Archie knew him, and he had exchanged resources with K-bomb from time to time. Five years ago, when a client hired Archie to specifically make a hit look like an accident, Archie reached out to Kirschenbaum to seek advice about whom he should bring in for the job. K-bomb said he had just the man, and farmed Spilatro out to Archie for a percentage. Unfortunately, Archie didn’t collect much more information on Spilatro beyond who his fence was. This sticks out to me, a bit out of character for such a diligent fence. It speaks to how much Archie trusted or looked up to Kirschenbaum. It’s awfully hard to see clearly when we have stars in our eyes.
That first hit was on a news reporter named Timothy O’Donnell, who also happened to be serving on a jury at the time of his death. The New York Times reported that on May 6, construction scaffolding collapsed on top of the middle-aged man while he was jogging his familiar route through downtown. It seems Spilatro isn’t afraid to use old tricks for new assignments.
The other two files present similar kills… a bookkeeper died of asphyxiation in a building fire, and a police detective had his ticket punched when he slipped on a patch of ice and froze to death, unconscious, in an alley behind his local bar in Boston. That particular job was worked as a tandem sweep: Spilatro and the same assassin who struck me as odd before, the woman named Carla who’d worked the personal kill for Archie. What role she played in this murder isn’t mentioned, just that it was a success.
“Here’s what’s absent from all these files…”
“What’s that?” Risina asks.
“Any personal information on Spilatro. What his real name is, where he lives, how he got his start, where he grew up.”
“And Archie usually has that?”
“Yes.”
“But no one knows any of that information about you, either.”
“Except Archie did at one point. And someone else does now.”
She starts to say something, then smiles. “Yes, of course. I know.”
“So we need to find out if Spilatro has a ‘you’ in his life.”
“I see. And how do we do that?”
“We go to New York and talk to his fence. Kirschenbaum.”
“He won’t want to give up that information.”
“No, he won’t.”
“But we’re going to make him.”
“Yes, we are.”
“And he’s good at this. So he’s going to be protected.”
“That’s right.”
I take her face in my hands, one palm on each cheek, and put our foreheads together.
“If you don’t want to do this… if you have any concern at all, I won’t think less of you.”
“Are you kidding? I think there’s a bigger problem evolving that you need to consider.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m starting to like this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ridgefield, Connecticut is an affluent, three-hundred-year-old neighborhood settled at the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. It boasts an historic district, an art museum, a small symphony hall, and two private high schools. Some sixty miles from New York City, it’s a simple, ninety-minute train ride from the Branchville Metro North station, conveniently located in the southeast corner of town, all the way to Grand Central Station in Manhattan. And yet, it is a world away from Bedford-Stuyvesant, or “Bed-Stuy.”
Kirschenbaum lives on a knoll in a five-bedroom brick house on four private acres in Ridgefield with vistas overlooking half the county. He has no wife, no children, no ties to the real world to be exploited. His house is a fortress, and he employs a regular staff of professional bodyguards, top-shelf guys who know how to handle a weapon and don’t rattle.
There are several ways to reach a man who doesn’t want to be reached. Usually, I focus on vices since most people who dip their toes into this pool have a few secrets they want kept in the deep end. They’ll visit whores or buy narcotics or have a thing for guns or want to diddle boys, and this gives me a way to get to them. But I don’t have time to plan a successful sneak attack, and I don’t have a fence to help me figure out and explore his vices, and with Risina along for the ride, guns blazing might not be the best approach either. Navigating this world over the years, I’ve learned there’s a time to explode, loud and aggressive, and there’s a time to be supplicant, quiet and introspective.
Risina and I approach the brick columns bordering the gate leading to Kirschenbaum’s property. There is a callbox but no button to press and no cameras visible even though I know they are there.
“Tell Kirschenbaum Columbus wants to see him,” I say to the gate. “I don’t have the time or resources to go through the proper channels. I’ll be in room 202 tonight at the West Lane Inn for the ten minutes following midnight. If men come through the door with guns out, those men will be dropped. I have no problem with Kirschenbaum; I just need information.”
We turn and head down the path back to the street.
Kirschenbaum arrives on the hour and enters the room alone. If he’s trying to set a tone, trying to signal he isn’t intimidated, it works. I’m impressed. He doesn’t need an entourage, doesn’t bother with his retinue of bodyguards-he watched me on the tape at his gate and decided on this strategy, to come devoid of self-doubt.
From what I’d read about him, I knew he was tall, but his height is pronounced in person, or maybe it’s accented by the way he almost has to stoop under the low ceilings of this old rustic inn. His hair is jet-black without a trace of gray, swept back from his forehead like he’s wearing a helmet. He wears a tight navy sweater and black slacks. His eyes are pale, striking, alert. He has half of a robusto cigar jutting out of the corner of his mouth like an extension of his face, and the smoke hangs around his head like a wreath.
He stands just inside the doorway, and looks at me, seated in a wooden chair near the small table, then turns his neck without moving his body to pick up Risina, who hasn’t moved from the corner near the door. I placed her there, in his blind spot, and she has her hands behind her back, leaning against the wall. A threat but not threatening.
“Where do you want to do this?” His voice is a lower register than I would have guessed. It seems to come from somewhere near his abdomen and has a raspy quality, like a frog croaking. He talks around the cigar like it isn’t there.
“You want to have a seat?”
He heads for the only other chair in the room without nodding, sits and crosses one ankle on his knee, then folds his arms across his chest, comfortable as can be. After a moment, he takes the cigar out and holds it between his thumb and forefinger to use it as a pointer.