The Way I Die

by Derek Haas

  “Oh. I thought we were—”

  “I suggest you upgrade your security and you take up the FBI’s offer to relocate you and the boys until this blows over.”

  I stick out my hand and he shakes it, though he’s still confused. “Okay, well, it was . . . good meeting you I guess. Can I drive you somewhere or call you an Uber?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll walk.”

  I head out without looking at the boys. I can feel their eyes on me as I step down the path. A hundred yards and I’m through the gate.

  Two miles away, I find a gas station, buy a drop phone, and call Archie.

  I pace.

  Archie sits in a motel chair, his feet up on the small desk, a frustrating half grin on his face.

  “You knew, you manipulative lying bastard. You knew this asshole had kids. Boys! You knew and you came to where I had a perfectly fine life and you ripped me out of there and you fed me this bullshit about two birds and the whole time you knew I’d walk into a house with three beds.”

  Archie flashes his broad smile and lights a Camel. “Perfectly fine? You practically tossed a noose over a ceiling beam.”

  “It was my choice!”

  “To deal with your grief?”

  “You’re goddamn right.”

  “Well, you’re dealing with it now.”

  “Don’t. Don’t you say her name, Archie, or I promise you you’re not gonna like what happens next.”

  I’m so hot, I can’t see straight. The room in front of me, the desk, Archie, they all swirl and swim like washing machine soap. There’s a red edge to everything, like someone painted an angry border around my vision.

  Archie sticks his cigarette in his mouth and holds up his hands, placating. “Fine. I won’t say her name, but you gonna deal with this one way or another, because what you was doing wasn’t dealing with it. It was the opposite of dealing with it.”

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  “Well someone needs to do it! You think I didn’t want to burn down the world, myself in it, when Ruby died? You think I didn’t go home and break every mirror in the joint so I wouldn’t have to look at my reflection? Check and check. But I got up and I got back in it because this is the world we chose and we don’t get to complain when it bites us.”

  I look down at my feet. My eyelids feel unnaturally heavy all of a sudden. My knees, my shoulders, my chest feel like gravity is pulling them through the floor. I fall into a chair. My fingers knead my forehead though they feel detached, like I’m watching someone who looks like me through the wrong end of a telescope.

  “He’s got boys, Archie,” I plead.

  “Yeah, he does. And they’re gonna be on their own or dead if you don’t help this man.”

  “I’m not a bodyguard, Archie. I’m a killer. I’ve been a killer since I was eighteen years old. You know that.”

  “That’s true and it’s not true. I know what lengths you’ve gone to protect someone.”

  My eyes flash at him and he looks away, like he’s been scented by a dangerous creature and doesn’t want to provoke it further.

  “All I’m saying is you gotta work or you gotta go ahead and pitch yourself in the ocean, because what you’ve been doing these last two years? It ain’t living. It ain’t anything. My mom used to call it shuffling. It’s shuffling. And it ain’t worthy of you, Copeland.”

  I chew the inside of my lip and feel a twitch tug the corner of my left eye. Archie falls silent, fills an ashtray with butt after butt, and we sit that way a long time.

  “He learns there’s a price tag on his head and he doesn’t isolate his boys?”

  “He doesn’t know better. You saw who he had helping him. They’re all amateurs.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of people brilliant about some things and stupid as hell ’bout others. He knew the threat was enough to reach out to Curtis, but some part of his brain closed off the danger.”

  “How bad is it? Who is coming for him?”

  “I’m working on that. In the meantime, he needs someone looking out for him and those boys. Keep everyone alive until I backchannel this shit, Copeland. That’s what he needs. It’s what you need, too.”

  I don’t know how long he lets me shake my head, but eventually it melts into a nod.

  Archie is the original smart bomb. I know he’s manipulating me but he’s impossible to resist.

  “What do I do now?” I ask.

  He stares at me with his head back, looking out over the tip of his nose, lining me up like crosshairs on a scope. “I’ll take care of it,” he says.

  “I left without an explanation.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he repeats.

  I stand in the kitchen of Boone’s suburban house, facing bay windows that gaze out over a small clearing in front of a line of trees. Windows in homes are luxuries, installed for people without enemies. There’s too much cover in the forest, too much darkness, too many shadows. I move away from the view without thinking about it. My feet work on their own, like neck hairs that stand on edge when the brain senses danger.

  Boone enters and stutter-steps when he sees me.

  “Guess I thought you left again,” he says, then shakes his head. “Sorry about that. Your reservations were explained to me and I’m grateful you’re back.”

  I nod, but that’s all I can give him for now.

  “Anyway,” he continues, “I want you to meet Liam and Josh. Boys! Get in here.”

  The boys I saw tossing the football line up in front of me with somber, curious faces, like visitors at an open-casket funeral. They cluster under their dad’s arms, tucking into either side of him. “This is Mr. Copeland. He’s my new head of security.”

  “Boys,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else.

  The younger one asks, “What happened to Mr. Finnerich?”

  Boone stammers an answer so I help him out with, “Mr. Finnerich is out. He wasn’t good enough to be the head of getting your dad’s lunch order, much less head of security.”

  This gets a laugh from the smaller one, Josh. Liam continues to eye me cautiously.

  “I liked him,” he whispers.

  “He wasn’t your friend,” I say. “And neither am I. I’m here to keep you and your dad safe, and that sort of requires me to be an asshole.”

  The boys flinch at the word and Boone works his jaw side to side as his cheeks flush.

  Before he can say anything I beat him to the punch. “Anyway, now that we’ve met, good, do whatever I say when I say it and we’ll get along like gravy on mashed potatoes. Otherwise, stay out of my way. I gotta talk to your dad now so you guys go upstairs and entertain yourselves.”

  The boys look up at their father for his blessing, confused. He taps them both on the shoulders and they rush away, grateful.

  He steps toward me, anger rising. “Okay, you walked away once. Maybe you should again.”

  I return his stare, flat eyes, flat expression.

  “They’re just boys. You may not know how to talk to boys but let me tell you, it’s not like that. Barking at them like some kind of rottweiler.”

  “Let me guess . . . Finnerich was their buddy? Used to swing them up on his shoulders? Piggybacks and cops and robbers and tag in the backyard? A real friend to them, huh? Well, that’s how you end up standing over two gravestones, Mr. Boone. I get close, I get compromised, and people die. If I put eyes on them, I take my eyes off everything else. Everything.” The edge in my voice is pointed, precise. I want him to hear me. I want him to flinch. “So I’m going to keep talking to them any goddamn way I feel like as long as I’m assigned to keep you alive.”

  Boone radiates heat, inflamed. I keep coming at him like a prizefighter scoring with my right, hooking him with my left. “First thing we’re doing is moving you, all of you, to a secure location. Not your goddamn residence. Somewhere with zero connection to your personal life or your business. Once that’s squared, we’ll discuss how to ta
ke you off the grid completely.”

  “Lovely,” he sneers. “And how am I supposed to run my company?”

  “You won’t. Not until this is over.”

  “And my children, Liam and Josh. They’re not supposed to go to school?”

  “That’s right.”

  Boone snorts as if words aren’t enough to convey his disapproval and so he’ll speak in grunts.

  There’s a knock on the door and he jumps like someone poked his side with a thumbtack. Okay, that’s good . . . maybe I’ve reached a part of his brain that understands the seriousness of the situation. I don’t react. When someone comes for Boone, it won’t be announced with a knock on the front door.

  Before I get to the next room, the boys are already opening the door without so much as peeping through a window to see who is on the porch. Did Boone not tell them anything? He catches my look, reads my thoughts, and ducks toward the front door, but a woman is already entering the hallway.

  “Peyton!” the younger boy laughs, excited, and she bends to allow him a hug. Stooped, she catches sight of me and her smile fades. She turns her eyes to Boone.

  “You wanted to see me?” she asks him, straightening.

  “I do,” I answer for him.

  We sit in a small office off the dining room, and though it has a window, we tuck in by a fireplace with no line of sight from the outside. She’s trying to defeat her nerves by holding one hand in the other. Her eyes are bright, though, and she keeps them on me.

  “You heard about Finnerich?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your loyalty to him?”

  “He brought me on three months ago and I’m grateful for that, but I don’t owe him anything.”

  “You want to keep your job and protect Mr. Boone?”

  “If you’ll have me.”

  “How’d you get the job?”

  “I was law enforcement for four years, down in Los Angeles, two years in the sheriff’s department, which was truly awful, then two years foot patrol in mid-Wilshire, which was always an adventure. I dug it. Pay was good but I was always up against it. I got a brother with some health problems so I helped out there. I met Finnerich during a firearms class he was teaching to the LAPD with Carmichael. They’d bring in tac guys from other police departments around the country to do specialty training seminars, I’m not sure why. Carmichael, he was the one with the red beard. He put the moves on me after class. I think Finnerich liked the way I said ‘no.’

  “Months later, when he’d gone private and Boone hired him to put a team together, he remembered me. Offered this job at forty an hour plus room and board, month to month with a two-month buyout when the job ended. I figured, Why not? I could use the money and if it worked out, it worked out. It seemed like something different. I’d never been up here before.”

  She stops and tries to read my thoughts.

  “You’re not married?” I ask.

  “No, sir.”

  “Children?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Dating? Love life? Sleeping with anyone?”

  She doesn’t blush. “No, sir.”

  “You ever fire your weapon on patrol?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When?”

  “A year ago. Two men were caught with fifty keys of heroin in a trap in the back of an old Cadillac. They fled and I pursued. The big one tried to ambush me in an alley. I opened up on him, caught him in the chest, and he went down. The other got away.”

  “You kill him?”

  “No, he recovered. Long enough to stand trial, at least. Got convicted. After that, I don’t know.”

  “How’d you tell him ‘no’?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said Finnerich hired you because he liked the way you told Carmichael ‘no.’ How’d you tell him ‘no’?”

  She leans back, and for the first time, she smiles.

  She opens her mouth to answer, and I lean forward to hear it, but before she can tell me the story, one of the kids screams from somewhere above us.

  4

  Time is the world’s greatest con man, the devil to Faust, Loki the trickster, the cruel, clever beggar who shows you an apple but gives you poison. When you crave time, when you plead on your knees for it, when you’d trade everything you own for one single minute, it gives you the back of its hand.

  When you wish time would pass quickly, when you need it to hurry, when you need it to have mercy on your suffering, it stretches and yawns, a cat in a sunbeam, lazy and indifferent.

  And when you think you have a surplus of it, when you push it to the background and believe it’s not a factor, there’s no need to hurry, you find that time has other plans.

  I am up and out of my seat like a sprinter out of the blocks and though I don’t know the layout of the house, I race toward the sound of that scream, not a play scream, a terrified scream, find a staircase, and I’m up it two steps at a time, making too much noise but I’m not here to kill, I’m here to protect I have to keep reminding myself, and a lot of noise can be a deterrent, a tiger’s growl, an elephant’s trumpet.

  I crash through a bedroom door and the older boy, Liam, holds his brother, who points out a window. “I saw two men with guns,” he says as his father enters the room.

  “What were they wearing?”

  “Black pants, black jackets, black rifles, like machine guns.”

  I don’t have to wonder how a ten-year-old can identify weapons. Kids these days scroll through detailed arsenals in their first-person-shooter video games. He could probably tell me what brand of rifle if I asked.

  Instead, I address Matthew Boone. “All three of you in the closet, now. Push as far back as you can and cover yourselves with clothes. Anything you can find. Do not come out even when you think it’s over. Do not come out for anything except my voice. I will come get you, and that’s when you respond. Understand?”

  Boone nods, his face ashen. He gathers his boys like a bulldozer scooping gravel, herds them into the closet, and shuts the door behind him. I hear rustling as they nest inside, followed by silence. Good. I know he’ll listen in a crisis. I could stay in this room and hope to pick the riflemen off when they make their move, but this isn’t the Alamo and I’m not defensive by nature. I’m the sword, not the armor.

  Quickly, silently, I duck out of the room and check a window that aligns with the side of the house. The sun shines from the west so I’m sure the glare will give me a view without extending the two men the same courtesy. They chose dusk to make their assault, which speaks to how little they respect Boone’s security. I hope the intelligence they gathered before this gig was only up to date to yesterday, when Boone employed a man named Finnerich to protect him. If so, they’re going to have a rude awakening.

  I hear glass tinkle in the back of the house and a door creaks open, somewhere off the kitchen, maybe the back hallway where the Boone boys toss their dirty shoes, snow boots, and raincoats. These men are confident if they don’t mind being spotted by a boy out a bay window or announcing their entry with broken glass and a noisy door. They are either inexperienced or far too relaxed, but it’s clear they are not ready for me.

  I don’t like the stairwell as an attack zone, far too many rails and a thick wooden banister that might provide cover, so I descend, feather-footed, and push back from the wall so I’ll have a chance to pop out before they know what hit them.

  Motion in my periphery and I turn to see Peyton peering back at me from her own ambush position on the other side of the sofa. I haven’t forgotten about her, but I wasn’t expecting her to engage. She nods at the left-most hallway and I’m glad she does. There are two ways to get to this staircase and I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing correctly, but would adjust if I rolled snake eyes. Peyton just slipped me loaded dice.

  I nod back at her, grateful, and she raises two fingers for two intruders. I signal to her to get down but she shakes her head, so I give her a stern, right fucking now,
all-business glare and this time she gets the message and lowers her head below the sofa.

  Footfalls echo on the red oak floor of the left hallway, and I time it so that they’ll be big targets and swing out with my Glock in firing position. They’re walking side by side, which means this really is an amateur parade, and I can see in their eyes and by their rifle muzzles pointed at the floor that they are not prepared for armed response, much less one that doesn’t call out “Wait!” or “Freeze!” or “Hold up!”

  I blitz both of their faces, the first shot through the bridge of the intruder on the left’s nose, so his head caves in on itself. My second shot catches his friend’s eye, blows out the back of his head, and Jackson Pollocks the wall behind him. Two men enter, two men dead.

  My adrenaline subsides but it was satisfying to feel it again. I calmly move to inspect the raiding party, though I don’t need to kick their legs or poke their shoulders with the barrel of my gun. I know they’re dead. That’s what headshots do for you, take out the guesswork.

  Something feels wrong. I’ve tussled with a wide range of bodyguards and a handful of killers and these two fall on the wrong side of the bell curve for talent. They didn’t split up, they barged in from the outside with all the nuance of a marching band, and they had their rifles pointed at the floor like they’d have all the time in the world to use them.

  I feel Peyton approach behind me.

  “Is it over?”

  “For now.” I rifle through their pockets.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I’d like to find out who they are, who they work for. Most hit men or hit crews wouldn’t carry personal information on them but this isn’t much of a crew so maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  The first guy’s pockets are empty. I hear scuffling upstairs and know the tension has gotten the better of Boone and he’s stirring.

  “Should I go tell them they’re all clear?”

  “No,” I respond. “This is good training for them. Grab the quilts on the sofa, and let’s cover these guys so the boys don’t have to see them.”

  She looks at me funny and I already regret showing sympathy. But she hops to it before I change my mind.