Congressman Mann and myself.”
“Okay, John. Would you mind if we took your fingerprints?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Great.”
A pad of ink is produced and I get my fingers ready but before they are pressed onto the moist purple pad a door opens and a female voice speaks up to a room as silent as a graveyard. “Abe wants to see him.”
The blonde with the clipboard. She chews the inside of her cheek, anxious.
The senior agent doesn’t hesitate. “That’s a negative.”
“Abe insists.”
“Negative.”
“Would you like to speak to him, Steve? Because he certainly isn’t listening to me.”
Steve nods and moves to a corner of the room, pulls out a cell phone and speaks softly. I can tell he’s arguing with my father on the other end of the line, and I wait and it soon becomes clear he is losing the argument. His face falls but then he looks at me and his eyes harden again. I can make out that he says “yes” into the phone before flipping the lid closed.
TWELVE secret service officers lead me down a hallway with Larry on my left and Steve on my right and we are moving like a hangman’s caravan toward two doors at the end of the corridor, the big suite on the top floor. We reach the doors and Steve gives me a curt “Wait here” and he enters into the room alone.
I wait for ten minutes, keeping my body neutral the way I’ve practiced for the last ten years until the doors open again and Steve emerges.
“Now, listen, John. There are going to be ground rules and if you deviate from those rules, we will not hesitate to kill you.”
I wait.
“You will enter the room and stand behind the line I’ve drawn for you on the floor. If you step over that line, Congressman Mann will ring a buzzer he’s holding, which will vibrate in my hand and I will enter the door and shoot you dead. Do you believe me?”
“I do.”
“You have ten minutes to walk out of that door. If you are still in the room after ten minutes I will enter and I will shoot you dead. Do you believe this to be true?”
“I do.”
“Okay, John. Then I’m going to let you in the room and start the clock. Please don’t raise your voice. It might make all of us a little antsy and I don’t want us to be antsy, okay?”
“Yes.”
“All right then.”
Steve opens the door and I step inside the suite.
A small foyer leads to a spacious living room. A red line of tape marks off the two rooms and I enter and put my toes on the line and there he is, after all this way, there he is sitting on a gray sofa thirty feet away, his eyes fixed on me like they are attached by a rope. He is bigger up close than he looked on all those stages and there isn’t an ounce of apprehension on his face.
“Hello. I’m Abe.”
“My name is Columbus. And I am your son.”
I say this as calmly as if I were announcing the weather.
“How do you figure, Columbus?”
“I was the baby inside LaWanda Dickerson whom you knew as Amanda B. when you had her killed your freshman year in the Congress.”
He does not look down nor away. He is very good at holding his gaze steady, a conditioned skill that has served him well.
“It wasn’t like that, son. I needed her to leave Washington and some men who were looking out for me took their job too seriously, too far.”
He stands up, keeping his hands in his pockets. “But how do you know I’m the father?”
“I know.”
“She was a professional prostitute . . .”
“I know.” I’m answering his first question.
He looks at me the way an architect looks over his final blueprints, searching for flaws, mistakes. But he finds none.
“I do, too. I can tell just by looking at you.” He exhales, heavily. “But why come now? What do you want?”
“I was hired to kill you.”
He swallows once and removes his hand from his pocket. He’s holding a silver box with a button on it. “To kill me?”
“Yes, I’m a professional killer. I’ve killed men and women all over the world. I do this because I was born to do it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He looks at his hand and back at me. “Let me ask you something. Do you think it was a coincidence you of all people were hired to kill me?”
“Someone told me fate has a way of making paths cross.”
“Yes. We just move through this world like so many puppets on strings.”
“No. Not me. I’m in control. Our paths crossed because I willed myself to get here.”
He studies me, like he’s mulling this over.
“Do you think you were lucky? To get up into this room?”
“I think luck often favors the artful.”
“So how are you going to do it?”
“I’m going to improvise.”
“Before I press this button?”
“Yes.”
He nods matter-of-factly, then takes his thumb off the button and places the silver box on the glass coffee table.
“How are you going to escape?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“No. But I got this far.”
“Yes, you did.”
“You have no idea what it took me to get here.”
“I presume your whole life, all your struggles, led to this moment.”
“Yes.”
“How much time do you have?”
“Six minutes.”
“Then listen to me. Here’s how you’re going to escape. You kill me and then you move through that door, which leads to the master bedroom. The window is open and there are balconies going down. But there is also a balcony going up to the roof. You climb to the roof and you will find a window-washing cart on the opposite side of the building. Use the gearshift to drop at a rapid speed twenty floors to the alley below. You can be several blocks away before Officer Steve comes through that door.”
I’ve kept a poker face during this speech but I don’t understand, can’t comprehend what he’s saying. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I hired you.”
The truth rings out in the empty hotel room like a strong wind sweeping in and carrying out the fog.
