Samson
I get out of bed while Anna sleeps, go to the dresser and get some new clothes—a hoodie and some jeans, some clean boots—and leave her there to her dreams. She isn’t in any danger of being stuck here. I’ve arranged for Jack to come by and let her out if I’m gone for longer than I should be. Failing that, I’ve left a piece of paper on the bedside table on which I’ve written three numbers and passcodes: numbers of my associates and passcodes to prove it’s really me who gave her the number. As another backup, I’ve written another note, this one containing instructions on how to shift the bulkhead from inside; there’s a lever secreted behind a false sheet of rock within the wall. Whatever happens, she’s not stranded here, not alone.
When I’m outside, it is nighttime and the wind attacks me violently, hissing around me. Ocean spray rides on the wind and spatters against my face. By the time I’m down the stairs and into the car Jack left for me—an old junk car, but serviceable—I’m thoroughly wet. I turn on the meager heating, take out my cellphone, and dial Anna’s father.
Ian Hill answers after a few rings. His voice is thick, and I guess he’s been drinking. His tone is short and somewhat arrogant, as it always is after he’s had a drink. My mafia contacts informed me before I took the job that he could get irate after one too many. It doesn’t matter. I can handle him.
“Uh?” Ian grunts.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Oh, where’s Anna?” he barks. “She’s not at her apartment.”
“I know. Don’t worry. I’m with her. She’s safe. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can we meet?”
“Fine,” he grunts. “Geno’s bar.”
“Give me an hour.”
“Fine.”
I hang up, and then dial Jack.
“How’s it going?” Jack says.
“Cold and wet. Listen, I need you to come by and watch the place while I’m gone. I should only be a couple of hours, but I’d feel better if you were here.”
“I thought you might ask,” Jack says. “Look up.”
“Look up?”
I do, and then I see him, sitting in the black sedan on the other side of the parking lot, obscured by the misting ocean water.
“Good man,” I laugh.
Jack starts the car and drifts forward until he is level with me, and then he lowers his window. I do the same, and he gives me a short nod. He’s a military man, that’s for sure: thick-muscled, crew-cut, stern expression. But he also smiles and laughs with ease.
“How long are you going to be?” he asks.
“A couple of hours. Need to go back into the city.”
Jack nods. “And I expect a—”
I laugh, reach into my pocket, and take out a bundle of notes. I’d placed them in there without even thinking. In my business, having cash on you at all times is a necessity.
“Here,” I say, handing them over. “Now be a good boy.”
Jack winks at me. “Fuck you, Samson.”
“Bastard.” I grin.
We both raise our windows. I feel more secure now, despite all the precautions. No matter what, Anna has to be safe, must always be safe. Part of me wishes I could just talk with Anna’s father over the phone, but I need to meet him face to face, need to look into his eyes and see if he’s telling the truth, if he knows anything about River. Because who knew about the hit apart from him? Who knew when and where it would happen? If anybody could’ve directed River to me that night, it’s Ian Hill.
###
The bar is owned by the husband of one of the crime family’s sisters. A brother-in-law whose bar has seen increased business ever since he tied the knot, even if that does come at the price of gangsters running up tabs they’re never going to pay, fights breaking out every other day, and having to replace more bottles and glasses than ever before as a result of the constant smashing. This evening, though, it’s quiet. I enter the bar and glance around. Two old men sit in the corner, smoking pipes and nodding at each other as they talk. Smoke swirls up toward the ceiling. The barman is squat, with a flat face and a perpetual sneer. He waddles over to me, but I wave him away, and continue to the nearest booth, waiting for Ian Hill.
I watch the entrance closely, aware that every minute I spend here is another minute I’m not with Anna, protecting her. Jack is there; I’ve taken precautions. Even so, the fear that some harm will come to her when I’m away is almost unbearable.
‘Turn your mind off, you know the score,’ Black Knight says. ‘When you’re on a job, you’re on a job. Your head is not up in the clouds. You’re not thinking of others things. Focus, boy, or you’ll miss something.’ I try to push Anna from my mind, but it’s impossible, like trying to dislodge a splinter that’s already buried deep within my skin. I manage to push her down a little; she is an undercurrent instead of a dominant wave.
The barman watches me with beady, suspicious eyes, and the two old men in the corner whisper loudly about that strange man. I ignore them all, watching the door, urging the rich businessman to walk through. The client whose daughter I now hide in my vault. Strange, the turns life takes. I was never supposed to see Ian Hill again, or, if I did, it would’ve been about work, another client. Not to look into his eyes and test if he knows anything about River. I wonder if the old man and River are together, and I find that I can’t assume no. River is not above using sex as a weapon. At least, she wasn’t when we knew each other.
I remember trying to leave her once before, picking up my bag and making for the room of the motel. The air reeked of sex and sweat and shame, and all I wanted was to get the hell out of there and forget that I’d ever been with her. I told her as much when she gripped me by the elbow, half-turned me, told her that I couldn’t go on with her. It wasn’t right and I wasn’t enjoying it and neither, secretly, was she. We were just playing a charade, pretending to be people we weren’t. I told her this and then she dropped to her knees and without any words brought her mouth to me. At first, I was sickened, I stepped away. But then my animal nature gripped me, and I was lost for a time. Weak, I cursed myself. Weak and pathetic. Weak and stupid. Weak, weak, weak. It’s true. I was weak. And if I somehow couldn’t resist her, even for that moment, how the hell is an old, lonely man like Ian meant to?
But I’m jumping to conclusions. He may well know nothing. He might be less involved than that and still know a little. He might be completely involved. I wring my hands, trail my finger over the back of my hand, caressing my knuckles, waiting, itching, restless. I find myself wishing that a fight would break out, just so there would be something to do.
Then the bell above the door rings, and a man who could’ve walked straight from the twenties Jazz Age enters. He wears a suit with a waistcoat beneath the jacket, pale blue, with a handkerchief stuffed in the front pocket, a shirt of white silk and a blue bowtie, pleated trousers, shiny black shoes. His mustache is combed, impressive, and his eyes are wide and seem angry with everything and everybody they come to rest on.
He paces toward me, turning as he walks to shout at the barman: “Whisky!”
I don’t stand up. I sit there, looking at him, and intentionally stay seated. I know that Ian Hill is used to people—his employees—standing up when he enters a room. I know that he has let his minor mafia contacts go to his head. And I know that he thinks of himself as a very dangerous man, a man not to be messed with.
When he reaches the table, he scowls down at me, and I can see the rebuke in his face, angry I don’t stand up.
I smile up at him. “Howdy, Ian,” I say. Not Mr. Hill, but Ian. “How’re things?”
“Howdy?” he grunts. He drops into the seat opposite me and strokes his mustache. When his whisky arrives, he takes it with a low snarl, drains it, and barks, “Another!”
###
After four whiskeys, Ian interlocks his fingers and rests his chin on his knuckles, leaning forward. He is a large man, fat around the middle, but the kind of fat which clings to a man’s body and makes him look muscular. Hard-packed fat, round, strong fat. His gestures and his demeanor remind me of a silverback gorilla.
“So, Samson, what is it you want?”
“To talk,” I say. Then I purposefully turn away from him, look to the barman, and call over, “I’ll have a coke, please.”
The barman nods and picks up a glass.
When I turn back to Ian, his scowl is darker, nastier than ever. He despises me, I see, despises me because I’m younger than him, rich, and don’t have to stoop and bow to him. He’s used to men of my age kissing his ass, yessir and nossir and all that shit. I think it kills him a little every time I look away from him. Insolent! I imagine him roaring. Insolent little bastard!
“To talk about what?” he says. “About where my daughter is? I think that’s the most important order of business, don’t you? I need to know where she is, to know that she is safe.”
“She’s safe,” I say.
“You expect me to believe you!” he snaps. “How am I meant to do that? Take the word of a killer—”
“Keep your voice down.”
My words are soft, untroubled, but a flicker of fear passes across his face. He swallows, nods.
“Take the word of a killer,” he whispers. “Is that what you expect me to do?”
“I don’t kill women. I don’t hurt women. I hate men who hurt women. So don’t think of it as taking a killer’s word. Think of it as taking the word of a man who has never once laid a finger on a woman.”
The barman waddles over and places my coke on the table, along with a napkin. He nods shortly, and then waddles away. Ian and I are silent until he is out of earshot, back behind the bar, and then Ian speaks as I take a sip of coke.
“You have no right to keep my daughter from me. You have no right to—”
“I haven’t kidnapped her,” I sigh. “She isn’t bound and gagged in some dim dark dungeon somewhere, Ian. I’m keeping her safe.” I lean forward, watch his eyes, his eyes which seem small and searching above that bushy mustache. “I’m keeping her safe from a woman named River Mendoza.”
His face is stone. Nothing touches his expression: not fear, recognition, confusion, anger, nothing. Just a slate of stone unmarked with emotion. I search his eyes, deeply, but he has turned inward. He’s concealing something from me. His poker face is too good. He’s an emotional man, a boisterous man, an angry man. For him to go cold and expressionless tells me that he’s purposefully going cold and expressionless, as though he’s willing his face blank. Uncle Richard once told me that you can tell as much from a man who’s suppressing his emotions as a man who’s openly displaying them.
But it’s not definitive, and I can’t be sure. I wait for him to speak.
Sipping my coke, half a minute passes, Ian watching me.
Then he shakes his head. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, boy.”
“Is that so?” I mutter, and continue looking at him in precisely the same way.
He slams the table with his fist. My coke lurches up, spills over the rim of the glass, and then settles with a clatter. “Don’t play games with me!” he roars. The barman and the two old men turn toward the sound, squinting. Ian lets out a long shaky breath and leans back in his chair.
“Is there something you need to tell me, Ian?” I say. “Is there some secret you’re keeping from me?”
“Of course not!” he snaps. “I just want to know that my daughter’s safe—”
“She is.”
“I want her back.”
“She’s an adult, Ian. I think she can make that choice for herself. You’re changing the subject. I’m going to ask you a question now, and I want you to think long and hard about your answer. Do you know a woman called River Mendoza, or any woman who works in the business? Failing that, do you know who put Eric’s body in the trunk of Anna’s car?”
“This is absurd,” he mutters. “I don’t know a thing except I want my daughter back.”
I click my neck from side to side. He’s not going to give me anything. I can tell that now, without probing further. In my business, you get good at knowing when a man will and will not give you what you want. Perhaps with some violence, he might give it up, but committing violence against Ian Hill isn’t a good idea. He does know people, people who’d be furious with me. Plus, even if their relationship is strained, he’s still Anna’s father.
I stand up. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll let you know when the problem’s dealt with. Maybe you’ll be more honest then, eh?” I nod to the coke. “Thanks for the drink.”
I feel his eyes burning into my back as I walk from the bar, but what, exactly, can he do?
I climb into the car, start the engine, and turn the heating on.
Then I take out my phone and go to the text message I received from River. I compose a text back, short and to the point:
I want to meet.
I wait for more than half an hour, sitting, watching the bar. Ian doesn’t emerge. Either he left by the back entrance or he’s in there now, getting drunk. Then my phone beeps. It’s River, with a time and an address. Tomorrow afternoon. Okay, good, I think. I can make that work.
Then it beeps again, and an emoji comes through. A skull and crossbones, and a heart.
I shake my head. River, I think. Give it up.