Derek Haas - Dark men

There’s not going to be an exchange, a negotiation. Not because I’ve already killed Decker, but because I don’t really care if Grant dies too. Sure, I’d rather he came out of this alive, but that would be a bonus, rather than the point.

I’m going to kill Spilatro as soon as I spot him. No talking, no give-and-take, just pull up my gun and shoot him in the head.

I tell this to Risina as we drive down a Virginia road, strip malls and shopping centers breaking up the horizon. Her hands are on her knees, knitted together.

“You said you wanted to know the plan. That’s the plan.”

“You don’t care about Archie? This has never been about Archie?”

“I like him. He’s a good fence. A great one, even. And I liked his sister very much, too. But if he dies in the middle of this, or if he’s already dead? I won’t mourn him. I won’t think about him. And he wouldn’t mourn me either. You wanted to see me, Risina, to see the real me? This is who I am.”

She nods. “You just shut off your feelings?”

“About everyone and everything except you. And I let my rage build for the man I have to kill. But don’t let rage and rashness blend. My rage allows me to take a man’s life and walk away from it cleanly, but I am never rash in executing the hit. Cold-blooded and cold-hearted, you have to be both.”

“And powerful, yes?”

“Power is the drug that hooks you to this job. Ending someone’s life against his will-it’s something you can’t fathom until you do it. It takes an even greater hold of you when you know you do it well, when you plan it and execute it and get away with it. My first fence told me it was a power reserved for God, and there is an attraction in that power that is difficult to resist.”

“And Archie? How did he deal with this power?”

“If he does his job right, he sets up his hitters’ successes. He compiles the information and hints at the best strategies. He lays out the evil in the target for his killers so they can stoke that rage. A hit man has to connect with the evil so he can sever the connection, and a good fence knows this, knows the importance of this. He does the plotting without the bloodshed. It’s a different power the fence holds, but I’m sure the good ones share in it.”

“When we finish this, I want to be your fence.”

She says it in such a matter-of-fact way that I can tell she’s been thinking about it for a while. “Even if we get Archie out alive?”

“Even then.”

“But we could run again. Hide out. Find a new spot, somewhere even more remote.”

“No. You know we would just wait for the next man to come. There will always be a next man who comes.”

“I wanted to believe in a future without this.”

“You can’t have it, any more than a tiger can lie in a cage and forget his instincts.”

She’s right. She has a way of getting inside my head and saying things I won’t let myself think.

“But why would you want to do this with me?”

“Because we are good together. Because I think I was born to do this work. Because I would like to know that you have every piece of information at your disposal to be successful. Because I can provide that, make the file come to life. Live, breathe. It’s research, it’s writing, but it has to have heart. For you to be the person you are, it has to have heart. I read all those files in Archie’s office and it was like discovering a new library that no one knew existed. It was life and death and love and pain and beauty and horror in one place, in those pages, and it was riveting. Biblical. I can do that. I can put it all together for you. Only for you. And better than Archie. I need time to learn, but yes, better than Archie.”

“You sound certain.”

“I am.”

“Where would we live?”

“The place you and I both know best. Boston.”

“And how would you establish us there?”

“You still know a few people. Word will spread quickly that Columbus is back in the business.”

“And how will you protect yourself?”

“We’ll protect each other. A pair of tigers, burning bright.”

She grins, pleased with her idea. Maybe it can work, if we survive the day.

I tell Spilatro an address near the Potomac just outside the District in an industrial area. Canneries rise out of the landscape, monstrous, noisy and bleak. It’s as though men couldn’t stand to look at the beauty of a river cutting through a fertile countryside and so did all in their power to poison the land.

I demanded the exchange take place at seven-thirty, when the sun hangs low and the commercial district will be primarily unpopulated. We might have to deal with security guards and cameras pointed at the street, but I don’t care. I’m finishing it now.

I want to drop Risina off at a coffee shop and pick her up when it’s over, but she refuses. I tell her that fences don’t participate in kills, and she tells me she isn’t my fence until this is over. The thought of not knowing what is happening while she sips on a decaf latte is more than she can bear. She’s been in this one since the beginning and she’ll be in it until the end, and if she sees the dark side of me again standing over Spilatro’s dead body, then she welcomes it.

I told Spilatro the address and he tried to keep me on the line, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. He’s learned all he’s going to learn about me, and now the preparation is over and the two killers have to take the field until one is dead.

A black Toyota Tercel with tinted windows slowly rolls to a nearby intersection, the address I gave him, and then turns right and speeds away. I expect to see the same car again soon… he came fifteen minutes early to get the lay of the land, do some reconnaissance. I haven’t given him time to set up a mousetrap. He’s in my world, the world of improvisation, a world he can’t control, a world where he has to take advantage of the opportunities as they develop or die face-down in the street.

“This is it. I’m moving out. When you see the muzzle flash, race in and pick me up. Don’t hesitate.”

She nods and I kiss her and I think she says “be careful,” but it’s lost in the wind as I duck low out of the passenger side and move to a row of shrubs. I didn’t anticipate how quickly the wind could pick up this close to the river and there’s an industrial smell to the air, that combination of gas and oil and chemicals that seems to linger around factories like a trip wire: “Don’t cross here or you’ll cough up blood.”

The shrubs line a concrete barrier demarking the property of a sardine cannery, and I slip between the greenery and the wall to make my way down to the intersection.

The sky turns that deep sea green as the sun hides in the horizon, and the traffic on the street is minimal, a few trucks rolling out of factories and lumbering up the streets. I find a spot where the intersection is visible through a break in the branches, and here comes that Tercel. I’m going to show myself just long enough for him to step out of the car and ask about the exchange so I can pop him in the head.

Two hundred yards away and it’s impossible to see if he has Archie in the car with him, and if he does, I’ll do my best to save my old fence, but only once the job is done and Spilatro is down and I can get away clean. Only then.

One hundred yards now and my Glock is out and in my hand. The wind howls, whistling a dirge as it crests the concrete barrier and zips through the shrubbery. Fifty yards.

Out of nowhere, a taxi smashes into the side of the Tercel and drives it across the width of the street, up on to the opposite sidewalk. The section of the Tercel from the driver’s side tire to the door is bent concave from the force of the taxi’s bumper and the engine has caught fire and whatever play this is… I have no idea what he’s up to, but it has to be a play.