The Killing Kind

4

Union Station in Utica, New York, is a structure oddly out of time and place. The city itself is a decaying industrial town nestled in the Mohawk River Valley, five hours and a world away from the bustle of Manhattan. Its streets are run-down and ill-traveled, and many of its storefronts sit empty. The factories that once provided jobs for its residents are now boarded or bricked up; the few windows left exposed are gapped by decades’ worth of vandals’ stones.

Yet Utica’s train station-which, these days, services more buses than trains-is an imposing marvel of Italianate architecture a full city block in size, with a vaulted ceiling, elaborate cornices, and an interior rife with gleaming marble. Massive columns jut upward toward skylights through which the gray light of the perpetually overcast Upstate New York sky streams through. Long, low wooden benches shiny from lacquer look out of scale for so large a space and lend the interior an oddly ecclesiastical air. In addition to a proper shoe-shine stand, the building also boasts a barbershop and restaurant, the latter an authentic lunch counter of the type that once appeared on street corners in every town in America.

The terminal was built in a fit of optimism, when rail was king, by the same architects who’d designed Manhattan’s Grand Central-but Utica’s fortunes were even then on the wane, having peaked decades before during the heyday of the nearby Erie Canal. Now the station seemed not so much preserved as forgotten, like an apparition doomed to walk the same halls again and again.

For the past fifty years, Utica hasn’t been known for much of anything-unless you count the violent struggle between four crime families that stretched the length of the seventies and eighties for control of the city.

Gazing dully out the window of his chauffeured Lincoln as it conveyed him from the private airstrip to his destination, Alexander Engelmann couldn’t for the life of him guess why organizations as powerful as the Genovese and Colombo crime families, as well as Outfits out of Buffalo and Scranton, would bother spilling blood over such a place. It seemed any money this town once possessed had been wrung out long ago. But he had to admit, their train station was really something. Perhaps it was pride that motivated their bloodshed.

Engelmann’s calfskin Ferragamos clacked against the marble floor of the terminal. Despite the summer heat, he wore a charcoal sport coat of worsted wool, a pair of pressed chinos, and a crisp white shirt, open at the throat. He carried neither bag nor weapon-his only luggage, a small carry-on, was in the Council’s hired jet, and he never traveled armed, preferring to procure any weapons in-country as needed and discard them after use. The terminal was empty but for Engelmann, two students with dreadlocks and dreadful clothes waiting for a bus, and a hulking mass of steroid-enhanced Mafia muscle shrink-wrapped into a black suit that bulged suspiciously at armpit, back, and ankle. Why this gorilla needed three firearms was beyond Engelmann, as was how anyone with that much muscle would even have the flexibility to reach an ankle holster.

Not that his assessment mattered-it was habit, nothing more. This occasion did not call for violence. Which was a pity, really; stiff and irritable as Engelmann was from his hasty trip halfway around the world, he could have used a pick-me-up.

As he approached the gorilla, the gorilla jerked his head to indicate the barbershop beyond. Engelmann strode past him without breaking stride, pushing through the glass doors and stepping into 1953.

Dime-sized hexagonal tiles, once white but now the color of old teeth, covered the floor, the grout between long since gone to black. Above waist-high marble wainscoting stretched walls that aimed for sunny yellow, but missed. Rounded mirrors hung above small vanities piled high with products Engelmann would have guessed ceased production decades ago. At each station was a pedestal sink and a barber chair of black vinyl, white trim, and ornate, tarnished bronze.

In one chair was a man, beside whom stood an aged barber. Whether the man was tall or short, fat or slim, Engelmann couldn’t tell, because he was mostly hidden beneath a black cutting cape-and his face was wrapped in steaming white towels in preparation for a shave, so that only his nose and thick black hair showed. His head was tilted back, his nose pointing skyward. His hair was slicked down such that even at the angle of his head, gravity held no sway over it.

At the sound of Engelmann’s footfalls, the man in the chair raised one finger-his hands until then both curled around the edges of the armrests-and the barber, a slight man with gray hair, gray eyes, and a lined, gray face, disappeared without a word.

“I kinda figured you’d be taller,” said the man, his gruff, coarse tone confirming him as the one who’d called Engelmann two nights ago.

The man’s statement was a joke-with a hot towel draped over his eyes, he could no more see Engelmann than could Engelmann see him. But Engelmann did not laugh.

“Someday,” said Engelmann, “you’ll have to tell me how you obtained the number of a burner phone I’d not used until that very night.”

“No, I don’t think I will. Sit down.”

Engelmann did not sit down.

The man shrugged. It was a token act of defiance, nothing more. Engelmann had come when called. He may be one of the most gifted contract killers in the world, but in this room, at this moment, Engelmann was more house cat than lion.

“We have a job for you,” the man said from within his wet folds. “A pest in need of exterminating.”

“And what, pray tell, is this pest’s name?”

“I wish to hell I knew,” said the man, “but if I did, I wouldn’t have had to call you.”

“Ah. I see. I trust, then, that you’ve no idea where I might find him, or even what he looks like.”

The man bristled. “Not specifically, no.”

“Then perhaps we should begin with what he’s done to so offend.”

The man gestured vaguely toward the oak vanity behind him. “Check the left-hand drawer.”

Engelmann did. Inside was a manila envelope with a string-and-button enclosure, fat with documents. Engelmann unwound the string and lifted the flap. Not documents, he discovered-or at least not mostly.

Mostly, they were pictures.

Some were glossy black-and-white eight-by-tens. Some were color copies of police reports, blown up so large the images had pixelated, and the typeset words around them were five times their normal size. On the back of each was a location and a date, scrawled in a tight, controlled script. The dates stretched back as far as three years. The most recent was just two days ago-the day Engelmann received the phone call summoning him here.

Each photo was of a murder scene.

No. Not just a murder scene. A hit. Cold. Calculating. Professional.

Engelmann thumbed through them, transfixed. Some of them, like San Francisco in October of 2010, or Wichita this January past, were precision long-range kills- needle-threading sniper shots from what had to be twelve hundred meters away. Some of them, like Green Bay or Montreal, were close and messy-the former a stabbing that took place past security in an airport, and the latter a garrote at the opera during a Place des Arts performance of Gounod’s Faust. Of the close kills, it was the former that impressed Engelmann the most. Smuggling a weapon past security, while not impossible, poses some degree of difficulty-but to then commit murder and vanish undetected is quite a feat indeed. Which clearly this man had done, for if his visage had been captured by security cameras, the Council would have doubtless obtained the footage. They had, after all, tracked Engelmann without difficulty.

“You believe this all to be the work of one man?” Engelmann asked.

“I do.”

“Magnificent,” he muttered.

“You sound surprised.”

“Most in my profession have a preferred method, something tried and true from which they never deviate. Whoever did these is proficient in a variety of techniques. Few in the world can claim such skill. Even fewer can make good on such claims.”

“You can,” said the man, steel creeping into his voice. Despite himself, Engelmann drew a worried breath, wondering for a moment if this had all been some elaborate setup to lure him here. But then, from beneath his towels, the man laughed. “Relax, Al-I didn’t ask you here so I could whack you. We’ve had an eye on you since this guy’s Reno job a few months back; we know you weren’t anywhere near Miami two nights ago when he last hit. He popped a guy from ground level across four blocks of busy city street, if you can believe it. Turned the poor bastard into a fucking smear.”

“These targets,” Engelmann asked. “They were La Cosa Nostra?”

“Some,” allowed the man in the chair. “Some were Salvadorans. Some Russian. One was Southie Irish. Truth is, there’s not an Outfit in the country ain’t been touched. Which is a good fucking thing as far as I’m concerned, ’cause if any of the families had been spared, everybody who got hit would be gunning hard for them, figuring it for some kind of power play. Shit, it’s just a matter of time before one family points the finger at another anyway, just ’cause they don’t like the look of ’em. This situation is a- whaddaya call it-a powder keg.”

“Hence the involvement of the Council.”

“Yeah,” the man said drolly. “Hence. Tensions among the families are running high. This don’t get resolved soon, there’s gonna be a war. Which is why we’re willing to offer you a million flat to find this guy and seal the deal. That, and whatever resources are at the Council’s disposal.”

One million dollars.

One million dollars, plus the combined resources of every crime family in America.

Engelmann could scarcely contain his excitement. But he managed. One does not attain a reputation such as his without mastering one’s emotions.

Engelmann smiled, showing teeth. “Euros,” he said.

“ ’Scuse me?”

“One million euros.”

The man in the chair was silent for a moment, and then he nodded his assent, his towels bobbing.

“Excellent,” said Engelmann. “Consider me in your employ. I’ll send you the number of my Cayman account, and you can wire the money at your convenience.”

“No need,” said the man. “We’ve got the number.”

Engelmann, unnerved, swallowed hard, and then changed the subject. “His victims,” Engelmann asked, “have they any commonality? Apart from their employers’ extra-legal status, that is.”

“Yeah. They’re all hitmen. And every one of ’em was on a job when they got whacked.”

For a moment, Engelmann thought he’d misheard, then realized he hadn’t. That one man had perpetrated such a variety of kills was impressive. That his victims were themselves all hired killers made the accomplishment all the greater.

“You are telling me you’ve a hitman killing hitmen, and now you’re hiring a hitman to hit him back?”

“I’m telling you I’ve got a problem, and you’ve got one million reasons to fix it.”

Engelmann smiled again, for he in fact had more than that. For the first time in a decade, he had a job that posed a significant challenge and a quarry worthy of pursuit. For the first time in a decade, he had reason to fear for his own safety-reason to question whether he was equal to the task. Of course, this man would not have the combined resources of every crime family in America at his beck and call-but then, it seemed his wits had served him well thus far in the face of such resources.

This man, thought Engelmann, was not to be trifled with.

This man, whoever he was, would be an honor to square off against.

This man, he would have killed for free.