It takes us a few days to buy passports. Although Smoke failed spectacularly as a bagman, he’s not a bad fence. He’s been with Archie Grant long enough to know how to scrounge the right information, ask the right questions, navigate the world beneath the world, the one where money exchanges hands and lips stay tight.
This is all new to Risina, and she adjusts, acting normally, with just a hint of boredom, the way she must’ve negotiated competitively for a rare book. An Italian fence named Vespucci once told me, “no matter the situation, act like you’ve been there before.” Risina says little and keeps her face emotionless, neutral. Even as we’re engaged in something as simple as obtaining illegal papers, she looks like she’s done it a thousand times. Maybe she’s a natural. I won’t deny that I feel, well, proud of her. Maybe that’s irrational, but I don’t care.
In a hotel near the airport, we lie in bed, waiting on a morning flight.
“I don’t want you to get too confident. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“How do you want me to be?”
“Observant.”
She widens her eyes. “Like this?” She holds it for a moment before breaking into a smile.
“I’m serious.”
“Yes, babe. I know. You’re going to be tense and I understand that. This is the new man. The one who has to worry about someone besides himself. But when we’re alone, then I’m going to want you back. Not Columbus.”
She pulls close to me and buries her nose in my neck.
“I wasn’t aware this was a democracy.”
“Well, now you are.”
“As long as you understand that when we leave this room, or any room, I’m in charge. You look to me. You learn from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Risina.”
“I know you do. And I answered you that I understand.”
She sleeps peacefully, as though this is just another night in the fishing village. Maybe she’s going to be okay in this world. Maybe she’ll learn quickly and take direction and thrive. Maybe if I keep telling myself that over and over, I’ll believe it.
Chicago is warm but stale, like a mausoleum releasing hundreds of years of trapped air after the front stone is rolled away. It must be the exhaust from the traffic in the city or the wind off the lake, or maybe the smell is just in my head. My temples throb like someone is tapping my head with a hammer.
Risina sits next to me in the rental sedan-a dark blue economy car-staring out the window, smiling absently.
I let her come. She insisted, but the decision was, is, mine. I could have blown off Smoke, protested I was out, truly out, that Archie’s problems were Archie’s problems, taken Risina and fled to another isolated country, but the truth is… I didn’t want to. I’m like Eve staring at the picked apple, but that’s not quite the right metaphor. I’ve already tasted the apple and instead of facing banishment, I’ve been offered passage back into Eden, or into my definition of paradise anyway. But at what price? There is always a price.
“I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to protest or argue or answer. Just nod your head that you agree when I finish.”
She waits, and I can feel her eyes.
“This is my decision to have you with me. To teach you what I do. To bring you into this world. Okay? I take responsibility for it. I own it.”
She waits until I turn my head her way before she nods. Whether or not she agrees with me, I think I see understanding in her eyes. Regardless, I had to say it.
I’ve never had a charge before, and I want it defined and out in the open, as much for me as for her. I have to teach her, protect her, and lead her all at once, and I will not take these obligations lightly.
Straight from the airport, Smoke leads us to Archie’s apartment. I check the side-view mirrors, looking for patterns in the traffic behind us, but I don’t think anyone knows about our arrival. If the plan of the kidnappers was to tail Smoke and strike as soon as he found me, then they’ve done a lousy job. There’s no tail from what I can see, and I didn’t clock anyone back at the bookstore or restaurant before we left our hiding spot.
I’ve been inside Archie’s building a couple of times before, once after killing a couple of his rival fences, and another time after I was shot in the ribs in a Chicago Public Library. Grant hired a private surgeon to stitch me up, and his sister Ruby took care of me until I got back on my feet. That was years ago, before I quit and before Ruby took a bullet to the face and died in front of a church in Siena as I stood next to her.
The apartment is as I remember it and as Smoke described. There’s dried blood in the bedroom, the color of rust, and several pieces of furniture-a lamp, a nightstand-are overturned.
“I didn’t touch nothing,” Smoke says. “This is just as I found it.”
I scan the room, then zero in on a chest of drawers and put my finger in a smooth hole.
“Shit. Is that a bullet hole? I didn’t even see that.” He hits the word “even” to make sure I hear the truth in his voice.
“Can you help me move this?”
The back of the chest and the wall behind it have the same hole. Risina watches, fascinated.
“You got a little knife on you?” I say to Smoke.
He immediately shakes his head, but then thinks. “Hold on a second …”
He scampers back to the kitchen and Risina smiles and nods, rocking forward on her toes. “I’m impressed.”
“In this job, you have to look at a scene of violence, the aftermath, and read it like a book. I want you to try to visualize what happened in this room. On your own, no help from me.”
I hear Smoke rummaging around in kitchen drawers, but I focus on Risina. Her eyes trace the room, drinking it in, and I can see her gears turning.
“I don’t know. There was a fight, and someone was shot.”
“Not shot. I don’t think so. We’d see a different blood pattern on the floor, on the walls. When someone takes a bullet, a part of his insides usually comes out. So you’d see some other matter besides blood.”
“Then what do you think? He was stabbed?”
Before I can answer, Smoke returns holding a small kitchen knife, a screwdriver, and a letter opener, presenting all three items like a kid excited to please his teacher.
“The opener,” I say. A few minutes later and I fish the bullet out of the wall, then toss it to Risina. “That’s a. 22 slug. Look at the size of it and try to commit it to memory. It’s a low caliber round out of a small gun. An assassin’s weapon. I’ll get ahold of some other calibers so you can compare them.”
I turn to Smoke. “Archie have a. 22?”
“Yeah.”
“He keep it under the mattress?”
“Yeah.”
I lift it up, but the gun isn’t there.
“Well, he got one shot off before they fought over the pistol. I’m saying ‘they’ ’cause I’m guessing it was at least two guys.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could be wrong, but I think one held him up while the other one went to work on his face. That’s why you have the blood here, in a circle, after they broke his nose and most likely knocked him out. They held him up while his head hung. It’s hard to hold an unconscious guy still, and his head lolled a bit. That accounts for why there is so much blood on the floor. A stab wound would pour straight down and soak the victim’s clothes. A broken nose? That’s a gusher, and if they’re holding him upright, it’s just going to get everywhere.”
It’s Smoke’s turn to ask a question. “Why would they do that?”
I shrug. “They wanted information on me and the muscle went too far? They wanted to beat on him for putting up a fight, pulling a gun? Who knows? But they were careful not to step in the blood, which means the fist work happened after the initial fight. Anyway, none of this matters all that much until we figure out who’s holding Archie and why they want me.”
Risina turns the bullet over in her fingers and holds it up close to her eye like a jeweler examining a diamond. “But we know now it was more than one guy.”
“We know it was more than one guy here in the room. But maybe they were only hired muscle… not necessarily the guy looking for me. Either way, the person who wanted Archie snuck two or more guys into this place, which is no easy feat, I know from experience, and got them out of the building while transporting an unconscious resident.”
“They’re professionals. Like you.”
I nod and chew my lip. I had come to that conclusion within five seconds of entering the room, but I wanted Risina to arrive at it on her own.
“So what now?”
“Now we bang on a door.”
Bo Willis is a big man, not quite forty, who looks like his monthly trip to the pharmacy includes a permanent prescription for Lipitor. He was a Chicago cop for twelve years but quit when he didn’t make detective the second year in a row. Being a cop means taking a lot of ribbing from your fellow officers, and I’m sure he received his fair share after failing his detective exams or getting passed over. Bo joined a private security firm, the kind that requires short-sleeve blue uniforms and patches with names on them. He was content to punch the clock and collect his sixty-five a year, though he did it with a scowl on his face. His first couple of years he spent on a bench at an airport warehouse. The last three, he held down an Aero chair behind a security console in Archibald Grant’s building.
We didn’t have to knock on his door; Bo eats breakfast each morning at a place called Willard’s Diner, occupying a booth near the front where he can spread out his newspaper. He looks up for a moment when Risina walks by, and follows her with his eyes until she passes. I want her to hear my conversation with the security guard, but I make a mental note that I’m going to have to talk to her about her appearance. In a business where invisibility is a weapon, I can’t afford to have Risina turning heads by simply walking into the room.
I give Bo a few minutes to settle into the sports page and then slide into the booth opposite him. He starts, unused to having his territory invaded, and that’s a good place to put him: uncomfortable, on defense before he even knows he’s entered the arena.
“This is my booth, guy,” he says when I just stare at him. He has a flat Midwestern accent, and his voice comes out a little pinched, like air escaping a punctured tire.
“I know it’s your booth, Bo. It’s your booth every goddamned morning.”
“Do we know each other?” He’s somewhere between puzzled and pissed. For a big guy, that voice is high, and does his tough guy stance a disservice. I wonder if it cut into his effectiveness as a cop. I wonder if he’s been battling it his whole life.
“You don’t know me, but I know you.”
“Listen, if this-”
“Shut up, Bo. Shut up and use your ears. You’re going to have the opportunity to open your mouth again, and when you do, I want it to be to tell the truth.”
“I don’t-”
“Who paid you to look the other way on March 25th?”
He blinks once, twice, swallowing hard. He’s a headline in large type, as easy to read as the newspaper in front of him. “I don’t-”
“I’m going to describe your sister’s house to you, Bo. It’s on Wilmette Avenue, about thirty minutes from here, a white clapboard two-story number with a green mailbox out front. Your nephew, Mike, occupies the bedroom in the upper right corner and your niece, Kate, right? She sleeps in the lower left below a pink Hannah Montana poster. Your sister, Laura, she’s been living alone now for what? Two years?”
Bo’s face turns bright red, like a brake light. His voice rattles now. “I don’t know who you think you are-”
I cut him off. “I’ll tell you. I think I’m the guy who will kill your sister, your niece, and your nephew in the next hour if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know. And when I get done killing them, I’ll head to your parents’ house in Glen Ellyn. The brick number set back from the street with the two-door garage? Eventually I’ll come back for you, Bo.”
He starts to open his mouth, but I’m quicker. “I know you were a cop. I know you still have friends on the force. But I’m going to tell you as directly as you’ll ever hear anything in your life: you and your friends have never dealt with someone like me. There’s already a file on your family that will read ‘unsolved homicide’ if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know.”
He lowers his eyes, and I’ve got him. I growl through clenched teeth, “Who paid you to look the other way?”
For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just pushes waffle crumbs around the table. Then, so softly I almost don’t hear him, “Not look the other way…”
“Speak up.”
“Not look the other way. He paid me to leave. To get up and head out. Said he’d only need an hour. Gave me two thousand bucks. I didn’t know what he was up to, I swear.”
“What’d he look like?”
“White guy, little dumpy to tell you the truth. Shaved head… just a regular guy, you know?”
“Accent?”
“I don’t know. East Coast, I’d say, but I don’t know. He didn’t say much. Just said ‘two grand, walk away, one hour.’ That was it. He handed me the money and I took off, you know? I don’t need any Mafia trouble if you know what I’m saying. Cooled my heels in Sharky’s down the street. Looked at my watch and the hour was up. Gave it an extra half hour just to make sure I didn’t walk in on something I didn’t want to see. But when I came back, everything was the same.”
“Video?”
“That was the thing. Of course, I looked over the last hour’s video. Or I was going to. But it was all erased, like the hour didn’t happen. I don’t even know how to work the console other than to hit rewind and play, but he knew how to do it. And there was nothing there.”
He shakes his head, remembering. “I held my breath the next day, expecting to hear about some big theft, but nothing. No one ever complained, and no one came to me and said anything illegal happened, so I just…” He glides his hand out like an airplane taking off and says, “pssssh.”
“Until today.”
“Yeah.” Now he looks up and meets my eyes. His expression is resigned, like a kid caught stealing, sitting in the store manager’s office, waiting for his parents to show up and mete out some punishment.
I stand, and he can’t help but exhale, relieved. Curiosity gets the best of him, though. “So what was taken?” He looks up with expectant eyes.
I don’t answer and head for the door.
“So that’s why you had Smoke put a file together on the security guard.” I had asked him to do so a few days before, and he had come through quickly. The file was green but not bad; it contained what I needed to make an effective threat.
Risina walks next to me as we move north up State Street. We stop in a sporting goods store, and I move to a rack of ball caps.
“Yeah. Like in most businesses, information is key. The more you have, the more specific you can get, the more effective your threats are. What you have to do is plant images in your mark’s mind and let the threat spread like a virus. Let his imagination do the job for you. You don’t have to be particularly intimidating, you just have to know a few pointed facts about his family, about their names, about their houses, and the mark wilts like a picked flower. That’s what a good fence does… gives you the information that gives you the power.”
I pick out a blue Cubs hat and then move over to women’s clothing where I select a pair of baggy warm-ups and a large, plain T-shirt. “Try these on.”
“You’re shopping for me now?”
“Until you figure out how to blend in a little better, yes.”
She looks over the clothes I hand her, wrinkles her nose, and heads to the changing booths. If she thought being a female contract killer meant leather pants and stiletto heels, she’s learning the opposite now. That shit looks good on a silver screen, but’ll get you killed in Chicago.
After a minute, she exits, and it’s all I can do to keep from laughing. Her hair is tucked up under the cap and the clothes fit like a kid trying on her dad’s softball uniform. But the effect works: it’s impossible to see what kind of a body she has under the clothes, and with the cap lowered, the top half of her face is in shadow. It’s not perfect-you don’t want to go too far the other way so that someone thinks “why’s a beauty like her wearing dumpy clothes?”-but it’ll do for now.
Archie’s office is in an old aluminum manufacturing plant on Harrison. Risina, Smoke, and I sit in a conference room, a stack of files on a long wooden table.
“This is everything, Smoke?”
“All the files in the last six months, plus a few Archie was putting together.”
“Okay, each of us takes a third. Sing out if you read anything that jumps out at you.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know. We’re tracking breadcrumbs looking for red flags. I don’t know why someone wants to find me, so we have to work off the assumption that Archie’s abduction is a factor. There are plenty of ways to try to find someone, but they chose to rough up Archie, which makes me think there’s a personal connection between the kidnapper and him. Maybe it has something to do with a hit he fenced, and usually these types of things are immediate, so I thought we’d narrow it down to the last six months. He keeps thick files. Just look for anything that… anything that looks abnormal. That’s the best I can think of to do to get started.”
Risina nods as Smoke divides the folders and slides her a stack. If she’s surprised by the amount of professional killings contracted in the last six months just by this one fence, she doesn’t show it. I think I know why. Here is something she can relate to, something in which she excels: literature. She opens the first file and burrows into it like a mole. I watch for a moment, thinking about that first time I saw her on the Via Poli in Rome, surrounded by all those austere books. This is a different kind of reading-a long way from Dickens and Walpole and Dante-but compelling just the same. After a moment of watching her, I pull a file off the top of my stack and get to work.
The first few files are typical assignments: eight-week jobs in various corners of the country. One shooter was assigned to each, and the jobs were all completed on time. Nothing remarkable about the marks: a lawyer, a construction contractor, a horse jockey. Guys who had no idea death was coming for them until the moment their bells were rung.
The fourth file is interesting. Archibald used one of his contract killers-a woman named Carla-to settle an old personal score back in Boston. Archie took down a rival fence who had set him up on an aiding and abetting charge.
“Tell me about Carla?” I say to Smoke.
Smoke shrugs. “Dumpy woman. Nothing special. Archie borrowed her from another fence, wasn’t in his regular stable. I don’t think she worked much. Burned out or got burned or something.”
“You ever meet her?”
“I did. On that job you’re holding now. She needed a scrounger to get her a bunch of equipment, and I helped facilitate.”
“What’s a scrounger?” Risina asks.
“A fella who gets you any props you need while working a job-a delivery truck, a uniform, a wheelchair, an ID badge…”
“Weapons?”
Smoke shakes his head. “Your fence’ll supply those.”
“Yeah, scroungers are mainly for everyday things. They get paid well to work quietly and quickly.” Then, to Smoke, “What was your vibe off Carla?”
Smoke shrugs. “Not much to look at. Had a dog-face if you want me to get specific. Not sure what breed, but definitely canine. She didn’t say much either, all business. A little jumpy, to tell you the truth. Why? What’s in the file?”
“Nothing… just… a personal gig for Archie. File says it went down the way it was supposed to go down. It shouldn’t be suspicious; but if I were looking for a reason to kidnap a fence, I’d start with the jobs he instigated himself. I might want to talk to this Carla.”
“Archie didn’t have a problem with her. Like I said… that was the only time he used her.”
“Okay.”
I set the file aside and plow into the next one. An hour goes by with no further anomalies, no red flags waving at me. Shaky clients called off a few hits before the assassinations took place, but this is not uncommon. Clients buckle under the weight of what they’ve set into motion, and they’ll pay extra to cancel the order, trying to salvage their conscience, afraid to wake up with blood on their hands. Fences can make a pretty good business on canceled hits.
I just open the last file in my stack-the execution of a pit boss at Harrah’s Casino in Joliet-when Risina speaks up.
“I think I found something.”
And she did.
It’s rare, but occasionally in this business there are incomplete hits. Not canceled hits… incomplete ones. An assassin might get killed while on the job, or the mark goes into hiding and just can’t be found, or the police or FBI catch wind and sting the bagman in the act. The fence is forced into an awkward position; he has to turn the money back over to the client, which is a substantial sum, half of which, subtracting his fees, he paid to the hit man on commencement of the assignment. So personally he’s on the hook for the total, unless he can barter with his hired gun to return a portion of the commencement fee. If his hired gun is alive and not in jail, that is. Worse, the fence takes a shot to his reputation by failing to execute the assignment. Clients get jumpy, rival fences swoop in like vultures to fill the void. A few dings like that, and the contracts dry up.
Four months ago, Archie put a file together on a Kansas City man named Rich Bacino. This is the file Risina found, the file I’m absorbing now. On the surface, it doesn’t look like a difficult kill. Rich started an internet software company in the boom of the nineties and was prescient enough to sell it before the bust of the aught-years. He netted eighty million dollars before he turned forty. A bachelor, he bought up properties on both coasts and added an apartment in Paris. He spent a little money on the usual accoutrements of the rich: cars, boats, real estate. But Rich saved the majority of his cash for a newfound passion.
Rich started collecting.
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of marks involved with an assortment of illegal activities. I’ve killed crime bosses, money launderers, numbers runners, low-level bagmen. I’ve killed corrupt politicians or judges taking bribes on the side. I’ve hit businessmen with mistresses and Sunday school teachers who were buried in gambling debts. I’ve also come across a few assholes involved in illegal collecting: kiddie porn or Nazi memorabilia or stolen art. You dabble with that stuff, it’s just a matter of time before a guy like me shows up on your doorstep. You sit in slime long enough, you make enemies and you get dropped.
But Rich’s collection is a first.
Rich Bacino collects skulls.
He has over fifty, all famous people, all acquired after the bodies were laid to rest without the heirs or families knowing about the exhumation. DNA tests and documentation prove their authenticity, though very few people will ever see the paperwork to confirm it. Collections like this aren’t gathered for display; it’s hard to describe, but they’re built on a perverse sense of getting over on everyone else. It’s like Poe’s telltale heart beating underneath the floorboards while the constable stands obliviously above it-except instead of driving the collector mad, the beating, the knowing excites him. While his friends, family, and acquaintances visit in his living room, they have no idea that the skulls of say, Ronald Reagan or Jeffrey Dahmer or Gianni Versace are stored in the basement beneath them. It’s a big secret fuck-you to everyone, an “I’m more powerful than you’ll ever know” high.
Exactly how much he pays for the skulls, I have no idea. Archie estimates millions of dollars exchange hands for each purchase. The more famous the person, the more public the grave, the higher the price.
So Rich either crossed someone he shouldn’t have, or someone’s loved ones found out about his hobby, because a price tag was put on his skull. Archie was hired to facilitate the kill, which was an eight-week job assigned ten weeks ago. And yet, Rich Bacino is still alive.
The bagman assigned to kill him was a native Chicagoan named Flagler. Next to his name, Archie had written a single word in red ink.
Missing.
I don’t know if this odd file has anything to do with the abduction of Archie or the note asking to bring me home, but it’s an unresolved issue in Archie’s professional life, and it seems like a good place to start.