Derek Haas - Dark men

“You didn’t trust me.”

“No, that’s not it. Trust has nothing to do with it. It’s only a matter of the unknown, and as a contract killer, you have to keep the unknown at bay every chance you get. That’s the job. I didn’t know how you’d react, and I knew what needed to happen. Once I killed him, it wouldn’t matter how you reacted.”

“Well, you should have told me anyway. You should have dealt with my reaction up front instead of catching me by surprise.”

“I’m not going to apologize for this, Risina. I had to play the cards dealt to me.”

She folds her arms across her chest and glares at me, grimacing.

“I’m in this all the way with you,” she starts. “You need to be in all the way with me.”

“I am.”

“No. You’re lying to yourself about that. I’ve known it since Smoke died in Chicago and you saw you couldn’t protect him. He died in the worst way possible, right in front of us. And since that moment-”

“Risina…”

“Let me finish. Since that moment, you’ve known it could happen to me too. So you won’t let yourself be in all the way with me. You’ve been questioning bringing me with you from the beginning.”

I’m practiced at keeping my face blank, but it’s as open as a book right now, and she reads it, reads that she’s right.

Her voice catches, but she plows forward, her Italian accent thickening with every word. “So listen to me and listen carefully. I’m not going away. I’m not leaving you. And you may not be able to protect me. I might get hurt or worse, but as you say, those are the cards we’ve been dealt. If the plan is to kill someone to get us to the point we need, then tell me. If the plan is to use me as bait the way you did in Rome with Svoboda, then tell me. Jesus Christ, just tell me. Quit trying to do everything alone. We’re partners. We’re a tandem, as you call it. Just tell me.”

“Okay.”

She starts to protest, so sure I am going to argue the point. “Okay?”

“Yes. You’re right. You’re right about everything. I brought you along because you were in danger the moment Smoke found us. I thought there was a better chance I could keep you safe if you were with me than if I left you behind or stashed you somewhere. I didn’t want you showing up in a photograph holding a newspaper with your mouth gagged and your hands tied behind your back, someone using you to break me.”

“I know what you are. I know your fearful symmetry, okay? I’ve known all along and I am a part of it, yes? The same hand that dared seize the fire to create you, created me.

“I’ve realized something about us. Something I think profound. Not because it’s a clever thought, but just because it is. You walked into my bookshop in Rome and I didn’t change you. You changed me. There is no changing you. Like a beast hibernating, you went dormant when we were on the island, but you didn’t change.”

“I didn’t mean for this to-”

“You don’t understand what I’m saying. I want you to know you changed me, but I needed to change. Some of us don’t find out who we are or what we are until another comes along to liberate us from the cages we build for ourselves. You did that to me. You liberated me.”

I stand up and move to her chair, hold out my hand and pull her into me. “But what if you don’t like the change? What if you discover you were happier before?”

“I was dead before.”

And then, as if to prove her point, she spends the next hour making us both feel alive.

He answers on the third ring.

“Hello?” It is unmistakably his voice, the same one I heard in the rented house in upstate New York. It has an enunciated sibilance to it that is as unique as a fingerprint.

“You have something I want.”

He stops breathing, presumably deciding whether he should hang up to regroup or plow forward. I’ve called him on his private phone, touched him when he thought he was the only one doing the touching. He pauses a moment, and that moment tells me everything-I have, in fact, disrupted his plan.

“Good. I was expecting your call. I’m surprised it took you this long.”

“You know, everyone keeps telling me how smart you are. Including you. But now I’m starting to wonder…”

“Okay. Okay,” he stammers.

Rattling him is easier than I imagined. I can picture him on the other end of the line, his face contorting the way it did when he found his wife standing next to his model of Cleveland. He doesn’t care for surprises; that part of the story was true. I wonder what miniature mousetrap he’s constructed for me and how worthless it is to him now.

“Okay,” he says for the third time. “You come to me, and I’ll release Mr. Grant.”

“Like a rat sniffing cheese while a steel bar snaps his neck?”

“You’re starting to get the idea.”

“You want to exchange me for my friend?”

“I want you to come willingly. Your friend is immaterial.”

“You know who else is immaterial? A soldier you used to run with. Roland Deckman. He’s gone by ‘Decker’ for the last twenty years or so.”

Spilatro pauses, then starts laughing. There’s an undercurrent to the sound though, like a stage laugh. It’s strained, wrong. “I assume that’d be the way you’d locate me. I tried to teach him, to give him advice, but he wouldn’t listen. Some people in this game think they’re invincible.”

“So now I have something you want.”

“I don’t give a damn about Roland Deckman.”

“You have twelve hours or he dies.”

“Right.”

“Check your phone.”

I press “send” on the picture that Risina took when Deckman was tied and alive.

“I’m not going to tell you you’re bluffing, because I don’t think you are. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through. If you kill Decker…”

“What I haven’t done is given you time to think it through. Twelve hours. I’ll call you again on this phone with the meeting place two hours before. Have Archie ready to move.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Just correcting one.”

“You’ll have to give me more time if you want Mr. Grant in one piece.”

“Twelve hours.”

He hesitates again. Then, “Where are you calling from?”

“Some place close.”

Walking to the car with Risina, I’m pleased. All conversations are about exchanging information, and when dealing with a mark, you try to get more than you give. Spilatro gave away something with his question at the end.

He’s a government hitter all right, and he’s working for these dark men, as he said, but this job isn’t sanctioned. It isn’t authorized. He doesn’t have a support team or a gaggle of analysts helping him break it down. If he were working through proper channels, he would’ve immediately known where I was calling from, probably had it pinpointed within a few city blocks. The playing field is leveled in a way. Nonetheless, I place the phone under my right rear tire before I pull away from the hotel.

How do you disrupt someone who thinks he can game out every move? When Kasparov played Deep Blue in their infamous chess match of 1996, he beat the machine by charging illogically at the beginning of each match, then set up random traps to capitalize on the computer’s hesitancy.

I’m going to charge illogically at Spilatro.

He’s made a mistake: he thinks I care about Archie Grant. He thinks the kidnapping of my friend, of my fence, is why I came back. He thinks that’s why I’m holding Decker. He thinks I actually care about an exchange.

It was my name. He put my name on a sheet of paper and called me out. No matter who instructed him, who gave him the assignment to kill me, he’s the one who put that note where Smoke would find it. He wrote my name on that paper and the machine was set into motion. It’ll only stop moving when he’s dead.