Dark Men (13 page)

“Hello, Columbus. I heard you were dead, so this is a surprise.” His thick French accent sounds even rougher over the phone line.

“Still breathing.”

“Yes, I can hear that now.”

“And you’re out of jail.”

“I couldn’t afford to stay in.”

“And how’s Brueggemann?”

“Unemployed, I’m afraid.”

Brueggemann was a German heavy who helped me find Doriot in that Lantin jail, against his will. I think I exposed his weakness as an employee.

“So you would not be calling me for any reason I can understand unless you need something from me, yes? So how may I help you?”

Belgians tend to get right to the point, a national trait I admire.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“I see. What is that something?”

“I need you to locate a New York female hitter who goes by Carla. I need you to hire her for a dummy job. Tell her she has to meet the fence and give her a fake address on Warren Street in Tribeca. I’ll pick her up from there.”

“You going to put her down?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Who’s her contracting fence?”

“I’m guessing Kirschenbaum, but he’s dead so you’ll have to figure out how to contact her.”

“I see.”

This is the part where he realizes he has me over a barrel and will ask for something. Either money or a favor or to pull a job for him for free. But Doriot is full of surprises.

“Okay, Columbus, how can I contact you?”

I give him the number on a prepaid phone and tell him to text me there with a secure number and then I’ll call him back from a different line.

“Very well. I’ll try to dial you in the next day or two.”

I decide to flush the quail if he’s not going to attempt it. “And what do you want in exchange?”

“Not a thing. I have a new outlook on life. I am trying to be accommodating to my friends and rely on providence to reward me with good fortune.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You are a cynic then. I understand. But my actions will turn you into a believer.”

“Okay . . . well, I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yes, soon.”

We hang up. If he’s going to work out his personal issues on my behalf, I’m happy to accommodate.

Carla is in her late thirties, and looks the opposite of most female plugs I’ve encountered over the years. Professionals are always trying to get close to their marks in order to make the kill in private and get the hell away after business is done; as such, most of the women I’ve seen in this line of work are gorgeous. They work their way inside on the mark through suggestions of sex and pounce when the target is at his most vulnerable. By the time the mark figures out he’s been conned, his bodyguards are outside the door, his pants are around his ankles, and his day is about to be ruined. Many a target has been popped at night, but not discovered until the next morning, naked, in bed, blood-dry.

Carla isn’t talking too many men into the bedroom. She’s dressed like she’s used to towing around a couple of kids: knock-off designer jeans and an unflattering print shirt bearing a vague pattern of stripes. She’s dowdy, about thirty pounds overweight, and has a face that wouldn’t launch any ships out of Troy.

I smile when I spot her. She wouldn’t stand out in any room, on any block, in any crowd, on any stage. She doesn’t just blend into the background, she
is
the background. I almost didn’t pick her out, even though she’s the only woman walking down Warren Street at this time of morning. Her expression is neutral, as bland as her wardrobe and as unassuming as her gait. I like her already.

I approach Carla from behind so she’ll have to turn. I want to see how she moves, see if I can spot where she keeps her weapons.

“Carla?”

She turns slowly, deliberately. Her eyes fix on my chest, unchallenging. Her voice is wheezy, like a trumpet with a faulty valve. Nothing about her is inviting.

“You Walker?”

“That’s right. Let’s move where we can talk.”

“You got an office around here?”

“I like to walk and talk.”

“You got muscle?”

“Just me.”

“You must be new to this.”

“I . . . how long I’ve been doing this is none of your business.”

She doesn’t respond, just follows beside me as I head up the street toward the river. I think she’s bought my newbie act, though I’m not certain.

I talk just above a whisper, “You work tandem with a hitter named Spilatro?”

“Why’s it matter?”

“I might need a two-fer and my client wants a team who’ve worked well together in the past.”

“Fsssh.” The trumpet hits another false note as she blows out a disappointed breath. “I don’t team anymore.”

“You guys have a falling-out?”

“Why’s it matter?” she asks a second time.

“Just making conversation.”

“Now I know you haven’t been doing this long.”

She stops in the street and this time lifts her eyes all the way to my face. “You got a job? Give me a file and let me know when you want the account closed. Otherwise I’m going to walk in that direction, you’re going to walk in that direction, and if we see each other again, we won’t be shaking hands.”

During this, her face doesn’t pinch or blacken. She just says it plainly, like we’re discussing the Tribeca weather.

“All right, don’t tighten up. I was just trying to get a feel for your style . . .”

“What you see is what you get,” she says.

“Fair enough. Let’s stop right here.”

She obeys and folds her arms, impatient. I change tactics, hardening.

“We’re going to have a conversation about Spilatro and you’re going to tell me everything you know about him, or you’ll be dead at my feet before you can take a step away. Your choice.”

This ambush catches her flush, off-guard. She blinks and swallows, not sure how control could have flipped so quickly.

Then her right eye flutters as a red laser shines into it, and we watch together as a small pinprick of red light slowly moves down her face until it stops square in the middle of her chest. Risina is high up on a rooftop working our own loose version of a tandem. Carla doesn’t need to know that the red laser comes from an office pointer rather than a gunsight.

I hold my hand up. “If I raise a finger, you drop. Nod if you understand.”

It takes her a moment to focus on me, and when she does, it is through defeated eyes. She nods. Her gaze flits back to the red dot on her chest.

“Who are you?”

“What’s it matter?” I say, using her words. “What do you know about Spilatro?”

“He . . .”

“Speak up.”

“He brought me into this business.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I . . . uh . . .” She shakes her head slowly, like she can’t believe what she’s about to say. “I was married to him.”

That’s unexpected.

“Start from the beginning.”

It doesn’t take long for the words to gush out of her like water from an overturned hydrant. I have the feeling Carla has been waiting a long time to tell her story, to get things off her chest. Most likely, she hasn’t had anyone to talk to about what she does for a living. She just needs someone to whom she can confess her sins, both personal and professional, and I’m the first man to ask for it. That’s unexpected, too.

For the first six years of their marriage, Carla Fogelman Spilatro had no idea her husband, Douglas, was a professional hit man. She thought he worked sales for a software company that specialized in creating computer programs for brokerages. He talked about programs for tracking stocks, programs for tracking sales, programs for tracking investments, and it all seemed, well, boring. She tuned him out. She didn’t care. She worked too, as a speech pathologist for a hospital, assisting stroke patients who could no longer get their mouths around their words. It was stressful and grueling and demanding, and she came home each day exhausted, too tired to listen to her husband talk about quotas and sales leads.

Their marriage was comfortable if not comforting, and she was happy to have the television to herself when her husband went away on frequent business trips. They had no kids, confessing early in their courtship neither cared for children, and she never heard her biological clock tick the way so many other women did. Between her husband’s commissions and her speech salary, they established themselves in the upper middle class and had a nice two-story home, the customary accoutrement of couples earning their income.

Her husband had one quirk. Miniatures. He had a basement full of miniatures—airplanes, trains, cars. In fact, he built elaborate cityscapes, with model skyscrapers and model traffic congestion and model construction equipment and sometimes little model pedestrians walking the model streets. She didn’t mind him down in the basement, building his tiny worlds; she figured having him home when he was in town was better than having him out at bars or running around the way some husbands did. Besides, she could watch her shows while he was building and painting down there. She never had to fight him for the remote control.

A text changed her life. A simple text from her friend Michelle.

I DIDN’T KNOW
D
OUGLAS WAS IN
C
LEVELAND.

H
E’S NOT.

O
H.
S
WORE
I
SAW HIM
. H
OW R U
?

She didn’t respond, and when the TV suddenly sprang to life, she realized she’d been sitting there for the full thirty minutes it took TiVo to override the pause. She looked at her hand and realized she had chewed her thumbnail to the quick.

Doug wasn’t in Cleveland. He was on a business trip, yes, but he said he was going to New York to see his client. What was the name he had said? Damn, why didn’t she listen to him? Smith Barney? Something like that.

She was being silly. Why was her imagination running wild? Why did she watch stupid trash like
Desperate Housewives
and
Young and the Restless,
where every husband was philandering around like it was Roman times? People in real life didn’t act like that, right?

She should just call him on his cell and see where he was. He’d probably said Cleveland anyway. Maybe she had mixed it up. Cleveland and New York?

“Hello?”

“Hey, hon, I can’t talk right now.”

“Are you in a meeting?”

“Walking into one right now. I’ll call you when it’s over . . .”

“Are you in . . .” But he hung up before she could finish the question.

She got online and found a number for a Smith-Barney branch in Cleveland. There were three so she picked the first one and dialed the main line.

“Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Financial . . .”

“Yes, hello . . . my name is Carla Spilatro . . . I have to . . . is my husband Doug there right now?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Doug Spilatro with Valsoft?”

“Hold one moment.”

She waited, chewing that thumbnail down until she tasted blood.

A new voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Matt Chapman, may I help you?”

“Hi, sorry to bother you. My husband works for Valsoft and I think he has a meeting with someone in your, uh, firm. His name is . . .”

“Don’t know any Valsoft. You sure you have the right branch?”

Her heart beat harder. “No, I guess I’m not sure.”

“Well, we have two other branches in Cleveland. I’ll have Melanie come back on and give you the numbers . . .”

“Thank you . . . oh, wait. Mr. Chapman . . . ?”

“Yes?”

“You said you don’t know Valsoft? It’s my understanding they produce and manage the software you use on your computers?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. We use good ol’ Microsoft.”

“Do all the branches use Microsoft?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

She had moved her teeth off the thumb and on to the cuticles on her ring finger. “Okay, sorry to bother you.”

“No problem.”

She looked up the Valsoft corporate webpage. It wasn’t more than a few pages, but there was her husband’s name and contact info under the “outside sales” banner. Sure, the number listed was his cell phone, but he worked out of his car most days. The corporate office’s main address was listed as Deerfield, Michigan, and she realized she had never been to Michigan, much less Deerfield. There was a main office phone number, so she picked up the phone to call again.

Then she stopped. What was she doing? One little text from her friend saying she’d seen Doug somewhere other than where he said he was—she was certain he had said New York—and she’s running around checking on him like he’s some sort of dual-life soap opera character. She put the phone down. She’d wait and talk to him when he returned and just ask him where he went and how the meetings went.

She plopped on to the couch but couldn’t concentrate, so she ate an entire quart of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia but still couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She flipped channels and all the networks were breaking in on the soaps to talk about a “major accident” in Cleveland. The Cleveland of it caught her eye. Doug might be in Cleveland and there was an accident there too?

She grew up near there, in Shaker Heights, and knew the skyline well. It seemed a section of light rail track above a highway had collapsed and an RTA train hadn’t been able to brake in time. It dove over the edge and killed fourteen people. Such a random, odd event. An act of God. One day you’re riding a passenger train, maybe worried about making a meeting on time or concerned about the job interview you’re headed to or wondering whether or not you’re going to have time to pick up a snack on the way home from work and what stops you cold? A piece of track giving way and it’s bye-bye to all those plans you made. Incredible.

A news camera in a helicopter was showing the accident under a “LIVE” banner, a bird’s-eye view of dozens of emergency vehicles surrounding the aftermath of the crash like moths circling a flame. As the chopper hovered, it settled on a particular angle, that view of God looking down from above on the carnage, and suddenly she felt as though she’d been jolted with electricity. She shot straight up on the couch and overturned her carton of ice cream as she sent the spoon clattering across the wooden floor.