Columbus

by Derek Haas

  COLUMBUS

  COLUMBUS

  DEREK HAAS

  PEGASUS BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  FOR MICHAEL, WHO DIRECTED.

  AND FOR MOLLY, WHO PRODUCED.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  IF YOU’RE ASKING ME TO LOOK BACK ON MY LIFE AND FIND ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS, OR IF YOU’RE HOPING FOR AN EXPLANATION OR AN APOLOGY FOR MY ACTIONS, YOU ARE GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED. I have not softened. I have not changed. Once I commit to killing a target, death follows.

  I told you not to like me.

  It is overcast in Rome. A wall of gray clouds have rolled in and settled over the city like a conquering army. Shop owners and businessmen cast upward glances, trying to gauge whether or not rain is inevitable. They think maybe the sky is just posturing, threatening, but they unpack their umbrellas just the same.

  I am dressed in the dark slacks and long-sleeve sweaters commonly worn by locals this time of year. My Italian has steadily improved, though my accent will never be without flaw. I had hoped to master the inflections, to be able to pass myself off as a native, but my speech pattern lacks authenticity, and I am easily pegged as an English speaker within a few short sentences. This has hampered my ability to blend in, which I’ve always worn like a protective coat in the States. As such, I have learned to say as little as possible.

  I make my way up a street named the Largo Delle Sette Chiese, and head for a small restaurant crammed to the breaking point with tables and customers and food and waiters too busy to give a damn about smiling. The menu is authentic Roman, as is the customer service; servers drop off plates and silverware and expect patrons to set the table for themselves. Most tourists aren’t smart enough to frequent the place, the Ar Grottino der Traslocatore, preferring the homier pasta and fish shops around the Spanish Steps or near the Colosseum.

  I drop into a wooden chair across from my fence, my middleman, an astute, stoic businessman named William Ryan. He has been my fence for a couple of years now, and though we relocated to Europe together following an assignment where my old fence was gunned down and I killed my father with my bare hands, our relationship remains strictly a business one.

  “How was your flight?”

  “Mercifully short.”

  Ryan had bought a home in Paris in the expensive Eighth arrondissement, above an art gallery near the Bristol Hotel. We meet in Rome whenever he wants to hand me a new assignment. Files are only passed in person, never mailed. I have asked him to move to Italy, but he prefers the amenities of Parisian living.

  “I trust you’re ready to go back to work, Columbus?”

  It has been two months since my last assignment, the execution of a corrupt Belgian police superintendent in Brussels. He had been a vain man who thought himself untouchable up until the moment I touched him.

  A waiter breaks off to take our order and soon fills the table with straccetti alla rucola and bistecca di lombo.

  “Yes. As soon as possible.”

  I can only take off a couple of months before I get restless, itchy. Anything more and I feel my edge slipping. Once the edge dulls, it can take drastic measures to sharpen it.

  Ryan extracts a thick manila envelope from a leather satchel. To anyone watching, we are simply businessmen conducting business in the bustle of a packed Italian restaurant. It is too noisy for other customers to hear our conversation, though we would never discuss anything suspicious in public.

  I transfer the envelope to my lap, and it feels like a brick has been placed there, solid and heavy. An image pops into my head, a man being crushed to death under stones while groaning “more weight” through clenched teeth. Where is that from? Something I read a long time ago, perhaps when I was incarcerated at a juvenile detention center named Waxham in western Massachusetts. I was sent there, along with my only friend, for killing one of our foster parents after suffering years of brutality. That place was responsible for my education in more ways than one, a rung on the ladder to where I stand now.

  Ryan picks over his food. “The client pays a premium.”

  “Where do you gauge the level of difficulty?”

  “Medium.”

  I nod, absorbing this.

  We finish our meal without talking, and when the waiter clears the table and takes Ryan’s cash, we stand and shake hands.

  “The job is in Prague. If you need anything additional from me, don’t hesitate.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The logistics are covered in the file. Take care, Columbus.”

  “You too.”

  We head away in opposite directions.

  The name at the top of the page is Jiri Dolezal. His file indicates he is a Czech banker, a man whose hands are buried up to the wrists in drug rings and prostitution rings and pornography rings and anything else illicit into which he can force his way. He is a bad egg, and it is obvious if he is suddenly discovered with his shell cracked, the Czech police will sniff around just long enough to look like they give a shit before labeling the case “unsolved.”

  Ryan’s file on the subject is thick and thorough. My former fence, Pooley, excelled at putting these files together, documenting as many facts about the target as possible and compiling them into a dossier to give me a detailed glimpse into a mark’s life. But Ryan is a true master craftsman, I have to admit; his work in this area—the depth of information he uncovers—is extraordinary, uncanny, far surpassing even Pooley’s best efforts.

  The pages inside the file serve two purposes. The first is practical: I need to look for the best place to strike the target and make my subsequent escape. Any piece of information might help. The route the target takes to work. The restaurants he frequents. The blueprints of his house, his office. Even personal information like the names of his children or his nieces and nephews or his dying father can feasibly come into play, can put the target at ease, can get me invited into his house or his office where I can shoot him without impediment. The more information Ryan provides, the less I have to rely on dangerous improvisation.

  The second purpose the file serves is psychological. It is difficult to explain, but the job I do—the professional killing of men—exacts a mental toll. The only way to diminish this toll is to make a connection with the target, to find some evil in the mark and exploit that evil in my mind. An olive-skinned Italian man named Vespucci explained this to me a lifetime ago in a small apartment in Boston when I first walked this path. He said that I must make the connection so I can sever the connection. He said he could not explain why it was so, just that it was. I heard from Ryan that Vespucci had died recently, though I didn’t hear how. I wonder if that old man went down swinging, or if he was finally crushed beneath the weight of his personal stones.

  Still, there is one incongruous nugget in Dolezal’s file. Mark frequents a rare bookstore in Prague located on Valentinska. He collects Izaak Walton and Horace Walpole.

  The information seems odd to me, like a flower emerging through the crack of a sidewalk. Nothing else in the dossier suggests Dolezal is more than a humorless thug. His life seems regimented, colorless; and yet, here is something unconventional. A collection indicates a passion. So why rare books, and why these authors in particular? Make the connection. I need to m
ake the connection, get inside the target’s head, so I can sever the connection.

  I enter a tiny shop in Rome on the Via Poli named Zodelli. The cramped room is lined with shelves, all holding leather-bound books behind glass enclosures. The bulbs are dim, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the absence of light. A gray-haired woman sits behind a desk, marking a ledger with a pencil. I greet her in Italian and she looks up and smiles perfunctorily, then calls out “Risina!”

  I turn to better examine the nearest row of books and wait with my hands stuffed in my pockets. The shelf appears to hold several volumes of the same book, The Life and Letters of Charles Dickens, bound in red. From what I can see, the covers look as fresh and spotless as new pieces of furniture.

  “These are first editions from 1872. . . ”

  There are two facets to a woman’s beauty. The first is internal, the beauty found in the kindness of eyes, in a simple gesture, in a soft voice. The second is physical, the kind that strikes you like a punch in the stomach and threatens to take your breath away, to suffocate you. The woman standing next to me is stunning. She’s wearing a simple black dress, and her dark hair is tied up, but one strand has fallen away and passes over an eye to gently kiss her cheek.

  And yet there is something else in her face. An undercurrent I’ve spotted on a few of my marks. What is it? Sadness? Loneliness? Whatever it is, it only serves to join the two facets together, like a peg bolting inside a lock.

  “Here, take a look.” She unlocks the glass partition and withdraws one of the books from the shelf. I have to concentrate to pull my eyes from her in order to focus on the book. “You see? It’s a beautiful series. It has twelve Cosway-style portraits depicting Dickens over the course of his life. Amazing. Octavo, see, with raised bands, green gilt inlays on the front panels, gilt doblures, watered silk endpapers . . . yes? Really magnificent. Perfect condition.”

  I find my voice. “Your English is quite good.”

  She smiles. “I went to university in America.”

  “Which part?”

  “Boston.”

  “I know the city.”

  “I loved it there. But Italy called. Italy always calls when you leave her. It is difficult not to answer.”

  I hand her the book back and she looks at it one more time like she’s studying the photograph of an old classmate before returning it to the shelf.

  “Now, Mr. Walker, how can I help you?”

  I had done some digging the last few days and, through a series of phone calls and references, made an appointment using a fake name at Zodelli with a Risina Lorenzana. My plan was to get inside my mark’s head, understand his fascination with rare books, feel how he must feel as he tracks down and purchases an old manuscript. I don’t speak Czech and didn’t want to draw attention to myself by using the same bookstore as my mark, so I chose one near to me. I had been expecting a bookish elderly woman with a haughty manner like the one sitting behind the desk to wait on me. Not this. Not her.

  “I’ll confess I’m a dabbler. I have only a little experience in collecting rare books.”

  “Do you like literature?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then you are no dabbler. You have already started collecting. Up here.” She smiles and taps her index finger to her temple.

  “Are you familiar with Izaak Walton?”

  “The Compleat Angler, yes? A wonderful book to collect . . . do you like to fish?”

  “I like to catch things.”

  Her smile widens, the kind that starts in her eyes before spreading to her mouth and cheeks. That underlying current fades a bit.

  “I do too. I think it is innate, this feeling.” She touches my forearm as she says this, a chuckle in her voice. Even after she moves to the desk, pulls out a binder and flips through it, I can still feel her fingers on my skin.

  She shakes her head, turning a page. “I’m afraid I do not have any Walton on hand, but it is . . . um . . . not much effort to find one for you.”

  “Is that how it works? Collectors come to you to find specific books for them?”

  “Yes, that is part of the job, yes. Also, I hunt for books coming on the market . . . auctions, estate sales, through a . . . what’s the American word . . . network? I have friends and contacts at other shops who let me know when something interesting is up for sale. A network, yes?”

  “And rivals?”

  “Yes . . . it can be competitive. But it is as you say, I like to catch things.”

  Her whole face lights up when she says this, and there is something familiar about the expression. I think I’ve worn it myself a few times.

  “How long would it take you to locate one for me?”

  “First edition?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will have to call a few people, but I do not think long. As old as the book is, it was very popular in its time. There are quite a few on the market. I should be able to find it for a fair price. How may I contact you?”

  I write down an e-mail address for her, and she hands me her card. “You can reach me any time . . . that is my personal mobile number.”

  “I look forward to hearing from you.”

  “I’ll start fishing,” she says with a laugh as I head for the door.

  It will be a while before the image of her face leaves my head. And that undercurrent, that emotion she tries to bite down but can’t quite pull off, is as intriguing to me as a wrapped box. I need to know more about Risina Lorenzana; I have to know more.

  These are thoughts I should not be having.

  Darkness descends on Prague quickly, like someone tossed a blanket over the sun. The city at night is quiet and expectant, the cold of winter chasing most tourists to warmer hemispheres. It is foot-stamping weather, and icicles hang like incisors from the buildings of Old Town. The moon hides, as though afraid of what’s coming.

  I am in my third week of tracking Jiri Dolezal, making the connection so I can sever the connection. It is easy to blend in here . . . thick, bulky coats, dark toboggans for the head, and full beards conspire to make all men look uniform. In the winter, it is simply too cold to pick out a stranger on the street, or to notice a professional killer as he stalks his prey.

  I am in a basement restaurant near the St. Charles Bridge, an authentic Czech establishment serving duck, rabbit, lamb, and potatoes in a large pot brought right to the table. As beautiful as the city is—the bridge itself is a marvel of medieval craftsmanship—the insides of the traditional restaurants are mausoleums: dark, cramped, and smoky. I have my head buried in a book while my fork moves regularly from dish to mouth. I don’t say much, don’t move much, just blend into the wall like a piece of old furniture.

  Two men sit in a dark corner, smoking Petras and drinking vodka. They run a nightclub for Dolezal, an ostentatious techno-dance hall that specializes in transporting women from the brothels outside of town to a less threatening location for tourists.

  Ryan’s file indicates that these men, Bedrich Novotny and Dusan Chalupnik, have been skimming money from the boss, bumping liquor prices on cash sales and ringing up only half the purchases while pocketing the rest. They also have deals with the working girls to pad their prices and split the profits, unbeknownst to their employer. It is a tightrope walk, this scamming of a scammer, and these men are either too reckless or too stupid to pull it off successfully.

  They have been summoned to meet Dolezal tonight, and it is obvious from the way they pick at their food and tap their legs up and down continuously, they suspect the old man might have caught wind of their play. Though I can’t speak their language, I gather they are comparing notes tonight, getting their stories straight before meeting the man they are defrauding.

  It is one thing to read about a mark’s misdeeds in a dossier, although Ryan does an amazing job of chronicling them explicitly. It is quite another to experience them first hand, to witness evil in a man up close, to see his face as he metes out punishment. I have learned over the years th
at perhaps the best way to get to know a mark is to watch his employees, to see how they carry themselves, witness for myself how they are treated. When looking for evil to exploit, watch the men right below the man. They are his representatives, a part of the mark himself.

  After an hour, Novotny and Chalupnik don their coats and shuffle out into the night. I settle my bill and follow discreetly. Prague is a walking city for many of the residents, and these men are no exception. They certainly aren’t worried about being tracked; they’re both wearing bright red parkas and smoking cigarettes like they’re determined to reach the bottom of the pack. They mumble to each other as they go, and though I don’t understand the words, I can pick up the tightness of their speech, like their windpipes are constricting as they get closer to the meeting point.

  They arrive at a corner where Partyzanska Street meets a set of railroad tracks and stand under a lamppost, their backs to me, waiting. My eyes have long since adjusted to the darkness, and it is easy for me to watch those red parkas from a stoop a block away. I am invisible here; even my frozen breath I’ve learned to trap in my black scarf by breathing slowly out of the side of my mouth.

  Fifteen minutes pass and they check their watches. Their voices reach me over the wind, irritated, frustrated. If they were planning on coming here to make an angry stand, the delay has taken the wind from their sails. Just as a freight train approaches, rounding the corner, I see a large man approaching them from behind rapidly, pulling a handgun from the small of his back.

  Gunfire erupts, two shots, the report of a low-caliber pistol, pop, pop, barely audible over the thunder of the train. The two men pitch forward, their foreheads opening, and crash to the sooty pavement, side by side, their limbs splayed out at absurd angles. The train passes and the shooter retreats down the adjacent alley to my right until I can no longer see him or hear his footsteps.

  I wait twenty minutes, though I’m sure the killer is long gone, and then head back the way I came. I’ve seen all I need to see.

  At Waxham Juvenile Hall, boys learned all the ways of dirty fighting, but nothing was held in more contempt and less respect than the sucker punch. Decking someone from behind with a fist to the temple, or shoving a pencil into someone’s back was considered the lowest of the low, and any kid who pulled that shit soon found himself friendless, alone, vulnerable.