Columbus

by Derek Haas

  Laverne answers the door wearing a shawl around her thin shoulders. She is slender and frail; she’s lost weight since Archibald managed to capture a few photos of her, like she’s been fighting an illness and a strong gust of wind might blow her away.

  “Ms. Webb?”

  “Yes?”

  “You . . . uh . . . you don’t know me, but I’ve driven a long way to find you.”

  She raises her eyebrows and sticks out her lower lip, taking me in. “Oh?”

  “I’m from Vancouver, ma’am.”

  She stiffens at the name of the city, and I press forward. “My father recently passed away.”

  “I don’t understand what. . . . ”

  “Before he went, he asked that I find you, get in touch with you. It took me a long time, but I put the pieces together. Do you mind if I come in?”

  I can tell she is thinking about it. “Would you mind telling me what this is about?”

  “I’d rather do it inside.”

  She folds her arms.

  I force an embarrassed smile on my face. “My father was a deacon at the King’s Cross Methodist Church there in Vancouver, and he wrote a letter he wanted me to share with you. He said it was very important I give it to you. I think he’s looking for some kind of absolution.”

  Her eyes move from my face to some point in the distance, like she’s trying to see through to the past. Slowly, she nods. “All right, then.”

  “Thank you.”

  She steps aside and allows me to pass into the house, a mistake she will soon regret.

  She is doing fine. Scared, yes, but doing as I ask as best she can under the circumstances. The cordless phone is up to her ear, and she watches me fearfully. Her eyes flit to the Glock resting comfortably in my right hand.

  After a moment, one of her sons answers the line.

  “Yo.”

  “Darius?”

  His voice warms immediately. I guess I’m a little surprised she’s able to distinguish between her two sons after hearing one syllable, but never underestimate a mother, I suppose. “Hey, Mom. How you doing?”

  “Not so well.”

  “What is it?”

  Before she can answer, I snatch the phone out of her hand and affect a gangland accent. “Bring me some money, yo.” And then I hang up. And wait.

  Juda, the bodyguard, is the first one through the door. Darius is right behind him, gathering steam as he barrels into the foyer. Both men have guns out and up in broad daylight, dismissing any worries of nosy neighbors watching them.

  Dalan, the younger of the two twins by exactly seven minutes, hangs back by the car, double-fisting a pair of chrome .45 automatic Colts, high-caliber, knock-out punch guns. I’m sure he’s there to ambush anybody foolish enough to try to escape out the front door.

  My first shot hits him flush in the forehead while my second catches him under the chin as he drops. I didn’t use a silencer, purposefully making as much noise as I can. The sound of the gunfire initiates the intended effect, Darius screams a guttural, maniacal wail as he bursts back out of the front door and races to the body of his twin brother, slumped backward against the rear tire of their Navigator, a lure too shiny to resist.

  My third shot rips through the back of Darius’s head, sending half of his skull into his dead brother’s face.

  Juda, standing halfway between the front door and the car, spins and looks at me where I lie on top of Laverne’s roof. My gun points directly at him, a sure shot, a clean kill if I pull my index finger toward me an inch. I don’t want to kill Juda, though. Not unless he does something stupid. As I mentioned before, I’ve found trouble can grow exponentially if I leave more of a mess than necessary, and bodyguards are always more interested in a paycheck than revenge.

  He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He’s a true professional, a man who has seen his share of bodies, and he knows he’s dealing with a killer who has the advantage. Slowly, he drops his guns and backs away, backs away, backs away, until he reaches the sidewalk. Then he turns and starts running, a sprinter, a man with nothing but monetary ties to the brothers and a will to live.

  In a few moments, I am off the roof, leaping into the back yard and sprinting in the opposite direction, to my rental car parked on a neighboring street. I tied Laverne Webb to a chair in her kitchen, and I don’t want to be within five miles of her house when she frees herself and comes looking for me. What I won’t do is underestimate the mother.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I AM SITTING NEXT TO ARCHIBALD GRANT’S BED WHEN HE TURNS ON HIS LIGHT. He doesn’t flinch, just sits up and props himself against the headboard. He is growing accustomed to having me in his life.

  “I might’ve been with a lady.”

  “You aren’t.”

  “But I might’ve been. And you would’ve scared the insides out of her, creeping up in here like that.”

  I shrug. “The job is done.”

  “The brothers are planted?”

  “Head shots. Both of them.”

  Archibald smiles, all teeth. “Well, all right. You can wake me up for that kind of news any day of the week.”

  “Give me my name, and I’m on my way.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We had a deal and you came through true blue. Open up that drawer in the bedside table there.”

  Inside is a black notepad, the kind with a wire coil on top. I pass it to him.

  “Hand me my glasses there.”

  I do, and he sets an old pair of bifocals on his nose, then starts flipping through the notebook, muttering to himself. “All right. Uh huh.” He makes nodding motions with his head as he continues to flip. Finally, he stops on one page. “Here it is. The name you’re looking for. Les’see, it’s: Alexander Cole-Frett. Not sure how to pronounce that. Here, take the page.”

  He rips it out and I look at the name. Alexander Coulfret in block capital letters. The name looks familiar, but I can’t peg it.

  “That’s all I have, Columbus. But he’s the guy putting his signature across the contract on your life. I know that.”

  “You have any idea why?”

  “Can’t say I do.” He shrugs, feigning ignorance, his porcupine quills, his tortoise shell, his built-in defense.

  I fold the paper away and stand.

  Archibald takes off his glasses and folds his hands behind his head. “Say, this been a pleasure for me, working with you. I mean that. We should do it more often.”

  “Good luck, Archibald.” I’m already moving toward the bedroom door.

  “Columbus?” He waits for me to turn. “Don’t tell no one about my glasses.”

  I can’t help but smile. He scoots back down, rests his head against the pillow, and closes his eyes.

  Coulfret. Coulfret. Where have I heard that name? It’s French; I’m on the right track, but I’ve studied Noel’s business dealings and his family tree going back generations and that name isn’t there. And yet I know I’ve seen it. I know it.

  I am sitting in the Hall public library on South Michigan, just about to type Coulfret’s name into a Google window when the first bullet rips through my side. It’s a low-caliber round but goddamn does it hurt, like someone swung a hammer into my rib cage.

  A civilian’s natural reaction is to drop to the ground when struck by a bullet no matter where it hits the body. It is ingrained from watching thousands of cop shows, thousands of movies, countless hours playing good guys and bad guys: when a gun goes off, the victim clutches his or her heart and falls to the earth like a punch-drunk prize fighter. But a professional killer knows better, knows you can live a long time with a .22 bullet inside you, knows that instead of dropping to the ground, you should be moving away from the direction the bullet hit your body.

  I wasn’t expecting this, had no warning other than the small cracking sound to my right followed by the blow to my side, but my instincts take over and people are starting to scream and flee and I act like I’m going to fall, only to leap onto the computer table, just as another crack an
d a bullet rips into the ground where the person holding the weapon thought I would drop, but I’m up and off the table and diving for a row between two bookshelves.

  I catch a glimpse of some dark hair, and I know it’s Llanos, the one from Argentina, and she managed to get one bullet in me but I’ll be damned if she’s going to manage two.

  I chose poorly on the row; there are nothing but bookshelves and a concrete wall in front of me, so I swing low and dive through the “H”s in the biography section, scattering hard-covers like buckshot, until I burst out on the other side of the shelf, hitting the ground hard.

  My ribs now feel like someone is trying to rip them out of my skin and I’m fighting to breathe, holding my shirt tight over the wound, but I’m pretty sure the bullet caught bone and stayed there, didn’t ricochet, because I’m not throwing up blood, not yet, and my wits are still about me. I may not have anything else, but I’ve got that.

  My eyes sweep my new position, homing in on the exits, because one thing is sure, a woman shooting a man in the middle of a Chicago public library is going to draw a hell of a lot of police. She knows it too and that may be my only advantage. She simply doesn’t have time to try and finish the job, not if she wants to escape.

  Across the aisle, I spot a door marked “Employees Only” and it’s my best shot, my only shot, a break room or a snack room or something leading down or up or outside.

  I grab a large book with the hand not pressed to my side, Lincoln’s face on the cover, and fling it across the open aisle, no-man’s-land, and I am moving while the book is still in the air. Lincoln draws the bullet instead of me and before a second shot is fired, I cross the ten steps to the employees’ door, and I’m through it, startling a corpulent woman in a small hallway who smells like cigarettes.

  “Smoking section!” I shout, a little louder than I would have liked, making the universal sign for cigarettes with the first two fingers of my good hand pressed to my lips and she’s too surprised to do anything but point a chubby finger at a door at the end of the hallway.

  Twenty yards and I’m slamming through the opening into sunshine and fresh air and freedom. My side feels like someone is jamming a spear into it; my right hand looks like I dipped it in paint.

  The alley behind the library opens to the street and I spot a cab idling at the curb with a skinny white kid behind the wheel.

  “Out now!” I scream as I fling open his driver’s door, and in my periphery I see Llanos streaking around the corner, gun out and up. The woman has sand, I’ll give her that.

  The driver unbuckles his belt as he puts his hands up but he isn’t moving fast enough. I yank him the rest of the way out of his seat, on to the sidewalk, and just as another volley of bullets pelts the side of the cab, I slide behind the wheel, throw the car in drive, and jam the pedal through the floorboard, not bothering to close the door. I couldn’t if I wanted to, my left arm is pinned to my side; my right guides the wheel. It slams shut from the momentum as the car races forward.

  I don’t have much time. My vision is already going hazy at the edges, like I’ve stumbled into a tunnel. I need to think of something. Anything.

  A quick glance in the rearview mirror, and goddammit, this Llanos woman is tenacious. I see her commandeer a second cab much as I took the first, and it roars away from the curb like a lion tracking wounded prey. She knows she landed a blow, and like a prizefighter crowding an opponent into the ropes, she’ll be damned if she’ll give up that advantage.

  I throw the car around a corner, blinking doublevision out of my eyes, and if I’m going to do something, I’m going to have to do it now. My hold on consciousness is slippery at best, and the pain in my side is burning, like half my body has been lit on fire.

  Before she can take the corner, I slam on my brakes, smoking the tires and just as quickly, I throw the stick into reverse and mash the pedal.

  When killing a mark, there is only one sure way to put the target down permanently: a headshot. With a car, the principle holds, and any time you can sacrifice your trunk for your opponent’s engine, you should launch at the chance.

  I can’t turn around, so I utilize the rear view mirror and grit my teeth and hope, hope, hope I’m timing this right and just as she blitzes around the corner, I thunder into her in reverse with a full head of steam.

  Her hood crumples like an accordion, bucking the yellow cab up so the back tires threaten to flip over the front. Then the rear tires slam back to the pavement before her entire cab spins to the side.

  I spin too, but am still facing away from her, thank God, and my engine is humming softly, so I shift back into drive and plow forward. My left rear tire is airless but the axle feels like it has kept its alignment and this poor cab may not get me far, but it should be enough. I eye the sideview mirror; Llanos’s car remains in the middle of the street, smoke rising from its hood like a funeral pyre and if she makes it out before the whole thing goes up, at least it’ll be with her confidence rattled. At least I gained that.

  Now that my adrenaline is in full retreat, I feel tired, so damn tired, like I’m trying to walk along the bottom of the ocean. I need to make a move, a decision. I can’t get much further limping in this cab. I have to find help. Goddamn, I need a fence. I have to. . . .

  Squash. Butternut squash soup, to be more specific, drips on my tongue and hits the back of my throat. I can smell it full in my nostrils, warm and salty. It might as well be a bone-in rib-eye. It tastes like the most delicious morsel I’ve ever put in my mouth.

  I open my eyes and am staring at a young black woman, pretty, unthreatening. She is ladling the soup into my mouth with one hand under the spoon to keep it from dripping on to my chest.

  “Hello.” Her voice is warm, barely hiding a southern accent.

  “Hello.”

  “How you feeling?”

  “Stiff.”

  “You had a twenty-two slug in you, lodged into your rib. You want to see it?”

  “No, thank you.” She spoons another bite into my mouth and I can feel the heat moving down the length of my chest after I swallow.

  “Just a second.” She sets the bowl down and bounces over to a nearby door so she can stick her head into the hallway. She isn’t dressed like a nurse or a caregiver; she’s wearing a tight skirt and a half-shirt that shows off a belly ring.

  “Archie! He’s up!”

  So I made it here after all. I remember throwing that Lincoln book—thanks for drawing another bullet, Mr. President—and I have images of a fat finger pointing me toward daylight and a cab barreling in reverse—but everything else bleeds together like Polaroids shuffled in a deck. I wanted to make it to a pharmacy and get the things I needed but I was slipping in and out of consciousness and didn’t have a choice. I thought about Archibald and I must’ve made that decision but I don’t remember doing so. I have no idea if I drove, walked, or crawled here. I’m vulnerable now, and I’m indebted to a man who knows how to exploit vulnerability, but I’m not sure I had another choice.

  My side is throbbing, but what really bothers me, what my mind keeps turning over and over as it blocks out the pain is the play Llanos made. Archibald had warned me she had picked up my scent in Chicago, and so I went to a public library with a perfect view of my surroundings. Yet, she still took her shot there, even though her chances of finishing the job were limited. Then she kept after me, long past time when she should’ve retreated. The only reason she would do that, I imagine, is the third assassin, the Czech named Svoboda, is also here. She wanted to collect the kill fee before him, or she was worried he’d come after her first. Either way, she tried to force a low-percentage play. I’m going to make that decision come back to haunt her.

  Archibald pokes his head in the room and I have to squint from the glare off all those teeth.

  “Back from the abyss.” His voice is as bouncy as the girl’s step. “I must say I thought it’d be a while before you knocked on my door again. I guess something up in the universe got us tied toge
ther on the same string.”

  “Thanks for the patch-work.”

  “I got a surgeon who likes cash money and doesn’t like paying malpractice. We got what the Nature Channel calls a symbiotic relationship.”

  “You got a mirror?”

  “This face? I got a house full of ’em.”

  He moves off and the girl smiles at me. “Archie tells me you’re the best he ever worked with.”

  “Archibald talks too much.”

  “Been that way since we were five. He had half our school working for him. The teachers too. Only one he couldn’t keep up with was our mother.”

  “I’d like to have met her . . . just to complete the picture.”

  Archibald steps back into the room, holding a hand mirror. “That old lady taught me everything I know.”

  “She’d roll over in the grave to hear that.”

  So Archibald—Archie—has a sister and he thinks we’re square enough to let me in on that secret, even after I got to the Webb brothers through their mother. It’s a calculated move on his part. I showed up at his place completely helpless, exposed and dying; in return, he exposes himself, personally, to me, tying us even tighter together. Maybe the universe really does have us dangling on the same string.

  I take the mirror and hold it at an angle to get a look at the wound in my side. Peeling the gauze and bandage back, I’m impressed with Archibald’s surgeon. The wound is clean and the stitches are tight and even.

  “I told you,” Archibald says from the door.

  “Yeah, pretty good.” The pain is awful now, throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I don’t want to know what it’s going to feel like if I cough.

  “You need some Tylenol or something?” the sister asks.

  “I’ll take some if you got ’em.”