The Way I Die

by Derek Haas

  I have respect for them, though respect does not grant them immunity.

  I enter the foyer of the first address and am surprised by how corporate it seems: a lobby, a few chairs in a waiting area, a potted plant, and some prints of flowers on the walls. The only hint this is not an accounting firm or a law office is the giant man standing by the one door that grants access to the building’s interior.

  I approach him and ask to see Ezra Loeb. He observes me with disinterest, then talks into a headset. After a moment, he points at a camera and tells me to state my business.

  “I’m here to consult with Ezra Loeb. I’m with Archibald Grant out of Chicago. I’m armed but I promise an armistice. I’m only here to make an offer and to have a few questions answered.”

  I turn to the beast by the door. “That’s it.”

  His expression doesn’t change.

  “What now?”

  “Have a seat,” he says, and points toward the plastic chairs.

  Thirty minutes pass, an hour. I’m an expert at waiting. So many people in this business like to play unnecessary head games, everyone looking for an edge, a power position, but I don’t give them the pleasure. I don’t check my phone, don’t fold my legs, don’t fidget. I don’t rattle. I wait in the chair with an eye on the big man in front of the door. I’ll give him credit, he doesn’t twitch either, a pit bull poised for his next command.

  Finally, he wands a fob over black glass next to the door, and it buzzes so he can open it. “Let’s go, then,” he says, his voice as big as he is.

  I’ve interacted with quite a few fences over the years and they are as different as DNA strands. The smart ones, the top-shelf ones, maintain their positions by respecting the game, showing deference when appropriate, demanding it. They have systems in place for keeping their personal lives and professional lives separate. They know it’s a career built on reputation, and the difference between respecting the job and disrespecting it is literally life and death.

  We walk to a small room with a red door. I sit in the one chair and he leaves me there, locking the door on his way out. There is no other furniture in the room. A window lines one wall with a thin diamond pattern etched into the glass, bulletproof by the looks of it.

  I don’t have to wait long. A light illuminates the other room, and the glass I thought was opaque is actually transparent. I can make out a male figure on the opposite side, but he obscures himself in shadows.

  His voice reaches me through a speaker.

  “What can I do for you?” Loeb asks.

  “I have no reason to hold cards close to my vest, so I’m just going to tell you straight, Ezra. Either you or a fence named Wilson Wilson accepted a contract on a businessman named Matthew Boone in Portland, Oregon, and assigned a hit man to kill him. I’m working for Mr. Boone, and I’m going to do what I can to keep him alive. I’m asking you to give me the name of your contract killer if you can’t call him off.”

  I expect a long pause and receive one.

  Finally, the metallic voice sounds through the speaker again. “What’re you offering?”

  “Your cut of the contract plus fifty percent.”

  Another pause.

  “You want me to undercut my reputation for money?”

  “I’m going to kill your man whether you turn me on to him or not. This is a courtesy visit because I have respect for you. You might as well profit from it.”

  The shape in the shadow shifts, the first movement from his side of the glass.

  “You mentioned the other fence, Wilson Wilson.”

  “I did, yeah, but forget him. I already know the coin flipped in my favor and you got the contract. I can tell from this conversation.”

  Another pause, then, “Let me tell you about my counterpart, Wilson Wilson. He’s bottom of the barrel. He’s the gravel at the bottom of an aquarium, the green scuzz on the side. You need a razor to scrape it off the glass. That you thought the contract was awarded either to him or to me is an insult in and of itself. He’s a blight on this profession, and he doesn’t deserve to be in the same sentence with me. He’s a back-alley pennies on the dollar hack.”

  “Sounds like you’re the one wanting to make a proposal.”

  I hear him breathing now through the speakers, hot and labored.

  “I want you to kill him for me. We have no ties, I don’t know who you are other than you came from Archibald Grant out of Chicago, and that name carries weight. So you take out Wilson Wilson, and I’ll give you the name of the contract killer assigned to hit Matthew Boone.”

  “No, thank you,” I say politely and stand. “If you’ll get your man to open the door, I can show myself out.”

  The light goes out in the other room and the window turns opaque again, a mirror. After a moment, the lock to the door in my room clanks, and I draw my Glock. I don’t think they’ll try to kill me on his property. That would be bad for business. Still, the giant man who showed me into this room might come through the door spoiling for a fight, and I’m not gonna let him get wound up.

  When the door opens, though, it’s not the big guy, but a squat, bearded man with eyes magnified by circle-lens glasses. He’s dressed in a blue sweater and gray pants and his accent has a bit of an Israeli baritone, nothing like the scrambled voice that was coming through the speakers. He waves at my gun hand like I’ve picked up a paperweight off his desk. “Put that away, come on, now.”

  I stow my gun and hold up my hands.

  “I show you my face. You seem like a serious man, and I want to show you I am serious too.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not pulling a side job for you, Ezra. It’s not out of disrespect. I can already tell you’re an excellent fence. But I assume you’ve already sent out your hit man and the clock is ticking. I’ve seen the way you operate, so I’m going to assume the assassin you assigned to the job is all kinds of capable. I don’t have time to settle a personal beef for you.”

  “This is a negotiation. I thought we were negotiating. You didn’t let me finish my offer. If you eliminate Wilson Wilson for me, I will give you the name of the killer I assigned to the job, and I will give you the name of the client.”

  I was not expecting that, and he sees it on my face.

  “Ahh, I’ve said the magic words, eh? If you agree to this, I’ll give you everything you need to know . . . after I have confirmation of Wilson Wilson’s death.”

  I toss it over in my mind. It would be a windfall to gain this knowledge, and he knows it.

  “Do we have a deal my friend with no name?”

  He extends his hand.

  “Copeland,” I say and shake it.

  The dangling fruit is too tempting. My assignment is to protect Matthew Boone. If I have the name of the man who wants him dead, not just the killer but the client, I can eliminate the threat at its source. I can cut off the head of the snake. Eliminate the queen so she can’t lay eggs.

  My reservation is I have to trust a fence who gives away confidential information. I would be earning that information, yes, but Ezra Loeb would have to betray his own assassin plus the man who paid for it. Maybe he’s setting me up, but I can’t see the angle.

  The way I die is from inertia.

  The way I die is trusting the untrustworthy.

  I was impressed by Ezra Loeb’s operation, and showing me his face to cement the deal was a solid negotiating tactic, I have to admit. So why can’t I see his play?

  The address I have for Wilson Wilson puts him in a residence near downtown in a neighborhood called Eagle Rock. Blocks there have apartments, duplexes, single-family homes, home businesses, and commercial properties all on the same street. I am not sure which of these I’ll encounter until I put eyes on the place.

  I roll from the valley to downtown, avoiding the freeways and heading up Sunset. Traffic is packed and urban sprawl is everywhere. After the endless emptiness of Mackinac Island, the city is a shock to the senses. I’ll take the sprawl over the snow.


  It’s jacket-weather cool here, and joggers in shorts and long-sleeve, body-hugging Under Armour tops dot the sidewalks. The absence of parking lots means cars line the curbs on both sides of the street, so it’s easy to conduct surveillance from the privacy of one’s automobile.

  I find an empty ten feet of curb and parallel park against it, a half block up from the address Archie gave me. The building looks like a small home set up for moderate protection with bars on the windows and two tattooed, sleeveless-shirted Hispanics loitering on the porch. For outside eyes, it has all the markings of a drug house. That keeps the general public away. A few payments to the right DEA officers and LAPD lieutenants will keep the cops at bay, too.

  A Mercedes S550 pulls to the curb, too much car for this neighborhood so it sticks out like a bloodstain on a white carpet. A man in a dark hoodie climbs out, the hood up, covering his head, so I can’t get a good look. The two cholos on the porch rise and hold the door for him, and hoodie disappears inside with no familiar handshakes or embraces.

  Wilson Wilson. Has to be. Only reason they would treat him with such deference is he’s the boss.

  A cavalier hit man would pounce once he spots his mark, but I didn’t last this long being cavalier. This house could very well be fortified, so why deal with the two on the stoop plus who knows how many inside?

  Experience tells me to follow the Mercedes and pop him when he’s alone and defenseless.

  Hours pass and the cholos are gone. They went into the house, walked out again, and headed up the street, away from me. One looked in my direction but took no particular notice of my car. If I thought he made me, I would’ve stormed the house without waiting to see what reinforcements he might summon.

  Maybe I should make a move now, while the porch is unoccupied, while the watch shifts. Maybe I should stick to the plan and wait until he emerges and drives away.

  The way I die is missing the details.

  The way I die is overreacting to the details.

  The way I die is lack of fucking confidence.

  Wilson Wilson emerges from the house, hoodie up, and ducks into his Mercedes. The engine cranks and he guides his car up a hill. I mash the rental car’s accelerator.

  The way I die is impatience.

  The Mercedes meanders right and left through Eagle Rock, avoiding highways, in no particular hurry. Through his rear glass, I see his head bobbing to some rhythm, the radio on, the bass thumping.

  Wilson Squared waits too long at a stop sign and my spider-sense tingles—have I been spotted?—but a glow inside the Mercedes tells me he’s wrapping up a text.

  A few seconds more and he tosses on his blinker and turns West toward Hollywood. I keep a discreet distance and resurrect my tracking muscles. Always keep a few cars between your mark and you, never make sudden stops or jerks, turn away and double back if he drives erratically. The surveillance is easy, and he drives about three miles before he pulls to a curb and hops out to enter a guitar shop on Sunset. It looks like a warehouse, more mom-and-pop than corporate chain. The name on the sign says “Wilson Guitars,” and I’m a little in awe of this dumb fuck. He’s dabbling in retail musical-instrument sales while he runs a contract-killing business? No wonder Ezra Loeb felt insulted.

  I hop out of the rental sedan and approach the store. There are a lot of cars on the street but not too much foot traffic. Los Angeles has never been a walking town. In the window of the shop, rows and rows of acoustic and electric guitars hang on peg hooks or rest in display stands, Fenders and Gibsons and Taylors and Epiphones. The glass is thick and reinforced with security gates that look like they slide up and down after business hours. COME IN AND START STRUMMING reads a sign. Christ.

  A bell jingles when I slip through the front door.

  There’s a counter with a vintage register up at the front, unmanned. The interior is made up of tall shelves stuffed to the breaking point with amps, chords, pedals, strings, tuners, electronics, and every type of guitar made: basses, steels, Flying Vs, Strats, acoustics. Heavy rock music blares from somewhere in the back, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s not a recording; someone is shredding a lead guitar in the bowels of the store. I can barely hear myself think, which means no one is going to hear me coming either.

  I make my way down an aisle piled high with touring cases. Around the corner, I make out Wilson Wilson, his back to me, the source of the music, wailing away on a Fender, a solo from some rock song of his imagination. Maybe I’ll let him finish before I pull my Glock and kill him.

  He turns, mid E-string finger bend, and he’s not Wilson Wilson, but an Asian teen who smiles at me with a “gotcha” in his eyes.

  A small-caliber revolver presses against the back of my head.

  “Kill the music,” Wilson Wilson demands, and the Asian guitar aficionado deadens the strings with the palm of his hand. The sound of the solo stops, replaced by the low hum of the amp.

  “Turn around,” Wilson Wilson says.

  A sharp contrast to Ezra Loeb, he looks like he belongs on the sands of Malibu Beach: blond hair, blue eyes, a vintage Quiet Riot T-shirt that looks ordered rather than collected. His eyes have a feature consistent with television preachers and cult leaders . . . the irises are completely surrounded by the white part, giving him a crazy affect.

  The two cholos I last saw on the porch in Eagle Rock appear on my right and left wearing matching grins. They’re so damned happy they pulled off a successful switcheroo, they’re practically giddy.

  Wilson Wilson keeps his .38 pointed at my face, those irises floating in milk.

  “Okay, asshole. Who are you, who sent you, and why were you following me?” His voice has that Southern California lilt that makes me look forward to smashing him in the throat.

  “Take it easy. I’m here because of Ezra Loeb. He wants a sit-down.”

  Wilson Wilson snorts. “Oh that is special. That is priceless. That prick wants to sit down with me, after he tried to run me out of town?”

  He makes a noise with his throat and nose that might be a laugh but I’m not sure.

  The cholos don’t know whether or not they’re supposed to join in, so they keep their eyes on me while making snickering sounds.

  “Well, I got a message for him,” Wilson says and starts to squeeze the trigger. I am not expecting our discussion to end so quickly but I recognize crazy eyes when I see them and I know he means to shoot me and send my body back to Loeb as a “Fuck you,” but I’ve always been able to move faster than my enemies expect.

  I mule kick backward, hard and lean, like a jumpy horse encountering a rattlesnake on the trail, and the force of my blow is delivered into the Asian guitarist’s chest. He flies backward into the amp wall, and since he’s still holding his Fender, the racket he makes is earsplitting, like a sudden thunderclap breaking over the top of you. The sound serves its purpose: disorientation.

  I rocket forward and punch past the raised revolver into the throat of Wilson Wilson. A punch to the throat when you get your full weight behind it is the most devastating blow a dirty fighter can deal.

  Wilson drops the gun without even squeezing off a shot. He staggers back, his hands clawing at his gullet as though trying to open a hole in his windpipe.

  The cholo on my left is quick and might be into that MMA shit because he tries to duck under my arm and send an elbow to my jaw. His problem is all the practice with heavy bags and speed bags and grappling mats goes out the window when your opponent deals in death and doesn’t play by the rules.

  I dodge the elbow and drive my knee into his balls with everything I have. The effect is immediate. He doubles over, sputtering, his strength snapped, and my next knee connects with his nose, detonating it like a grenade.

  The second cholo must figure whatever paycheck he’s getting from Wilson Wilson is no longer sufficient. He breaks for the back door and is through it as though the building is on fire.

  Wilson Wilson still has his hands to his throat but his eyes are on the revolver b
etween us. It spins on the ground like a wheel of fortune. It points toward him, then me, then the cholo, then the Asian, circles through a second time, before it stops, pointed at him.

  Prophetic.

  On Larchmont Boulevard, in a neighborhood called Hancock Park, I find a bookstore named Chevalier’s. It’s small, comfortable, and crowded, with floor-to-ceiling shelves. It smells like dust and paper and knowledge and Risina. I met her in a bookstore in Rome when I wasn’t ready for it, and she stopped in bookstores like this whenever we traveled to a new city.

  I shouldn’t continue doing things she did. I shouldn’t revisit the past. I shouldn’t stir up ghosts, smells, images. Risina in a bookstore, her legs curled under her bottom in a high-back chair, her nose buried in a Jeff Abbott thriller. Risina with Pooley in a bathtub, water spilling onto the floor. Risina staggering across a covered bridge, a knife buried in her side.

  The way I die is overcome with grief and guilt.

  A small woman named Liz with smiling eyes and a wily grin asks if I need help finding something and I leave with a book from Scandinavia.

  There’s a pizza place across the street that has New York–style giant wedges, so I wait for my slice to come out of the oven and turn my thoughts from the distant past to the immediate one.

  Why did I agree so quickly to kill Wilson Wilson? Loeb barely got the proposal out of his mouth and I was running and gunning. To protect Matthew Boone, right? Or was I impatient to get back to spilling blood, taking lives?

  There are two jackets hanging in a closet—one protector, one killer. Why was I so quick to shed one and don the other? Was it because one fit comfortably and the other fell apart the last time I wore it? And why the hell did Archie ask me to put it on again? He knows what happened the last time. He knows.