Exit Strategy

lessons?”

“Jack?”

“He doesn’t seem the type, does he? Like you.” A sly look my way, as if expecting a response. When I didn’t comment, she continued. “Now, me? I bet you think I’d make a good actress.”

“Probably.”

She took out her keys and opened the car door. “Well, I’m not. I can’t stand it, and no amount of practice makes it any easier.” She slid into the driver’s seat and waited for me to get in before continuing. “I just never could get the hang of being someone else. Nearly blew a job over it once.”

She started the car and pulled from the lot. I expected the “story” to end there but, when she reached the main road, she continued.

“I had to hit a mark at a big party. I was about your age. Now I was never what you’d call pretty, but there are ways to make men forget that. Under the circumstances, what’s the easiest way to make the hit?”

“Honeypot.”

“Exactly. A little vroom-vroom-like you did in there-lure your mark away, then take him out while his brain’s hiding in his trousers. So I bought the dress, put on my disguise, showed up at the party, got my first really good look at the old geezer and knew there wasn’t a hope in hell I could pull it off.”

“Ugly?”

“Made Little Joe look like a fireman’s calendar centerfold.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Waited until he found a little morsel he liked, let her do the dirty work, then shot him while she was in the bathroom cleaning up afterward. Improvisation, Dee. That’s what I’m good at-not acting. The point is, everyone has strengths. Jack can teach you some. I can teach you others. There’s no need to limit yourself.” She slid a look my way. “But remember I’m the one with the teaching experience. Jack’s only ever played the pupil.”

I nodded and said nothing.

By the time we made it to the jail where Volkv was being held, visiting hours would likely be over. Besides, this wasn’t a “fly by the seat of your pants” type of mission. It would require planning.

As we switched places and I drove back to Evelyn’s, she kept me amused with stories about Little Joe, none of which were complimentary and all of which wouldn’t have been nearly so funny if I’d hadn’t met the man.

“-nearly blew a year’s worth of planning,” Evelyn said. “And why? So he wouldn’t have to pay for the goddamned blow job.”

“Isn’t that the same story he told us? The payroll heist?”

“Now you know why the man’s stories are so boring. He takes out all the parts that make him look like a moron, which means there’s no goddamned story left. Between making things up and letting things slip…Volkv! Yes!”

Her sudden outburst nearly had me wearing my Coke.

Evelyn waved an apology my way. “I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out where I know the name Nicky Volkv from. Thinking about Joe’s loose lips just reminded me. Volkv tried to turn pro after he left the Nikolaevs. His first hit, he screwed up big-time. Put a car bomb in the wrong car, killed a young couple.”

“Sounds like Volkv and Kozlov would have hit it off well. Two Mafia incompetents.”

“It’s the mob. Competence is a recessive gene. That’s what keeps us in business.”

I changed lanes, carefully passing a school bus. “You did mob work?”

Evelyn waggled her hand. “Fifty-fifty. For contract killers, mob hits are like office work-steady employment, decent pay…and boring as hell. There’s far more lucrative and interesting work out there.” She glanced my way. “Even for someone with her own rules. Drug cartels, political assassinations…”

I said nothing. To Evelyn, I suppose this made sense. If I didn’t mind killing thugs, why not just kill bigger ones? But that would take me places I didn’t want to go.

Didn’t want to go? Or wasn’t ready to go?

I shook off the thought and concentrated on the road.

Evelyn sipped her coffee. “Do you like working for the Tomassinis, Dee?”

“They treat me well. When they give me a mark, I check it out, and it’s always exactly what they say it is. No tricks.”

Evelyn gave a slow nod. “The Tomassinis are good. A small, old-fashioned family. Not many of them left. They haven’t changed much from back when I worked for them.”

“Ah, so that’s how you know Frank Tomassini.”

Her eyes glinted. “It didn’t seem strange to you that a Mafia don had no problem hiring a woman? You have me to thank for his enlightened employment policy and, believe me, it took some work to bring him around. I spent a year pretending I was a man before I told him. When I did, he fired me…until he had a job no one else could do.”

“And hired you back.”

“Frank always said I was the best damned hitman he had, which I was-and which is why he probably jumped at the chance to hire another woman.”

“I guess I should say thanks.”

She snorted. “You’ll do better than that. You owe me, and I’m collecting.”

“I’d owe you if you got me the job. You made it possible, but you didn’t get it for me. That I did myself.”

“True, which begs the question. How the hell does a New York Mafia don find a Canadian girl living in the middle of the goddamned forest, and recruit her as a contract killer?”

I let out a small smile. “Fate.”

“That better not be all I’m getting. We have an hour left, and I expect to be entertained with a damn good story, especially considering what I’m offering in return.”

“Which is?”

Her gaze still on the windshield, she lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but not before letting an enigmatic smile slip out. “Questions answered, as I said. Specifically, one question for one question. A fair exchange of information, that mightiest of commodities.”

“And what information will I get?”

The smile tweaked the corners of her lips. “That depends on you. On what you want to know. For now, give me your story.”

I hesitated, but could see nothing in the tale that could satisfy more than idle curiosity. She could always find out through the Tomassinis. Better for me to give it, and take something in return, some knowledge or skill I could use.

So I began. “The offer came through Frank’s nephew, Paul…”

SIXTEEN

As for how Paul wound up at my lodge, that I do chalk up to fate. He’d come up with two of his cousins-also Tomassini wiseguys-for deer hunting season. They’d checked into a lodge 50 kilometers from the Red Oak. But the place hadn’t been up to Paul’s standards, and someone had recommended mine. He came, he liked, he stayed…even if he had to do his actual hunting off the property.

I figured out that they were Mafiosi pretty fast, but Paul and his cousins were quiet, well-mannered guests- better than those with the corporate team-building getaway I was hosting at the time-so I didn’t care. Deer season ended, and Paul booked a week for duck season. Then he reserved the deer season for next year. Paul’s cousins kept their distance from their ex-cop host, but Paul and I hit it off well-not friends, but friendly.

By his fourth visit, I could see foreclosure on the horizon and was scrambling to push it off a little further, but had finally come to realize I was only postponing the inevitable. My second life was about to crash-not as spectacularly as the first-but all the more devastatingly. I’d kept my problems to myself…until Paul tried booking his next visit, and I had to admit the lodge might not still be around.