Derek Haas - Dark men

I move in and pull her into me and we stand in the forest as the world falls silent. I’m not sure if I’m holding her or she’s holding me, and when we break, her eyes are wet.

“Can you at least make the jokes better?”

She starts to react, then realizes I’m having fun with her. “You shouldn’t do that when I have a pistol in my hand.”

“You haven’t even taken the safety off.”

She looks down at the grip and when she does I snatch the gun from her hand.

“Oldest trick in the book.”

She starts laughing, hard. The woods come to life again.

A squirrel darts into the path in front of us. It’s a bit wary and cocks its head to the side to give us a once-over. It sniffs the air, hops twice more across the path, and rears on its hind legs again to gauge whether or not we present a threat.

Risina stops, levels her gun, and before I can say anything, she pulls the trigger, once, twice, three times, missing the first two shots low before she corrects and sends the creature pinwheeling backward, tumbling end over end like a bowling pin, its hide a mess of blood and fur.

“Anything else you want me to kill?” she asks, unsmiling.

I study her face, and she breaks eye contact to saunter off. I’m starting to think I don’t need to worry about the after. Maybe, instead, I should be worrying about what I’ve created.

He’s waiting for us in the cabin.

That fucking bastard Doriot must’ve sold us out, and I never saw it coming. Didn’t even have an inkling it was coming. I’ve grown too fucking seat-of-the-pants on this whole mission… except it’s not really a mission, is it? Christ, I should be shot in the head. Ever since I brought Risina into this and I didn’t have a fence and I thought I could call in favors and I thought the name Columbus still meant something, it has been one thing after another and I still haven’t learned. And that’s the rubber meeting the road right there. Columbus. The name carries no weight. Not anymore.

When I was incarcerated in Waxham, I learned a term called “chin-checking.” Roughly translated, it describes a gang leader who returns to his neighborhood after time in the joint. While he was gone, some young buck stepped in to fill his shoes in the power vacuum. The ex-con has to reassert his authority by walking up and punching the new kid right in the fucking mouth. Chin-checking. Hello, I’m back. I thought stepping back into this life would be like I never left, except I did leave, and memories are short. Doriot used to be afraid of me, but he’s not anymore. If I get through this, Doriot’s gonna learn a new term.

I open the cabin door and a cell phone is standing up on the table like a scar. Risina senses something is wrong the way animals perk up whenever a predator roams nearby. The phone rings before I can say anything to comfort her.

If he wanted to kill us, he could’ve shot us when we walked inside the door. If he wanted to plant a bomb in the phone, then we’re already dead. But in my experience, people call when they want to talk.

Risina shakes her head but I press the green button on the phone.

“Hello.”

“You’ve been asking about me.”

“You wanted to flush me, here I am.”

“You presume to know my intentions?”

“I know a few things. I’ll learn more.”

“I’ll help you out. Here’s a fact about me: I’m smarter than you.”

“That why you missed me outside the restaurant in Chicago?”

“Who says I missed?”

“It was sloppy.”

“Accidents are sloppy by nature. And sloppy by design.”

“And the police at Kirschenbaum’s house?”

“Now looking for a murderer who happens to fit your description.”

“Not exactly the way you drew it up.”

He chuckles, and the sound is disturbing in its confidence. “You don’t sound sure about that.”

He’s right. I don’t. Even this conversation feels like I’m being spun whichever direction he wants me to go.

“You want-“

But I cut him off in a clumsy attempt to gain control. “What’s your play?”

“I don’t-“

“Why kidnap Archie Grant? Why call me out by name?”

“You gonna let me finish?”

Is this how boxers feel as a round slips away? Right hooks coming but you’re just too slow or tired or old or rusty to get out of the way?

“Is he alive?”

“Check the phone.”

The phone beeps in my hand, an incoming text message. I click on it without hanging up the line and there is a picture of Archie holding a New York Times with a photograph of a blazing inferno on the front page-fire trucks out and about, spraying the flames down, and I have no doubt if I drive to a newsstand, it’ll be today’s paper. Archie looks defiant in the photo, a fuck you face if I ever saw one. I put the phone to my ear again.

“Satisfied?”

“Let me talk to him.”

“He doesn’t feel like talking.”

“What’s this about? Why the games? You want me, here I am.”

“You contact my wife again and I’ll blow Mr. Grant up in front of you. You’ll walk around a corner or step off an elevator and he’ll be tied up sitting in a chair. You’ll barely have time to register what is happening before parts of your friend slap you in the face.”

“Come on. You wanted to flush me? You flushed me. Let’s finish this out in the open.” Flailing. Too tired. Stumbling.

“You’ll be out in the open, Columbus. You won’t know where I’ll be.”

“Just tell me what this is about. I don’t mind spinning in circles, but at least tell me why I’m spinning.”

And right when I don’t think he’s going to say anything else, he surprises me. “Dark men.”

I’ve heard that expression once before, in a hotel room in the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, from the lips of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democratic Nominee for President, Abe Mann, moments before I killed him. “ When I had my problem with your mother, some dark men made that problem disappear. You understand about dark men, I take it… ” he had said.

He went on to tell me about the men who were the real players behind the politicians, the dark men who moved the representative’s mouths like ventriloquists, the dark men who wouldn’t let their candidates, candidates like Abe Mann, leave the game. So the Speaker of the House hired a killer named Columbus and designated himself as the target. His only escape was death, and I was his suicide method.

The dark men must not have been happy about that decision. All this time I was worried about someone in law enforcement tracking me down, but now I see my anxiety was misplaced. I killed the man I was hired to kill, but I upset the dark men who wanted him alive so they could keep pulling his strings. It seems they’ve held his death against me all these years and now they’ve hired Spilatro to exact their revenge. He went to them with my name and they said “bring us his head.” This changes everything.

Risina and I leave the house immediately, and instead of planning our next move, I just drive. The sun is heading west, dropping toward the horizon, so fuck it, I drive into it headlong, the light fierce in my eyes but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I’ve stuck to the shadows for too long and need to spend a little time with the sun in my eyes. Maybe some light will clean my fucking head.

Risina is pensive as she fights the urge to speak. Farms roll past the window, looking properly pastoral. After a moment, she pivots toward me. “What did he mean by dark men?”

“An old job. I probably upset a few apple carts.”

“So these men want revenge?”

“Yes.”

“And they hired Spilatro to kill you?”