Samson
I take Anna to one of my apartment safe houses in the city. It’s nowhere near as luxurious as my penthouse, but I know for a fact that nobody knows where it is, not the police, my mafia contacts, my fellow killers, nobody. Black Knight was a careful man, in his way. I park the car down the street and we walk hurriedly under the yellow streetlamps and through the misty autumn air. When I open the door, I’m mildly embarrassed by the state of it. Foolish, perhaps, under the circumstances, but I can’t help it. It’s a small one-bedroom apartment with an adjoined living room and kitchen. The couch is old and musty and it’s the only piece of furniture. The wallpaper is yellowed and turning at the corners. The kitchen is devoid of anything but canned goods and a few old pieces of cooking equipment. The bed has a thin mattress and thin sheets. There’s only one picture on the wall, an old life-bitten man holding a small boy on his shoulders, grinning to the camera.
“Who’s this?” Anna says, walking over to the picture as I lock the door behind us.
I stand at her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her, stunned that she’s alive. I’m happy, of course, but the happiness is numbed and I realize that part of me assumed she would be dead. Part of me assumed that I wouldn’t be able to get to her quick enough. Now that she’s here, alive, breathing and mostly unharmed, I feel like I am in a dream. I think of the scene over River’s body, when I told her that I loved her. And I feel silly for not saying it sooner. I don’t hold any of the bullshit pride I had before, the pride which stopped me revealing my inner self. If there’s one woman I can do that with, it’s Anna, this gorgeous, amazing, smart, perfect woman standing before me.
“That’s Uncle Richard,” I say, pointing at the man. “And that’s me.” The child in the picture knew nothing of the business. It was before I began to learn the ins and outs of killing, before I lost my childhood innocence and became a tool of the trade. I have only been here a few times since his death. It’s too painful. There’s something tragic about the picture, something which tells me I’ve lost an important part of myself, a part which cannot be reclaimed.
But maybe Anna can help you put that part back, I think. Maybe Anna can cure you of this sickness, this killing sickness.
“Wow,” Anna says. “You look so different. Carefree. Innocent.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I do, don’t I?”
Then the pain of my wounds starts to ache and I stumble back, head trembling.
“Woah, woah!” Anna cries, turning swiftly and catching me by the shoulders. “Silly me. I’m a bit battered a bruised, but look at you, Samson . . .”
She takes me by the shoulders and leads me to the couch. I’m glad to be babied, glad to let my woman take over and tend to me. That’s something I never would have dreamed I would’ve thought. I’ve always seen myself, a lone wolf stalking the night, but with Anna here that seems like a strange outlook to have. Why would I be alone when Anna is here, my Anna, my woman, my love?
‘You’ve changed,’ Black Knight mutters, and it’s almost as if the old man on the wall is speaking to me. ‘You’ve changed more in this past week than you’ve changed in the past decade and a half.’
“Please tell me there’s a first-aid kit in this place,” Anna says.
“There is,” I say. “Under the sink.”
If there’s one thing every safe house needs, it’s a first aid kit.
“So this was your uncle’s place,” Anna says, returning with the kit. She lays out the tools, swabs my wounds, and begins tending to me. I hardly feel what she does, don’t worry about it. I trust that she knows what she’s doing, and that’s enough. I would trust Anna with my life. Hell, I’d trust her with more than that. I can’t think of a single thing I wouldn’t trust her with.
“Yeah,” I say, as she patches me up. “I don’t come back here much.”
“Look at this,” Anna says, “and then look at the safe houses you’ve been taking me to. You’ve been a very successful man, Samson.”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
I get to thinking, thinking in a way I’ve stopped myself from doing for most of my life, thinking about the future. Before Anna, when I thought of the future, I imagined myself becoming like Richard, growing old in the business and dying alone. I’d be richer, of course, but the bare facts would be similar. I’d be alone, distanced from everybody around me. But now . . .
“Ah,” I grunt, when Anna nicks me. “Careful.”
“I’m always careful,” Anna says. “You’re the one who gets in trouble.”
“Wait a second!” I laugh.
She giggles along with me, and then grows suddenly quiet. “Did you know that River was Eric’s sister? I forgot to tell you.”
“No,” I say, mouth falling open despite the pain in my jaw. “No, I did not.”
I find it difficult to feel anything at the revelation, only that I have to make Anna see something important.
“You know it was never your fault, don’t you, Anna?” I say. “You know that, right?”
She shrugs. I squeeze her shoulder and look deeply into her eyes. “Nothing, not any of it, was your fault. I want you to say that back to me.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Do it,” I insist.
“It . . . That’s harder than I thought it would be.” She takes a deep breath, and then says: “It’s not my fault.”
“Good,” I say. “Never forget that, Anna.”
###
I ring Officer Gomez when Anna’s done patching me and herself up. She took a shower to wash off the blood and throw up. Now, she’s curled up on the couch now, a blanket thrown over her, watching me with a sleepy smile on her face. Whatever happened yesterday, whatever will happen tomorrow, tonight we’re okay. That’s what her smile tells me, in this moment, she’s content, and that’s all we can reasonably ask for right now.
He answers after only a couple of rings.
“Samson,” he says, breathless.
Officer Gomez is one of many police officers in New York City who think that men like me aren’t such a bad thing. I’m not like The Butcher or his friends, men who will kill women and children and think nothing of it. He knows that I’ve only ever killed bad men, criminals, men who would go on to do much more damage than I ever could. Because of that, he treats me with respect. And, perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t want to see me go down.
“Gomez,” I say. “What’s the situation?”
“They have all five of them up on assault charges, murder, conspiracy to commit murder . . . well, there’s a laundry list of them, to be honest. But they have you on CCTV, Samson. And the evidence on River isn’t as strong as it could be.”
“Right,” I say, massaging my temple. “Okay, well, we need to meet, then. I can help with the evidence. I have a whole cache of it I can give to you. But what about the CCTV?”
“Money will fix that,” Gomez says promptly. He agrees with what I do and he doesn’t judge me for it, but he needs to eat. The entire force needs to eat. “The detectives know who you are, but as far as I can tell, they’re all willing to look the other way . . . for a fee.”
“We need to meet, then,” I say.
I can almost hear him nodding eagerly down the phone. “Tomorrow,” he says.
“Yeah, tomorrow. I’ll bring the money and the evidence. How much, by the way?”
He tells me. It’s a lot, but it’s not more than I expected, and far less than I have in storage.
“Right, fine,” I say. “And that’ll strike me from the investigation, yeah? Oh, by the way, how’s the NBA player?”
“A bit busted up, but he’ll be okay. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I can’t talk now.”
“Okay, where and when?”
He names the time and place. The docks, an old meeting place for us. At noon.
“See you then,” I say.
He hangs up, and I sit on the couch next to Anna’s curled-up legs. Her eyes are half-closed, but she watches me the whole time and I know she wants me to sit here and wait for her to go to sleep. I know that without having to ask her.
I put my hand on her leg and massage it softly, savoring the feel of her, the wonderfully alive feel, the beautifully solid feel. I find it difficult to come to grips with the events of the night. Everything was so hectic, happened so fast and yet seemed to happen over the course of a long time. It was unlike any other night in my business.
‘Because you really cared,’ Black Knight says, and for once the judgment in his voice is gone. He sounds like the kind man he was before I discovered the business, discovered that he was a killer and that I would be a killer one day, too. ‘You really cared about what happened. It was about more than money.’
I know that tomorrow will be busy. I’ll have to wake up early and make a round of my safe houses, gathering up all my cash. Over twenty million in total, stored in various safes and cubby holes around the city. Gather all my cash and then meet Gomez and give him a small slice to eradicate my presence from the arena.
And then what? I ask myself. Anna begins snoring softly beside me, and after a moment I climb onto the couch behind her, spooning her. She moves aside with a soft grunt, without having to think about it, and I wrap my arm around her and hold her close to me, hold her so close that I’m frightened I might be holding her too tightly. But she snuggles into my arm and I know, even in sleep, she wants me to hold her tightly.
I rest my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her. The outpouring of love that grips me now is sudden and violent. My world reforms around her, the various aspects of my life—the killing, the women, the violence—pushed aside until only Anna, shining out like a beacon, stands before me.
And then what? I ask myself again, and it comes to me, comes to me so starkly that, despite everything, a smile spreads across my face. I kiss the back of her head, laughing quietly when her hair tickles my lips.
The then what that enters my mind is brilliant, fantastic. It’s the then what of a life I never dreamed I would be able to have. The then what that few men like me ever get to experience. Over twenty million . . .
That’s enough for one lifetime, isn’t it? That’s more than enough. We can live in comfort for the rest of our lives for twenty million.
With a shock that causes me to bite down, I think, I don’t have to kill anymore.
I have never dreamed that I would think this, would even want to think this. But life is like that, I guess. That’s what Anna has taught me. Life rarely stays on the course you set it. Things happen, circumstances change, life gets involved.
And then . . .
And my smile grows wider. I kiss Anna and hug close to her, closing my eyes, and drifting into the most content sleep of my life.
###
I leave Anna with Jack’s cell number, telling her to bolt the door behind me and call Jack if anything seems suspicious. But I know that it’s only a precaution. River is in a jail cell now. Not prison, but bars still close around her and that’s a massive improvement from this time yesterday. River is sitting behind bars. Angry, resentful, probably boiling over with rage and plotting a thousand ways to get back at me, but she’s behind bars and that’s all that matters.
I leave early, before seven o’clock, and it takes me around four and a half hours to make a circuit of all my New York safe houses and collect all my cash. When I’m done and I’m driving through the midday half-light to the docks, three briefcases sit on the passenger seat next to me. It’s strange to think that everything I’ve ever done, all the jobs and the murder, all the lives I’ve taken and all the pain I’ve caused—even if it was pain against men who deserved it—can be squashed down to a few briefcases and placed next to me. My life’s work sits beside me, silent, cold and green. It makes me think as I drive, think about the future, Anna . . . Anna most of all, because she’s the point now. More and more, I’m starting to think that my life’s work is over, at least this part of my life. The coldly earning cash part of my life, the killer’s part, has passed. I don’t know what will be next, only that I want Anna with me every step of the way.
But first . . .
As I pull into the dock car park, I think about the last time I was here. I was going to kill her, I think, as I climb from the car. I take the briefcases from the passenger seat, walk around to the trunk, and hide them underneath the secret passage. I open one and take out the cash for Gomez, and when I close it, I place a small tracking device inside the briefcase. If, on the off chance, the car is stolen, I’ll be able to get to it before the thief discovers the hoard of cash. I walk through the cars with wads of cash pressing into my pocket, wondering how different life would’ve been had I just killed River. Outwardly, I know, not much would change except that the cuts and bruises which cover my body and face would not have been there. But inwardly, I would be a changed man, something I never want to become: a woman-killer. It’s been a pain, risky, dangerous, and yet I’m glad I chose the bloodless road.
Officer Gomez waits outside one of the disused warehouses. He’s a squat man, flat-faced, but with an easy smile and stocky muscles. He’s wears a suit just a little too big for him, so that it hangs from his body as though from a clothes rack. As I approach, he flicks his cigarette into the sea and faces me.
“Black,” he says.
“Gomez,” I nod.
We walk down the dock, away from the workmen which buzz around, until we are standing at the edge of the water. I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and take out the brown envelope. I’m officially a rat now, I think. But I’m not scared or ashamed, like I would’ve been not that long ago. Ratting, in my game, is one of the worst things you can do. Usually, whoever you ratted against would have you killed. But River and her goonies are behind bars, and she has no long-term ties to any crime families. She’s not mafia. She’s freelance, like me. He takes the envelope wordlessly and tucks it into his pocket.
“Enough here to bring her down?” he says.
“Way down,” I say. “Life. She’ll never be free, or, if she somehow cheats the system, it’ll be in at least thirty years. And I’m not the sort of man to borrow the worries of tomorrow against today.”
Gomez nods, takes out a cigarette, and then lights it. He offers me one. I shake my head. “And the other thing?” he says.
I take out two more envelopes, each of them overflowing with bills. He snatches it quickly, and then turns a wide smile on me. “I’m going to build a gaming PC,” he grins. “I’ve got bills, you know, and my landlord is a bit of a prick. Doesn’t respect the badge at all. But who does, eh? Wanted one of these gaming PCs for a while. Four-K. But my mother’s sick and the landlord and . . . well, River is a bad woman, isn’t she?”
I shrug. I find it more difficult to answer that question than I perhaps should. “She tried to hurt somebody very close to me and she’s killed countless people. If anyone deserves to go to prison, it’s her.”
“Well, this’ll do it,” Gomez says, and then takes a long drag on his cigarette. “That NBA player is going to be okay. Might not play for a while, but . . . He’s going to survive, so if that was eating at your conscience, you can let it go.”
“Good,” I say, surprised to find that I am relieved. I love the NBA, have always loved the NBA. I’m not as fanatical about it as I could be, but the idea that I ended a man’s life who has never killed before doesn’t appeal to me. Even in the early days, when I took most jobs I was offered, it was only most jobs where the mark deserved it. “But surely he’s in some shit, too?”
“Oh, yeah, attempted murder,” Gomez says. “But some prisons have sports programs these days, don’t they?”
“No idea. I never want to find out.”
Gomez chuckles. “You know that River was the brother of—”
“I know, yeah. Made a whole lot of sense when I found out.”
“I’m sure it did. What you maybe didn’t know was that we’ve just rescued this NBA player’s sister from a goddamn hole in the ground. River got close to him, seduced him, made the poor guy crazy for her. Then, when they were close and his mind was all messed up, she kidnapped his sister and blackmailed the guy into trying to kill Anna. Don’t know what choice the guy had under those circumstances. But I can tell you this, any motherfucker can kidnap my sister any time he likes. If I have to listen to one more goddamn baby story I’m going to blow my brains out.”
He drags heavily on the last half of his cigarette, drawing it down to the filter, and then exhales through his nose and mouth.
“You know you can’t work in this town anymore, don’t you, Black?” he says as he turns to leave.
“I know,” I say. “Only one person this information could’ve come from. And you know as well as I do what the mob thinks about rats. Not that River was well-loved. But there’s the off chance some white knight might try something on principle.”
“So what’ll you do?”
Gomez stuffs his hands in his pockets and paces away without waiting for an answer. I watch him go until he rounds a corner and is out of sight. And then I turn to the sea. Suddenly, the clouds part and bright sunlight lances through and touches the water. It glints and reflects into my face, but I don’t lift my hand to shield my eyes. After all this darkness, a little light is good, welcome. Maybe my life could be like that autumn sky, I think. Years of shrouded cloud until, finally, the clouds part and light passes through.
He’s gone and there’s no need to answer his question, but I do anyway.
“I’ll live,” I say. “I’ll live and I’ll be with Anna. I think that’s enough, now.”
###
I’m driving back to Uncle Richard’s apartment when I pass a jewelry store. It’s one I’ve passed many times in my time in New York. It’s one of those places which cater exclusively to the extraordinarily rich. I’ve never had a reason to go in there before. I certainly never splashed out on River or any of my previous women in such an extravagant way. As if by fate, the traffic is heavy as I pass it and I slow to a crawl, enough to see the rich women that walk in and out of the store. Fake-faced, Botoxed and plastic. One even holds a handbag with the terrified face of a dog poking out between its folds. The door swings open and I watch a glimpse of the inside, the jewelry laid out like glittering pieces of starlight.
I wonder, can a man like me really have a life like that? Can a man like me really do everything I’ve done and be everything I’ve been and still have his happily ever after?
It’s a question I’m only considering because of Anna, Anna who has entered my life and changed it irrevocably. Anna who has the power to shift everything around her. Anna who has me questioning who I am now that all of this is over. River will go down and so will her cronies, Anna is safe, but I can’t stay in New York. There’s no question about that. I’ll have to leave. But will Anna leave with me? Maybe not if she’s just Anna, my girlfriend, my woman. But what if . . .
Giving myself over to spontaneity, I pull into the first free parking space I see. I don’t get out of the car right away. I feel as though I am at a crossroads in my life. I see it, in my mind. But in my mind I am not the man I am now; I am the small boy I was before I learnt of the life. The small boy terrified of Dad’s fist and full of love for kind Uncle Richard, a man I never imagined could do harm to anybody, a man I never dreamt would be known as Black Knight for his brutality. Anna has turned me into that boy again, has pulled away the veils of coldness and anger that surrounded me and revealed the boy underneath. Because he’s still there, I know. He’s still there in everybody, I bet. Whoever you are, whatever turns your life has taken, somewhere, maybe hidden so deep you don’t even suspect he’s there, is the small child you once were, before life took you and warped you.
‘You’re too old to become a philosopher, boy,’ Uncle Richard laughs. ‘There’s nothing in this life worse than a late-blooming philosopher. You love the girl, that’s what you mean, eh? So if you love her, get your ass out of this car and do something about it! Sitting here and thinking won’t get you anywhere!’
I smile to myself, and then step from the car, go to the trunk, and take out enough cash to buy Anna a ring any woman would be proud to receive. As I walk down the street, I find I am nervous. I have been on hundreds of jobs and killed countless men and always, whatever happened, I’ve been able to hold onto my sacred killer’s center. That is something I’ve never lost. But approaching this jewelry shop makes me more nervous than any of that ever did.
What if she says no? I wonder.
A cold spike moves through me at the thought. The jingle of the bell above my head as I enter the store cuts through me.
She can’t say no, she just can’t. For better or for worse, I have placed all my hopes and dreams in Anna’s hands.