Risina and I are eating burgers at Blackie’s on South Clark. The joint has been here for most of a century, and in a town that knows how to cook meat, it’s a standout.
Smoke settles in across from us in the booth, looking a bit twitchy.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m just not good at this, is all.”
“You did solid work on the security guard.”
Smoke shakes his head. “That was a piece of pumpkin pie. This.. I don’t know if I helped much. I wish Archie were here.” He takes out a file and slides it furtively across the table.
I put my hands on top of the manila envelope but don’t open it, just level my gaze at Smoke. “Give me the highlights.”
“Well, looks like we’ve used Flagler twice before this job, but Archie didn’t know him too well. Like that Carla you mentioned, he wasn’t in the regular stable. He came on a rec from an East Coast fence named Talbott.”
“That who you talked to?”
“That’s who I tried to talk to. He gave me the Heisman.” Smoke strikes the trophy pose before dropping his hands back to his lap.
“You gotta work him…”
“I don’t have the tongue Archie has… you’ve seen that.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short.”
“Man, I don’t know.”
Risina pulls the file out from under my hands and starts skimming it. “There’s a lot of solid information here, Smoke.”
Smoke shrugs, his eyes downcast. “I need a cigarette. Excuse me.” He climbs out of the booth and heads for the exit.
Risina starts to read the first page in the file, then stops. “You don’t think Smoke…?” She pauses, trying to figure out the best way to say it. “You don’t think someone maybe got to Smoke, do you? Or that he’s been involved from the get-go? I mean, this note says to bring you to Chicago, and here you sit.”
I shake my head. “I think he needs to find his footing. Gain some confidence. This job is… it’s not for everyone. It’s one thing to watch Archie put files together, another to get out and beat the streets all by your lonesome. I’m sure I rattled him in that alley in Manila. Maybe he’s putting one toe in the pool and finding out the water’s a little too deep. Being a fence is a lot harder than it looks. Psychologically, I mean.”
“Hmmm.” Risina goes back to reading, her eyes floating over the page. I like the way she’s thinking now, even if I don’t agree with her. She’s starting to engage her intuition, a weapon as important to a hit man as his gun. She’s asking the right questions, at least.
After a moment, Smoke returns to the booth, smelling like his namesake. “Sorry ’bout that. I tried to quit smoking once, but that didn’t work out for me. Anyway, while I was out there I was thinking there was a nugget I found in this Flagler file that stuck with me. It’s in there and you’ll come across it, but I’ll tell you anyway. This cat didn’t pick up his money himself. Both times, the commencement pay and the completion-he gave instructions where to drop it. Now, most of Archie’s regular guys on the payroll, Archie pays ’em direct. They’re tight, you know? They’re… like I said before.. ”
“In the stable.”
“Yeah. Not this guy.”
“You know where the drop-off was?”
“Yep. I took the duffel myself. Trailer park goes by ‘Little Arizona’ near the Indiana border.”
“And you handed it to him?”
“No, that’s the thing. I never met him.”
Smoke’s file gave me part of Flagler’s story, but it had holes in it big enough to drop a body through. He started as a bagman in Maryland, Virginia, and DC, and stayed mostly in that area up until about a year ago. Smoke didn’t know what he looked like… and if Archie did, he didn’t put it in his file. Archie was good about keeping notes on all his contractors, but for some reason, hadn’t gotten around to recording much on Flagler. Smoke was sure Flagler wasn’t his real name, but didn’t know where, when, or why he chose it.
There was scant information regarding the jobs he’d worked on the East Coast, just that he had a fence named Spellman who died of colon cancer, allowing Flagler to become a free agent. He must’ve pulled a few jobs for the other fence named Talbott, who gave the recommendation to Archie, but like Smoke said, Talbott wasn’t talking.
What Smoke did find were details on the two jobs he pulled for Archie prior to the one that went sour.
The first was the owner of a bar in Minneapolis, a sixty-year-old lothario. From the file Archie cobbled, the man was juggling six different women in various parts of the city. Three of them were married. I have no idea who ordered the killing: a jealous woman or a cuckolded husband, but the barkeep’s Don Juan lifestyle caught up with him. He was shot in his car at one-fifteen in the morning after he closed down the bar and put his key in the ignition of his Cadillac. Robbery was the police department’s initial suspicion; the safe inside the bar’s back office was open and empty. But as details of the bar owner’s social life emerged, the police shifted their attention to his spate of lovers. A dozen people were brought in for questioning, but all the suspects seemed to have strong alibis. The case remains unsolved and open.
The second assignment was a bit of a high-profile case. It involved the violent death of a professional athlete. Again, Flagler used the robbery angle to throw the police off the scent. This is not an uncommon tactic; hired killers have been utilizing it for centuries. Make it look like a petty theft gone wrong and the cops will spin their wheels for weeks, staking out pawnshops and flea markets, trying to find the killer by tracking what was stolen. All the while, the trail grows as cold as a frozen pond. Robberies are supposed to be about money; the goods have to be fenced at some point. So nothing drives a detective more insane than when the stolen items simply vanish.
In this case, the athlete was a cornerback for the Bears, a guy who mostly worked on the punt and kick-off teams, but occasionally made it on to the field in nickel packages or long-yardage situations. He was in his sixth year in the league, and hadn’t made a fortune, but had done all right for himself. He lived in a decent-sized house in Cabrini and was into guns, amassing dozens of handguns and rifles.
He was shot in the foyer of his house, just inside his front door, while wearing a bathrobe. He lived alone and his body wasn’t discovered until he missed his second day of practice. Most of the athlete’s weapon collection had been stolen from the home, and the police went the robbery/homicide route.
The cops staked out gun shows and various shops around the city, but none of the weapons ever surfaced. Flagler was smart enough to bury them in the woods or drop them in the bottom of a lake, making the stolen guns a trail that would only lead to frustration. Half of a bagman’s job is to escape cleanly after a mark is hit. A good killer’s best weapon against the police is to behave illogically.
Contract killers know how homicide cops think. They want to keep their “closed” case percentages up, and nine out of ten murderers are handed to them on a silver platter. A boyfriend kills his lover. A husband kills his wife. A drug dealer pops his rival. A couple of days of work, someone cracks, someone steps forward, and the homicide is solved. Case closed. A contract killer has no personal connection to the victim, and if he’s good, he makes it look like the intention of the killing is something it’s not. When the case goes infuriatingly cold, it’s human nature for a homicide detective to move on to greener pastures.
Despite Smoke’s misgivings, he had given me quite a bit to go on; in fact, Flagler’s modus operandi helped fill in the blanks on why he went missing.
Flagler was contracted to kill a man who owned a strange, expensive collection of human skulls. I think Flagler finally found something worth stealing he didn’t want to bury.
Little Arizona is located in Hegewisch, smack between Powder Horn and Wolf lakes, on top of an old landfill near the Indiana border. For being so near the city, it’s a rural lifestyle, where fishermen can reel in a blue gill or a carp, and hunters can legally bag birds seeking a drink as they migrate south. For a trailer park and despite the occasional meth head, it’s not a bad life.
I left Risina and Smoke back in the city to do further research on Flagler, to see if the two of them could sift through the silt of Archie’s files and pan out any more gold. Risina was content to examine more of Archie’s work, and didn’t protest when I told her I’d like to make the run to the drop site alone. I have an ulterior motive for leaving her behind though: this is the first time I believe I might head into some violence, and I don’t want to expose her. Not yet. Whether or not the violence is going to be directed toward me or dispensed by me doesn’t make a difference.
The park is quiet and the plots for the trailers are spread out wider and more haphazard than I imagined, like someone dropped a box of matches and just left the sticks to lie as they fell. A black curtain of clouds is gathering in the north and heading this way, and I’d like to scope out the site and uncover any salient information before the skies open. Rain, so often thought of as a blessing, a life-giver, the washer of sins, is no friend to a hit man. It causes fingers to slip, vision to blur, and muddy ground to hold shoe prints in clear relief. Best to get in and get out before any complications.
Smoke had dropped Flagler’s money off at the white and green pre-fabricated home in plot number 73. He said that both times, a middle-aged woman answered the door, took the duffel bag, and closed it in his face without saying a word. It’s odd for Flagler to use such a method for receiving his kill fees… if he didn’t want to collect his money himself, why use an immobile-rather than a fluid-location? Why use the same drop site twice?
When a lion is looking for a kill without having to expend too much energy, he follows the hyenas.
I knock on the door and paste a pleasant smile on my face, ready for the inevitable glance out the nearby window. After a moment, the door opens, and the middle-aged woman Smoke described grimaces down at me. She has meaty arms and a fleshy face, but with a layer of hungry menace in her eyes, like an alley cat who has found a home and no longer has to fight for its daily meal, but still keeps its fur up all the same.
“What’choo want?”
“Flagler.”
Her eyes flash for only a moment and then she leans into the frame, looking down at me. “You ain’t gonna buy it when I tell you I don’t know no Flagler?”
I shake my head.
“I figgered. What’choo want with him?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Well, if you find him, tell him I’m looking for him too. I haven’t seen him in months.”
“How do you know him?”
“How does anyone know anyone?”
“You have a picture of him?”
“Wouldn’t that be something. No…”
“All right then.” I start to leave, waiting for her to make the next move. Before I get ten steps from the door…
“You sure you jes’ want to talk?”
I turn. “Well, I have something for him, but I’d like to give it to him myself.”
“What?”
“None of your business, ma’am.”
“Money?”
I let her digest my hesitation. “That’s between me and Flagler. If you see him, tell him I’m staying at the South Shore Inn on South Brainerd.”
I head for my car and make a show of driving off.
Less than ten minutes later, she is in an old Celica hatchback that looks like it might roll over and die at any minute. She speeds out of the trailer park, tires throwing up dirt and gravel as she maneuvers on to the highway that cuts around the lake. The car is painted white and stands out nicely against the blacktop. Even as the rain hits, I can track it as easily as an elephant in short grass.
I settle in, not sure how far she’s going to drive. She isn’t making any evasive maneuvers, happy to roll down the highway like a homing beacon. I’m content to follow the hyena.
Forty-five minutes on the road and her blinker glows red as she exits into Edison Park, not far from O’Hare. Killers often live within a stone’s throw of an airport, not just for convenience while on a job but for escape when things grow uncomfortable.
She parks in front of a hardware store, lumbers out of the Celica and hurries inside. I wait for a moment, gnawing on my lower lip. I thought she was going to break for his residence, so this detour to a retail shop has thrown me off. Does Flagler work here? Or more likely, own the place? Or is it a front for something else?
Five minutes have gone by and no sign of the hyena. I’m just going to have to go in after her. I’m starting to feel like the tables have flipped, and maybe I’m not the predator but the prey. Damn it, she just wasn’t smart enough to pull it off, to bait me into the spider’s web, was she? So why am I climbing out of my car now, exposed to the rain, heading toward the stand-alone store with the red awning marked, “Wayne’s Hardware”? Why am I in Chicago anyway, the moment someone puts my name in a note? If I’ve lost a step, I’m going to pay for it.
As I move quickly across the street, a new thought bangs around inside my head: I’m glad Risina isn’t here.
And that’s the crux of what has been dogging me since we left Manila. I’m glad Risina isn’t here.
Can I do what I do and protect her? This moment, this situation reinforces that interrogative like the question mark at the end of the sentence. Should I force her to see it my way and explain it doesn’t have to be the end for us? I know I’m not going to watch her die and I know I’m not going to leave her unprotected if something should happen to me. Not even a week into this assignment-I’m already thinking of it as an assignment, even if this is a rescue operation instead of killing someone-and the folly of the two of us working this as a tandem sweep starts to appear like cracks in a foundation. The question looms: is it better to recognize that folly now than to stand face to face with the ramifications under worse conditions?
Focus. Fuck. The hardware store has display windows in the front, the kind that let shoppers know of sale items but don’t offer a view into the store. I quickly check the sides and the back but no windows. Only a gated rear door and a rolling receivables dock allow access into the place from the back alley. The neighborhood isn’t the friendliest in Chicago and the proprietor has gone out of his way to make his shop impenetrable after hours. I guess I’m just going to have to waltz in the front goddamn door.
From the best I can gauge, the entire store is maybe three thousand square feet, but I don’t know if it has low shelves so you can see across the length of it, or high shelves like a maze, or if the cash register is in the front or the back or how many workers or customers or… goddammit, I’m just going to have to play it like it lies, get my head on a swivel, keep my eyes peeled, and be ready.
I keep my gun tucked into my back since it’s raining and I don’t know if I’m walking into a store full of customers or a fortress full of killers, but my hand is at my hip and ready.
I throw open the door and nearly bump into the hyena before I can take one step inside the store. The woman gets a panicked look on her face and bellows, “He’s here!” a split second before I wallop her in the side of the head, dropping her like a stone, but her warning’s enough, and whatever element of surprise I had evaporated with that shout like boiled water.
My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the light and I hear the distinctive rack and eruption of a shotgun, a thick BOOM, BOOM. I jerk my head straight down on instinct and paint cans explode in the spot I vacated.
A double-barrel can be effective at close range but not from forty feet and it’s a bitch of a gun to reload, and so I charge in the direction from which the cartridges were fired, my Glock leading the way, hoping I can stop him before he cocks the weapon again, and as I dash up the aisle, I just barely catch a flash of a red shirt barreling toward me, closing the distance, both of us with the same idea in mind. Before I can brace myself, he drives into me like a bull, sweeping me off my feet. We collide into a three-tiered shelf filled with paintbrushes, toppling it on top of us. I don’t know where my gun went but it’s not in my hand.
Even though the hyena came to warn him, I must’ve caught Flagler off-guard, unprepared, because his only line of defense was a shotgun and once both barrels fired, he resorted to grappling. I’m guessing she fed him the bit about someone with money asking around for him, someone who was staying at a motel nearby, and instead of realizing she’d led him right to me, he prepared to go on the offensive. Maybe I should have let that happen, played possum, rope-a-dope. Maybe that would’ve been better than lying on my back unarmed in an aisle of scattered paintbrushes.
He must’ve been taught somewhere how to street-fight. Before I gain my bearings, he goes right for my eyes, clawing with his fingers, trying to rake my lids with his nails, and when I move my arms up to block him, he immediately switches tactics, heads south and tries to pound my groin.
With all that time in a juvey home, I’ve learned a few dirty tricks myself, and flip my hips before he can land a sapping blow. Undaunted, he leaps up and off me. The high ground is always a good position to take, so I’m expecting him to try to stomp down on me but the blows don’t come and when I look up, he’s taking off for a different aisle.
As quickly as I can, I find my feet and sprint after him. Whatever he’s going for, whatever he has stashed in this store, a hardware store for Chris’sakes, can’t be good. The hyena is making mewing noises near the front door and if any customers with cell phones decide to come shopping right now, it won’t be long until the cops are right behind them. I’m hoping the rain will keep them at bay. Who wants to look for lightbulbs and wingnuts in this shit?
I spot Flagler halfway down an aisle, and when he turns to face me, he’s two-fisting a sledgehammer, the old fashioned kind with a steel mallet attached to the end of a hickory stick. I set my feet and prepare for the inevitable rush.
Before he makes his move, though, he wants to talk.
“What do you want?”
“Whatever you took.”
This causes a genuinely puzzled look to spring to his face. “What’re you talking about?”
“Rich Bacino. You were supposed to kill him but you didn’t.”
His eyes flit now, like he’s trying to calculate my play.
“What’s it to you?”
“I think you took something from him instead. I think he either bought you off or you stole something out from under him. That’s your play, take some shit so the cops think it’s a robbery. Only this time, you took something worth a lot. And Bacino wants it back.”
“I don’t…”
“Whose skull did you steal?”
His eyes narrow. My question landed. I can see it working out in his brain: does he try to deny it or just charge me?
The latter wins out and he raises the sledgehammer like a baseball bat, rushes in and swings in an upward arc, a homerun swing, a golf swing, aiming for my head. I duck backward and the mallet catches the shelf to my right, knocking it down and only too late do I realize this was also part of his feint. He released the tool as soon as he swung it, never really intending to catch me with it, and instead bum-rushes me while I’m still spilling backward, off-balance.
This time he crouches low and drives his shoulder into my sternum, lifting me off my feet so I can gain no traction before he pile-drives me into the cement floor.
Flagler is better than I thought, a professional hit man who is strong even without a gun in his mitts. He knows how to work over a body, knows how to get his knuckles bloody, and as I absorb the blow and try to keep air in my lungs, I start to think maybe I’m going to lose this fight, maybe he’s better than I am. Maybe after all this time, it won’t be a gun that brings me down but a brawl. I lost a few steps in my layoff and a man who never left the game is knocking more than my rust off.
He’s hammering my ribs with his fists and I can’t take much more before my wind is gone and then both of us hear the rack of a gun’s chamber, my gun, and I twist my head to see the hyena, pointing the gun our way, terrified, out of her element, about to squeeze the trigger, trying to plug me while I’m on my back and compromised.
It’s the distraction I’m looking for. I buck Flagler up as the hyena closes her eyes and squeezes the trigger and the gunshot is ear-splittingly loud as it echoes off the cement floor. The bullet catches Flagler in the upper arm, sending him sprawling. An amateur firing a Glock almost always hits a spot a couple of feet above the intended target as the pistol’s kick is much stronger than anticipated.
She opens her eyes and her face blanches as she realizes what she’s done. Before she can correct her mistake, I kick her legs out from under her, take the gun right out of her hands as she tumbles on to her back, and then drive an elbow into her nose, popping it and punching her lights out a second time. That crack should keep her down for a while.
Flagler does what I would have done… he tries to scramble away. I catch him easily and drive a fist right into the wound, and as he bites on that pain, his hand comes up in a feeble attempt to cover the bullet hole. I drive a second punch into his fingers, through his fingers, and he sprawls out on the floor, submissively throwing his hands up like a white flag.
After I do a quick search to make sure he doesn’t have any blades stashed in his clothing, I move to the front door, flip the “closed” sign around and lock it. We’re going to have a longer conversation now, and I’m reluctant to share it with any new arrivals.
Flagler lives above the hardware store. It’s a bizarre front for a professional hit man. Most killers prefer to deal with the public as little as possible, but here’s this guy, welcoming them in and selling them circular saws and ceiling fans.
“My pop owned this place for forty-two years,” he offers by way of explanation. “He left it to me when he croaked and I figured what the hell, I’ll keep it open. He was a decent dude. Never did me wrong. She does more business than you’d think. Got to where I was only taking one or two contract gigs a year after I moved back. Should’ve just quit the game entirely. I definitely thought about it.”
“Who’s the drop girl? The one who shot you downstairs?” I didn’t really care, but I liked the way he was Mr. Chatty all of a sudden.
“My aunt Elaine. Elaine McCoy. I used to call her the Real McCoy because she always kept it real with me, you know? You didn’t end her, did you?”
This guy. I shake my head once. “Hogtied on aisle six.”
“The rope aisle.”
“Yep.”
He nods, “Thanks for that. She knows what I do, and she knows she’s in it, but still, it would’ve been a shame.”
“Where’s the skull?”
“You gonna shoot me after I tell you? I don’t care much, I’d just like to know if it’s coming so I can get my mind right.”
I shake my head again. If he’s relieved, he doesn’t show it. If he doesn’t believe me, he doesn’t show it either.
“There’s a floor safe under the lamp there. Combo’s 24-34-24.”
I look over in the direction he indicated. “You open the safe, fish out the skull and give it to me. Afterward, you can call whatever doctor you use and get ’im over here. I wasn’t hired to kill you, so I’m not going to do any pro bono work. I just need the skull.”
He walks stiffly over to a straight black floor lamp near a television. Using his good hand, he rolls it along its base and exposes a recessed safe before he stoops over the lock. His face is white from the bullet wound; sweat has broken through and drips off his forehead. He forces himself to concentrate as he twists the dial on the safe’s face, and then exhales when the door pops open.
I put the barrel of my pistol up against the middle of his back as he reaches inside with both hands. In movies, guns at close range are always pointed at victim’s heads, but the head is the easiest part of the body to jerk suddenly, like I did when I heard the shotgun cock downstairs. But the middle of the back? The middle of the back is damn near impossible to spin out of the way in the time it takes for a skilled gunman to squeeze a trigger.
He doesn’t flinch as he withdraws a bone-white human cranium from the safe and hands it to me.
“You gonna ask me whose skull it is?”
“I’m gonna ask you something else.”
“Yeah?”
“What would’ve happened if I would’ve dialed 24-34-24 into the safe like you told me?”
He swallows. His face blanches as white as the skull bones.
“I…”
“You told me 24-34-24. But when you popped open the safe just now, the combination you used was 10-20-10.”
He smiles weakly. “You caught that?”
“Yeah. I have good eyes. Could’ve been a fighter pilot.”
He shrugs. “It… uh… it would’ve blown up in your face.”
“I figured.”
“Does that mean…”
I fire into his back twice, through his skin and into his heart. He flops forward, dead before he can finish the sentence.
I wasn’t lying when I told Flagler I wouldn’t kill him. But attempting to trick me into tripping a bomb puts a foot on the throat of my mercy.