“A job prospect,” she said.
“Did it go well?”
“We’ll see.” She leaned in close to me and rested her hand lightly on mine. The feel of her skin was electric. With her brow furrowed and her voice low, she whispered to me, “Leonard, you should be more careful about falling asleep in public. I’m sure that car was following you a few days ago. And I’m sure you have more than your share of enemies.”
I nodded, acknowledging her concern. She relaxed back in her seat, still keeping her arm and leg touching mine. Even though there was fabric separating our skin, the touch of her made me lightheaded. We sat making small talk, mostly her joking about how I should get a set of action figures marketed for myself; that with enough publicity I could be the next Rambo. After we entered Waltham, I caught a glimpse of a calculating shine in her eyes, and I waited for what I knew was coming. We were maybe two blocks from our stop when she mentioned about how when we first met I had asked her if she was a writer.
I nodded slowly.
She said, “I don’t have any training as one, but your story is amazing, especially after what you did yesterday. Leonard, with the two of us working together I’m sure we could still write a kickass book, one that we could get paid a lot of money for. I mean, how hard could it be? And who knows, maybe we’d even be able to get a movie deal for it. So what do you say?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, my voice catching on me.
“Please do.” She placed her hand again on top of mine. “I’ve been going though a rough patch, to put it lightly, and this could really bail me out. And it would be so much fun. Think of it, Leonard, the two of us getting to work hard through all those nights together.”
I should’ve turned her down. But the thing was, even though she was just playing me, and had only been playing me ever since we met, I knew something that she didn’t. That there was a genuine connection between us. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I could feel it just as much as I could feel the electricity of her touch. No matter how good a con artist she was, and she was damn good, she couldn’t have felt as comfortable with me as she did without that connection existing, and I knew that part of it wasn’t an act. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
“Can we meet tomorrow and talk about it?” she asked, a faint pleading in her voice. “Maybe you can give it some thought tonight?”
“Sure,” I said.
A hint of a sly smile showed on her face then. We agreed on where and when to meet, and after the bus rolled into our stop we walked together with her arm hooked through mine until it was time for us to go our separate ways. I stood still and watched as she walked down a side street, a lump forming in my throat. I should’ve turned her down since I knew there was no way I was ever going to let a book be written about me, at least with my help. I couldn’t do it, though. Just as she was playing me I was going to have to play her as long as I could. If I could buy another week or two of her needing to meet with me, maybe by then she’d understand the connection between us too.
I found myself already looking forward to when I’d see her the next day.
I was near dead on my feet by the time six o’clock came around, and decided to treat myself to a steak dinner. The restaurant I went to wasn’t fancy or anything, but it was several cuts above the places I had been eating. My waiter clearly recognized me from how nervous he acted. He didn’t say anything to me, though, not even to take my order, just stood sweating and looking like he was about to keel over. Before too long other diners were shooting furtive glances my way, and I heard their hushed whispers, but none of them said anything directly to me either. I didn’t care. I ignored them all, and after a sirloin steak, baked potato, piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and half a dozen cups of black coffee, I felt mostly rejuvenated and up to working my job.
That night the kid working security avoided eye contact when I checked out the office keys, his mouth forming a sullen, hurt look. I decided I preferred it this way than to listening to any of his smartass cracks. My shoulder was still sore and I couldn’t lift it any higher than I could that morning, but it didn’t slow me down and I was able to keep my usual pace. The talk shows were still talking about what I did the other day, and the calls were still all over the place about my motive, with some callers suggesting I had some nefarious reason for avoiding the reporters who’ve been wanting to interview me about the incident. I listened to them for the first hour, then switched over to music.
Later, as I was vacuuming the offices I thought I heard voices again drifting in from the lobby, but by the time I turned the vacuum off they were gone. This time I didn’t bother checking it out.
Chapter 21
1985
I can still smell that dense, musky smell coming from my skin.
I’ve been sitting in the steam room at the Y off and on for over two hours now and I can’t seem to sweat it out of me. Deep down I know the smell doesn’t really exist, that it’s some sort of obsessive compulsive thing going on, but it doesn’t help me much. I took the target out hours ago. It was a clean hit, too. No witnesses, no surprises, not even a drop of blood on me.
I play the hit over in my mind. The guy I took out is a piece of shit, and nobody’s going to be missing him much. I have no remorse over what I did. This isn’t anything like that. No guilt is eating away at me. It’s just that when I smell that odor, even if I know it’s only in my mind, I don’t want my kids anywhere near me. I can’t help feeling that if I have any physical contact with them, I’ll get that stench all over them too, and I don’t want to stain them that way. Even if I know it’s all just in my head.
And that’s the rub. Because today is Paul’s sixth birthday. Jenny’s throwing a party for him, something she’s been planning for a while now, and I promised her I’d be there. And fuck, I want to be there. But then I had to get that call last night. Sal Lombard needed the hit done this morning. I couldn’t argue with him. He’s not the type of man you can argue with. Besides, I wouldn’t have had any good reason for postponing it. The hit went down easy and all it should mean is once less piece of scum in the world.
I leave the steam room to go back to the showers where I scrub myself under hot water for a good fifteen minutes. This is the third time I’ve done this. After I turn off the water I inhale deeply. The stench is faint, but it’s still there. Me, personally, I couldn’t care less about it, but I just don’t want it on my kids. As it is I know they sense something about me, at least Michael and Allison do. Michael’s always been a quiet and moody kid, and the last year it’s like he skulks around when he’s near me, never saying more than two words to me, at least not voluntarily. It breaks my heart having him like that.
Something’s up with Allison too. She always used to be Daddy’s little girl, always jumping into my lap when I’m trying to read the racing forms or watching TV. She doesn’t do that any more. Hasn’t for months now. Recently I’ve been catching this odd look on her, like she’s not quite sure what to make of me.
Jenny knows something’s not right with me and these two kids. She doesn’t say anything to me about it, but I can see the questioning looks she gives me when those two start moping around in my presence, like I’m abusing them or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never once laid a hand on either of them. Never raised my voice either. So I ignore those looks Jenny gives me. What am I going to tell her? How am I going to explain that those two have a bad feeling about me? Christ, it doesn’t make any sense. Even the family cat still crawls into my arms as if I’m a decent person. Those two kids somehow see something that the cat doesn’t, or at least they think they do.
Paul’s different than Michael and Allison. Whatever it is that the other two kids think they know about me, he’s oblivious to it. Maybe it’s because he takes after me while the other two have so much of Jenny in them. With Allison it’s a good thing, you can see that she’s going to grow up to be a beautiful woman. Even with Michael I gu
ess it’s probably good too; maybe he’ll escape having to be the same ugly fuck I am.
Paul, though, he’s already a miniature version of me. Short and thin and wiry, and with this ferociousness about him. He’s half the size of Michael, and only six years old to Michael’s eleven, but I’d still bet money on Paul having a first-round knockout if the two of them ever got into a fight. But there’s not much chance of that ever happening – whenever Paul tries pushing Michael into a fight, Michael backs down, and as much as he tries to pretend otherwise, it’s out of fear, not restraint.
I head back to the steam room to try to sweat out the last faint remnants of that stench, and I see from a clock on the wall that the party has already been underway for over an hour. I doubt it will still be going on by the time I head home. Jenny’s going to be disappointed, but she won’t say anything to me about it. She stopped voicing her disappointment years ago, besides, she knows whatever excuse I give her will be a lie. Anyway, deep down inside the last thing she wants is any hint of the truth. Paul, on the other hand, won’t let it faze him one way or the other. With Michael and Allison this will be one more grudge for them to hold against me.
I take a seat in the steam room and close my eyes, my head lowered, a towel hanging loosely around my neck. I don’t have much left to sweat out, but what else am I going to do?
If only I hadn’t gotten that call last night…
chapter 22
present
At nine o’clock the next morning someone knocked on my door. When I didn’t answer it, the person knocked harder and shouted through the door, announcing himself as Eric Slaine, a reporter for one of the local Boston papers. I put away the book I had been reading and pushed myself out of the recliner. If Lombard’s boys had figured out where I was living, they wouldn’t bother with a trick like pretending they were a reporter to get me to open the door – they would just kick it down.
I opened the door enough to look out. Standing in the hallway was a kid in his thirties, about my size, dressed casually in jeans and a turtleneck sweater. As thin and short as he was, he was good-looking with thick brown hair and the type of pretty-boy looks a lot of girls go for. He also looked damned pleased with himself as he stood there smirking at me.
He introduced himself again and held out a hand for me. When I didn’t take it, it didn’t deter him in the slightest. All it did was make his expression all the more smug.
“Leonard March,” he said, whistling softly to himself. “I’ve been looking nonstop for you for over a day now. What will it take to let me interview you about what happened outside Donnegan’s Liquors?”
He was lying to me. It couldn’t have been true about him looking nonstop for me, not with how refreshed he looked. He had clearly had a good night’s sleep. He’d also taken the time in the morning to shave and shower, and not a hair was out of place. You could tell he wasn’t someone who was ever going to skimp on his personal appearance. Instinctively, I didn’t like him.
“How’d you find me?” I asked.
“A professional secret,” Slaine said.
“If you were able to find me, others will too, and these will be people who are going to want something other than an interview. So why don’t you quit acting cute and tell me if someone’s selling my address.”
I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew somebody was. While it was no mystery that I was living in Waltham, nobody should’ve known my address, at least outside of my prison caseworker, Theo Ogden, and whoever had access to the apartment building’s administrative files. The story I was given about pest maintenance being in my apartment was bullshit. My place had been searched by professionals the other day, and I wanted to know whether Theo or someone else was giving out my address.
Slaine considered what I asked him. “I’ll trade you,” he said. “You give me an interview and I’ll tell you how I found you.”
Looking at him I could feel the heat rising off the back of my neck, especially with how much more smug his smile had gotten.
“If you’re going to be knocking on doors expecting favors from people the least you can do is answer a civil question,” I said. “And show some consideration. What the fuck are you doing knocking on doors at nine in the morning, especially given that people might’ve been working late the night before?”
“You have a job, huh?” he asked pleasantly. “And you’re working nights, too. Mind my asking where?”
I started to close the door on him, but he moved a foot into the doorway to block me, then squeezed his shoulder through the opening. I didn’t fight him as he muscled the door open and pushed his way forward, only stopping when his face was inches from mine.
“I showed you more consideration than you showed the people you murdered,” he said, his voice tight, his breath sour as if he’d been eating chopped herring. He was still smirking at me, but there was no humor in his eyes any more and his skin color had dropped a shade. “About waking you up – I didn’t think there was much chance of that, at least not after talking to prison officials about you and finding out about your sleep habits. So Leonard, let’s quit the bullshit. What’s your cost for an interview?”
“Two things,” I said. “First, tell me how you found me.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “I went to every low-rent apartment building starting near Donnegan’s Liquors, and showed your picture around until I found you at this dump. What else?”
“Ten thousand dollars. In cash and off the books.”
He didn’t bat an eye at that price. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor,” he said. “But for that amount of money we’re going to want a lot more than what went down at that liquor store. We’re going to want to know about your life as a hit man for the mob and your time in prison.”
“Okay.”
He stepped away from the doorway and rolled his shoulders in order to adjust his turtleneck sweater. “Why don’t you give me your phone number so I can call when I get an answer about your price?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Leave me a card and I’ll call you next week.”
He looked like he wanted to argue with me about that, but he reluctantly fished a card out of his wallet and handed it to me. “For ten grand it’s going to have to be an exclusive interview,” he warned me. “You can’t be talking to anybody else.”
I watched him walk away before I closed the door shut. When I gave him that ten grand figure I never expected him to be able to meet it, I just threw out that number to get him away from me. I stared at his card for a long minute trying to decide what to do with it. I wanted to rip it up – I sure as fuck didn’t want to do an interview – but I started thinking about what I could do with ten grand if I could get it paid to me under the table, and Sophie figured in the equation. If it wasn’t for her the money wouldn’t have even been a thought. In the end, I stored the card away instead of tossing it like I had first intended.
There was only one person who knew the truth about any of the things I’d done, and that was me. If they were able to come up with ten grand and I decided to go along with an interview, whatever I gave them would be better put to use as fertilizer.
I had an hour before I was going to be meeting Sophie. I stripped off the ratty clothes I’d put on when I first woke up, took a long shower, shaved, then splashed on some new aftershave I’d bought the evening before. After that, I put on a new pair of slacks, shirt and sweater that I had dropped two bills for at a local department store after I had left Sophie the other day.
I stepped outside and pulled the collar of my leather jacket tight against my neck. The weather had turned colder with the sun nowhere in sight and the skies darkened by thick purplish-grayish clouds. Sophie and I were going to meet in a park near Moody Street. I hadn’t been there before but I followed her directions, walking briskly with my head lowered and my hands buried deep in my jacket pockets.
The park was empty when I arrived there. There wasn’t much to it: a few benches, a swing set, a sm
all area of dead grass. As I made my way to one of the benches I saw Sophie off in the distance. I smiled at that. As good as she’d been so far with the con she still had things to learn. The smart play would’ve been to keep me waiting at least a half-hour to get me more invested. Anyway, I waved to her and she waved back.
Her hair was as much a hornet’s nest as every other time I’d seen her, and she looked even colder than I felt in her threadbare cloth coat and jeans that weren’t in much better shape. I couldn’t help feeling a jitteriness in my stomach as I watched her hustling towards me carrying a paper bag under one of her arms. When she joined me on the bench she handed me the bag while she rubbed her hands together and blew into them. Inside the bag were two large coffees and cream cheese bagels wrapped up in paper. I handed Sophie one of the coffees, then unwrapped a bagel and cream cheese to hand her as well. We sat quietly eating our sandwiches and drinking our coffee, but it was a comfortable quiet. When we were done Sophie commented that it was nice having breakfast with someone for a change, then glanced up at the sky and remarked how it might start raining soon.
“That would put a dampener on things,” I said.
She got a laugh out of that. “Yes, it certainly would,” she agreed.
“How come a beautiful girl like you doesn’t have someone to share breakfast with?” I asked.
She smiled at that. It was a sad, almost tragic smile, and it made me think again about my original thought of her having done time in prison, and I couldn’t help feeling that that was probably what had happened, and maybe it was only recently that she had gotten out. It would explain a lot, especially the connection I knew we had.
“Leonard,” she said softly, but with a heavy breath, “that would be a long and complicated story, one I could write a book on. And I have to thank you for the ‘beautiful’ compliment, although I certainly don’t deserve it. Also for thinking that I could be young enough to be thought of as a ‘girl’. How old do you think I am?”
Killer bgooj-3 Page 14