Killer

chapter 29
1992

Sal Lombard pours both of us glasses of Dewar’s. While I’m sipping my scotch, he takes a couple of Montecristos from a box and offers me one. I decline and he cuts the end off his and lights up. After several puffs, the room’s clouding up with the pungent smell of tobacco. I was never one for cigars. Not much for scotch either.

Sal and I are alone, although he’s got several of his boys in the room next door. The two of us both went through a lot of trouble to make sure we weren’t followed to this hotel suite. It’s important that we keep our association hidden from the authorities, which is why we rarely meet face to face. When we do, it’s usually at a suite like this one. Lombard has several of them rented anonymously throughout the city, and he takes the necessary precautions to make sure the Feds don’t have a clue about them.

“Lenny, what’s so fucking urgent?” he asks, his eyes bugging out to show his impatience.

I can’t help feeling that he already knows what I’m going to tell him, and I remember the other hit man in his employ that I took out years ago. I know he’s not going to let me retire. I know why his boys are sitting in the room next door. Still, Sal’s smart enough to know that before they’d get to me I’d have his jugular sliced open.

I drain my scotch and start to tell him how screwed up things went with Marzone.

“Don’t worry about it, Lenny,” he says. “Marzone was always a slippery fucker, but you finished the job. That’s all that matters.”

I shake my head. “This job was cursed from the beginning,” I say. “When I finally catch up to him my piece of shit Luger jams on me. Then the sonofabitch takes off and runs me a good mile through the streets of East Boston before I catch up with him for the second time. How the fuck I wasn’t spotted that night, I still don’t know. Sal, I think this was a sign for me to quit this shit.”

I sit quietly after that with my hangdog expression. I don’t tell him about the girl in the bulky green parka, or what I had to do to her. I don’t tell him how young and innocent she looked or how I’m haunted every night now by the memory of what I had to do to dispose of her body. Or how hard it is for me now to close my eyes without seeing her. If I told him any of that I’d be dead. We’d both be dead.

Sal’s appraising me quietly. All at once he breaks out laughing. It’s a quiet laugh, his body convulsing with it. It’s a while before his body stops shaking like jelly. Once that happens, he wipes a few tears from his eye and smiles broadly at me.

“You telling me because of a couple of bad breaks you want to quit?” he says. “I don’t believe it, Lenny. I know you, I know what’s in your blood. You can’t quit this. You’d be fucking miserable.”

“It’s a sign, Sal-” I try telling him.

“Fuck that. It was a few tough breaks, but you nailed the motherfucker in the end. Right now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll snap out of it. Take your wife and kids to Florida for a few weeks. You’ll be as good as new when you come back.”

I shake my head. “I can’t do this any more. I’m sorry.”

He grows very quiet, his eyes nearly lifeless as he studies me. Finally, he says, “I can’t let you quit, Lenny. I know you’re smart enough to know that.”

I nod, but don’t bother saying anything. We’re both staring at each other now. He knows what I’m thinking just as I know what he is. He knows what will happen if he calls out for his boys in the next room.

“Where does this leave us?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it only the hits you don’t want to do? What about still working for me?”

“It depends. What do you have in mind?”

Sal pours himself a fresh glass of Dewar’s. He takes his time drinking it, all the while giving me a hard look.

“I’m starting up a new business by the docks,” he says. “It needs a smart guy in charge, which you fucking are even if you’re going to give me this bullshit about you not being a killer any more. You still up to some rough stuff if necessary?”

“If necessary.”

“Okay then.”

He fills up my glass and we drink a toast to our new venture. Whatever moment of danger that had existed between us has passed.