Dark Men

by Derek Haas

  I am about to drive that road again. I knew it the moment Smoke called me by name. The real question, the one I’m not sure I want to answer: did I ever truly leave it in the first place?

  Risina is folding clothes in the back room when I enter, and her face lights up when she sees me coming through the door.

  “What’d you bring me?”

  Then she spots it in my face, and I guess she’s believed this day would come since we first arrived.

  “Someone found you.”

  I nod.

  “How much time do we have?”

  I swallow, my mouth chalky. “We leave tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “I have to go to the U.S. for a while.”

  “What’s a while?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She folds her arms across her chest and raises her chin. She’s never been one to lower her eyes, and she’s not going to start now. “Tell me what happened.”

  I paint the picture of Smoke, about the way he found me and what he had to say about Archibald Grant and the note left behind that called me out by name.

  “You told me you were out . . . that Archie wanted you out, was covering for you, he said. I don’t understand this. His problems are not your problems.”

  “I was out. I am. But he stitched me up when I needed stitching and I can’t turn my back on him.”

  Risina collapses into a chair, but still she doesn’t lower her eyes.

  “I want you to know . . .” I start but she cuts me off.

  “Give me a moment to think, dammit.” This might be the first time she’s ever snapped at me, and I can’t say I blame her. “Can you bring me some water?”

  I move to the kitchen and pour some filtered water out of a jug we keep in the refrigerator. This might be the last time I’m in this kitchen, the last time I open this fridge, and even though this place isn’t much, it has been good to us. Better not to think this way. This is no time for sentiment. Better to rip the bandage off quickly.

  I return with the water. She takes it absently and drinks the entire glass without taking it from her lips. I’m not sure she even knows I’m in the room. I can see her eyes darting as her mind catches up to what I told her.

  After a moment, she finally raises her eyes and focuses on me, maybe to keep the room from spinning. She blushes, blood rising in her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry . . . this is new to me. I thought I was prepared, had prepared myself for something like this, but . . .”

  She swallows and bites her lip. I know she is sorting her thoughts the way a contract bridge player organizes playing cards, bringing all the suits together before laying down the next play.

  “Are you going to have to kill someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if once you enter this life, you don’t want to stop again?”

  She’s trying to read my face, less interested in what I say than how I look when I say it. It’s a skill she’s picked up from me. I answer with the truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  She absorbs this like a physical blow. Just when I don’t think she’s going to say anything, she finds her voice. There is a strength there that shouldn’t surprise me, though it does.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s not a question. I’m not asking for permission. I’m coming with you. You offered me a life with you and I won’t run away just because the past caught up with us. Us. Not you. Us.”

  “Risina—”

  “You can’t send me away. You can’t kick me in the stomach like you did the first girl you loved.” Her eyes are hot now. “I’m coming.”

  I turn my voice to gravel. She hasn’t heard this voice from me, but I want the weight behind my words to be clear. “It’s one thing to hear these stories about me and another to live them, to see them with your own eyes. I can’t get back into this and have to worry about—”

  She interrupts, fearlessly, her voice matching mine. If I thought I could outgravel her, I misjudged the woman I love. “Yes, you will. You’ll learn to do it and worry about me at the same time. I’m not giving you the choice.”

  “You’ll see a side of me you won’t recognize.”

  “Don’t you understand a damn thing I’m saying? I want to know every side of you. I must know! I’ve wanted all of you since I first met you. Not just one side or the other. Not just the mask you choose to show me.”

  “And what if you hate what you see?”

  “I won’t.”

  “And what if you die standing next to me?”

  “Then I’ll die. People do it every day.”

  I start to ask another question and stop myself. There’s a reason I fell in love with Risina the first time I saw her; it’s here before me now. Defiance, ambition, determination, passion . . . the qualities of confidence. The qualities of a professional assassin. A tiger is a goddamned tiger. The beasts are born that way, and no matter how they are nurtured, their nature always emerges eventually.

  “So when do we leave?” she asks.

  “Now,” I whisper.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It takes us a few days to buy passports. Although Smoke failed spectacularly as a bagman, he’s not a bad fence. He’s been with Archie Grant long enough to know how to scrounge the right information, ask the right questions, navigate the world beneath the world, the one where money exchanges hands and lips stay tight.

  This is all new to Risina, and she adjusts, acting normally, with just a hint of boredom, the way she must’ve negotiated competitively for a rare book. An Italian fence named Vespucci once told me, “no matter the situation, act like you’ve been there before.” Risina says little and keeps her face emotionless, neutral. Even as we’re engaged in something as simple as obtaining illegal papers, she looks like she’s done it a thousand times. Maybe she’s a natural. I won’t deny that I feel, well, proud of her. Maybe that’s irrational, but I don’t care.

  In a hotel near the airport, we lie in bed, waiting on a morning flight.

  “I don’t want you to get too confident. We haven’t done anything yet.”

  “How do you want me to be?”

  “Observant.”

  She widens her eyes. “Like this?” She holds it for a moment before breaking into a smile.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Yes, babe. I know. You’re going to be tense and I understand that. This is the new man. The one who has to worry about someone besides himself. But when we’re alone, then I’m going to want you back. Not Columbus.”

  She pulls close to me and buries her nose in my neck.

  “I wasn’t aware this was a democracy.”

  “Well, now you are.”

  “As long as you understand that when we leave this room, or any room, I’m in charge. You look to me. You learn from me.”

  “I understand.”

  “I mean it, Risina.”

  “I know you do. And I answered you that I understand.”

  She sleeps peacefully, as though this is just another night in the fishing village. Maybe she’s going to be okay in this world. Maybe she’ll learn quickly and take direction and thrive. Maybe if I keep telling myself that over and over, I’ll believe it.

  Chicago is warm but stale, like a mausoleum releasing hundreds of years of trapped air after the front stone is rolled away. It must be the exhaust from the traffic in the city or the wind off the lake, or maybe the smell is just in my head. My temples throb like someone is tapping my head with a hammer.

  Risina sits next to me in the rental sedan—a dark blue economy car—staring out the window, smiling absently.

  I let her come. She insisted, but the decision was, is, mine. I could have blown off Smoke, protested I was out, truly out, that Archie’s problems were Archie’s problems, taken Risina and fled to another isolated country, but the truth is . . . I didn’t want to. I�
��m like Eve staring at the picked apple, but that’s not quite the right metaphor. I’ve already tasted the apple and instead of facing banishment, I’ve been offered passage back into Eden, or into my definition of paradise anyway. But at what price? There is always a price.

  “I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to protest or argue or answer. Just nod your head that you agree when I finish.”

  She waits, and I can feel her eyes.

  “This is my decision to have you with me. To teach you what I do. To bring you into this world. Okay? I take responsibility for it. I own it.”

  She waits until I turn my head her way before she nods. Whether or not she agrees with me, I think I see understanding in her eyes. Regardless, I had to say it.

  I’ve never had a charge before, and I want it defined and out in the open, as much for me as for her. I have to teach her, protect her, and lead her all at once, and I will not take these obligations lightly.

  Straight from the airport, Smoke leads us to Archie’s apartment. I check the side-view mirrors, looking for patterns in the traffic behind us, but I don’t think anyone knows about our arrival. If the plan of the kidnappers was to tail Smoke and strike as soon as he found me, then they’ve done a lousy job. There’s no tail from what I can see, and I didn’t clock anyone back at the bookstore or restaurant before we left our hiding spot.

  I’ve been inside Archie’s building a couple of times before, once after killing a couple of his rival fences, and another time after I was shot in the ribs in a Chicago Public Library. Grant hired a private surgeon to stitch me up, and his sister Ruby took care of me until I got back on my feet. That was years ago, before I quit and before Ruby took a bullet to the face and died in front of a church in Siena as I stood next to her.

  The apartment is as I remember it and as Smoke described. There’s dried blood in the bedroom, the color of rust, and several pieces of furniture—a lamp, a nightstand—are overturned.

  “I didn’t touch nothing,” Smoke says. “This is just as I found it.”

  I scan the room, then zero in on a chest of drawers and put my finger in a smooth hole.

  “Shit. Is that a bullet hole? I didn’t even see that.” He hits the word “even” to make sure I hear the truth in his voice.

  “Can you help me move this?”

  The back of the chest and the wall behind it have the same hole. Risina watches, fascinated.

  “You got a little knife on you?” I say to Smoke.

  He immediately shakes his head, but then thinks. “Hold on a second . . .”

  He scampers back to the kitchen and Risina smiles and nods, rocking forward on her toes. “I’m impressed.”

  “In this job, you have to look at a scene of violence, the aftermath, and read it like a book. I want you to try to visualize what happened in this room. On your own, no help from me.”

  I hear Smoke rummaging around in kitchen drawers, but I focus on Risina. Her eyes trace the room, drinking it in, and I can see her gears turning.

  “I don’t know. There was a fight, and someone was shot.”

  “Not shot. I don’t think so. We’d see a different blood pattern on the floor, on the walls. When someone takes a bullet, a part of his insides usually comes out. So you’d see some other matter besides blood.”

  “Then what do you think? He was stabbed?”

  Before I can answer, Smoke returns holding a small kitchen knife, a screwdriver, and a letter opener, presenting all three items like a kid excited to please his teacher.

  “The opener,” I say. A few minutes later and I fish the bullet out of the wall, then toss it to Risina. “That’s a .22 slug. Look at the size of it and try to commit it to memory. It’s a low caliber round out of a small gun. An assassin’s weapon. I’ll get ahold of some other calibers so you can compare them.”

  I turn to Smoke. “Archie have a .22?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He keep it under the mattress?”

  “Yeah.”

  I lift it up, but the gun isn’t there.

  “Well, he got one shot off before they fought over the pistol. I’m saying ‘they’ ’cause I’m guessing it was at least two guys.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I could be wrong, but I think one held him up while the other one went to work on his face. That’s why you have the blood here, in a circle, after they broke his nose and most likely knocked him out. They held him up while his head hung. It’s hard to hold an unconscious guy still, and his head lolled a bit. That accounts for why there is so much blood on the floor. A stab wound would pour straight down and soak the victim’s clothes. A broken nose? That’s a gusher, and if they’re holding him upright, it’s just going to get everywhere.”

  It’s Smoke’s turn to ask a question. “Why would they do that?”

  I shrug. “They wanted information on me and the muscle went too far? They wanted to beat on him for putting up a fight, pulling a gun? Who knows? But they were careful not to step in the blood, which means the fist work happened after the initial fight. Anyway, none of this matters all that much until we figure out who’s holding Archie and why they want me.”

  Risina turns the bullet over in her fingers and holds it up close to her eye like a jeweler examining a diamond. “But we know now it was more than one guy.”

  “We know it was more than one guy here in the room. But maybe they were only hired muscle . . . not necessarily the guy looking for me. Either way, the person who wanted Archie snuck two or more guys into this place, which is no easy feat, I know from experience, and got them out of the building while transporting an unconscious resident.”

  “They’re professionals. Like you.”

  I nod and chew my lip. I had come to that conclusion within five seconds of entering the room, but I wanted Risina to arrive at it on her own.

  “So what now?”

  “Now we bang on a door.”

  Bo Willis is a big man, not quite forty, who looks like his monthly trip to the pharmacy includes a permanent prescription for Lipitor. He was a Chicago cop for twelve years but quit when he didn’t make detective the second year in a row. Being a cop means taking a lot of ribbing from your fellow officers, and I’m sure he received his fair share after failing his detective exams or getting passed over. Bo joined a private security firm, the kind that requires short-sleeve blue uniforms and patches with names on them. He was content to punch the clock and collect his sixty-five a year, though he did it with a scowl on his face. His first couple of years he spent on a bench at an airport warehouse. The last three, he held down an Aero chair behind a security console in Archibald Grant’s building.

  We didn’t have to knock on his door; Bo eats breakfast each morning at a place called Willard’s Diner, occupying a booth near the front where he can spread out his newspaper. He looks up for a moment when Risina walks by, and follows her with his eyes until she passes. I want her to hear my conversation with the security guard, but I make a mental note that I’m going to have to talk to her about her appearance. In a business where invisibility is a weapon, I can’t afford to have Risina turning heads by simply walking into the room.

  I give Bo a few minutes to settle into the sports page and then slide into the booth opposite him. He starts, unused to having his territory invaded, and that’s a good place to put him: uncomfortable, on defense before he even knows he’s entered the arena.

  “This is my booth, guy,” he says when I just stare at him. He has a flat Midwestern accent, and his voice comes out a little pinched, like air escaping a punctured tire.

  “I know it’s your booth, Bo. It’s your booth every goddamned morning.”

  “Do we know each other?” He’s somewhere between puzzled and pissed. For a big guy, that voice is high, and does his tough guy stance a disservice. I wonder if it cut into his effectiveness as a cop. I wonder if he’s been battling it his whole life.

  “You don’t know me, but I know you.”

  “Listen, if this
—”

  “Shut up, Bo. Shut up and use your ears. You’re going to have the opportunity to open your mouth again, and when you do, I want it to be to tell the truth.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Who paid you to look the other way on March 25th?”

  He blinks once, twice, swallowing hard. He’s a headline in large type, as easy to read as the newspaper in front of him. “I don’t—”

  “I’m going to describe your sister’s house to you, Bo. It’s on Wilmette Avenue, about thirty minutes from here, a white clapboard two-story number with a green mailbox out front. Your nephew, Mike, occupies the bedroom in the upper right corner and your niece, Kate, right? She sleeps in the lower left below a pink Hannah Montana poster. Your sister, Laura, she’s been living alone now for what? Two years?”

  Bo’s face turns bright red, like a brake light. His voice rattles now. “I don’t know who you think you are—”

  I cut him off. “I’ll tell you. I think I’m the guy who will kill your sister, your niece, and your nephew in the next hour if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know. And when I get done killing them, I’ll head to your parents’ house in Glen Ellyn. The brick number set back from the street with the two-door garage? Eventually I’ll come back for you, Bo.”

  He starts to open his mouth, but I’m quicker. “I know you were a cop. I know you still have friends on the force. But I’m going to tell you as directly as you’ll ever hear anything in your life: you and your friends have never dealt with someone like me. There’s already a file on your family that will read ‘unsolved homicide’ if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know.”

  He lowers his eyes, and I’ve got him. I growl through clenched teeth, “Who paid you to look the other way?”

  For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just pushes waffle crumbs around the table. Then, so softly I almost don’t hear him, “Not look the other way . . .”