Columbus

by Derek Haas

  “The guy takes what he can and hurries away, leaving the kid, the boy who isn’t much more than a baby sitting there in the silver wagon, stuck there, a mile from home, where he can’t see anything but his father lying there dead on the sidewalk and still no one has noticed. No one has come for him. The mother is oblivious in a house a mile away and the father and son are gone for hours sometimes and she’s still forty-five minutes away from even thinking something’s wrong.

  “The kid starts to cry again, because he’s scared now even if he doesn’t know why, but he’s scared in that part of him where deep, deep down through centuries and centuries of ingrained behavior we know we’re in danger even before we are.

  “And right then, just as he’s getting worked up to really wail, a woman comes rushing out of her house. She’d just been looking out the window and saw that kid and that wagon stuck on the sidewalk and the man fallen over and he hasn’t gotten up and she rushes over to check on the man, and she feels for a pulse, but she knows he’s dead, and so quickly she has that seatbelt unbuckled and has the kid up and in her arms and she’s saying ‘it’s okay, it’s okay. What’s your name, child? What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?’

  “And the kid knows his name, he does, it’s on the tip of his tongue, his parents have called him it a thousand times and he’s said it himself a few times too, but it won’t come out, he can’t make it come out and so he just shakes in her arms, sobbing.”

  I sit there for a moment, listening for her on the other end of the phone.

  “That’s it. That’s what I remember.”

  Her breathing has stopped, like she’s afraid to exhale. After a long moment, she breaks the silence. “I wish I could tell you I knew this story. But I don’t.”

  “Yeah. I haven’t been able to track it down.”

  “Well I like it. I like it very much. I need to think about it some more. Consult some other sources.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.”

  “Well, thank you. I really appreciate that, Risina.”

  “Are you certain you’re okay?”

  “Yes, I’m certain.”

  “I’m very glad you called me, Jack. I’m still thinking of this story. I can see why it stuck with you.”

  “Yes.”

  We talk for another ten minutes about nothing before we say our goodbyes. I head into the bathroom, wrap the phone inside a towel, and then smash it with the heel of my shoe until it shatters into pieces. Slowly, methodically, I flush each piece down the toilet.

  Thomas Saxon isn’t quite a billionaire, but he doesn’t mind when people make that mistake. He’s a vulture investor, a corporate raider, a man who never found a shortcut he wouldn’t take. He was a frequent attendee of the Predator’s Ball in Los Angeles in the eighties, when a few men created enormous wealth by building an entire financial market around junk bonds. Information was key—whether it could be gained legally or illegally didn’t matter. The SEC caught up with a few, others escaped scot-free, entire companies were carved up, chewed up, and spit out, but everyone involved made the kind of money that has strings of zeroes at the end of the number. The suckers were the ones who worked within the system, and the suckers never came out on top. Tommy Gun, as his friends called him, was nobody’s sucker.

  He is living in an enormous house in East Atlanta, out past the airport. It was originally built for Evander Holyfield’s mother, but after she died, the champ didn’t want to set foot in it again. Saxon paid cash and moved in within a week of the funeral.

  Like a lot of financial guys, Saxon thinks he is invincible, immune to the dangers that felled some of his friends and rivals. He narrowly dodged charges from the SEC in 1987 while he watched his associates drop like flies. He thought he was untouchable, special, lucky. This feeling of grandeur ultimately manifested in the hiring of dark men like me. How many men Tommy Gun has sentenced to death, I have no idea. Does he do it because of petty rivalries? Out of hubris? Or is it all just about money? I don’t have a fence to put files together for me, so the information I have is only what I can cobble together over the Internet or through an assortment of shadow guys I’ve come into contact with over the years. I am beginning to suspect Anton Noel meant nothing more to Saxon than numbers across a ticker, that his death was engineered to affect the price of Ventus-Safori’s stock. Yet, I feel a nagging at the back of my brain, like something doesn’t want to add up so easily, like the square peg is just a little too unwieldy to fit inside the round hole.

  Often, an assassin will get to a mark through his vices. A guy might have a mistress, or visit a regular whore, and since he has to be sneaky about meeting the woman, he compromises himself, makes himself as easy to pick off as a duck at a broken-down shooting gallery. He might enjoy a specific type of cigar, or a certain bottle of wine, or participate in an illicit card game, and a contract killer can get to him by posing as a delivery guy or a rival gambler. Everyone has vulnerabilities; it is an assassin’s job to exploit them.

  Saxon doesn’t keep a mistress, smoke cigars, or play poker. He doesn’t visit whores or collect French wines or smoke a little weed on the side. No, what Saxon likes to do is fish.

  Every weekend, he drives an hour north of Atlanta, into the mountains, alone, and fly-fishes the Soque River. Fishing is a solitary endeavor, a chance for him to commune with nature. Maybe he does it because it brings back memories of him and his old man casting their lines. Maybe he does it to get out of the rat race and clear his mind. Or maybe he thinks stepping into the water will somehow wash his sins down the river.

  I tail him for three straight weekends before determining the Soque River as the place our lives will intersect.

  I am standing in the men’s room of a tiny store named Ramsey’s Bait and Tackle off of Highway 197 in the town of Jackson Bridge. A biting wind has kept most anglers near a warm fire this weekend, but not Saxon. Every Saturday, he makes the trek north, no matter the icy temperature or thick frost on the ground.

  Saxon hasn’t yet come to the store, but he’ll be here soon. I take a quick look in the mirror and set my jaw, steeling myself, getting ready. The bell over the door in the front of the shop jingles.

  I turn on the water of the sink and position myself behind the bathroom door so I’ll be hidden when he enters. I take one last breath as the handle starts to bend downward. If I were waiting for Saxon, this would be over in moments. But I’m not waiting for Saxon.

  It is common to use a shiny lure to catch trout, letting the sun filter down through the murky water until the bait catches the fish’s eye and suckers him toward the hook.

  For the last two weeks, I made a show of stalking Saxon. I watched him out in the open, paced the perimeter of his office, followed him out to his favorite fishing spot in a red SUV. I was letting the sun reflect off me, hoping to reel in my catch.

  The door to the restroom pushes open and the bearded man is coming through cautiously but not cautiously enough. I grab his head and the back of his pants and drive him head-first into the bathroom mirror, shattering it, cutting a red streak across his forehead. He’s a professional—up until two seconds ago a pretty goddamn smug professional—and he immediately tries to counter, wailing backward with his left elbow, but I move with the blow and use his own inertia against him, whipping him around for a second meeting with what’s left of the mirror.

  He’s got heart, I’ll give him that. He drops like a rock, plunging to the linoleum floor as he tries to whip my feet out from under me but I sidestep his scissoring legs and stomp with everything I have on top of his kneecap until the bones crunch like gravel. He wails in pain, instinctively, and reaches into his sleeve for his knife but it’s not there. He looks puzzled for a moment until his eyes settle on my hand.

  “You stupid fuck.” I am holding his knife in one hand and my pistol in the other.

  “Let’s work something out, Columbus,” he says from the ground, his hands raised, his righ
t leg snapped at an angle like a wishbone. He’s got a thick Irish accent that lends a strange softness to his words. His voice doesn’t match his face in the least.

  “What part of me were you supposed to take back to your client?”

  He measures me, trying to determine if he should lie. He also wants to keep me talking; as long as I’m talking, he’s alive. I would have tried the same thing.

  “Your trigger finger.”

  “Kill me first and then the finger?”

  “Aye, cut it off while you’re alive, but yes, that’s it.”

  He lowers one elbow to the ground, leaning back, breathing hard, blinking blood out of his eyes. It is seeping down the contours of his face and collecting in his beard so the whiskers turn a blacker shade, creating an odd aura around his face, like he’s getting younger before my eyes. His hand creeps toward his side like an inchworm, but I don’t shift my eyes to it.

  “You the only one Saxon hired, or are there more?”

  “Who’s Saxon?” The inchworm keeps inching.

  “The guy who’s going to call all this off.”

  “If you say so, brother.” Inching. Inching.

  “I say so.”

  And the worm reaches his belt, and in a blur the bearded man has a gun in his hand but my first silenced bullet takes off the top part of his hand, sending the gun skittering across the linoleum until it comes to a rest next to the toilet.

  He looks at me with true shock in his eyes just a moment before my second bullet closes them forever.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SPOT ON THE SOQUE RIVER WHERE SAXON LIKES TO FISH IS PRIVATE, PART OF A FISHERMEN’S LODGE THAT HAS BEEN STANDING FOR GENERATIONS. SECURITY IS LAUGHABLE, RELIANT ON A FEW “NO TRESPASSING / PRIVATE PROPERTY” SIGNS AND TWO GUARDS WITH SNOWY HAIR AND BULGING BELLIES, AS THREATENING AS FIELD MICE.

  I step out of a small copse and stand directly behind Saxon. He looks like he wandered out of an L.L.Bean catalogue, standing on the bank of the river, wearing navy waders and a plaid hunter’s shirt underneath a thick multi-pocketed vest. He is tying a spinner on his line, pulling the knot tight with his teeth as I approach.

  “Catch anything?”

  He gives me a once-over, like I’ve just befouled his sanctuary.

  “No.”

  Then he turns his back on me, as if I might disappear. When I don’t, he sighs dramatically before looking at me again.

  “You staying at the lodge?”

  “No.”

  “Well, this is private property, buddy. And I like fishing alone.”

  “I caught something this morning.”

  “Good for you.”

  “You might want to take a look at it.”

  He waits, and I can see the thoughts warring behind his eyes: do I humor this asshole and maybe he’ll go away, or do I tell him to get the fuck out of here and possibly incite him? The first choice must win out. Resigned, he offers, “Okay. Show me your catch.”

  I toss something at his chest and he fumbles his pole as he tries to get his hands on it. When he looks down at his palm, he realizes he is holding a man’s finger.

  He drops it like it’s toxic and stammers, “What is this?”

  “The trigger finger of one of your hired killers.”

  Fear sweeps across his face and his cheeks burn as though they’ve been slapped.

  “Call them off.”

  “What?”

  “The fence you’re currently using. Tell him to call off the contract.”

  “I . . . I don’t. . . . ”

  “Don’t insult me, Tommy. I’ve already gotten to Doriot in Belgium. I know you’re behind this.”

  I can see terror in his eyes, true fright. This is not at all uncommon in clients who hire killers. More often than not, they are feckless men, men who like to give orders from a safe distance without ever entering the battlefield. They imagine they have courage—ordering the deaths of others through multiple chains of command—but that courage evaporates like boiled water as soon as they come face to face with a man who pulls the trigger. So much for being a hard man. Saxon is as hard as a minnow.

  I lower my hands into my pockets conspicuously. His eyes widen as he imagines what I hold there.

  “No checking out, no going to the lodge. Just walk out of here slowly, and I’ll follow you to my car. You arrange a meeting with the fence on the way. We go together and we end this. Nod if you understand.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” He looks like he has something more he wants to add, but he’s afraid to open his mouth. I nod to him. “My lawyer is the one who arranges everything with the . . . um . . . other guys.”

  “Fine. Your lawyer, then. Let’s move.”

  The drive back is silent. Most men in his situation try to chat me up, to make themselves appear likable, misunderstood, human. But not Tommy Gun. No, he steers the wheel with a scowl on his face, like an unrepentant sinner forced to sit in a Sunday morning service. He’s afraid of me, yes, so he turns that fear to anger. The miles roll beneath the tires and he simmers, a pot of water about to boil over. If he’s waiting for me to say something, to break the silence, he’s misjudged me. Keeping men like him uncomfortable is a skill, and one I’ll admit I enjoy using.

  His lawyer’s name is Colin Goldman and he lives in Buckhead, not far from the mall where the bearded man watched me on the escalator, smiling when he should have been shooting. Colin is a small man with a big house.

  We stand in the grass of the back yard, a good distance from the rear porch. The lawyer is shivering, wearing a robe over a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his feet in slippers. I didn’t give him an opportunity to change after he answered the door.

  “How many gunmen did you hire?”

  Goldman coughs into his fist, nervous. He searches Saxon’s face. “I would advise you not to—”

  “Tell him.”

  “He could be a Fed.”

  “He’s not a Fed. Look at his eyes. He’s a goddamn killer. Tell him.” Saxon’s confidence is back, now that he has someone smaller than him to lord over.

  Goldman blows out a measured breath. “Ummm . . . just one.”

  “Well, your one is dead. I shot him in the bathroom of a fishing store in Jackson Bridge.”

  “Jackson Bridge?” The lawyer looks confused.

  “He wanted to get in close, so I let him get in close. Then I shot him in the face.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t give a shit. You hired one and you failed. You should’ve known better than to send a cut-up man after me. Now, I don’t give a fuck if you didn’t like the way I worked the Noel job. I finished it, and it’s done. You want payback, you poked the wrong animal.”

  “Wait, what’re you talking about?”

  It is my turn to feel uncomfortable. An uneasy feeling is starting to settle in my stomach. Square peg, round hole. Men in their positions usually look shamed, crestfallen, like they got caught in the act and are on their way to the guillotine. But these two are genuinely surprised, genuinely bewildered.

  “You sent a man after me.”

  Goldman stammers as he stamps his feet. “We . . . we only have one open job, I swear it. We’re taking out an SEC officer. In New York.”

  Saxon speaks up. “We understand the Noel job was successful. Why would we—?”

  In an instant, I have a pair of Glocks up in either hand and am pointing them point-blank at both of their foreheads. A well-positioned gun held in a steady hand makes a hell of a lie detector.

  They draw back instinctively. “Ho! I swear it. Whoever you are, we have no beef with you. You have to believe us.”

  I backhand the lawyer with the barrel of my pistol, so he goes down in a heap, and then I point both barrels at Saxon. The fear in his eyes is pellucid, tangible. He cringes, and there is anger in his voice.

  “Goddammit, listen to me. I don’t know who you are or what you believe I did, but if you think I put a price on your head, you’ve never been more wr
ong. I know my targets, all of them. Y-you got this one wrong.” He breathes hard, like he just ran a marathon. “Noel is dead and that case is closed. No reprisals. You got this one wrong.”

  Here comes that wave again, that bad-luck wave that has dogged me since Paris. Bad luck because this isn’t ending in Atlanta, not in the back yard of a little man’s big house in Buckhead. And certainly not ending in the bathroom of the Ramsey Bait and Tackle Shop off of Highway 197. Bad luck because where one killer fails, others will surely follow until I find out who has done the hiring. Bad luck because now I know Saxon and the bearded man were telling the truth.

  The silver wagon has stopped, the handle has dropped, and I have a name but I don’t know it. It has to be in front of me, somewhere. But where, goddammit?

  I know the Noel job triggered this. The heat that assignment brought led someone to Ryan, and Ryan led that someone to me. So it had to be a man who knew Ryan fenced for me on that job, and the only link in that chain is Doriot.

  Replaying my conversation with the Belgian fence, I remember he was quick to go where I led him, to finger his client, Saxon. In retrospect, it was too easy. Someone had gotten to Doriot first, before me, which is why he got himself tossed in jail. He was just buying time, as much as possible, till this whole thing washed over. He’s going to regret having misled me.

  The bearded man made a solid play initially, taking out Ryan to get to me. Even though he lost the war, he dealt me a crippling blow. Losing my fence, my middleman, is like missing a limb. I need information, someone to bang an idea off of, someone who can root around in the dirt for a bit and get back to me with a truffle.

  The last time I saw a fence named Archibald Grant, he was in the process of hiring me to kill the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But Grant withheld some information at the time of the assignment, namely, that he was asked to hire three assassins instead of just me. My friend and fence Pooley died because of this omission, gunned down in my hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the middle of my assignment. I would say Archibald owes me a pretty damn big chit.