He’d killed one poor bastard because he needed civvy clothes, and another for his motorcycle, which duly packed up after thirty miles, forcing him to walk for a while. Big fucking country Chile -north to south anyway. He’d stuck to the west coast, killing some bearded Australian backpacker for his passport. Jesus, backpacking in fucking Chile: that was asking for trouble.
He’d crossed into Peru, smiling for the border guards like the man in the picture in the passport, rubbing his chin and laughing, to show he’d shaved a lot of his beard off since the photo had been taken. They stayed somber throughout but let him go. The backpacker’s body would never be found, not while it had skin on it, though one day the skeleton might be found. He bypassed Ecuador and went into Colombia. People in Peru had told him not to do it, but he didn’t see why not-and it was lucky he didn’t heed their warnings, because Colombia turned out to be a great place, and the site of his first civilian job. He’d met up with some hard cases in Cali and ran a few errands for them. He got to know the kingpin, Edouard, and Edouard told him there was always work for those willing to undertake personal risk.
“I’ve taken more risks than you’ll ever know,” Jay had said, though in fact he’d already told Edouard most of the Rio Grande story, exaggerating somewhat and turning Reeve into an early corpse.
Eventually, Edouard had given Jay a job which involved liaison with some Americans. The Americans took him with them to Venezuela and from there to Jamaica, where he decided to stay awhile and was duly passed to yet another new employer. He was learning fast what his employers wanted, and how to know if a proffered fee was a rip-off or not. He stayed in Jamaica more than a year and saved enough to buy an American identity. Later on, homesick, he bought himself a new British passport, too, and now he had a Canadian one as well-all in different names of course, none of them his own.
When the Jamaican police started asking questions about a headless, handless corpse that had been dragged out of a trash dump on the edge of Kingston, Jay left the island, not without regrets, and headed to the USA, feeling immediately at home in Miami. Jesus, what a madhouse. It was in Miami that he found himself talking like an American, even though most people he spoke to still mistook him for an Australian. Jay set up his stall in Miami, but found work hard to come by. It was all organized, mostly along clan lines: he wasn’t Cuban, so the Cubans didn’t want him; he wasn’t Puerto Rican, so the PRs wouldn’t take him. They had their own firepower, and if they needed freelancers, there were a hundred kids on the street, each one with something to prove and nothing to lose.
Jay got in touch with Edouard, who put him in touch with an old friend. Edouard had been good to Jay, and Jay had liked him. There was an affinity between them, two men who only ever liked to be called by a single name. The only hit Jay had ever turned down had been on Edouard.
Edouard’s old friend brought Jay to L.A. The man’s name was Fessler, and Jay had worked for Mr. Fessler-that was what you had to call him, Mr. Fessler; Jay sometimes thought even Fessler’s wife called him that-for three years before setting up on his own. He liked the regular income, but itched to be his own boss. It was tough at first, but got easier after the first couple of jobs. In fact, the money got so good, Jay developed a nose-talc habit which he broke only with the aid of a lot of booze. A lot of booze. The booze had put some weight on him which no amount of workouts seemed able to shift, but he thought he carried it well enough, and in a baggy suit no one noticed, right?
La-La Land, that was what Jay called Los Angeles. He’d come across it in a book about snuff movies. The appellation stuck in his mind, and he pretended he’d made it up, even to people who knew he hadn’t.
He liked La-La Land. He liked being his own boss. Above all, he liked working for big companies. Big companies paid well and let you get on with it. They didn’t want to know the details, the procedures-they just wanted the job done. And they paid on the nail. No fuss, no mess, minimum paperwork. Jay’s cover was as a “corporate restructuring adviser,” and he’d even read books on the subject. Well, articles anyway. He bought the Wall Street Journal sometimes, too, and he was an avid reader of some bits of Time. He had letterheaded paper and knew a guy who could type up an expense sheet or an account if the employer really wanted one. These pieces of paper were art forms, full of terms like “workstation projection analyses” and “capital fluidity advisement,” stuff Jay didn’t understand, but the guy who did the typing swore they meant something.
Kosigin wasn’t like anyone Jay had ever worked for. For a start, he wanted to know everything-every detail. And he would make Jay tell the story several times over. Jay was never sure if Kosigin was looking for him to make a mistake in the retelling, or if the guy just got off on the stuff Jay told him. Certainly, no matter how exaggeratedly gruesome Jay made the details, Kosigin never winced, never showed any emotion. He’d just stand there at his office window, or sit at his desk with his hands together as if in prayer, the tips of his fingers just touching his chin. The fucker was creepy, no doubt about that. No doubt at all.
But Jay reckoned he could learn a few things about deportment from Mr. Kosigin. He liked Kosigin’s style. Kosigin was Brooks Brothers for work and L.L. Bean for casual moments, as buttoned-down as an oxford shirt. He would never feel right in Armani, even if it was original. He was aloof, but that just made him seem stronger. Jay liked to visit him in his office. He liked to study him.
It was like a message, when Kosigin gave him the job which led to Reeve being delivered unto him. It was like a dream. Jay could have taken Reeve out a dozen times since, any number of different ways, but he wanted a face-to-face. He wanted to know what had happened to Reeve, and what he’d told the brass. Just for his own personal satisfaction.
Then he’d kill him.
And if Reeve wouldn’t tell, or made any rash first move… well, Jay would drop him without a second’s hesitation.
“Where’s this fucking bulletin board?” he murmured, walking through the packed concourse. It was like a demolition derby of luggage carts and parties of elderly couples, all with walkers and umbrellas and bags of golf clubs and raincoats folded over pencil-thin liver-spotted arms. Umbrellas in La-La Land! It was a madhouse, and the lunatics had been in charge so long that nobody bothered to question the system anymore.
“I love this town,” he said out loud, maneuvering past the latest obstruction. He finally saw the information kiosk, though it was doing its best to blend in with the scenery. He passed a couple of his guys without acknowledging their presence, but when he got to the board, he stopped and turned on his heels, checking all around, studying the scene through the plate-glass window-a jam of cabs and minibuses and a frantic cop windmilling his arms at them. The cop had a whistle in his mouth, referee-style. Jay remembered that moment in the scrape, when he knew he had to jump and fight or he’d implode, he’d been lying there so long and so quiet. He knew that in technical parlance, he had “cracked”-but fuck that. Reeve was so tight-arsed he’d have lain there and let a bomb detonate between his cheeks. If Jay hadn’t got up and run, very probably neither of them would still be alive. That was something else he wanted to tell Reeve; he wanted Reeve to thank him for getting him out of that situation. He reckoned he was owed a little respect.