The Silver Bear (10 page)

The hotel has a pretty good-sized gym, and I decide to pound out my energy on a treadmill. I’m the only one running at this hour; there’s a television in the corner showing sports highlights with the sound off, but I ignore it, just pounding my steps in place, settling into a comfortable rhythm, the only noise coming from my steady gait. I plan on running for an hour, and since I am running in place, the past has plenty of time to catch up to me.

 

 

I
hadn’t meant to change, and I was too myopic to understand what was happening to me. Yes, I had killed Mr. Cox with a sewing machine in the abandoned Columbus Textile warehouse, but I had loathed Mr. Cox, and I had killed him with passion, with emotion, with hatred. When Vespucci opened the door the following morning, I could walk away the same person I was, somehow cleaner, like emerging from a baptism.

But suffocating Judge Janet Stephens with Saran Wrap on the courthouse stairwell was markedly different. It was devoid of emotion, passionless, mechanical, and therefore flawed in a way I could not yet understand. I had done everything right; I had fulfilled my obligation, studied the file, found the weakness, exploited the routine, and my assignment was successful. So what was missing?

I had met Vespucci the next day at a coffee shop at his request.

“You have a bank?” he asked over a small glass cup holding an Americano.

“Yes.”

“Close your account.” He slid me a small sheet of paper. “Go to this address when you need money. No more records, no more paperwork, no more checks. Everything will be kept in cash.”

“What will I find at this address?”

“A bank for those of us who don’t like banks. You will find you already have an account there. And in that account is fifty thousand dollars that wasn’t there yesterday.”

I leaned back, trying to mask that the sum staggered me. Vespucci knew it had, but he didn’t say anything more. For a minute, we just sipped our espressos, leaving the air between us silent.

“When do I get my next assignment?” I finally managed.

“When you are ready.”

“I’m ready now.”

“No, Columbus. You need a month to get your . . . how should I say? . . . to get your
edge
back.”

I opened my mouth, but then closed it while his eyes measured me. He was right. I wasn’t ready. Though I couldn’t put my finger on what was holding me back.

“This business, this business you find yourself in, it pays well but it also exacts a fee, Columbus. Do I make sense? It exacts a fee up here . . .” He tapped his head with his index finger. “The only currency by which you can pay this fee is time. You need some time so you can do what you do again.”

I nodded, but I knew he had more.

“I think it is not enough to do your job and walk away from it. I believe . . . this is hard to understand . . . I believe you must connect with your mark’s mind . . . ahhh . . .” He waved off his words as though he were displeased with them, like they had failed to communicate what he was trying to say. I waited. After a moment, he spread his hands in front of him. “Columbus, I did not give you enough lead time because it was a test to see how you would do. Typically, you will have eight weeks before an assignment must be complete. Use the time to not only know the routine of your mark, but to know what is going on inside your mark’s head, to become your mark, to really understand his . . . or her . . . motivations. Once you have fully
realized
the connection, only then can you fully
sever
the connection. Do not ask me to explain why this is so. I only know it is.”

With that, he dropped a ten-spot on the table to cover our bill, excused himself, and shuffled out of the coffee house.

 

 

JAKE
could tell I had changed. She didn’t know how to ask what was different about me, why I was acting morose, so she grew frustrated.

“What did I do?” We were sitting down to dinner.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Ever since we came back from New Hampshire you’ve been acting . . . I don’t know . . .
bothered
by me.”

“I’m telling you this has nothing to do with you, Jake.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you want me to say? You need to drop it.” I could feel my anger rising like boiled water.

This was our first row and I discovered she wasn’t one to back down. “Drop what? How can I drop something when you won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to be dropping?”

I started to answer but she interrupted, “I’d expect this from some people, but not you. Since the day I met you, we’ve been nothing but honest with each other. That’s what having a relationship, a real relationship, is all about. You have to trust me and I have to trust you. There isn’t any other way to do it—not a way that works, that really works.”

She was right, but my hands were tied. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

I could see her eyes soften, but she held firm. “You’re apologizing but I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. This isn’t communicating. This is me talking to a brick wall.”

“I said I’m sorry, Jake. I’m trying to figure some things out, but you have to believe that the problems I’m having aren’t about us. The
only
thing . . . the only thing I depend on each day
is
us. I know that’s not a satisfying answer but I need you to accept it . . . I’ll get down and beg you to accept it if that’s what it takes. But I can’t handle you going sour on me, too. I just . . . can’t. When the time is right, I’ll tell you everything.”

Whatever defenses she had melted away. “You promise?” she said, weakly.

“I promise.”

“You trust me? Completely?”

“You’re the only one I do trust on this planet.”

“I love you.”

When I answered her with the same three words, I meant them fully.

MY
next assignment was a disaster. The name on the top of the page was Richard Levine, a numbers runner on the east side. Vespucci had done his homework, but even the homework had gaping holes in it, gaping holes due to a very specific reason: I was working a job where the target knew I was coming.

Levine was a five-foot-two slight figure with chronic headaches and a short fuse. He had made a fortune working the rackets among the union workers down by Boston Harbor, and as his bank account increased, so did the list of his enemies. A cautious man, he had a regular staff of five bodyguards . . . professional guys, former cops, men who hadn’t had a chance to go soft. He lived in a large house near Beacon Hill and rarely went out any more, letting his minions work the books, deliver the payouts, and make the collections. A handful of guys were entrusted to enter his door, and all of these guys were known faces, fellas who had been on his payroll for ten-plus years. None of these men left the business either; the only way to get away from Levine was to die or disappear.

Vespucci didn’t have schematics on the inside of his house; they had mysteriously vanished from the Department of Records downtown. My fence also knew better than to talk to any of Levine’s men. I had eight weeks and very little information. But it was the last sentence in the file that got my attention:
“Mark knows he has a price tag on his head.”

The son-of-a-bitch knew, knew someone had been hired to kill him, knew bullets were being loaded into cylinders at this very moment, intended to strike him dead.

What I had to do, what Vespucci inherently knew I must do, was to get inside the head of my mark,
realize
the connection so I could
sever
the connection, as he said. But how could I crack Levine if I couldn’t get close to him?

I started by jogging down his street wearing a Boston College T-shirt and some athletic shorts I’d purchased from a bookstore close to the school. I’m sure I looked like every other out-of-breath runner, cutting through neighborhoods near the park to break a sweat and get the ol’ heart rate up.

His street was common, lined with expensive homes, the standout feature being Levine’s house at the end of the block. Gated, with an expansive lawn, it was a two-story Tudor mansion looking down on the rest of the homes like a pedantic schoolteacher in front of a classroom. I didn’t stop to tie a shoelace and get more of a look; it was too early in the game to raise any eyebrows.

From the file Vespucci gave me, I pulled out a chart with the names and faces of Levine’s pigeons, the low-level guys who handled the sports books around town. Vespucci had also included the name of a bar in Little Italy where a couple of the guys liked to whittle away time instead of going home to their wives. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

I eased into Antonio’s on Stuart Street, just down from Maggiano’s. It was a small place, dimly lit, with a long oak bar covering the length of the back wall. A couple of dartboards, a jukebox, three tables, a television tuned in to the Sox, and a fat Irishman pouring drinks for an eclectic crowd of locals, college kids, and tourists.

Two of Levine’s bookies were at a table near the box, drinking beer and watching the game through jaded eyes. I tried to pick up snippets of conversation, but most of it revolved around the fuckin’ Sox this and the fuckin’ Sox that.

I watched the final out as the Boston cleanup hitter grounded weakly to the pitcher. “Fuck!” I said loudly, and followed it with, “That cost me a grand.” I didn’t have to turn around to know my words had found their mark. As I downed the last of my beer, I heard chairs scraping over the wooden floor, then heavy footsteps, and finally two sets of eyeballs appeared on either side of me.

“You bet the Sox, kid?”

I turned around with a frown on my face, and made eye contact with the shorter of the two guys, the one I knew was named Ponts.

“Yeah. Shit. I know you should never bet your heart . . . but I had a
feeling
tonight.”

Ponts snorted. “Happens to all of us.”

The taller of the two, a bookie who I knew was named Gorti, jumped in with, “Shit, don’t it?”

“What you drinking, kid?” Ponts asked.

“Me?” I looked at the bottle like I didn’t know. “ Budweiser.”

Ponts called out to the bartender. “Three Buds, Seamus . . .”

“You don’t have to—”

“Christ, you just lost a grand on the goddamn Sox. It’s the least I could do.”

The beers appeared in front of us in a hurry. “Thanks, then . . .” I said.

“Who you bet with, kid?”

I pulled down the bottle from my mouth and looked at Ponts suspiciously.

“Bet with?”

“Who’s your bookmaker?”

“You guys cops?”

They looked at each other and started chuckling. “Nah, kid. We ain’t cops.”

“We are
far
from cops, I can guarantee you that,” added Gorti.

“Well, just the same . . . thanks for the beer. But I should—”

Ponts didn’t let me finish the sentence, “Kid, the reason I’m asking is because Ben Gorti here and me, Stu Ponts, Ben and me run book right out of this bar.”

“Oh, yeah?” I tried to look pleasantly surprised.

“That’s right. And lemme guess, you’re still using your daddy’s bookie somewhere back wherever home is?”

I let out a smile like he was right on the money.

“Well, what d’ya say you let your old man run his own game and you start running one with us?”

“Really, I should—”

“Tell you what . . . what’s your typical lay?”

“How much you bet, kid?” added Gorti, as if to clarify.

“I usually go five hundred. Unless I’m feeling it. Then, who knows . . .” I tried to sound like a fish who had just bitten on the worm and gotten the hook.

Ponts’s grin widened. “Well, I’ll give you your first $500 bet on the house, and a five-thousand-dollar credit line. Does your dad’s bookie give you that?”

“No, sir.”

“Call me Ponts.”

“Okay. . . .”

He clasped me on the back with a beefy hand. “Now, who you like this week in the Miami game?”

 

 

THERE
is a common misconception following a successful assassination. Often, the people closest to the target will say they never got a look at the hired killer, they don’t know how the assassin could have gotten close to their boss; the man came in like a ghost and put a bullet in their friend, husband, co-worker without disturbing the dust in the air. They’ll say someone in their midst must have betrayed him, they’ll look at each other with skeptical eyes, they’ll check over their shoulders every time a shadow moves across a doorway, every time they cross in front of a dark alley.

But the truth is they’ve often known the face of the trigger man, they’ve probably shaken hands with him, probably done business with him, hell, probably bought him a beer in a small sports bar in Little Italy.

If I couldn’t know Levine, if I couldn’t make a connection with him, I could watch his pigeons, I could get to know his roots, where he came from before he lived in the big house on the hill at the end of the street. He got to where he was by being the best at what Ponts and Gorti did now. My guess is he was more ruthless, less forgiving then the typical runner. I didn’t know if he demanded the same of his employees, but I intended to find out.

 

 

IT
didn’t all go wrong on the day of the hit; it happened the night before I pulled the trigger. I was into the guys for most of my nut, the initial amount of credit they gave me to hook me. I played stupidly right off the bat; I didn’t have time to make casual bets. I started with sucker plays, parlays, rolling any wins I stumbled upon, pushing the limits, and Ponts lapped it up like a stray cat with a fresh bottle of milk. In three weeks, I flopped on enough games to be into the fat man for forty-eight hundred.

I met up with him as he was coming out of Antonio’s.