Derek Haas - Dark men

Risina looks back at me for guidance. She knows instinctively not to ask questions aloud, and I nod her forward toward the cracked door that spills light at the end of the corridor. I think she picks up something on my face because she blanches a bit, swallows hard, and then keeps moving.

I’m acutely aware of our breathing, the only breathing I can hear in the house, and the front door opens and closes downstairs, I’m sure of it. What the hell are we walking into? If I could think of where I saw that guy, maybe without the mustache, maybe with different color hair or no hair, goddammit, I’m coming up blank… I can now glimpse a four-poster through the crack in the door, so this must be the master bedroom, and I touch Risina on the elbow to let me pass and enter first. She steps back and my heart pulses now, a welcome feeling, a fine feeling, and maybe Risina feels it too because she looks alert and spry.

The guard didn’t frisk us, which is unusual but not unheard of in this situation, especially since we’d made contact and been invited here by the man we’re meeting. I wouldn’t have given up my gun anyway and we might have had a problem downstairs, but it doesn’t matter now and I pull out my Glock from the small of my back and I don’t look but I know Risina is doing the same.

Three more feet to the door, and there are voices, but they’re television voices, two idiot anchormen blathering on about some reality star and that seems incongruous with the man in our hotel room, what he’d be watching on a weeknight, just one more square peg that doesn’t fit. So much for not coming in with guns out…

I push the door open wider and the bedroom is empty, but there’s an open set of French doors leading out to a deck on the right and maybe he’s out there, but why wouldn’t he have signaled us or had someone show us in?

This is not right and there’s no use for pretense anymore.

“Kirshenbaum?”

No answer. As I move to the deck, I tell Risina to watch the door.

The deck has some patio furniture, the rustic kind of chairs with green cushions surrounding a slat-wood table, and Kirschenbaum is out here all right. He’s wearing a plastic bag over his head, held tightly around his neck by an elastic cord, and his hands are tied behind his back and strapped to his feet. A lit cigar is in the ashtray in front of him.

I hear sirens in the distance headed our way and in that moment it hits me where I know the guard. I’ve seen him twice before, and goddammit, I should have recognized him. I used to be a fucking expert at breaking down a face, noting the eyes and the ears and the parts you cannot disguise, but I used to be a professional contract killer and now I don’t know what the hell I am.

The first time I saw him was in a construction vest on scaffolding outside of the Third Coast Cafe, except he wore a dark beard and blond hair, and the second time was without facial hair, or any hair at all: the big bald guy who came into Archibald’s office and asked us our business, the guy I fucking let go because I thought he was nobody important.

There can only be one answer. The man who let us in was Spilatro, and he’s been playing me like a violin since I got to Chicago, or maybe before that, maybe since Smoke pulled a safety deposit box out of its slot and caught a flight to find me.

“What is it?” Risina calls from the doorway and I realize I need to snap out of it and move now if we’re going to escape.

“K-bomb’s dead.”

“What?” she asks, alarmed.

“Spilatro’s framing us. Let’s go.”

I take her by the elbow and just poke my head into the hallway when a pistol cracks and bullets pound the doorway next to my head. I feel Risina duck back and I spot blood fly and goddammit, if he hit her…

We spill backward into the room and her cheek is scratched to hell but not from a bullet, rather from splinters from the door and she looks angrier than I’ve ever seen her, like the blood on her cheek brought the tiger to the surface for good. Multiple pairs of feet pound up the stairs down the hall, and I catch a quick look at them as I fire a few rounds back, popping the first guy flush and stopping the rest, and maybe they don’t know the boss is already dead, and maybe they don’t hear the sirens as they close in on us.

Spilatro wasn’t with them, though, I’m sure of it. The son of a bitch must’ve planned the whole thing. He framed us with both the cops and the bodyguards, hoping we’d get caught in the crossfire. He bolted out the front door as soon as we went up the stairs-that was the door opening and closing I heard-and he’s probably a mile away by now.

I hear scuffles down the hall and maybe the guards hear the sirens outside, which grow nearer, louder by the second. Risina and I are going to have a chance, but it’s going to be a slim one and we have to do it soon, we have to make our move in those moments of inevitable confusion as the cops make their way on to the scene but don’t know exactly what they’re rolling into.

I see the bubble lights now, a pair of cruisers, that’s it, and they blitz through the gate, knocking it off its hinges, then roar up the driveway, pinning our rental sedan in front of them as both sets of doors fly open and uniformed police officers spill out, guns drawn.

I hear the front door open and one of the bodyguards shouts something and the cops yell back, and that’s what I’m looking for.. a little contact so I can change the pace.

I bust out the bedroom window glass and fire over the cops’ heads, BAM, BAM, BAM, into their patrol cars, BAM, BAM, BAM and I hear the front door slam shut and a scared guard scream “he’s fucking shooting!” and then the downstairs explodes as the cops retaliate with indiscriminate, panicked firepower.

“Outside! Grab the cigar!” I scream at Risina and she dashes out and back in as quickly as a cat, the cigar held out to me.

I snatch it out of her hand, jam it in my mouth as I collect the sheets off the bed, puff, puff, wadding them up, puff, puff, getting the end of the heater to glow red like a coal in a stove, and then I hold it to the end of the sheets and it doesn’t take long, they start to burn, and I toss them to the curtains, which catch fire and go up too as flames curl toward the ceiling and lick the molding.

Confusion is as big a weapon to a professional hit man as a gun, and the more obstacles you can throw at your pursuers the better your chances of survival.

We’re out on the patio as the room goes up. We step past K-bomb’s dead body and I plant both hands on the railing and hop it, drop from the second story to hit the grass and spring up without tumbling, and I don’t have to look back to know Risina does the same.

“Don’t shoot a cop unless you have to,” is all I have time to say, as we reach the front of the house, and I peek around the corner. The cops are out of their cars, and the two in the near sedan have moved up behind our rental to use it as cover. Smoke starts to pour out of the top floor, and the cops have their firearms pointed at the front door, waiting for the men inside to make a move.

I wait, wait, wait, and then I get the break I expect, the front door opens and one of Kirschenbaum’s men shouts, “we’re unarmed! We’re coming out! No one’s firing! It’s a goddamn inferno in here!”

“Keep your hands up or we will shoot!” shouts back the closest officer, more than a little distress in his voice.

“Don’t shoot us, goddammit! We’re unarmed! We’re coming out! There are four of us!”

And the door swings open wide, as four hacking, wheezing guys make their way out on to the porch, black smoke trailing them. The cops’ training kicks in right on cue and all of them bolt for the men. Each grabs a bodyguard and shoves him off the porch and on to the grass out in front as the house really starts to go up, a fireball.