Columbus

by Derek Haas

  But Ruby Grant’s career will end soon. She’ll slip or she’ll panic or she’ll step back when she should be moving forward. Fear is nesting inside her now, whether she knows it or not. The bluster, the swagger . . . that was the act. Maybe she’ll have the foresight to walk away, to get out of the game early, before her ticket gets punched. But more likely, someone will take advantage of a simple mistake and put her down.

  I won’t be around to see it.

  I need to move quickly. The dead Mallery brothers are probably on slabs at the morgue, and it won’t take long for someone in Coulfret’s organization to tip him. Once he learns one of his killers, Llanos, died in the city, immediately followed by the slaying of one of his henchmen, he’ll understand I’ve come looking for him. I have yet to draw a bead on the third assassin, Svoboda, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’s somewhere close by, circling.

  I need to lure Coulfret out of that apartment building on the Rue de Maur tomorrow, before he has a chance to bury in like a tick and wait out my demise.

  I’m still going to get to him through his nose. And as much as I’d like to do this on my own, I’m going to need help.

  “You want to be my fence, we start now.”

  Archibald’s voice comes through the pay-phone line. “I thought you might come around, Columbus. We tied to that string like I said.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . we’ll discuss structuring our deal and parameters and all of that as soon as I get back to the States. But right now, I need some assistance in Paris. I need a scrounger who can work on the fly. . . . ”

  “Say no more. I got a fella works outta London . . . I’ll have him there on the first train in the morning—”

  “It’s gotta be tonight, and he’s gonna have to pull some serious strings.”

  “Where you gonna be?”

  “Hotel Balzac. Room 202.”

  “He’ll be there in two hours. Name’s Olmstead. Bald, glasses.”

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure, Columbus. See you when you see me.”

  Olmstead enters in the dead of night. He’s as Archibald described: shaved head, thick square-framed glasses, but he’s big for a scrounger, over six feet tall. For someone whose job it is to acquire things, often illegally, I was expecting a slight figure, a man who doesn’t stand out on surveillance-camera footage.

  As is so often the case in this world, there are no greetings between us as he moves to the small desk in the room, sits down, and opens a tiny notebook.

  “Now what is it I can get for you, Columbus?”

  “A water and power truck. A jumpsuit, the kind a city worker would wear.”

  He looks up. “You’re in luck. The water service in Paris is moving from a private company back to a city-run municipality. It’s in complete and total flux. This year is the transition and it’s running as smoothly as cobblestone. Won’t be a problem.”

  He’s got a blue-collar accent, and scars on his knuckles speak to his resourcefulness.

  “What else?”

  “Doctor’s masks.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mentholatum.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I need the truck filled with bags of manure.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Bovine? Horse? Organic compost?”

  “The kind that smells the worst.”

  Ruby watches us from the bed, lugubriously. I don’t have to tell her she’s out.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “I’m going to need two nameless guys. . . . ”

  “Shooters?”

  “No, wallpaper. Two men dressed in the same uniform as me, directing traffic, nodding at pedestrians, and running like hell as soon as I pull the trigger.”

  “That’s gonna be expensive.”

  “I’ll pay ’em whatever you think they’re worth.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I understand you need this in the morning.”

  “I want to be rolling by eleven.”

  “Then I’ll meet you two blocks to the east, in front of the Parc de Monceau, at 11 A.M. tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He closes his notebook, coughs into his fist, and leaves without saying good-bye.

  When I look at Ruby, she simply rolls over and faces the wall.

  Coulfret’s men pay us no attention as we park a block north of his building. Our truck has the blue-and-white insignia of the city printed on its side, and it only takes a moment for me to pop out of the back and open the adjacent manhole cover.

  As I mentioned, Paris has an extensive sewer system, historic enough to generate its own tourism business. It would provide a somewhat easy path to enter Coulfret’s building from underground if that were my aim, but I’m wary of attacking there. Like the Webb brothers, his home turf is well guarded, he knows it better than anyone, and I have no intention of ending up in the bottom of an elevator shaft.

  The two men Olmstead found are impassionate and more or less featureless. They toss me bag after bag of compost as soon as I descend into the cavern beneath the street. The size of the chamber is commodious; I barely have to stoop. It takes me a dozen trips back and forth, but soon I have all of my materials in the right location underneath the Rue de Maur. Directly above my head is the main sewer line running into Coulfret’s apartment building.

  We move the truck to the middle of his block, directly across from his front door, and the first of Coulfret’s bodyguards approaches, a young man with an out-of-style bowler cap. My two hired pigeons and I have doctor’s masks covering our noses and mouths, and we are in the middle of prying up another manhole cover.

  Bowler Hat speaks in colloquial French with a thick nasal accent.

  “Keep moving. You have no business here.”

  I try my best to respond in a passable Parisian accent. “We’re having trouble with the sewer conversion.”

  “I don’t give a whore’s fuck if you are prying out golden piping beneath the street, you don’t do it here. Pack up your truck and—”

  “You’ll have to take it up with the city—”

  “I’m taking it up with you, you son of a—”

  And then I see him instantly recoil as the stench hits him, his forearm flying up to cover his nose.

  “My God. . . . ”

  Two of his fellow bodyguards spring up as their cohort flinches backward. The nearest one, a bald mustachioed thug I recognize from the whore’s pictorial spread, clamps his hand inside his jacket and raises his voice. “What is it, Anton?”

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “It’s shit. These sons of whores smell worse than a monkey cage.”

  The two approaching bodyguards now catch a whiff and reel backward. “Gadddd. . . . ” I hear one of them grunt.

  “I told you we were having problems. You didn’t want to listen.”

  “Yes, yes, Jesus. For the love of the virgin, please, just cover that goddamn hole and drive away.”

  In a ruse like this—what is essentially a short con—if you play it right, the mark will believe it is his idea to give you what you want.

  I nod at Bowler Hat, then turn to my men. “Okay, cover it, boys. They don’t want our help, they don’t want our help. I’m sure they’ll have an easy time rescheduling with the city.”

  My pigeons start to recover the manhole when the first of Coulfret’s inner circle steps out of the apartment building, waving his hands in the air, gagging.

  “What the fuck?” he chokes out in our general direction.

  “What is it, Philippe?” Bowler Hat shouts back at him.

  “The toilets are flowing backward with shit!”

  “Inside?”

  “Yes, inside, goddamn. Where do you think I just came from?” A couple more of Coulfret’s inside dwellers emerge like bomb victims from the house, sucking in huge gulps of air as soon as they make it to the sidewalk. Their disgust is coming out in angry cries directed at Bowler Ha
t, just for his proximity to us. He yells back defensively in a high-pitched voice that sounds like it is pouring directly from his nose. “I didn’t do a fucking thing. I’m trying to get to the understanding of this!” He turns back to me, eyes red and teary.

  “Fix it, you stinking whore. Fix it or so help me, I’ll rip off your face and flush you down the sewer myself.”

  He then rips the doctor’s mask off my face, snapping the elastic band, and holds it up over his own mouth and nose, daring me to complain.

  “Okay, okay, no problem.” I whistle at my guys to get back to work. “I’m really sorry.”

  “You should be sorry, you enormous shit bag.”

  He’s taken a few steps back, and I pretend to watch my men work on the manhole cover, but my eyes are locked on the front door of Coulfret’s building as more of his men emerge.

  I’m scanning for anyone who looks like he’s had plastic surgery on his face. I know Coulfret’s height and weight and build and I’ve seen three pictures of him from before he faked his death, and I’m certain I’ll spot him when he clears that front door. If he fancies himself a wine connoisseur, then there’s no way he had any work done on his bird-like beak. I’m willing to bet he changed his eyes and his hair and his chin and his jawline but not that aquiline nose with the bridge that looks like an architect sculpted a flying buttress. I’ll know it when I see it, and I’ll put a bullet right through it and jump in the truck and get the hell out of here.

  Two new men emerge from the front door, though neither can be Coulfret. One is too young and the other a foot short, and the din they raise as each comes out of the house hurling curses at the sky sounds like a demonic choir. One more thug trickles out, but he’s far too skinny, and then I hear Bowler Hat yell at someone over my shoulder.

  “Gerard! Is this the kind of shit we can expect from the city taking over? Shit, shit everywhere?”

  I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know who he’s summoning; I understand from the first “ha ha” I hear bellowed back. The obsequious detective from the Bastille district who happens to be writing a novel about French crime approaches behind me, the same one who left me alone with the files on Coulfret.

  Not now. Not right now.

  Another two heavies lumber out of the building, but neither is Coulfret and he’s gotta come out any second and I don’t need much but I need that now. The way to him is through his nose, and there just isn’t any conceivable way he can hold out much. . . .

  “Ha ha! Anton, it seems the stench of your sinful life is finally catching up to you, yes? Ha ha!”

  The fat detective sweeps past me, biting into an apple, and I turn just enough to give him my profile, and for some reason he seems immune to the smell and he’s happy to set up shop two feet from me, chomping on that apple like he’s about to sit down for a picnic.

  Three more men flood out of the door, one holding a handkerchief over his face, covering his mouth and nose. Is he Coulfret? He’s the right size, the right body shape. But I can’t tell with half his face obscured.

  “Is this really bothering you, Anton? I would think a pig like you would be right at home in a den of filth.”

  I inch closer to the front door, toward the man holding the kerchief, waiting for him to lower it, please lower it, and there’s something familiar about his eyes, but I can’t be sure. Lower the kerchief, just give me half of a second to look.. . .

  “Why don’t you do something about it, you miserable goat?”

  “I am doing something, Anton. I am out enjoying a nice walk in the neighborhood I love to serve, keeping an eye out for any unusual business, and do you know what I’ve been wondering?”

  “I don’t give a damn what—”

  “I’ve been wondering why Roger Mallery and his brother were murdered in separate places last night.”

  Another two goons step out into the sun and join the man with the kerchief, and they are both too large to be Coulfret, but their body language indicates a deference to the man they’ve joined. If he’ll just lower that fucking handkerchief and let me catch a glimpse of his nose. . . .

  “What is this you say to me? What of Roger Mallery?”

  “Dead on the roof of a building on the Left Bank, and the same night his brother is murdered on a street two blocks from here. But you know nothing of course, ha ha. You are just a know-nothing imbecile. . . . ”

  I’m riveted by the man holding the kerchief to his face and I can tell the exact pattern on it, a yellow and white floral stitch, and I can tell exactly how it folds back at the top into a little triangle, and I am imploring him, willing him with my eyes to lower it. Detective Gerard and the goon with the bowler hat pay me no attention, an arm’s length away, as my pigeons stoop over the manhole cover like they’re actually working, trying to find a leak in some subsurface piping. I have to hand it to Archibald’s scrounger, he found unflappable men and whatever he’s charging for them, I’m going to double it as soon as we get out of here.

  “I’m up to my ears in shit here and you want to question me like I’m down at your stinking police station?”

  “Why is your face turning red, Anton? Is it because the story I heard is true about you having an incident with Roger Mallery concerning some thuggery you did together near the river Seine?”

  “Do you think, you cow, maybe my face is red because the street smells like a toilet and now the building behind me is stinking to heaven and this miserable ass is gawking when he should be working.”

  The man with the kerchief is just lowering it as I realize Bowler Hat is talking about me. And there it is, that unmistakable hook nose, and yes, the shape of his face has changed, and yes his eyes have changed, but that nose remains the exact bulging mar to his face I first examined in his mug-shots. The man is Alexander Coulfret, the one who put the price tag on my head for accidentally causing his brother’s death, I’m sure of it.

  I can feel Detective Gerard turning in my direction. I block him out, keep my eyes on my target as I drop one hand behind my back and return it fisting my Glock.

  “Mr. Walker?” I hear Gerard say, confused.

  I turn my eyes just enough to see Bowler Hat hesitate, his brain working out that I am raising a gun and he is going to be too slow to stop me.

  The manhole cover clanks down hard on the ground as my two pigeons recognize the moment is at hand and sprint away like track stars.

  Surprise is slipping quickly, and a professional killer knows the wise move is to close the distance to the mark as efficiently as possible. I abandon all pretense, break character, and charge Coulfret, arm raised stiff.

  He spots me coming and is smarter than his men, puts it all together in an instant, how I flushed him out and am now moving in to finish the job.

  A threatened animal’s instinct is to break for home, shelter, security, the place he feels safest, and Coulfret does the same, spinning on a dime and darting back for his front door.

  Gunshots break out around me as the bald mustachioed heavy or maybe Bowler Hat or any of a half-dozen thugs I’m ignoring try to squeeze a shot off at me, but I remain focused on the prize and pull the trigger and a puff of red mist explodes as I wing Coulfret just as he bursts through his door.

  There is nothing I can do but follow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE STENCH IS A BEING, ALL-ENCOMPASSING, A PHYSICAL PRESENCE, AS POWERFUL AS A KICK TO THE STOMACH. Despite my precautions—I rubbed mentholatum under each nostril, the way coroners do when dealing with corpses—the manure trapped in the building has successfully battered my defenses. All I can do is push it to the side of my brain, treat it like a wound, like pain, and ignore it as best I can.

  I thought Coulfret might have mounted an assault as soon as I barreled through the door, but only a blood trail leads down the corridor to my left. Instinctively, I spin around and double-bolt the door. He turned this building into a fortress, which I can use to my advantage to keep his men at bay. If there are other ways inside, I hope t
his at least buys me enough time to finish my work and somehow escape.

  The blood streaks on the concrete floor are more splashes than drops, and though I didn’t see exactly where I hit him, it had to have been more than a glancing blow. He’s not going to last long without medical attention, and maybe not even then. My first thought is to take my chances and concentrate on getting the hell out of here, but I have to know this is over, know Coulfret is dead, know the contract has been lifted. If I don’t see it with my own eyes, if I don’t finish him, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. This has to end now.

  I hear pounding on the door behind me, big angry blows like someone is trying to put his foot right through the steel, but the locks are holding as I continue to stalk down the hall. It’ll take them some time to break it down, but I don’t know how much. I don’t know if it’ll be enough. The red streaks become even more prominent on the tile, more defined as I follow them, picking up my pace.

  The blood trail ends at the closed doors of the elevator.

  Stairs. There has to be a stairwell nearby. I know he went down to the basement, the place he’s most comfortable, and if he thinks I’m going to walk into the elevator car and wait for the drop, then the blood loss is affecting his head.

  I fumble with a door nearby, nothing, then a second gives way, and I’m in the stairwell. I slow my breathing and deaden my footfalls as I soft-step down the stairs. I may be exactly where I don’t want to be—in the mouth of the monster—but his wounds even the playing field and I am going to see this through now or die in his basement like all the others.

  He wanted to send me a message, but I have a message to send back, one that reaches beyond these walls to the world within a world where I have my flag planted. My message is this: if you put paper on me, if yours is the signature on the contract, if you pay a hit man to hunt and kill the assassin known as Columbus, then you’re signing your own death certificate.