We backtracked through the four files we had on Spilatro, the four hits Archie assigned. And there it was. The connections between all those jobs that Risina and I and Archie himself had failed to catch. The first hit, the rich female English professor at Ohio State, had helped finance a PAC set up to block government land use for military training in Ohio. For the second, the TV reporter had been working on a story about bribes involving the top senator from Illinois. The unlucky bookkeeper in the third file had more than a few Washington clients on his ledgers. And the final file? The police detective in Boston? The one Carla helped knock over? He would’ve testified against two NSA officials who were caught with hookers and cocaine at the Intercontinental in downtown Boston if he hadn’t slipped on the ice and had such an untimely accident. All Spilatro kills… all with government ties. And the fact that all those deaths looked like accidents was the icing on the cake. If they had looked like actual hits, actual assassinations, there would have been inquiries, scandal, attention paid. The dark men wanted these issues to disappear, not become headlines. Spilatro’s killing style was perfect for these kinds of jobs.
I wonder if Archie knew he was a patsy for the government, and to what degree he was playing ball. I wonder if he slipped and accidentally gave Spilatro my name, or Spilatro discovered it and then sought out Archie, worked his way inside. Used Kirschenbaum to make himself available to Archie, then worked a few government jobs for him to gain trust. I wonder how extensive the Agency is involved in the private killing business and how many of my assignments over the years were actually financed by taxpayers.
Finally, I look up the light rail accident in Cleveland, the one Carla claims to have discovered in her basement, the one where a section of the rail collapsed, killing the 14 passengers on board. Sure enough, three of the passengers worked for a top Defense contractor, McKnight International. Why the government wanted them dead, and what contract that helped to close, I have no idea.
But Spilatro works for Uncle Sam and has been all along, I’m now sure of it.
It takes her a week in DC. I remain uncertain on whether or not she’s capable of shooting a man in the head, but as a researcher, she’s extraordinary. This is an Ivy League-educated woman who built an impressive rare book collection by carefully researching titles, cross-referencing sources, compiling lists of potential dealers, wooing and cajoling and nudging reluctant sellers while she gathered the best information first, so she could swoop in and procure a title before her competition knew there was a deal to be made. My mistake, I’m beginning to realize, was grooming Risina to do what I do, to be a contract killer. I’ve been working with a natural fence the whole time.
She won’t need to blend in, to hide in plain sight; in fact, she can use her beauty to secure what she needs, to make men want to help her. She can use an arrow I don’t have in my quiver: she can be wholly unthreatening.
She made an appointment with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs at the Pentagon, posing as a freelance journalist. With the Presidential initiative for a more transparent government coupled with the Freedom of Information Act and countless journalistic precedents, it wasn’t difficult for Risina to gain access to enlistment records. She charmed the ASOD as she explained she was writing a heartwarming article on Desert Storm veterans who had parlayed their time in the service into high-end jobs. So much of what is reported in the mainstream media focuses on the negative, she told him-the combat fatigue, the stress disorders, the disabilities-she was hoping to chronicle the positive effects on veterans who served their country well and made something of their lives after their tour of duty, using the skills they learned in the military to achieve civilian success. The assistant secretary damn near threw his spine out of alignment bending over backward to help her.
Roland Deckman, aka “Decker,” and Aaron Spittrow, aka “Spilatro,” both joined the army in 1988. Like I said, most hit men aren’t too imaginative when they come up with their killing names, and Risina made short work of spotting two similar names in the same unit. They entered the 24th ID out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, one of the first units deployed to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1990. When the Gulf War began, the 24th faced some of the fiercest resistance in the entire campaign, running up against the 6th Mechanized Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard. They still managed to capture the airfields at Jabbah and Tallil. Deckman and Spittrow worked as infantry grunts, nothing unusual in their service records.
The ASOD apologized to Risina profusely, but contact information on Deckman and Spittrow was sketchy following their military service. They both were honorably discharged in 1992, and where most soldiers would at least have a few files of contact and discharge information, those files seemed to be missing for Deckman and Spittrow. Risina asked if there was contact information from before they joined the army.
The ASOD smiled. That, he had. At least for one of them.
Northville, Michigan is a quiet slice of suburbia outside of Detroit, with modest homes peppered around mansions. Although many neighborhoods in Detroit look as though they’ve been abandoned and forgotten, Northville could just as easily be situated outside Kansas City, Chicago, or Dayton. It is filled with regular folks making livings and raising families. Roland Deckman grew up here before he joined the army.
We drove straight to Michigan, taking shifts behind the wheel. Risina spent enough time driving in the States when she was in college that she isn’t intimidated by the width of our highways. In fact, she handled our sedan like it was primed for the Indy 500.
“Do you know what the fastest car in the world is?” she asked as we blasted through Ohio.
“What?”
“A rental car.”
Well, at least her jokes have gotten better.
It’s warm and rainy when we arrive, the kind of summer shower unique to Michigan that blows down like hell for fifteen minutes before it exhausts itself and retreats out to the lake.
We sit outside Deckman’s parents’ house. He’s now a government assassin, I’m sure of it, a breed of animal I’ve been fortunate to avoid until recently. He’s had training I’ve never had, supplies I can only dream of, access to targets that must be facilitated by entire teams of personnel and equipment, and a get-out-of-jail-free card that removes half the worry of making a kill.
But does he secretly despise his job? Does he question the political motivations behind his assignments? Does he rely too heavily on the system? Do his fortunes change with each new administration? And does this cement his loyalty to his friend Spilatro over his loyalty to his employers?
The real question, the only question that matters: is he a tiger?
No, I haven’t had to worry about government hitters until now, until they sought me out, forced me back in when I was content enough to ride out my days in obscurity.
We sip coffee and wait for the rain to die.
“Decker’s our key. He’s who we’re going to trade for Archie and how we’re going to get them off me.”
“What makes you think Spilatro or Spittrow, or whatever his name is, will be more willing to deal for Decker than Carla?”
“Because these cover stories people tell are mostly lies but always have moments of truth. I think Decker has been Spilatro’s friend and fellow soldier for twenty-plus years. I think they were already working jobs together when they were in the service. I think Decker went to the CIA first and rescued Spilatro from a dead-end life of middle-management and that formed a bond that is unbreakable.
“I could be wrong. He could mean nothing to Spilatro. But he helped him pull off that fake hit to fool his wife. After all that time, they were still together. My guess is the Agency isn’t too keen on fostering or facilitating friendships… they’d want their officers working alone and anonymous. So these guys still pulling a job together has to mean more than blood… it has to. At least, that’s what I’d like to believe.”
“Because it’s the best plan?”
“Because it’s all we have right now.”
The military is one thing, the CIA quite another. She couldn’t get inside Langley the way she did the Pentagon, so the only chance we have of confronting Decker has to come from his past. Spilatro certainly covered his tracks, burning down the “Aaron Spittrow” military records from both before and after his service, but Decker must’ve been comfortable no one would put the puzzle pieces together the way we did. He failed to erase the blackboard of his “Deckman” upbringing, and the military kept a record of his home address.
His brother, Lance, now lives in the same home they grew up in. He’s an alcoholic. He owes money to the bank, has sold the equity in the house, has tried unsuccessfully three times for a small business loan, and was rejected on the grounds of bad personal credit. All of this information, supposedly private, Risina pulled from the Internet during our ride west. A natural fence, like I said.
The rain abates, so we approach the house. After a minute, a man in his early forties opens the door. He holds a beer bottle in one hand, and his eyes are droopy, red-rimmed, like a basset hound’s.
“Help you?” he says as he takes a glance at me and then lets his gaze linger on Risina.
“Mr. Deckman?”
He turns back to me. “Yes?”
“Today’s your lucky day.”
He leans into the doorframe as his expression turns suspicious. I’m holding a duffel bag, and he eyes it, then looks back at me. “Hadn’t had too many of those. What’s the sale?”
“No sale. We’re here to give you money. Can we come in?”
He folds his arms but doesn’t budge.
“What’s this about, pal?”
“It’s about your brother.”
“My brother?”
“Roland Deckman’s your brother, correct?”
His eyes dart back and forth between us now, the lids pulled open. “Yes, but…”
“Well, he’s made a significant amount of money over the last twenty years, and he wanted you to have most of it.”
“Is he… has something happened to him?”
“Can we come in, sir? We’d rather not do this on the doorstep.”
“Yes, of course.” He blinks down at himself, tries to smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt, then props the door open, stepping aside. “Please, come in. Sorry… we get solicitors all the time here.. ”
“No problem.”
Risina moves in first, and I follow. The house is a craftsman, lots of wood and rustic furniture. The living room is cramped and messy, like it hasn’t had a wipe-down in a while. The television is on, a video game in mid-pause on the screen.
“Can I get you guys a beer? Or a… or some water?”
“No, we’re fine, thank you.”
We take seats on the sofa and Lance looks nervously at the screen and then presses a button on the remote so the television snaps to black.
After I let him stew for a moment, biting at the nail on his pinky finger, I lean forward. “I’ll cut right to it then, Mr. Deckman. I don’t know if your brother told you, but he was working for Central Intelligence.”
“Yeah… he, uh, I don’t know if I was supposed to know but he mentioned…”
“Good. It’s certainly not against regulations.”
I pause a moment longer, then smile sadly. “I’m sorry to say that your brother died in the line of duty.”
I watch Lance’s eyes, and they continue to move back and forth between us but don’t cloud over. It’s easy to see inside his head: he doesn’t give a damn about his brother, he just wants to know what is in it for him. I suspect his credit cards are maxed out, his bills are piling up, and the house we’re sitting inside is one of the few possessions he owns outright, paid for by his parents before they croaked.
He catches himself and coughs into his fist. “Oh… oh no. I.. this is a shock, you know.”
“I understand.” I shift the duffel up to the coffee table, struggling for effect with the weight, and his eyes go to it like a prisoner looking at a key that fits his lock.
“Like I was saying, your brother socked away a significant sum during his employment, and his will states that he wants you to have it.”
“How much?” He catches himself again. “I mean, wow, this is incredible. I’m…” He stops, coloring.
“Well, that’s why we’re here in person, Lance. This bag holds a hundred thousand dollars in cash…”
He’s fun to watch. There’s obvious disappointment at that amount-like it’ll cover his debts but he isn’t completely out of the woods. He won’t be able to sit around playing video games for the rest of his life, all his bills paid. I keep playing with his emotions..
“… which represents five percent of his wealth.”
He swallows, and his lips purse and tremble like a baby with a pacifier. He’s too dumb to do the math, but he knows the number has a lot of zeroes. I hand him the handles of the bag and he takes it in his lap. He wants to play it cool but he can’t stop himself; he unzips the bag and looks over the stacks.
“Now here’s the messy part.”
His eyes dart up, searching my face. “Messy?”
“Yes, sir. See, we’re authorized to release you the rest of the inheritance, but we need something from you before we can do that.”
He nods before he even knows he’s doing it. “Sure. What do you need?”
“Well, when an asset of ours dies, for national security reasons, we have to make sure all ties to him are erased. If an enemy were able to trace steps back to where he started, where he was living, where he kept personal possessions, files and such, we’d be… well, it would be bad for the country.”
I have zero idea what I’m talking about, but I’ve read enough Ludlum, Clancy, and Follet to impersonate a government handler. Well, at least conjure enough of a performance to manipulate a desperate man who doesn’t know jack shit.
“Yeah, sure. I understand.” He stands up and absently wipes his hands on his shirt again. “Let me see…” He heads to a back hallway, leaving us alone in the living room.
Risina eyes me, a half smile on her face. I shrug, and we wait. I can hear doors open and close somewhere in the house, and then the sound of paper shuffling.
After a moment, Lance returns, holding a small yellow legal pad. In his other hand is a cell phone. He exhales loudly… “This is all I got. Umm… I haven’t heard from Ro in years, shoot, I mean, had to be 2005 or so, after mom died. He had to sign some papers so I could, um, take over this place. He told me if I ever got in serious trouble, to, um… get ahold of him at this number.”
He hands me the legal pad and the only thing scrawled on it is an 888 number. He hands me the phone. “He, uh, he said to use this phone so he’d know it was me. I guess it has a chip in it or something?” He hands me an old Nokia. “I haven’t, uh, charged it in a while.”
“Did you ever call him?”
“One time. I called him and some broad…” he looks over at Risina. “Sorry, I mean, some woman answered and said she was with some bank or something. At first, I thought I’d dialed the wrong number, then I realized it was probably a cover or something? I told her to tell Roland that his brother needed him.
“I swear it wasn’t another five minutes and the phone rang in my hand. He was all concerned, out-of-breath you know, asking if I was in trouble. I told him I was running out of funds, you know… maybe he could loan me some money? He told me to only call him if my life was in danger, if someone had threatened me, that was it. That’s the last I heard from him. We were never close, but I guess he… uh, I guess he…” He looks down at the duffel. “… wanted me to have a better life or something.”
I stand up and Risina joins me. “You sure this is everything you have that could lead back to him? No address in Washington or anything?”
He holds up his empty hands, then crosses his arms like he’s hugging himself. “No, nothing else. That’s it. If he had a home address, he never gave it to me.”
I nod, and look into his eyes, like I’m checking to see if he’s lying when I already know he’s telling the truth.
“Okay, Mr. Deckman. Thank you.”
He looks at the duffel as we head to the door. “Sure, no problem.” He follows us closely…
“So… the rest of the money?”
I stop, like I had forgotten about it. “Yes, sorry. My associate here will deliver it when we make sure there isn’t any other way to get to your brother’s identity through you.”
“There isn’t.”
“I’m sure there isn’t. It’s just a formality. You mind if we give it to you in cash? Makes it cleaner for us.”
“No, yeah, I mean, cash is great.”
“Karen here will get back to you shortly. We, uh, we know where you live,” I say with a laugh.
He laughs too, like he’s relieved. As we step back off his stoop, “How… how did he die if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It’s classified,” I offer, trying my best to look apologetic.
He nods again, then gives us a half wave, drops his hand like he was embarrassed about that, and then just shuts the door.
Risina and I climb in the car, and she chuckles. “Okay, not all of this job is miserable.”
“No, not all of it,” I agree as I hold up the phone. “Let’s go find a place to call Decker and see if he might want to come say hello.”
We take him at the casino.
Downtown Detroit has three of them, one in Greektown, and two in the middle of downtown. The MGM is a Vegas-style complex, with a full floor of gaming tables, restaurants, nightclubs and a show theater attached to a forty-story hotel.
I call the number from his phone and know it’s going to be recorded, so I evince my best impression of his brother’s nasally whine when the woman picks up with “National Investments.”
“It’s Lance. I’m outta money. And these guys at the MGM, they’re not messing around. Tell my bro… tell Ro I gotta… I’m going in at midnight to room 4001 to meet these guys… just tell him I love him.”
I hang up. The phone chirps in my hand three minutes later, but I ignore it. I don’t remove the battery so they can pinpoint the location with whatever satellites do that type of thing. Since Risina and I are already checked into the hotel, it should paint a convincing picture.
I’m certain he’ll come alone. He doesn’t want his employers to know any more about his personal business than absolutely necessary, and certainly not about his deadbeat brother who got himself in a bad way with some casino heavies. No, my guess is he’ll come in by himself, pissed off, armed but not ready to shoot, not ready to play defense. And as a man who understands the value of surprise, I’m betting he won’t try to contact the casino owners ahead of time to straighten out this matter. If he does, my plan is sunk, but what better place to play the odds than right here in a gaming joint?
At eleven-thirty, Risina spots a man heading to the elevator, and after he gives it a cursory glance, he backtracks toward the reception area. His face is similar to his brother’s, but better looking-a stronger jaw, brighter eyes-like the superior chromosomes bandied together to favor him and exclude his alcoholic brother. Still, the family resemblance is there.
The top floor requires an extra security card to trigger the elevator, so he’ll have to request the floor, another indication this is our guy. Risina ducks in behind him, hears him request a room on the fortieth floor, and then
listens to the receptionist give him room 4021.
He thanks her politely and heads back to the bank of elevators. I’m sure he’s surging with grim energy, ready to confront the guys in room 4001 before his brother arrives, straighten out the situation, turn it ugly if he has to, whatever it takes to get his brother off the hook. After he presses the up button, the first doors to open are for the middle car in this deck of three, and as soon as he’s in it, Risina calls up to me.
“Middle elevator, up now.”
I’m on the twentieth floor. Above the doors are LCD readouts displaying the floor number of each car’s current position. I watch and hit my own “up” button as the middle car passes the tenth floor. We tested this a few times and ten out of eleven, the elevator heading up is the one that stops; the only exception was when one of the other cars was already on the twentieth floor. But the right and left elevators are elsewhere and the one rising should be the correct choice, come on. Except now as I look, the elevator up on twenty-eight is heading down this direction and if it gets here first, I don’t know what will happen, which door will open. The middle one continues to climb, please don’t let someone else in the teens press “up” and stop it. It’s moving up steadily, 17, 18… while the one on the right continues to fall, 22, 21, and then it hits 20 and I hold my breath, but it keeps heading down, 19, 18 on the way to the lobby and then the middle elevator door dings open. No one else is inside but Decker. I have a ball cap slung low so he won’t get a good look at me. I doubt he knows my face but if he’s working closely with Spilatro, I can’t be sure.
I move in quickly, pull my card out to clear security for the top floor, then shrug since the 40 button is already lit up. I move to the back wall as the doors close, hoping he’ll scoot up but he’s experienced enough to keep his back to the wall. I have a burnt cigar in my mouth to mask the smell of what I’m about to do.
This is different from my usual work, an anomaly because I don’t want Decker dead. If this had been an assignment, I would have popped him when the door opened. But I want him alive, unconscious. My left hand drops to my pocket, where the handkerchief soaked in chloroform rests. I can see him in my periphery, and he definitely checks me out as the elevator crosses 30 on its way to the top.
I have about ten more seconds to do this. I hope the smell doesn’t give me away, but the cigar’s scent is strong and should overpower the chemicals.
The elevator passes 34. I have eight more seconds, maybe five, but before I can pull out the rag, he says, “Do I know you?” and I can feel the pressure of a handgun’s barrel pressed against my temple. He’s a professional, a government professional, and he’s trained to spot anomalies like warning flags, so a guy on twenty pressing forty must stand out. He may not know I’m Columbus, but he knows I’m someone sent to shadow him, and he probably mistakes me for one of the guys who is about to hold his brother in room 4001.
The elevator chimes as the floor hits forty and in that little jostle elevator cars make when they come to a rest, I duck the gun and drive my forehead into his chin. He jerks back instinctively, and I pin his arm to the wall, the one fisting the gun, and I bang it one, two times into the back paneling and the gun drops. Unfortunately, by focusing my energy on the gun, my rib cage is vulnerable, and he takes advantage, pounding me in the side with his free fist, just as the door springs open.
He’s a strong puncher, even in close quarters, and he connects in my kidney with a rabbit punch that doubles me over. He drops for the gun but I’m able to kick it out the open door onto the fortieth floor hallway and luckily, no one is up here waiting to catch a ride down. The door starts to shut on us, and he dives for the gun, but I grab his leg and the door bangs into him before springing open again. He kicks backward at me and connects with his heel to my chest before he dives for his gun in the hallway.
I leap for him. If he gets to that gun first, I’m sunk and this whole damn thing is for naught. I won’t let that happen, can’t let that happen. He’s on the gun, but I’m on him, and before he can roll over and come up with it, I drive my fist into the crook of his elbow, snapping his arm backward. The elevator behind us closes and heads down again, leaving us to battle it out here in the fortieth floor foyer. I can see another car heading up this way, in the thirties and climbing. If it’s coming to this floor, we’re going to be spotted and who knows how quickly security will be here next. Somebody might have heard the scuffle and the hotel dicks are already on the way.
Unexpectedly, Deckman or Decker or whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is works his legs around my mid-section and squeezes my torso in a scissor-lock. I’ve seen mixed martial artists do this shit on TV, but it’s a new one to me. Before I know it, he’s forced me off of him, and I can barely breathe, barely move my arms as he squeezes the air out of my lungs. At the same time, he gropes with his hands, reaching behind him for the gun on the ground…
The elevator continues to climb toward our floor, 35, 36, but the numbers are going fuzzy, like I’m looking at them through a kaleidoscope. I pound my elbows into his thighs, but the muscles there are like rocks.
He keeps pulling us backward, just a few feet from his gun now, and if I’m going to make a move, it’s going to have to be in that last instant, when he reaches for his pistol and releases just a little bit of pressure from my ribs.
We slide another few inches and I’m able to reach my hand into my pocket and withdraw that cloth. The numbers above the door pass 39 and that car is coming and whatever he or I plan to do, it’s going to be in front of witnesses. He drags us the last few inches and his hands seize on that pistol, a little Colt. 22, and the pressure from his legs around my waist loosens only a bit. We both twist around at the same time, toward each other, just as the elevator dings, and he swivels with the gun as I swivel with the cloth, but I’m a half-second faster and I mash that cloth into his face and hold it there, pin it there, up under his nose and mouth. He bucks wildly but doesn’t fire that pistol and his eyes roll to the back of his head as his whole body goes slack, and his legs finally drop from my waist.
“You all right?” Risina says, stepping out of the elevator car, a Glock in her hand. I’m glad I was a half-second quicker or she might have witnessed something a bit bloodier when she emerged onto the floor.
“He’s checked into 4021,” she says as she stoops over his limp body and withdraws his key card.
“Then let’s show him to his room,” I grunt as I wrestle him up.
No sooner do we have him propped between us than a maid rounds the corner, pushing a cart. She barely glances our way as she moves down the hall. He’s not the first semi-conscious guest she has encountered in the hallway and won’t be the last, I’m sure. Probably not even tonight.