Samson

 

I hold Anna longer than I’ve held a woman before. I’m not a holder, a hugger, a close-and-personal type. The only time I get close is to kill, and the only time I get personal is for blood. But now, sitting on the bed with Anna in my arms, I feel something I haven’t felt since I was a young boy who knew nothing of the business, whose father was just a drunk and whose uncle was just a kind-faced man. It must be hope, I reflect. Hope for what, though? I’m not sure. But listening to her breathing, which gets slower and more calm as I hold her, I know it’s hope for something.

 

But beneath the hope I can’t get rid of the image of that fleeing man in black, the aches in my body from his goddamn Taser, and the shame of being outplayed.

 

“I have to check outside again,” I tell her.

 

She nods shortly, and leans away from me. “I’m okay now,” she says. “I’m fine.”

 

I don’t know if I believe that, but I’m not experienced enough with women to know what to say. I stand up and pull on my clothes, still dirty from the night before. Soon, I’ll have to change them. But there are more important things to worry about at this precise moment. Maybe the man from last night has gotten cocky; maybe he’s back here, watching.

 

“Samson,” Anna says, when I’m about to stand up.

 

“Yeah?” I turn and face her. Her face is red, but not bright red, and her lips no longer tremble. She looks at me and her almost-black eyes are holding more pain than I can imagine—waves of pain crashing against the blackness of her eyes.

 

“I want you to know. Last night. It wasn’t because I was drunk or scared or anything. It was because I wanted to.”

 

“Me, too,” I say. “And I want to again.”

 

My voice becomes thick, animal-like, but I can’t help it. Sitting there in her tight-fitting pajamas, her body outlined perfectly, I can’t fight the animal desire inside of me.

 

She smiles, shy and playful. “So do I. But don’t you have business to attend to?”

 

I groan, stand. “Lock the door behind me,” I say.

 

Anna follows me to the front door, I open it, and for a few moments we just stand there, looking at each other. I guess she’s thinking the same thing as me: how? How can we feel this way about each other after so little time? How can I feel so protective, and how can she feel so protected?

 

I smile at her, and she smiles back. “This is kind of an adventure, isn’t it?” she says.

 

“I suppose it is,” I say.

 

We hold gazes, but neither of us speaks, and after half a minute or so I leave.

 

###

 

I scout the street quickly with my eyes, taking it all in. The sky is clear, but the sun is pale and dim. Even so, the street is lit up with sunlight. It reflects just as the moon did on the wet sidewalk. The bar at the end of the street is closed and shattered glass covers the space around it. Cars drift by slowly. There are fewer cars parked on the street, people going to work or school. I scan the cars, listen, but I don’t see or hear anyone. I stand just outside the apartment door, unwilling to leave it again, just in case this Whoever Man decides to trick me again.

 

I take out my cellphone from my jacket pocket and dial Jack. Jack Weiss is one of those men the army often creates: disillusioned and generally angry at everything, but the world especially. He was in Iraq and now he’s an associate, a driver, and sometimes a killer for one of the biggest crime families in New York. It’s the same crime family I do a lot of work for, but I’m a free trader. So is Jack, when I want him to be. We’ve worked a few jobs together and he respects me in an oddly devout way, as though I am his officer.

 

He answers as he normally does, with a gruff: “Yeah?”

 

“It’s me,” I say.

 

“Oh.” His voice drops an octave. “Heard you went into hiding.”

 

“Not hiding. Working. Eddy, anything in the air about me? Any rumors?”

 

“No.”

 

I breathe a sigh of relief.

 

“We all know about the NBA hit, but nobody knows who hired you, and hardly anyone even knows it was you, and they’re only guessing because of the poison. That’s your favorite method, after all.”

 

“Cleaner,” I grunt. “Is anyone taking credit for it?”

 

“The hit? No.”

 

“Not the hit itself. Putting the body in the car.”

 

“Oh.” He pauses, and I can almost hear him filing through his memories with methodic efficiency. “No, everyone thinks that was you. Seemed strange to me, actually, so I asked around, checked if there were any former players in the mix. You know, people who might want to hurt you.”

 

“Good man,” I say.

 

He smiles; I hear it in his voice. “But there’s nothing, nobody. No former players, no enemies, nobody back on the scene. None of the families are taking credit for moving the body, which is strange, ‘cause they would if their objective was to make a point. You know, rattle you. Whoever’s doing this, they’re freelance. At least, that’s how it seems.”

 

“I met the fucker last night,” I say, and then quickly tell Jack about the chase.

 

He chuckles. “Bet that hurt like a son of a bitch.”

 

“You bet right,” I sigh. “So no leads at all?”

 

“Nada, but I’ll keep my ears pealed—or is it eyes?”

 

“Do both, and you’ll be doing be a favor.”

 

“Aye-aye, sir.”

 

“Bite me, Jack,” I say, and then hang up the phone.

 

Nothing, nobody.

 

I lean against the wall near the main door to the apartment building, tossing my phone from one hand to the other and scanning the street—always scanning. That’s the killer’s life, in many ways, constantly spreading invisible hands into his surroundings, constantly questioning if there is someone close by who may do harm. But I see and hear nobody, and I’m forced to conclude that whoever was here last night is gone now. Maybe they’re gone forever; maybe they’ve learnt their lesson. I want to believe that, but it’s difficult. Whoever dragged a corpse—a heavy corpse—across a parking lot and stuffed it into the trunk of a car has something to say.

 

I think of Anna upstairs, the dancer, the veterinarian student, loving and kind and whose fault none of this is. First it was Eric, now it’s me, both of us bringing chaos into her life. The only solace I can take is that she seems to enjoy my particular brand of chaos. I vow to myself to not squander that enjoyment, to treat her well, to make sure she’s safe, always. Last night was a mistake, chasing the man like that. It was stupid. It will not happen again.

 

“What are you doing, mister?”

 

The boy is about five years old, wearing a blue overall with yellow stains down the front. His hair is fine and brown, combed close to his head, and his eyes are bright. He looks up at me with frank curiosity. Behind him, I see his mother, or who I guess is his mother. She waves her son over. The boy continues to look up at me, so that the mother is forced to lean down and take him by the elbow.

 

“Don’t bother the man,” she says.

 

“He’s just leaning there. Shouldn’t he be at work?”

 

“Maybe it’s his day off,” the mother sighs. She meets my eyes. She looks worn and haggard, and I notice that her belly is bulging with another child. “I’m sorry—”

 

“No apology needed, ma’am,” I say. She smiles her thanks and leaves.

 

I find myself asking where the father is. A stupid question. He’s most likely at work, earning money for the rent and the bills and the cot and the formula and whatever else it is a child needs. But then my mind moves way, way too forward, into a future where Anna is pregnant. And I try to imagine leaving her to roam the streets alone, and I can’t. I would protect her; I would always protect her.

 

‘You’re getting sentimental, nephew,’ Uncle Richard chuckles in my mind.

 

I can’t deny it.

 

I watch until the boy and his mother have walked the length of the street and turned at the bar. Still tossing my phone from hand to hand, I try to think of somebody else to call. There must be somebody, I think, anybody who might help. The thing is, if Jack hasn’t heard anything, it’s unlikely anybody else has. And the crime families are busy enough without me going to the bosses. And if I went to the bosses, they’d demand to know who my client is, just to be sure it wasn’t one of their competitors. No, I can’t have that. It would only draw Anna further into the fray.

 

Maybe I could do a larger scout of the neighborhood, but that would involve leaving the apartment—

 

Suddenly, my phone beeps. A short monotone note, so a text, not a call.

 

I flip my phone over. It’s an unknown number, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t somebody I don’t know. I have around ten burner cells back at my place, after all.

 

I go through to the texts. Just a photograph. I bring the phone to my eyes, covering the screen from the glare of the sun with my hand, and study the photograph. A drawing, no—a tattoo. On the back of somebody’s leg, or perhaps their knee; it’s a close-up and difficult to tell exactly. But then I focus properly on the photograph, and I know where the tattoo is without having to see more. And I know who the tattoo belongs to.

 

I collapse against the wall, my head pulsing, and my mouth dry. If it were not for years of training, conditioning myself, I’m sure I would be shaking right now, shaking like somebody who’s just seen a ghost. Which I have. Which I have, I think, stunned. The tattoo is of a Phoenix, expertly drawn, its fiery wings spread wide, its neck arched upward, its beak open. Ashes drop from its wings, and there is a pile of ashes beneath it. Her name is River Mendoza, and she’s my ex-girlfriend. But more than that. She’s my ex-partner. We worked jobs together.

 

But she’s dead, I think, letting my head fall back and rest against the wall. She died. How? How the hell?

 

My phone beeps again.

 

This time it’s a text: Remember the cabin; remember the five times.

 

I cringe at the words. The cabin where I sometimes took her to have sex, and five times, referring to the occasion where we once had sex five times in a row. I never told anyone about the cabin, and as far as I know neither did she.

 

But she’s dead! She died!

 

For a time, my mind repeats these statements over and over again, screaming them as though if I think it enough times, it will be true. But I can’t deny the text. I see now for the first time, too, that I can’t be sure she’s dead. I never saw the body.

 

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “I never saw the body.”

 

I heave myself away from the wall, mind whirring. I look up and down the street. Is she watching me? But she’s not there.

 

My mind is cast back five years, when I was twenty-four and working a job with a young, slightly mad woman.

 

###

 

I was in one of the bars owned by the Italians, and I was drunk. Drunker than I normally allowed myself to get. I sat at the bar, knocking back whisky after whisky, still wearing the black suit I wore to Uncle Richard’s funeral. Black Knight was dead, and nobody was mourning. He’d stopped being a main player before I was eighteen, and he’d drifted out of the consciousness of the criminals and the gang bosses. A rare feat in itself, considering most careers in this business ended in blood. So I sat my vigil, drinking whisky after whisky for him, and then River, wearing jeans and a tank top, her pink hair messy, tousled, sat down beside me.

 

“Next one’s on me,” she said, and I grunted.

 

It continued like that all night, me thinking more and more about Richard, about the man who I thought of as my father, because my real father was a scumbag, even if he was a skilled killer. I thought of the way Richard had sat me on his knee, before I knew about the business when I was very young, and bobbed me up and down, tickled me, and played with me. Before I knew him as Black Knight, when he was just a kind man with a thick beard, he seemed like a big lovable lump to me. And even after I discovered what he was, who he was, that was difficult to shake. He was Black Knight, sure, but he was still the man who had tickled me for half an hour straight once, who had laughed like a jackal when I tickled him back. He was the man who had taught me bravery. Richard had told me to confront my father, and I had. I’d marched back to our house and I’d fought him like a dog, biting his ear and clawing at him. In the end, I’d ended up on my back, bleeding into the tiles of our kitchen. But that was my first lesson, the lesson that stuck with me more than anything else. You have to fight. If you do not fight, you are not a man. This kind-faced, bearded man had drummed this into me, and I believed him. I loved him.

 

And now he was dead.

 

I was one of three people at his funeral. Two, if you don’t count the priest. The other was an old man I’d never met who apparently knew Black Knight back in the seventies, another remnant from a time gone by when the streets were nastier and the police were slower. But the other man didn’t talk, and soon I felt as though I was alone: alone mourning this man who, to my mind, was a legend and deserved a parade.

 

I drank, and drank, and drank, and I hardly cared who was buying the drinks. River? I asked myself drunkenly. Who’s that? It didn’t seem to matter. If she was giving me whisky, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to think.

 

I’d never been blackout drunk in my life but I came close to it then. I could walk, just. My steps swayed and I imagined that Richard was watching me from the corner. He was stroking his beard meditatively and his kind eyes were looking deep inside of me. Make as much money as you can and then get the hell out. I heard the words as though he was not dead, as though he had really said them.

 

Before I even knew what exactly was happening, River and I were fucking. Not even screwing, and definitely not making love. Just fucking. Just gasping and gouging and writhing. Just throwing ourselves into each other and taking what little pleasure we could. After, I learnt that she was in the same business as me, hence why she was allowed to drink at the bar. I saw her around. We began to work jobs together. We talked little; I knew hardly anything about her. But I sensed she cared for me more than I did for her. Once, she said, “We should go on a date one day, you know, to the movies or whatever.”

 

I shook my head. “No,” I said, and that was the end of it.

 

I didn’t love her, didn’t care for her. Perhaps I was cruel, perhaps it was wrong of me to take pleasure from her without opening up even a little, but I couldn’t help it. Our fucking was always quick and shamed: coming together, never kissing, never touching except where necessary, and doing it as fast as possible, a quick release. A fucking like killing.

 

Six months after that first night, River and I stood in the shadow of the warehouse. The sun was setting and the docks grew steadily darker. The workmen milled to and fro, carrying, hurrying, so many of them at first that they appeared like a nest of ants. Quickly, they dwindled until only a dozen were left moving here and there. And then, once the sun was almost set, the docks emptied completely. It was spring and warm, but still we wore black clothes, blending in with the dark. River’s hair, dyed pink, was hidden under a black hat. She had a mask pulled up around her face. She was tall and lithe, like a cat.

 

“Samson,” she muttered, the sky dark, the water splashing against the docks even darker. “Stay focused.”

 

“I am,” I grunted.

 

She tilted her head at me. She’d been looking at me like that more and more lately, as though she was trying to read me. I hated it. I didn’t want her to read me. I didn’t want her to see inside of me. I wanted us to remain as we were. No, not even that. I wanted us to stop being what we were. I wanted to stop the fucking, the shameful and sweaty act which wasn’t even pleasurable anymore. I wanted to stop working with her. I wanted to cut all ties with her. It would be fairer on her, I thought, to end it sooner rather than later. I couldn’t let her think that there was a chance for us: some twisted Bonnie and Clyde couple.

 

That’s it, I thought. After tonight, I would end it. I couldn’t do it now, because we were working. But as soon as the mark was dead, I was done. Maybe she’d rage, maybe she’d cry, but that wouldn’t matter. She’d get past it, come to realize what I’d known all along, that there was nothing truly between us that could be called a relationship. Even the label girlfriend was meaningless between us, because she wasn’t really my friend.

 

We turned to the docks, waiting. This was going to be the biggest job I’d ever pulled, bigger even that any job Dad or Richard pulled back in their day. Five marks, two of them arriving by boat, three of them walking out onto the dock. A drug deal between two factions our client didn’t particularly like. Irish and Chinese, crime syndicates from both sides, exchanging a massive amount of heroin. As far as I understood, our client, an Italian mob boss from a family which was around in the twenties, was doing a favor for the police. Our job was to kill the marks so the police could move in and claim the heroin. We get paid, the police back off the Italians, and a lump of heroin is taken from the streets.

 

Win, win, win. Except for the Irish and the Chinese, of course.

 

We waited another an hour, and then the boat glided silently into the dock, its lights turned off. The only thing telling us that something was on the water was the subtle change in the sounds of the waves, and when one of the men coughed. The boat docked quietly, and two Chinese men stepped onto the walkway, both of them wearing tight-fitting suits, the outlines of Uzis clear beneath their jackets.

 

The men talked rapidly in Chinese; one of them laughed. Then they stood there, waiting.

 

A few minutes later, a car coasted into the parking lot, on the other side of the warehouse from where River and I stood. Both of us took out our pistols and silencers. We twisted the long tubes onto the end of the guns, and waited.

 

The Irishmen swaggered out onto the walkway, the one at the rear holding a briefcase. The men looked much the same from this distance, the chief difference being that the Chinese men wore suits, and the Irishmen wore thick military jackets, boots, and jeans. All of them were armed, though none of them were carrying their pieces in their hands. I spotted the guns even in the lowlight: under the jackets, under the coats, stuffed down the back of one man’s jeans. We were about fifty yards away from the walkway. Storage containers sat between us and where the five men were meeting.

 

I nodded to River, and she nodded back. “I’ll take the Chinamen,” she whispered.

 

We wove through the storage containers, staying in the shadows, our pistols aimed forward. I was calm, as calm as I always was before a job. Even though it’s been months since his death, Richard usually haunts me. Made my heart beat faster than it should. Made me panic when I should’ve been calm. But now, weaving through these boxes with murder on my mind, my heart was steady; the gun didn’t shake at all.

 

“You are late!” one of the Chinese men shouted.

 

“Traffic. What’re you goin’ to do, eh?”

 

“Let’s trade.”

 

When we got closer, crouched down behind a container, I saw that the Chinese man who spoke was around a foot shorter than his companion. But he wasn’t short; he was around five foot eight. No, the man at his side was just massive. Tall and thin, around six and a half feet, with eyes that scanned the night. Eyes that reminded me of my own. Eyes that saw everything.

 

“Alright, alright,” one of the Irishmen said. “Get the product. We have the cash.”

 

I looked at River, and she counted back from three on her fingers. I chose my target, aimed, and stroked the trigger. Three quick shots, before they knew what hit them. Bang, bang, bang. Easy.

 

Three . . .

 

The man with the case walked forward toward the Chinese men, and I followed him with the barrel of my gun, aiming at his head. ‘If you can’t be sure they’re not wearing a vest, always aim at their head. You do a hell of a lot of damage shooting someone in the center mass, plus it’s easier to hit, but if they’re wearing a vest, then what? No, headshots unless you can be sure.’ Uncle Richard’s advice, and it hadn’t led me astray yet.

 

Two . . .

 

The man with the case tapped his foot as the shorter Chinese man hopped into boat and moved into the back, rummaging around. He returned a moment later, holding two large suitcases. Then he went back onto the boat, and returned to the walkway. He did this five times until ten cases were resting on the ground.

 

One . . .

 

An Irishman at the rear moved past the one holding the money, meaning to inspect the goods.

 

River dropped her finger. We fired.

 

Chaos gripped us for a few moments. I didn’t think. I didn’t aim, not consciously. I had no need to aim. My body knew what to do and I let it. My first two shots hit cleanly and two of the Irishmen fell with soft grunts, blood spilling from their skulls. The third darted into the darkness, toward the parking lot. I cursed and sprinted after him. Out of the periphery of my vision, I saw that the shorter Chinese man was dead, but the large one, the one with the predator’s eyes, was crouched down behind the boat, holding a gun. He fired at me. I ducked around the corner of a container, out of sight.

 

River will handle him, I thought to myself. Regardless of how I felt about her – or didn’t feel, as the case was - but she was good at the business, that’s for sure. I sprinted after the remaining man safe in the knowledge that when I returned, River would have ended him.

 

I sprinted, listening to the gasps of the man. He was only a few yards ahead of me, trying and failing to lose me amidst the containers. But I heard his breathing, his heavy footsteps. I emerged into a clearing, a gathering area just beside the car park. The man stopped at the edge of the parking lot when I grunted out, “Hands.”

 

He stopped, and then lifted his hands above his head and turned to face me slowly. He was old, around fifty, maybe older, with bushy gray eyebrows and shocks of gray hair.

 

“We lost, did we?” he sighed, lips trembling, but otherwise showing no sign of his fear.

 

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

 

He nodded. “Go on then, lad.”

 

I put a bullet in his head, he slumped forward, and I turned away and headed back toward the docks. Still, I didn’t feel anything, not scared or angry or sorry or regretful. Just focused.

 

I jogged back to the docks, expecting to find the Chinese man dead, expecting to see River walking toward me with that annoying-as-hell grin which is always plastered to her face after we’d done a job together. I was already composing my speech in my head. I’d end it with her tonight. I couldn’t leave it any later. The thought of fucking again, desperate and pointless, made my skin crawl. I just wanted to have a shower and sleep.

 

I emerged onto the dock, gun aimed, ready to fire.

 

But he fired at me first. The bullet buried deep into my thigh. I swore and threw myself behind a container. Blood poured from my leg and soaked into my pants. The pain was intense, but I ignored it. I tore my sleeve free and began wrapping it to stop the flow of the blood. As I did that, I shuffled on my ass so that I could peek around the edge of the container. A loud bang—a revolver without a silencer—and River fell backward into the boat. The Chinese man jumped into the boat after her, started the engine, and sped off.

 

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

The bullet took her in the chest, what must’ve been her heart, and I knew for a fact that River wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest.

 

So she’s dead, I thought, and perhaps I’m not human because I didn’t feel a thing.

 

There was no question of chasing him. The cases—the money and the drugs—were still on the docks, and the bodies of most of them were lying here. That would have to be enough for my client. Maybe they’d pay me less, but that was life.

 

With an effort, I climbed to my feet.

 

She’s dead, I thought again, comparing what I felt when Richard died to what I felt now. A tsunami versus a trickle—not even a trickle.

 

I limped into the night, teeth gritted against the pain in my leg.

 

###

 

I didn’t see the body, I think now, pacing up and down in front of the apartment building. I saw her fall into the boat and I saw the boat drift into the night, but I didn’t see up close, didn’t see that she was really dead. Maybe the bullet missed her heart, miraculously missed her lungs and came out clean without hitting her spine. But if she lived, how did she live? Did she kill the Chinese man and escape? But if that’s the case, why is she only returning now, after all these years?

 

I have no answers to these questions, but I know for sure now who dragged Eric’s body into Anna’s car. It was River. And last night, the chase and the Taser, that was River, too. I thought it was a man in black. I was wrong. It was a woman in black.

 

River, a woman who wanted more from me than I could give her, a deadly killer, a woman I left for dead—she’s back. A woman I left for dead is back, and she’s after not just me, but Anna as well. A chill runs down my spine. I’ve seen River work. She’s efficient. If she wants Anna dead, there’s a big chance she’ll be able to do it, with or without my protection. If we stay here, anyway.

 

I can’t keep her here. I have to move us. I have to keep her out of danger. I feel more for Anna after being with her for one night than I did for River during the entire time we were together. I feel more attached, more loyal, more dedicated. I wouldn’t even run down a walkway for River; for Anna, I would’ve leapt into the icy water, wounded leg or no, and swum after her.

 

I won’t let her take Anna from me, I think, gritting my teeth so hard there’s an ache in my temples.

 

I stuff my cell into my pocket and turn to the apartment door. I need to see her. I need to make sure she’s safe.