by Derek Haas
It doesn’t take long. The woman in the skullcap pulls into a Caribou Coffee parking lot, cuts her engine, and steps out of the car to go inside. Her guard is down; my guess is she hasn’t been in the supplier business long and has yet to understand the need for caution. When she exits the place holding a paper cup emitting steam, I am lying in wait.
“Tara?”
She jumps, startled, then searches my face, looking for recognition. “Yes?”
“I need you to come with me.”
A thousand thoughts sweep like storm clouds across her face, all of them dark. I see her eyes dart to the coffee in her right hand, the car keys in her left, and then back to me, sizing me up.
“I suppose you’ll be ready if I try to burn you or put these keys in your face?”
“Yes.”
“Is this about some business I did?”
“Do you want to have this conversation in a parking lot?”
She looks at me, processing the question, and then shakes her head. “What about my car?”
“You should think about driving something less colorful.”
HAP is less than a mile away. He is planning on meeting Tara in thirty minutes to make the exchange, a new gun for old money. He doesn’t realize I will be the one meeting him, but that doesn’t make him any less of a threat. Assassins are wary by nature, distrustful by training. He might’ve picked up on something in her voice, a slight rise in inflection letting him know this call was being made under duress, that there was literally a gun to her head. She might have slipped him a code word in the conversation, something agreed upon at an earlier date, a word that is seemingly innocuous, but would signal the true nature of the night’s exchange. I think she played it perfectly, innocently, but I’m not Hap on the other end of the line, and I’m not about to approach this confrontation lightly.
I have chosen the cemetery for the exchange, the place I passed on the way to Tara’s office. It is after midnight and darker than I expected; the moon is only a fingernail scratching at the night sky. I have been here for hours, adjusting my eyes to the darkness. Not much of an advantage, but sometimes you only need the scales to tip the slightest in your favor to make your kill. I’m not worried about Tara trying to contact Hap and let him know about the trap; she won’t be doing much talking for at least a month after what I did to her.
The cemetery is colder at night than I anticipated; the proximity to the mountains brings in a chill wind that seems to permeate right into my skin. The grave markers are small and spread out in neat rows, offering little protection from the breeze. I crouch on the cold earth, my back to a stone marker that reads: MICHAEL MATHESON, 1970-1979, as I watch the front entrance warily, two pistols cocked and loaded, folded into my lap. Hap has lived a few years longer than the boy on whose grave I sit, but I plan on having him join Michael Matheson tonight.
What I don’t plan on, what I haven’t foreseen, is that Hap is working this job as a tandem sweep. I know from Pooley that three shooters were hired to take out Abe Mann at his party’s convention in a little less than a month. What I don’t know, not for the next two minutes at least, is that two of them—Miguel Cortega and Hap Blowenfeld—are working this job together.
I am the odd man out, it seems.
CHAPTER 11
I am bleeding in a cemetery, a fitting place, as though the land itself is beckoning to cover me up like it has so many others. I have two holes in me, one where the bullet entered my side and shattered my rib, and a second where it exited my back. Pools of gore are soaking my shirt and I’ll admit I’m a little worried about the blood loss. I am not afraid I will die from this wound, not yet at least, but I am concerned about losing consciousness before I get a chance to take out the second shooter. I’m pretty sure I dropped one of them, at least I think I did. Fuck, I don’t know for sure. I am suddenly very tired, like my eyes are filled with sand.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot while working a job.
IT was my seventh assignment with Pooley. We had settled into a comfortable rhythm; he proved intuitive at setting up a network of contacts and contracts, and resourceful at finding the information I needed to execute my job. He was right. He was a natural. He had quickly surpassed Vespucci in every aspect; he had a hunter’s eye and a survivor’s cleverness—Waxham had given him both—and he was much to credit for our early success.
One client was particularly impressed. I had killed for her recently—a New York job—a Wall Street trader who must’ve bought when he should’ve sold. The man had hired a private security firm for protection, but they were sloppy and unprofessional.
Pooley showed up a few weeks after the mark was found in pieces scattered across the George Washington Bridge.
“That job was a big one, Columbus. Our client . . . she’s a whale amongst fishes . . . a leading player on the acquiring market.”
“Good . . . I don’t want you to have to work so hard.”
He smiled. “I was thinking I might take a trip. Get out and see the world.”
“You deserve a break.”
“I’m not going on vacation. This is a business trip.”
“Where to?”
“Italy.”
I looked at him skeptically.
“I told you . . . that last client was impressed. She wants to hire you again. Immediately.”
“The mark is overseas?”
“Yeah. I need a month to put the file together. Then you have six weeks to do what you do. She has a specific date she wants you to make the kill. June sixth. In the dead of night.”
“She’ll pay for the specificity?”
“It’s taken care of.”
I used the four weeks to get my mind right, as Vespucci had taught me. I fell into a routine; there was comfort in rigidity. I worked out hard, running five miles in the mornings, then several hours reading, flipping back and forth between contemporaries and classics: Wolfe and Mailer and Updike and Steinbeck and Maugham and Hemingway. Then a light meal followed by a sparring session at a boxing gym on the south side where everyone paid cash and nobody asked questions. Dinner was at home and I usually watched the news. Then bed. Every day the same. Comfort in rigidity. And I didn’t have to think about Jake. I did not want to think about Jake.
Pooley handed me a brown manila envelope, our hellos and how-ya-beens out of the way.
“How was it?”
Pooley shrugged. “They got a fucked-up way of doin’ things over there. They don’t like strangers unless they’re throwing money around. And even then, they pretty much don’t like ’em. But the food was good.”
“You get what you need?”
“It’s all there. Our client had some pull.”
“You have any suspicions?”
Pooley shook his head. “Naah . . . it’s no walk in the park because of the specific time she wants it done, but it’s nothing you can’t handle.”
“I’m going to be in the visitor’s dugout.”
“That’s true. No home-field advantage.”
“All right, then. Thanks, Pooley. It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too, Columbus.”
THE name at the top of the page was Gianni Cortino. He was fifty-two years old and currently splitting time between Rome and a coastal town named Positano. He was in the real estate business, but it appeared he had his thumb in a lot of pies: utilities, hotels, restaurants. He was a wealthy man; his net worth was counted in hundreds of millions.
Pooley had done his homework. Like many rich men, Cortino was tight-fisted with his wallet, like he had such a devilish time acquiring the money, it pained him to let any of it escape. His vice was cigars: Cuban Cohibas. He was devoted to his wife, his two sons, and his first grandchild, a boy, Bruno, born just eleven months previous. There had been whiffs of a scandal involving Cortino and a socialist politician in Florence, but the rumors turned out to be planted by an investment rival. As far as Pooley could tell, Cortino was free from graft. No whores, no
gambling, no illicit goods, just a successful man in a country that is leery of success.
He also had a bodyguard.
The guard’s name was Stephano Gorgio. Gorgio had spent thirteen years in the Italian special forces, mountain division, and had subsequently hired out as a mercenary in the Serbian war in Yugoslavia. His uncle was an early business partner to Cortino, and the two met after Gorgio returned to Italy. He made a proposal to Cortino to come on as his private bodyguard, and Cortino fired the security company he had been using and shook hands with Stephano. They had been together seven years.
Gorgio had two bullets in his shoulder, taken when the same investment rival who tried to smear Cortino also tried to kill him. Instead, the rival was choked to death bare-handed by Gorgio, bullets in the shoulder notwithstanding.
In the file were pages and pages of details, attempts at finding patterns in Cortino’s life. Did he eat at the same restaurant every day? Did he use the same route to get to work? Did he travel from Rome to Positano at a certain time each month? Use the same roads? Take the same car? The train? There is comfort in rigidity. But there is also death in it.
I arrived in Rome at 3 P.M. and took a taxi to my hotel, a small one in the middle of the city, the Hotel Mascagni. It was owned by Cortino, one of the first he acquired after he came to Rome with a bit of an inheritance. While he had bought and sold and traded many properties in the twenty years he had been acquiring his fortune, he kept this one throughout. I wasn’t sure what clue it would give me about the man, what it would do to help me realize the connection so I could sever the connection, but it was my first tangible piece of the man I came to kill.
The hotel contained only fourteen rooms on six floors and an old two-person elevator built into the tiny lobby. It had a bar and a restaurant—together the size of an American living room—and a small staff who nodded and bowed and gesticulated regularly. The building resonated warmth, the same warmth I got from reading Cortino’s file, and I wondered if it was a mistake staying here. I was searching for evil to exploit in the man, and so far I found only charity and kindness.
I took the first two weeks to familiarize myself with the city, not as a tourist would, but as a rich businessman might. I avoided the ancients: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, instead concentrating on the busy commercial streets named after months: Settembre, Novembre. I ate at restaurants I knew Cortino haunted, places specializing in seafood and pasta, but managed to avoid seeing him until I set my foundation, until I began to think like a local, establish my roots.
The third week I took a train from Rome to Naples and then hired a car to take me from Naples to Positano. I traveled the way Cortino did—although it was rare and inconvenient for such a wealthy man to travel by rail and car between the cities, Cortino lived as he did when he had no money. I imagine it was a way for him to remind himself of the struggle, that if he lost touch with his rise, he’d give way to his fall. It was a trait I admired.
The train was clean and comfortable and not at all unpleasant, a mixture of tourists and natives on their way to the coast. The station in Naples was the opposite, a dirty latrine in a bathroom town. Dark-faced con men looked for gullible tourists, but they only glanced my way before homing in on easier prey.
A driver took me to Positano in a white Mercedes van, following the winding, narrow road down the coast-line. His English was limited and I was glad; I didn’t feel like chatting. I knew Cortino lived high up on the hill overlooking the city, and with a population of less than 4,000, he would be a well-known figure in the town. I had read in the file that Positano was built into the side of a hill feeding down to the sea, but I wasn’t prepared for the reality. Positano is a vertical city; the buildings seem to sit one on top of another as they move straight up a steep gradient, like a grocer’s shelf that allows you to see the front of everything you’re buying. Red and pink and yellow and white and peach and tan, the buildings cut into the green foliage like they are part of the mountain, only stopping when they reach the sky or the sea.
Tourists were everywhere. Fat Germans with fanny packs jostled each other as they cruised from shop to shop while Vespas plunged down the streets like a swarm of gnats, everyone and everything heading in one direction . . . down to the ocean. I loved the place. I loved the order of it and the simplicity of it and the singular logic of it; the church bells and the black sand and the quaint shops and the narrow alleys and the coffee makers and the gelato makers and the pasta makers and I was pleased I would kill Cortino here. Not in the bustle of Rome, where it would be infinitely easier to get away, not on the train or the station in Naples where the grime and the desperation were palpable. No, I was glad to be a part of this place, to create a new legend for a town that looked old and felt older. I don’t know why I was happy, except to say for the first time, I had a strong feeling about a place, maybe my place in it. Like the job I did, the killing I did, the life I led up to this point were somehow reflected in this town, cut impossibly against the gradient, always on the precipice, always just a heavy rain from tumbling into the sea. There was something artistic about it, and infinitely sad. There was a warmth to it, not just a physical warmth but a psychological one, and if I couldn’t have Jake, if I couldn’t have someone who could cover me like a blanket, then maybe I could find security and understanding and promise and depth in this place, this impossible town.
I checked into a hotel positioned about halfway up the hill. My suite offered a deck overlooking the cliff and the sea and if I sat in the darkness inside my room, all I needed to do was lift my eyes to the top of the window to see Cortino’s house, a salmon-colored mansion with high arched windows at the hill’s summit. According to Pooley’s file, he would be coming to town one week before I was to kill him.
I took the time to adjust to the place and have it adjust to me. I was just another turista in a town that fed itself on turistas, and I bled into the scene gradually, the way watercolors fade the longer the brush is applied to the canvas. I bought a straw fedora and wore it poorly; I lunched in the open-air cafés perched above the ocean; I milled through the souvenir shops and pressed my face to the glass of the pastry counters. I took a boat to Capri—Newbury Street covering an island—and came back with a sunburn. I blended in, but never forgot why I was there.
“Would you like coffee, cappuccino, Coke?”
The waitress looked affable; she had pale blue eyes and tanned cheeks.
“Coffee . . . grazie.”
“Prego. Where are you from?”
“Los Angeles. United States.”
“It is my dream to go there. Very beautiful.”
“It is the dream of Americans to come here.”
“Ahh . . .” She looked down at the sea, a sight that had lost its magic for her long ago. “I’ll bring your coffee.”
I waited for her to return and greeted her with a smile. The place wasn’t full. “How many people live in Positano?”
“Four thousand, more or less.”
“Everyone knows each other?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Any Americans?”
“Yes . . . summer houses. An English couple, too.”
“How much does a house cost here?”
“Depends on how high up you are . . . or how close to the beach.”
I sipped my coffee. She didn’t look in a hurry to go anywhere else, so I pressed on. “Like, say, that one up there.”
“The Cortinos. Wealthy family.”
“The house looks big.”
“It is. Five . . . how do you say . . . rooms for sleeping . . .”
“Bedrooms?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “My guess is . . . two million euros . . .”
I let out a low whistle.
“Yes, expensive. But they are nice family. They helped rebuild the church. Mrs. Cortino . . . her legs . . . how is it . . . don’t work. It is . . . much pity.”
“She uses a wheelchair?”
“Yes.”
; “Must be difficult in this town.”
“Yes . . . but he takes care of her. Makes sure she still goes around.”
“That’s very nice.”
“Yes.”
A couple of noisy Austrian tourists came in. She smiled, rolled her eyes, and went to help them find a table. I sipped my coffee, thinking.
His wife, crippled. In this town, it must be extremely difficult; the place wasn’t exactly built wheelchair-friendly. None of this was in the file. Why did Pooley censor it? Did he think it would affect me? Was he concerned that after I had used my time to measure this man, I would find he was a good man, a man with no capacity for evil, with nothing to exploit?
I first saw Cortino and his bodyguard Gorgio a week later. He visited a church near my hotel, a stone edifice painted the same color as the cliff so it blended into the rock. The exterior was bleak, lacking the ornate iconography of most Catholic churches. I knew it was one of the first things he’d do when he returned to Positano; his file noted that he always walked to the church, lit two candles, and kneeled before the altar. For whom he lit the candles, I didn’t know, maybe one for each of his deceased parents.
I sat at a nearby Mediterranean restaurant, eating prawns silently, careful not to attract attention. Cortino looked grave as he moved inside the church. Twenty minutes passed as I ate my seafood, waiting for him to emerge. When he exited, his face was transformed, beatific. This surprised me. Could a man’s attitude really be improved so radically from the simple act of kneeling? What had he found in there? What words had his lips whispered? I discovered I was staring at his peaceful face, fascinated, and when my gaze flicked to the bodyguard, Stefano Gorgio, the man was eyeing me.