The Painted Gun

by Bradley Spinelli

  “The CIA has their fingers in every pie, people in every region. And people from other countries come here. It’s not always easy to get to a target. They play a waiting game, lining up targets with opportunity. We’d only planned three jobs on you, then you’d be done.”

  “Three jobs. Martiartu, Natali, and Rodgers.”

  “Wow.” McCaffrey shook his head. “You really are good.”

  “Save it.”

  “Yeah, the Cuban was the first one. Hard guy to find—kept changing his name. The Agency had been looking for Martiartu since Bay of Pigs. And the Natali thing . . . that had been in the works for a long time too. Tran—the gangster in the Tenderloin?—was connected to bigger fish in Asia. The Agency was shutting Tran down on two continents, and Natali knew too much to let him walk around.”

  “But some random young guy sitting in his car in Oakland?”

  “I know. That was fishy from the get-go. I didn’t know who he was. I don’t even know if the guy they killed was actually Lucius Rodgers. We were told to get THIS guy, matching THIS description, at THIS address. They told us less than usual, and it was last minute. That’s why we brought in Balam—we’d never used him before, and I didn’t like it.”

  “He didn’t kill Martiartu or Natali?”

  “No, no. Martiartu was a lifer who works South America and the Caribbean. He knew Martiatu’s background—might have known him personally. Natali . . . the guy who did that job is dead now. Afghanistan.”

  “Sad story. So if all three kills came off without a hitch, I should have been done. What happened?”

  “Balam happened.” McCaffrey shook his head. “He did the Rodgers job. We planned to keep an eye on you for a couple more weeks until we were sure the cops had nothing. Then we’d shut it all down, I’d get a fat bonus, we’d pull the gear out of your house, done. But Balam was hanging out with the chapines in San Mateo.”

  “Chapines?”

  “Guatemalans. The guys I had working at the shop. They got all buddy-buddy. And Balam met Ash and didn’t trust her. She always had her drawing pad with her, sketching you, and he thought she should be . . . contained. No one ever noticed her before—her ‘art’ seemed harmless enough. Or so we thought.” He put his hand to his forehead and went silent. “Give me a cigarette.” I lit him up, and he exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “After the Rodgers job, he noticed a flash drive missing. They’re brand new, practically prototypes. Balam was convinced that she’d stolen one, and he turned her studio upside down and found stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I don’t know. He said he had proof that she’d been copying files from your jobs. But Ashley must have known he was on to her—she disappeared. And Balam started calling shots—pushing Conrad around, trying to find Ashley and anything she could have used to move data.”

  “Her paintings.”

  “Exactly. And I had one. She sent it to me. The one I sent to you. I was looking at it here, in the office, and . . .” He fell off. “They were gonna clip her, Itchy. They didn’t want to talk, they were just gonna kill her.” He stamped the half-smoked cigarette out on his desk, bending and breaking it, spilling tobacco flecks. He put his hands over his eyes. “I just wanted to save her. That’s why I called you.”

  “You know I’m under surveillance, and you hire me?”

  “I tried, all right? I called for a data purge the day I contacted you. Everything shuts down during a purge—recording, the feed, everything. No one was watching or listening when we talked.”

  “You called me the day Dalton got whacked.”

  “Did it again. I was afraid Balam had killed you already. When you picked up I figured Balam was setting you up for Dalton too. That didn’t come from me.”

  “He knew I was looking for her. I used my home phone to call the Dalton Gallery—how did you think I could find her without anyone noticing?”

  He threw up his hands. “I did what I could. You don’t know the risk I took. I would’ve been killed too—because of the flash drives. I was DEAD. Me and Ash both. You were the best person to find her. They wanted you alive—”

  “I don’t like that I was responsible for leading a killer to the Daltons.”

  “Conrad already knew about the painting at the Dalton Gallery. Whether Dalton was an arranged hit or not, who cares? It’s a fucking free-for-all now. Balam? He’s insane. He’s completely off the reservation. Susan Dalton? She was less of a threat than her brother. And Conrad—fuck. I can’t believe he killed Conrad.”

  “He thought Conrad would talk.”

  “You tipped off the Bigfoot chick at the gun range?”

  I nodded. “Conrad let something slip.”

  “I had Conrad under control. He was ruthless, but not psychotic. Look—the outside assets got their marching orders from the same people I did. Middlemen, talking to the Agency with one side of their face. I don’t know who the directives came from. Balam and I were peers, get it? I can’t say he wasn’t getting orders that conflicted with mine.”

  “You didn’t know who you were working for?”

  “It’s Black Ops, Itchy. The less you know, the better. Indirectly, we were all working for the CIA. And Balam—and hit men in general—came from a guy they call the Old Man.”

  I perked up. “The Old Man?”

  “It’s bullshit. Some creepy Hassan-i Sabbah reference. I don’t know the guy.”

  I did. Or, at least, Conrad did.

  “Where are the guns, McCaffrey? I’m going to need them.”

  He sighed. “They’re here.” He got up and went behind his desk, turned the dial on a floor safe. He handed me a package: three guns, all in Ziploc bags. “The three hits. Wipe them for prints first.” They were dated in black Sharpie, like something you’d put in the freezer.

  “Where’s the other one?”

  He slipped another bagged gun out of the top drawer, laid it on the desk, and sat back down. It was a 9mm Glock.

  “This isn’t it.”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “This isn’t the last gun they took off of me.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? There were three guns on you—that’s it.”

  “There were four. Charlie confirmed they picked up a gun from her on the day Dalton got killed at the gallery—but I knew it couldn’t have been used for that hit. And Conrad said they were keeping me alive for another job. What other job?”

  McCaffrey shook his head. “There was no other job. What else did he say?”

  I shrugged. “He said a lot of shit. He asked if you hired me. What is this gun?”

  “That’s what Balam used to kill both Daltons. It doesn’t have your prints on it, but he sent it down thinking we could plant it in your house.”

  “Think, McCaffrey. He already planted it on you.”

  “What? They need me,” he said, but he was giving it thought.

  I looked at the 9mm. “If he got my prints on another gun, maybe he could preserve them and use it later to kill someone else.”

  “Maybe you’re not remembering it right, or Balam lied to me. Maybe your prints are on that gun.”

  “No. The gun I shot was a Baby Glock—a subcompact. Balam still has it, I saw it. I’m not an expert, but this is maybe a Glock 19—” I stopped when I saw his face; he’d gone whiter than his office walls.

  “I kept it in the floor safe.” He sounded far away. “When I couldn’t find it . . . I thought I’d taken it home, drunk. But I couldn’t find it there either.”

  “The Baby Glock was yours?”

  McCaffrey leaned forward in the chair, almost keening. His voice went to a whimper. “It’s me. It’s obvious.Balam must have put it together. I was scheduled to go to San Francisco today to close Balam out. That would have been my funeral.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because you shot up my guys in San Mateo. Stole the hard drives. I’ve been on the phone nonstop doing damage control.”

  “You think Balam’s
on his way here?”

  “No. He’s a ghost. Someone else will come for me.”

  “You said Balam was crazy.”

  “He’s not stupid. He’s been made. My guys are in the hospital, in custody. Balam is on a plane, I’m sure. Probably back in Guate by now.”

  I walked behind the desk. “You got something here?”

  “Bottom left.”

  I found the bottle and poured us a couple of stiff ones. We drank without toasting.

  “So,” I asked, “where are we?”

  He laughed. “We’re dead, that’s where we are.”

  I finished my drink and put the glass down. “Get your toothbrush, McCaffrey. I’m taking you in.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Afraid not. The FBI has already heard about this little fiasco, and I need you to vouch for it. Everyone else is dead.”

  “They can’t protect me, Itchy. The FBI—protective custody, whatever. I’m a dead man, I promise you.”

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong.”

  “Itchy.” He looked exhausted. The very breath was sucked out of him. “Where is Ashley?”

  “I didn’t find her.”

  “Damnit.” He pushed his hair back so hard I expected what was left of it to come off in his hand.

  “At least she’s alive, McCaffrey. If she weren’t, we’d know about it by now.”

  It was a long, quiet drive to San Francisco.

  29

  I took the 580 off the 5 and jogged over to the San Mateo Bridge, the long thin pencil spanning laterally across the bay, so unattractive compared to the iconic bridges of the City. I got on the 101 and quickly blew by my exit, watching Sign Hill roll by—SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, THE INDUSTRIAL CITY­­—and then we were at Brisbane. I always do my best thinking driving across the causeway at Brisbane—my bay, my personal piece of the ocean.

  I’d missed it. The question wasn’t why Sharkskin didn’t clip me when he had the chance, it was why the organization didn’t clip Ashley long before she gummed up the works.

  I looked at McCaffrey, petulant in the passenger seat of Rider’s Honda. He had hired me to find her. Despite all his evil deeds, he didn’t want her dead. He’d put me on the case knowing I was connected to it, knowing that sooner or later I’d loop back to him if I weren’t killed in the process. And he’d saved me the red herring—Ashley’s last name. McCaffrey had blacked it out on her driver’s license when he sent it to me. It wouldn’t have helped me find her—she didn’t use it anymore. But if I’d been a little smarter, I would have gone straight to McCaffrey when I found her name and realized she was “dead.”

  I was off the highway and climbing up Fell Street when it occurred to me how close the police station was to Rider and Sobczyk’s place. Instead of turning onto Fillmore I went on to Scott, then turned back down Hayes and pulled over at the corner of Alamo Square Park. Even through Rider’s dirty windshield, the view was sickeningly cute. The park, the Painted Ladies—the neat row of Victorian homes as tidy as a film backdrop—and the City’s skyline sharp in the distance.

  McCaffrey looked at me. He didn’t know where we were, what was happening.

  Sobczyk’s voice rang in my head: Someone put her on that list.

  I turned the car off and spoke very softly: “Who put Ashley Fenn on the Death Master File?”

  He didn’t say anything. His face was turned to the window, and he brought a hand to his brow. I swatted the hand away and punched him in the head. It bounced off the window and I hit him again.

  “Who put Ashley on the Death Master File?” I was yelling now.

  “I don’t know.”

  I hit him again. A woman pushing a baby carriage squealed and hurried past. I didn’t give a fuck—Call the cops, we’re headed to them anyway. “It was you—I want to hear you say it.” I hit him one more time and his head on the window sang like a ripe melon.

  “I didn’t—I didn’t—”

  “Why’d you put her on the list, McCaffrey?” I reached for my Derringer. “I’m gonna put one in your fucking leg—why’d you put her on the list?”

  “No,” he whimpered, growing smaller in the seat. “I did it, I did it . . .”

  “Why?”

  “I’m an idiot, I fucked up.”

  “You fucked up, but you’re not an idiot. You did it on purpose. Tell me why.”

  “I needed someone I could trust.”

  “Like she trusted you?”

  “It was a big promotion, it was the chance to get in on something big. I don’t speak Spanish, the crew I had—like Conrad? He’d sell me out for nothin’—”

  “You ‘killed’ your own stepdaughter for a fucking promotion?”

  “I couldn’t lose her after losing Patty!” he yelled.

  I was in shock. “Patty . . . ?”

  “Patty, goddamnit.” He was half-crying, half-spitting, punching the dash. “The girl who died on the nude beach. She was my fucking daughter.”

  I heard the words almost before he said them. How could I miss something like that?

  “You never could’ve known,” he said, as if in response. “Her mom and I were young, we had broken up, I wasn’t gonna do the right thing—she put Ronald McDonald on the birth certificate just to spite me. We did a paternity test—she was mine, all right—and she made me pay support but cut me out of her life. But years later, when I’m with Ash’s mom, Ash is in seventh grade and she brings home a new friend. It’s Patty.” His eyes lit up. “It happened so organically her bitch mom couldn’t say shit. I had a daughter. We got close—even after she moved to San Francisco. And Chris was a good guy!” He glared at me. “Her boyfriend—they were good together. But her mother couldn’t stand that he was black, and when they died she wanted someone to lynch. I knew it wasn’t you, Itchy. Just . . . what? Two kids in their twenties, smoking reefer and drinking beer on the beach? In California? You never—you don’t think . . .”

  He fell apart, and I felt bad for him in spite of everything. I remembered what Conrad had said just before he bought it—I had wrongly assumed he was talking about Ashley: Do you even know about McCaffrey and the girl?

  “I can see how this put you back onto Ashley,” I felt almost guilty saying it, “but the Death Master File?”

  He put his hand over his face and started shaking. He was crying, but there was no liquid coming out—he was all dried up inside. I put the gun in my jacket. “She wouldn’t work with me,” he said, through choking sobs. “I offered her everything—a place to live, a job—but she wouldn’t come along. She said I abandoned her and her mother, that she was better off on her own. It isn’t true. Her mom left ME. And Ash . . . I wanted her back. I wanted us to work together like the old days. And . . . if she had nothing else . . . we could help each other.”

  I just looked at him. It was so deeply fucked up, yet completely opportunistic—the sine qua non of McCaffrey’s being.

  “It was supposed to be a moment in time,” he said, looking up at me. “Like a bankruptcy. This day, dead, then, tomorrow, back alive. But I couldn’t turn it off. After I gave them her Social Security number—it was over. The system is too complex, and the octopus . . . too many arms . . .”

  * * *

  I called Willits—with McCaffrey bawling in the background—to let him know we were coming in. Willits was animated; he had an FBI agent with him, Sobczyk and Rider were at the station, and they were all trying to piece it together. But I couldn’t find a parking spot. I made the block—Fillmore, Turk, Steiner, Golden Gate—three times and finally gave up. I pulled up and double-parked in front of the station, got out, and called over a uniformed officer.

  “Can you watch this guy? He’s a suspect in a murder case—I can’t find a parking space. I just need to get Inspector Willits or Berrera.”

  “All right. Be quick.”

  I leaned in the window to McCaffrey. “Just sit tight. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “They can’t protect me, Itchy.” He seemed resigned. �
��They can’t.”

  “We’re at a police station, McCaffrey. Relax.”

  “Hey, Itchy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.” He gave me an almost wistful look. “You’re a better man than I thought. Of all the men she’s had to meet . . . at least she fell for you.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  It was minutes later when I came out with Willits. He sent the uniform on his way and gave me directions to a parking lot, then opened the door of Rider’s Honda.

  “Mr. McCaffrey?”

  It took us almost a full minute to realize he was dead.

  * * *

  Cyanide. Old-school spook shit. McCaffrey must have really believed he’d never make it, and took the easy way out.

  I was held for close to seventy-two hours. Willits and Berrera took my statement before I was cross-examined by a hard-ass FBI agent named Siegel—midforties, square-jawed, classless, no-name suit, Dragnet all the way. I was back and forth between a holding cell and an interrogation room as the interested parties determined my fate. I never did ascertain how much the FBI already knew about the CIA’s involvement with Balam’s “organization” or how much they believed me. Suffice it to say that the FBI and the CIA don’t talk to each other very much.

  Eventually I was released. There wasn’t anything to charge me with. The two guys I shot had disappeared—an unidentified “agent” of some kind had walked them out of the hospital in front of at least a dozen cops. They were either dead or ghosts. I wasn’t a flight risk, so the FBI let me walk provided I kept myself available for further questioning, and Willits, who seemed to forgive my previous petulance, promised to keep me in the loop.

  My side of the story held up, despite the fact that no one was left alive to corroborate it. The 9mm Glock from McCaffrey’s office matched ballistics to the deaths of both Daltons. My .45, of course, killed Al, and with the corroborating evidence of the surveillance of Al’s murder, it was taken at face value that the man on the tape in the sharkskin suit had killed both Daltons as well. Not that anyone would ever see him again. Conrad’s killing still couldn’t be proved without a murder weapon, but overall the authorities were buying the “single killer” theory. Meanwhile, the ballistics lab was busy trying to match the guns McCaffrey had given me with the three unsolved murders he and I had discussed. Again, no one would ever be charged, so I wondered how much it mattered.