“People change.”
“Sure they do. Sure. You’re looking good, though, fit as ever. Retirement agrees with you.”
“You didn’t come all the way up here to make small talk,” I said. “What do you want, Ed?”
“How about a drink for starters? I been on the road five hours, I can use one. You still drinking Irish?”
“Now and then.”
“Spare a double shot for an old friend?”
We’d never been friends, but there was no point in making an issue of it. I led him inside, poured his drink and a dollop for myself while he looked around at the knotty pine walls, the furniture and bookcases I’d built myself, the big native stone fireplace. “Some place,” he said again.
“Suits me.”
“You get cell phone reception up here?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. I couldn’t find a number. But I see you got a landline.”
“Unlisted and blocked. I don’t use it much.”
“What about TV reception? Pretty bad?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a television. Or want one.”
“Yeah? So what do you do nights, winters?”
“Read, mostly. Work puzzles, listen to CB radio. Fall asleep in front of the fire.”
“The quiet life.” Malachi’s expression said what he meant was boring life. He couldn’t imagine himself living the way I did, without luxuries and all the glitz he was used to. “What about women?”
“What about them?”
“You always had one around in the old days.”
“That was the old days. Now I like living alone.”
“But you don’t always sleep alone, right? I mean, you’re not even seventy yet.”
“One more year.”
“Hell, sixty-nine’s not old. I’m sixty-five and I still get my share.” His laugh sounded forced. “Good old Viagra.”
“Let’s take our drinks out on the deck,” I said.
We went out there. Malachi carried his glass over to the railing, stood looking down at the short wooden dock with my skiff tied up at the end, then out over the mile and a half of glass-smooth lake, the pine woods that hemmed it on three sides, the forested mountains in the near distance.
“Some view,” he said. “Anybody else live on this lake?”
“No. Nearest neighbors are six miles from here and they’re only around in the summer.”
“You do a lot of fishing?”
“Fair amount. Mostly catch and release.”
“No fun in that. What about deer? Catch and release them too?”
“I don’t hunt as much as I used to.”
“How come? Still got your eye, right?”
“My eye’s fine. Arthritis is the problem.”
“But you can still shoot? Your hand’s still steady?”
“Steady enough. Why don’t you get to the point, Ed, save us both some time?”
He took a swallow of his Irish, coughed, drank again. He was still smiling, but it looked as forced now as his laugh had been. “I got a problem,” he said. “A big problem.”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. And you wouldn’t’ve come alone.”
“I don’t know who to trust anymore, that’s the thing. I’m not even sure of my bodyguards, for Christ’s sake. Things’ve gotten dicey in the business, Griff. Real dicey.”
“Is that right?”
“Might as well tell you straight out. Me and Frank Carbone, we’re on the outs. Big time.”
“What happened?”
“Power struggle,” Malachi said, “and it’s none of my doing. Frank’s gotten greedy in his old age, wants to expand operations, wants full control.”
“Why come to me about it?”
“Why do you think? Do I have to spell it out?”
“Contract offer? After all these years?”
“Sure, a contract. Best one you ever had.”
“I’m an old man. Why not bring in some young shooter from out of town? Detroit, Miami, L.A.”
“I got to have somebody I know, somebody I can trust. I could always trust you, Griff. You never took sides, never rocked the boat. Just took the contracts we gave you and carried them out.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “I’ve been out of the business almost eight years.”
“Not such a long time. I’m betting you’re as good as you ever were. The best. Not one screw-up, not one miss. And you always had an angle nobody else thought of. Like the time the cops stashed that fink Jimmy Conlin in the safe house with half a dozen guards, and still you found a way to make the hit. How’d you manage it, anyway? I always wondered.”
“Trade secret,” I said.
Another forced laugh. He gulped the rest of his drink before he said, “Fifty K was the most you ever got in the old days, right? For Jimmy Conlin? I’ll pay you seventy-five to hit Frank Carbone.”
“I’m not interested.”
“What? Why the hell not? Seventy-five’s a lot of money.”
“Sure it is. But I don’t need it.”
“Everybody needs money. Sooner or later.”
Well, he was right about that. I was down to only a few thousand stashed in the strongbox under the bedroom floor, and the cabin could use a new roof, a new hot water heater. I could use a bigger skiff, too, with a more reliable outboard. But money and the things it could buy weren’t important to me anymore. I could make do with what I had, make it last as many years as I had left.
“No sale, Ed.”
“Come on, don’t play hard to get. Seventy-five’s all I can afford. Think what that much green’ll buy you. Round the world cruise. Trips to Europe, South America, anywhere you want to go.”
“There’s no place I want to go,” I said. “Everything I want is right here. I haven’t been away from this wilderness in five years, not even for one day, and I don’t intend to leave again for any reason or any amount of money. I’m staying put for the rest of my life.”
“Bullshit, Griff. Can’t you see how desperate I am?”
“I see it, but the answer is still no.”
Malachi’s fat face was a splotchy red now — anger, fear, the whiskey. “Goddamn you, I done plenty for you in the old days. Plenty. You owe me.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t owe you or anybody else. I paid all my debts before I retired.”
“You better take this contract,” he said. He pointed an index finger at me, cocked his thumb over it. “You hear me? You know what’s good for you, you take it and you do it right and fast.”
“You threatening me, Ed? I don’t like to be threatened.”
“I don’t care what you like. You got to do this for me, you got to hit Frank, that’s all there is to it. If you don’t and I have to take a chance on somebody else—”
“Then that somebody hits me too. That what you’re saying?”
“Don’t make me do this the hard way, that’s what I’m saying. I like you, Griff, I always have, you know that. But you got to take this contract.”
I gave him a long look. His words had been hard, but his eyes were pleading and he was sweating into the collar of his expensive silk shirt. I said, “I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“Neither of us has. So you’ll take it?”
“Yeah. I’ll take it.”
“Good! Good man! I knew you’d come around.” Malachi’s big smile was back, crooked with relief. He used a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe off his sweat, then clapped me on the arm. “How about we have another drink,” he said, “seal the bargain?”
I said that was fine with me and went inside to refill our glasses. Before I took them out to the deck, I made a quick detour into the bedroom.
“What’s that you got there?” Malachi asked when I handed him his drink. He was looking at the wicker creel I’d slung over my shoulder.
“Creel. I’m going fishing after you leave. Let’s take our drinks down to the dock.”