Free Columbus by Derek Haas Page B

Glocks up in either hand and am pointing them point-blank at both of their foreheads. A well-positioned gun held in a steady hand makes a hell of a lie detector.
    They draw back instinctively. “Ho! I swear it. Whoever you are, we have no beef with you. You have to believe us.”
    I backhand the lawyer with the barrel of my pistol, so he goes down in a heap, and then I point both barrels at Saxon. The fear in his eyes is pellucid, tangible. He cringes, and there is anger in his voice.
    “Goddammit, listen to me. I don’t know who you are or what you believe I did, but if you think I put a price on your head, you’ve never been more wrong. I know my targets, all of them. Y-you got this one wrong.” He breathes hard, like he just ran a marathon. “Noel is dead and that case is closed. No reprisals. You got this one wrong.”
    Here comes that wave again, that bad-luck wave that has dogged me since Paris. Bad luck because this isn’t ending in Atlanta, not in the back yard of a little man’s big house in Buckhead. And certainly not ending in the bathroom of the Ramsey Bait and Tackle Shop off of Highway 197. Bad luck because where one killer fails, others will surely follow until I find out who has done the hiring. Bad luck because now I know Saxon and the bearded man were telling the truth.
    The silver wagon has stopped, the handle has dropped, and I have a name but I don’t know it. It has to be in front of me, somewhere. But where, goddammit?
    I know the Noel job triggered this. The heat that assignment brought led someone to Ryan, and Ryan led that someone to me. So it had to be a man who knew Ryan fenced for me on that job, and the only link in that chain is Doriot.
    Replaying my conversation with the Belgian fence, I remember he was quick to go where I led him, to finger his client, Saxon. In retrospect, it was too easy. Someone had gotten to Doriot first, before me, which is why he got himself tossed in jail. He was just buying time, as much as possible, till this whole thing washed over. He’s going to regret having misled me.
    The bearded man made a solid play initially, taking out Ryan to get to me. Even though he lost the war, he dealt me a crippling blow. Losing my fence, my middleman, is like missing a limb. I need information, someone to bang an idea off of, someone who can root around in the dirt for a bit and get back to me with a truffle.
    The last time I saw a fence named Archibald Grant, he was in the process of hiring me to kill the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But Grant withheld some information at the time of the assignment, namely, that he was asked to hire three assassins instead of just me. My friend and fence Pooley died because of this omission, gunned down in my hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the middle of my assignment. I would say Archibald owes me a pretty damn big chit.
    Archibald served sixteen months in Lompoc on an aiding-and-abetting collar, but within eight hours of his release, he was back in the game, contacting his old associates, setting up new contracts. Boston must’ve been too hot for him; he relocated to Chicago, where he has had little difficulty pitching a new tent. It is just as well; I have too many memories floating around Boston.
    When he steps out of his bathroom wearing only a towel and shuffles into his kitchen, I am sitting at his breakfast table.
    “Fuck me!” Archibald jumps like he’s seen a ghost, then covers his heart with his hand, trying to calm himself. He takes a long look at me, recognition in his eyes. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Columbus.”
    “How you doing, Cotton?”
    That takes him by surprise. He hasn’t heard his given name, Cotton, in a long time.
    “You know that one, huh?”
    “I know a lot of things.”
    “You pop my bodyguards downstairs? The doorman too?” He makes the trigger-pulling gesture with his fingers when he says the word pop .
    “Nah. They don’t even know I’m here.”
    “Motherfucking Columbus. I