Accidents don’t exist in this business. A hit man dies, a fence goes missing, a mark wanders off the side of a building on his way to plummeting ten stories: none of this is surreptitious. This trade places a premium on precise planning, on exacting detail, and if a player has his ticket punched, more likely than not, a malevolent hand, not an act of God, is behind it.
The wind has grown belligerent throughout the day, racing around corners and smacking pedestrians in the face like a schoolyard bully. The sun is nothing more than a condemned man held in chains by a wall of dark gray clouds. The sky might rain, or it might just threaten the act, as though it gets some sort of twisted pleasure out of withholding the information. Every now and then, Chicago, as a city, likes to rise up and remind its citizens she won’t be pushed to the background, she won’t blend in behind them, she’s a leading character in their life story and they’d be wise not to forget it.
The three of us, Smoke, Risina, and I, hurry under the scaffolding of some Gold Coast remodeling project and head toward a simple eatery named the Third Coast Cafe. “Pardon our progress” signs have spread across the city like kudzu. Everywhere I look, another building constructed in the late-19th century aftermath of the Great Fire is in the middle of a facelift. After the housing crash, all those construction workers had to find something to do with their time, so the city funneled stimulus dollars into the hands of no-bid general contractors. Of course, it wouldn’t be Chicago if evidence of kickbacks and greased palms hadn’t already been hinted at by the Times.
The workers swarm the scaffolding like wasps, the wind only a nuisance. They raise equipment, bang away at walls, scrape, sand, and plaster, ignoring the weather. I guess anything becomes routine if you do it long enough.
The restaurant is half-full this time of day and customers hunch over coffee and pieces of pie, reluctant to give up their table and head back out into the wind. We slide into a booth in the back corner and order some food. Smoke’s nervousness has reached a new apex; his leg shakes up and down like a piston.
“We’re in a jam now,” he says. “We’re up against it.”
“Yeah, we’re at square zero. We haven’t even reached square one. The skull collector was an anomaly in Archie’s files, but not the one who nabbed him or wanted me.”
“We chased the wrong dog up the wrong tree.”
“I suppose we could take a look at the file again, see if we can figure out who the client was, see if he’s upset the mark is still alive.”
“Seems like it wouldn’t have nothing to do with you, though?” He’s asking more than he’s telling. He has a point, but his fidgeting grows even more exaggerated.
“What aren’t you telling me, Smoke?”
When Smoke looks up, I can’t tell if he’s surprised by my question or if I caught him by being direct. He swallows and wipes his mouth with his napkin. He looks to Risina for help, but she gives him a hard stare I didn’t know she had in her. I’ll admit it’s disconcerting, coming from her. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that look.
“What’d’you mean?”
“You’ve grown more fidgety than a prisoner walking toward the hangman.”
“I told you, I’m nervous ’bout this whole thing.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“You know…” he tosses his napkin down on the table, then points his finger at me, “this is exactly what I was worried about. Exactly. ”
“What’re you worried about, Smoke?”
His finger hasn’t left the air. “This! You turning on me, everyone looking at me like I had something to do with Archie disappearing. You think the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw that ransom note wasn’t ‘uh-oh, you stepped in it now, Smoke?’ I’ve been scared shitless since he was taken, and I could’ve run a thousand times. Hell, I didn’t even have to come find you; I could’ve just caught the first bus to Frisco and forgot the whole damn thing. But I did because Archie said if he were ever in a pinch that’s what I was supposed to do.”
His eyes focus, like he just now realizes his finger is jabbing the air toward me, that his voice is growing louder. He lowers his finger but doesn’t lower his eyes.
“Let me tell you something about Archie and me. You won’t understand this and I don’t care if you do, but this is the truth and if that’s a sound you’ve heard before then you’ll recognize it now.
“I was twenty-eight years old before anyone believed in me. My whole life was spent with people telling me I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t solid enough, you know what I’m saying? My mom thought I looked like my father and never forgave me for that, even when I apologized. Can you imagine? Apologizing to your mom for the way you look? And all you get for it is your mother trying to beat your father’s face off your neck.
“School stopped for me when I was fifteen. Just walked away and didn’t go back. You think there were officers out there checking to see where I was? You think the school board or the principal or the teachers came around asking, ‘why isn’t Leonard in school?’ Let me let you in on a little secret: they don’t care. No one gives a shit. Just one more drop-out, one more black boy out of our hallways, out of our detention hall, and good riddance.
“My first arrest was for boosting a car. I’d love to tell you a story about how some buddy of mine talked me into it, or how I wasn’t going to do nothing but drive that car around and forget my life for a few hours, but that’d be a lie and you’re here for the truth. The truth was I knew that Cam’s Motorshop out by the airport would pay a couple thousand to strip down Hondas with no questions asked and that’s where I was heading when I got stung. I wanted the money, plain and simple. I turned eighteen exactly three days before my arrest so I did a hundred days at Cook County instead of juvey. That was about as much fun as a punch in the dick. I’m sure you’ve seen your share of hellholes but you have no idea. You have no fucking idea, I assure you.
“The second time I got picked up was across state lines. I had grown pretty skillful at jacking cars by then and I had a regular thing going with six or seven chop shops all over Chicago. This one cat named Holmes I worked with a few times asked if I could drive a hot Nissan over to Boston where his brother Todd had a shop and drive back some other wheels to Indy. Said he’d pay five gees for the trouble and that cash sounded pretty damn good to me. I don’t know what I was aiming to buy at the time, but I remember that the money would set me straight for a while. Needless to say, I saw the bubble lights go up behind me just crossing into Massachusetts, and I panicked, ended up with a helicopter spotlight over my head, six cruisers, and a set of those spikes stretched across the road to take me down to the rims. It was like a Hollywood movie except missing the ending where the good guy gets away. Or maybe I wasn’t the good guy, come to think of it.
“Anyway, state lines is state lines and I ended up in Federal without a friend in the world. I tried to call Holmes and I’ll be damned if the number done changed. I was staring three years in the face and the Fed House meant organized crime and drug traffickers and El Salvadoran gangs and Aryan brotherhoods and a whole mess of hard cases who wouldn’t think twice about putting your insides on the outside of you if you know what I’m saying.
“The second day I’m locked up… the second damn day… I get sucker-punched in the walkway between the chapel and the restrooms. I’m walking along and WHAM! on my back, laid out flat. Didn’t see the fist fly, didn’t see the face, just a blast of pain, blinking white lights, and I’m looking up at the ceiling. I don’t know who hit me or why they hit me or what I had to do to make it right.. no one tells you that shit. Look at me, I’m all of five-ten and skin and bones and I was even thinner back then if you can dig that. No one helped me up and no one told me what the fuck I was supposed to do to keep from getting jawboned again.
“When I went to get my meal that afternoon, I saw some of the prisoners snickering at me and my fat lip and my purple cheek but I just ignored them best I could and sat down at one of the tables they had scattered in the cafeteria.
“That’s where Archibald Grant found me, busted lip and busted flat, eating a dry hamburger in the cafeteria at Lewisburg. He asked me my name and he asked me my story and I don’t know why I let everything out, but like I’m doing here, I did for him there. The words just poured out of me like water out of a busted bucket. I told him where I came from, where I’d been and why I was stuck up inside there.
“He looked at me, smiling that half smile of his, the way he does, you know, and didn’t say nothing for a while. Then, he nodded like he’d known my story before I told it and he said I’d been stealing the wrong things. Cars, electronics, wallets, knicks and knacks, this place was full of people who boosted the wrong shit. Boosted it because they didn’t know better. All that crap could only get you a little cash and what was the point in that? Risk versus reward was all upside down. Five thousand dollars worth five years in lockdown? In Federal? With these animals? Hell no. No fucking way.”
Smoke shakes his head vigorously, then swallows hard. He doesn’t look at us, lost in his story, as he continues.
“Archie folded his hands and lowered his voice. He said what he stole, the only thing worth stealing, was information. He said there was no greater commodity in the world. He said people laid down their lives for it since the dawn of man and they did it for good reason. Told me he stole information on the outside and he’d been stealing it on the inside, riding out his two-year term in comfort and security until he could resume business on the other side of the wall. Said he got thrown in here on purpose anyway, and though that claim had just the slightest ring of bullshit to it, I bought it like a fifty-cent bottle of beer. Looking back now, I’ll just bet he did get himself thrown in there for whatever reason made sense at the time.”
I remember that time. My old fence Pooley went to visit Archie in that prison, and commented how he couldn’t get to him to put a scare in him, get the information I needed at the time. Maybe Archie was in there to avoid my reach back then. It doesn’t matter… I keep my mouth shut and listen to Smoke unfold his story.
“Anyway, I naturally said something along the lines of ‘why you telling me this?’ And he said, ‘nobody ever believed in you, but I see a spark inside you maybe no one else saw before. Maybe it’s buried deep down in there but I can see it.’ Of course I thought he was completely shining me but fuck if those words didn’t sound like honey. Say what you want about Archibald Grant, but he’s got a mouth on him that could sell scissors to a bald man. He told me he knew who waylayed me in the hall outside the chapel and he knew how to take care of that situation so I wouldn’t be bothered again, not even looked at askew the whole time I was behind bars, but I needed to do something for him. ‘Could I do that?’ he asked.
“I didn’t know but I said I’d try. He said ‘good, good.’ Then he nodded to indicate a beefy prison guard standing behind the glass near the exit. ‘See that hack over there what looks like he ate too many dollar specials at the Taco Bell?’”
Smoke stops and laughs to himself. “You know how Archie do.”
I can’t help but smile too, but signal with my hands tumbling over each other for him to get on with it. It doesn’t do either of us any good to think of Archie in the past tense.
“He tells me the guard goes by the name of Nash. Archie says he’s been able to crack the code on most of the hacks but this Nash has been a problem. Says he’s tightlipped and none of the other guards’ll spill on him.
“Now, as you can imagine, most bulls take a handout here or there for favors, but not this Nash. He’s straight as an arrow and there was no chinks in the armor neither. He’s one of those true blue badges you hear about but never expect to see. And those are the dangerous ones. Because nothing can fuck up a connected con’s plans like a hack who won’t play ball. Suddenly, you find yourself transferred to the wrong cellblock, or your pleasantries are confiscated, or you’re eating at the wrong table in the cafeteria or worse. Balance of power is always a precarious thing in life, but in lock-down, it’s hanging by tooth floss, I’ll tell you that.
“Archie looks me over, and says, ‘get me something.’ ‘What’d’you mean, ‘something’? I ask back, and Archie gets that look in his eye he gets time to time that says ‘I’m smarter than you think I am.’ He looks down his nose at me and says, ‘What have we been talking about? Information, Smoke.’ He’s the first one to call me that by the way cause I had this pack of Parliaments I pulled out and lit up in mid-conversation. That’s the one good thing I’ll say about L-burg.. you can smoke inside that damn place. What happened to the world where we kicked all the smokers outdoors? Anyway, Archie keeps on, ‘Anything I can use on Nash to get what needs getting. One week. You find me some A-plus information and all your problems inside this box disappear like bad dreams in the morning light. Consider yourself off-limits for a week… nobody but nobody gonna be in your business, I guarantee that. And don’t forget something, Smoke. I believe in you.’”
Smoke fiddles with his unopened pack, turning the box over and over, occupying his hands. I have a feeling he’d like to pause the tale to step outside and light one up, but telling stories has a way of gaining a foothold on anything else you might want to do, planting its flag until it’s over. He looks up at me.
“So what the fuck was I gonna do? I’m like three days into this shitbox and I’m going to find out information on a hack no one else has been able to procure? A bull with a clean certificate? How the fuck was I gonna do that? But those words were there, Columbus. He said ’em and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean ’em. ‘I believe in you.’ Those words were like, I don’t know, they had weight, man. You believe that?”
I nod and half of Smoke’s mouth turns upward. His eyes start to shine, but he doesn’t wipe at them.
“First thing I did was spend two days doing nothing but watching Nash. Marking his shift changes, seeing how he conducted himself, who he talked to, who he watched, hell, I even counted how many times he scratched his nuts. But there was nothing there. He just stood behind the glass and watched us with dark eyes.
“Now, he wasn’t always behind the glass and that gave me a bit of hope. The bulls took various shifts, sometimes behind the glass, sometimes in the corridor outside the rec room, sometimes walking the block, and sometimes out in the yard.
“I watched him, I watched him, I watched him, and this cat Nash did not give me a goddamn inch. Believe that. I started thinking maybe he’s a robot, like some android out of a space movie. C-3PO or some shit. Cons would try to talk to him and he’d just ignore their shit and give ’em a stare that stopped ’em cold.
“I was five days into my seven and I hadn’t come up with jack squat. Not a plan, nothing. My mind was racing. Maybe I just make up a story and tell it to Archie, but what would that give me? Seemed like I might as well grab a shovel and start digging my own grave out in the yard. But damn if your mind don’t play tricks on you in the box when you start running out of options. And those words were hanging over me the whole time… ‘I believe in you.’ I know it sounds corny as a holiday card, but I wanted that belief to be rewarded, made whole… that’s the only way I can describe it. I wanted to justify his belief. This man I barely knew. Had only spoken to once.
“Then I saw an opening. The slimmest opening possible. An opening that would add some years on my sentence and would put the ‘hard’ into ‘hard time’ if I got caught.
“See, one thing I’ve come to learn about this job is you gotta look at things from a different angle. I was trying to shadow Nash and pick up on a mistake or a flaw or some way to get inside with him, but instead, I should’ve been watching where he wasn’t. I didn’t say that right. Let me explain.
“I noticed that the guards went into a locker room just off of A block when they checked in. Various guards would be in and out of there all day, Nash included. When he came in, he’d be wearing a pair of khakis and an oxford shirt, but when he walked out, he’d be wearing a different pair of pants and the blue dress shirt that all hacks wore, you know? It came to me then and there. I had to get inside that locker room and see if there was any clue, any anything he left behind in his locker when he went out on shift.
“So there it was. All my eggs in that basket. I only had a day left, and how the hell was I gonna get into that locker room? Prisoners weren’t supposed to be out of A block at all, much less in the bullring.”
Smoke holds up one finger and flashes me a smile. “Except one inmate. One guy, that’s it. Little sawed off son-of-a-bitch named George Yackey. The Yack Attack, my ticket in. This con got the sweet gig of shining the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, picking up the dead bugs off the windowsills in the area called ‘A Extension’ but what the cons called ‘the bullring’ cause that’s where the guards went for break and change. Yack was the only orange jumpsuit allowed back there, twice a day, to clean up the ring and make it look nice.
“Now understand, the bullring wasn’t near the perimeter or even on the outskirts of the building, so it wasn’t like you had shotguns trained on you or the hacks would think you were trying to escape if they caught you in there. In a lot of ways, it’d be worse for you, ’cause if you were in the ring unauthorized, the guards would assume you were trying to fuck ’em in some way. Steal from ’em or what-not. And here’s a little fact about serving time no one talks about: if you make a legitimate attempt at escape… if you get caught climbing the side of a wall, or in a tunnel or gripping the undercarriage of a laundry truck as it drives off the site, the hacks don’t beat the shit out of you. Hell, they’re not even sore. They actually show you a little bit of respect. That’s the truth! Don’t ask me why it’s so.. best I can figure, they put themselves in the con’s shoes and say, ‘why the hell wouldn’t I want out of this dungeon any way I can? How’m I gonna blame this poor fool for trying?’ Sure, they’ll throw you in solitary for a month and take away privileges for a year, but when you walk down the block, they’ll give you a nod like ‘not bad, you crazy son-of-a-bitch. Not bad.’
“So if I was trying to escape, I might’ve had a bit of lenience if I was busted. But caught in their area? Caught in the ring? Those bulls’ll go to town on your flesh until they catch bone, I guarantee that. That’s lesson time to them. Gotta teach a lesson, right?
“Anyway, I went to Yackey’s cell and I told him I needed a favor from him. I kept my eyes square and my hands spread like this, so he’d know I was in the askin’ position, not the tellin’ one, you know? He looked me up and down like I was dirt going down the shower room drain. So I made a play I had no idea would take, a play out of desperation, but what was I gonna do? I said, ‘Yack, let me tell you about your future. In the next day I’m going to be on the inside with Archibald Grant, and if you know what that’s worth, then you should climb on my back now. Do me this favor, and we’ll reap the rewards together. But if you choose to cross me, if you tell me to fuck off and go away, then put your money on the ‘don’t pass’ line and we’ll see what happens.’
“He thought about it for a long minute, maybe the longest of his life, certainly was of mine, and then looked up and asked me what I needed. ‘Five minutes of your time tomorrow,’ was my answer.
“I did my best to clean my jumper and shave my face and trim my hair and do everything I could to blend in, not stand out, not give the bulls a single thing that would call attention to myself if they happened to look my way as I approached the barrier between A Block and the bullring. Five minutes, I told myself. Five minutes, in and out, get something, anything out of Nash’s locker and run like hell back to the block.
“Now every day from two to three, that locker room in the bullring was empty. I clocked this for two straight days and this was the only pattern I could find. It had something to do with the rotation or the way they marked their shifts, but not once did a guard enter that locker room between two and three, and point of fact, the entire ring was empty during that time, save for George Yackey and his mop and bucket.
“At 2:15 on the last day, I walked from A block bathroom over to that barrier. Now, Yack Attack told me he’d meet me there at that time, swipe the card, get me inside, and that was that. But I’ll be damned if he wasn’t there.
“Now I’m standing next to the door and if a bull walks out of the cafeteria or out of the gym, I’m going to be looking like a big orange sign saying ‘this fucking con is up to no good.’ And I’m sweating and under my breath I’m cursing ol’ Yack, this passive-aggressive motherfucker who told me what I wanted to hear but really placed his bet on the other side and the sad thing is he was right to do so. By noon tomorrow, I’d be powerless and he’d still have his sweet gig, so why the hell should he do me any favors?
“I’m stewing for a good couple of minutes, trying to figure out my next chess move, knowing that I need to vacate immediately, get the hell away from this barrier and get back to my cell and figure out what the hell I was gonna do in the next ten hours to get my ass out of this spot, and then I see the door to the locker room open inside the bullring and Yack shuffles out and heads to the barrier and opens the door to let me inside.
“He mutters something about wanting to make sure the coast was clear and for me to get the hell on with it, and if I don’t start moving instead of gawking in the passageway, he’s gonna slam the barrier back in my face.
“I move like a jackrabbit, into the bullring, one, two, three steps and I’m through the locker room door, my heart beating so hard I can feel it in my throat, and there I was feeling as exposed and vulnerable as a naked baby.
“The locker room was pretty much what’d you’d imagine, sort of in the shape of a domino, two rooms really, a half partition in the middle, with rows of lockers along each wall and wooden benches in the center so the bulls could change their socks or whatever needed changing.
“The clock in my head was already ticking as I stood dumbfounded in that off-limits room, and it hit me that I didn’t know which fucking locker was Nash’s. What the hell was I thinking? Walking in here blind like this. I moved around the front room looking for a clue, but all the lockers were the same, just steel outsides, shiny and clean, no tape or nothing marking whose was which. Fuck me, my head was telling me to just bail out now, slip back outside and through the barrier before I catch a beat-down the likes from which men don’t come back normal, but my feet kept moving me on. I was between a rock and a bigger rock, I’ll tell you that.
“So my feet walk me into the back part of the room, and there it is, a mop set right up against one particular locker. Yack Attack, who had no reason to do me any favors other than knowing I’d owe him if I did in fact find myself riding high after this, played me an ace. I moved the mop out of the way and even though the locker was locked, I slipped it open as easy as eating cake. I had one set of skills coming into this place and this baby lock wasn’t going to stymie a man who knew his way around opening things up that needed opening.
“I get the locker unlocked and it makes more noise than I mean to make because I’m so fucking jumpy and my hands are a little sweat-soaked I have to admit, and I let the door slip and it bangs against the locker next to it. I hold my breath but no one comes a-calling, and I’m staring inside at his clothes, those same clothes I saw him come in with: a pair of khaki pants, neatly folded on a hanger, hanging next to a red striped oxford shirt and a blue blazer. Down in the bottom of the locker sit a pair of brown Cole Haan loafers. That’s it. That’s what I’ve risked my hide for… a set of clothes and nothing else.
“I fish through the pants pockets but they’re empty, then I try the blazer but nothing in the inside pocket and I swear this headache springs up on me all of a sudden like when you drink something cold too fast, and I realize that my body’s telling me emphatically and wholly that I’ve screwed the pooch and right then I notice some heavy coughing coming from outside the locker room door, like a fit, like Yack’s out there choking on his lunch and through the murk of this headache I somehow realize this is a signal, a warning, and I shut the locker and dive behind the little half wall divider that separates the front part of the room from the back and press myself up against it as I hear the door open and a guard whose voice I recognize as this black bull named Propes is saying ‘You okay, prisoner?’ to Yackey as he enters the room.
“I got a fifty-fifty shot, that’s all I got. Either his locker’s in the back part and he’s going to catch me there looking like a fish out of the tank or his locker is in the front part and I might, just might, be okay if I can keep my teeth from chattering. You know how many times your life comes down to such a clear-cut, fifty-fifty chance? Maybe five, ten times, and there it was: white marble and I’m okay, black marble and I’m gone, baby, gone.
“I hear Propes take five, six steps into the room and he’s close enough I can hear him breathing through his nose the way he does, and my heart’s beating now like a donkey kicking the inside of my chest, and the bull sniffles a few times and opens up a locker in the front room on the right, no more than twenty feet from where I’m hiding, holding my breath.
“I hear Yack say, ‘you okay, boss?’ and Propes says, ‘just forgot my damn Advil,’ and he must finally find the pills in whatever place he keeps ’em in his locker, because he closes the door and leaves without another word.
“Immediately, I’m back inside Nash’s locker and I got one more place to look before I break down and cry, and so I stick my hand deep inside his shoes, and I’ll be damned if I don’t hit paydirt. He’s got his wallet buried down in there and his keys and his sunglasses and some loose change, and I forget everything else and flip open the wallet. Forty seconds later, I’m out the door and Yack looks as sick with worry as I feel and another ten steps and he lets me out of the barrier and it is finished.”
Smoke looks up at me and he knows he has me. I’m a sucker for a good story, and most guys in the game know how to spin one. Archie was one of the best and Smoke must’ve picked up a thing or two sitting beside him. I don’t interrupt because I’m enjoying this tale and because I know he’s telling the truth.
“Next day, next morning even, Archibald Grant shows up in my cell as soon as the bars open and this is what he says to me. ‘Give me what you got.’ Not ‘did you get anything?’ not ‘tell me you didn’t blow this, Smoke,’ just ‘give me what you got.’ You see, he meant it when he said he believed in me. He knew I’d have something. He just knew it.
“I told him I had two things, actually. Nash’s address on Las Palmas Street and that he had two little blond girls named Kahla and Mitty, ages 10 and 8, and that’s all I could get. Archie smiled at me as big as Christmas and said ‘even better than I thought, Smoke. Even better than I thought.’
“I’ll tell you something, I don’t know how he used that information to get over on Nash, but we’ve both been in this business long enough to know that if you got someone’s address and you know his kids’ names and what they look like, well, shiiiiiit. It don’t take a mathematician to figure out what two plus two makes. Archie had that straight-shooting bull practically wiping his ass within a week. And Archie kept his word too… I didn’t so much as have a con look at me sideways the rest of my time in Federal.
“Archie gained his release six months before me and I thought maybe that’d be my ass, but his grip on L-Burg stayed tight even after he shook tailfeathers. And the day I walked out of that cinderblock, he had a bus ticket waiting for me. Said I’d be working for him from now on and not to worry about nothing else. He said I’d still be in the stealing business, but stealing the most important shit of all: information. And he was right.”
Smoke stands up and that finger comes up again. This time his lips quiver as he pierces me with his eyes. “That’s my story. So don’t sit here and tell me I had something to do with Archie getting kidnapped or that I might know who did it. Archibald Grant believed in me when no one else would. I’d give anything… check that, I’d give everything for him. You believe that, Columbus?”
I nod once. “I do.” I can see Risina nodding too out of the corner of my eye.
“All right, then. Good. We on the same page and let’s keep it that way.” He picks up his pack of cigarettes. “I gotta go light one.”
Smoke leaves the booth and heads to the front door.
Risina exhales as he rolls out of hearing range. “What do you think?”
“I think he gave it to us straight. What do you think?”
I can tell she’s pleased that I reciprocated by asking for her opinion. “I think he’s closer to Archie than you are, closer than I’ll ever be. I think he’s scared for his friend. I think he’d do anything to get him back. And I think he told us the truth.”
I nod my agreement, pay the check, and Risina and I head for the door. I’m going to do something when I go outside that I rarely do. I’m going to apologize. Apologize to Smoke for doubting him. I need him with me on this, pulling in the same direction as me, and I need him to trust my decision-making, my instincts, even though those same instincts wanted to finger him as an accomplice or worse. The only way to accomplish that is to say I’m sorry.
Smoke is standing right outside the front door, under the construction scaffolding, his cigarette down to the filter, staring blankly across the street. I hold the door open for Risina and start to follow her outside.
Smoke looks our way, drops his cigarette to stamp it out, and his eyes search mine for, I don’t know, understanding? Clarity? Acceptance?
I’ll never know because the scaffolding crashes down like an avalanche, collapsing on top of his head, and kills him instantly.