Jack and Patrick had come back around often then.
It was just after 9/11, and the business was experiencing fresh risks when Jack Blackwell requested multiple sets of identification for his newborn son. Gerry was reluctant to take on the task in those days, but he was even more reluctant to disappoint Jack Blackwell. He produced the requested birth certificates, which came from fifteen different states in America, as well as four sets of international papers, Australian, British, Dutch, and Swiss. Each was in a different name, and Jack provided all of the names, which led Gerry to wonder if they meant something to him, if they indicated something from his past life — or perhaps indicated lives he’d ended.
Gerry had no idea what the boy’s real name was, but the first time he’d met him, Jack had called him Dax, and so that was what Gerry went with, even though there was no paperwork for that name. Or at least, none that Gerry had created. Knowing Jack, Gerry figured he’d likely sourced identification from more than one person.
More than a dozen years later, when Gerry had need of Jack and Patrick’s services again, Jack told him they themselves were unavailable, but his son could handle the task. Gerry’s first response was to laugh — a very dangerous response when one was around the Blackwells, but Gerry knew the boy wasn’t even old enough to drive yet.
Jack Blackwell hadn’t laughed. He’d waited until Gerry said, “You’re not serious,” and then the faintest of smiles had crossed his face, and he nodded exactly once.
That was enough.
Nine days later, Dax Blackwell completed his first professional killing. Or at least, his first professional killing for Gerry Connors.
Over the years that followed, Gerry had been in touch with the boy fairly often. He had no idea where he lived or where he’d gone to school — or if he had gone to school, although he was certainly well educated, almost preternaturally bright. He also had no idea how much time the boy actually spent with his father and uncle, but based on his mannerisms and his skills, Gerry suspected that he was with them more often than not. After hearing word of Jack’s and Patrick’s deaths in Montana, Gerry considered offering his condolences to the boy, but he hadn’t. Instead, he offered him work, and the boy accepted the job and completed it. Small-time stuff, mostly, no high-dollar work, no international work. Gerry viewed it as an internship.
The pupil flourished.
They never spoke of Dax’s father and uncle formally, but they each mentioned them in passing and never referred to their deaths. Gerry followed the boy’s lead in keeping discussions of them in the present tense, as if they were still there, ghosts in the room, just waiting for the call to summon them back.
And in fact, when Gerry sent for Dax, that was exactly how it felt. As the boy grew, Gerry saw more and more of those two Aussie lads who’d walked so calmly into the room of hardened IRA killers.
Yes, he felt very much like he was calling on a ghost when he sent for Dax Blackwell.
Today the ghost arrived. He entered Gerry’s office in Boston’s North End expecting a paycheck for a completed job, having no clue yet as to the trouble that had occurred. Carlos Ramirez had needed to kill one man and steal one phone. Somehow, Carlos Ramirez had managed to steal the wrong fucking phone. Gerry understood this because the German had told him not to worry about a trace on the phone because it wasn’t active and had no signal. The phones in Gerry’s desk drawer had signals. Both of them had been ringing, and that was a problem. That was, maybe, an enormous problem, as the German was due to arrive by the weekend to pick up something for which he had already paid handsomely but that was not in Gerry’s possession. The German did not travel internationally to pick up things in person that could be mailed unless the items were of the utmost importance. Based on Gerry’s understanding of the German, he felt that this in-person disappointment was not the sort of thing one would want to experience firsthand.
Enter Dax Blackwell.
“The job’s not done,” Gerry told him as soon as the door was closed behind him.
“Not done? Did Carlos walk out of the morgue?” the kid asked as he sat down. Make no mistake, Dax carried his family’s blood. Which was to say that he was empty and cold in all the right ways, but he also carried his father’s smirk and his uncle’s deadpan delivery. Gerry had never been a fan of those qualities.
The only thing Gerry hated more than Dax’s attitude was his wardrobe. Jeans and hoodies, tennis shoes and a baseball cap. Always the fucking baseball cap. Whatever happened to gangsters with class? When did people decide they could come see him without shining their damn shoes, maybe putting on some cuff links?
But Dax wasn’t a gangster, of course. You had to be patient with the young ones. When young shooters became old killers, then you could demand more from them. If they made it that far, they’d probably figured it out on their own. Right now he was an Australian version of what the cartels called a wolf boy — a teenage killer, an apprentice assassin. Wolf boys were valuable in the border towns. Why couldn’t they be useful on a larger scale too?
Dax Blackwell, the Aussie lobo, descendant of ghosts.
“We are missing a phone,” Gerry said, leaning back and propping his feet up on the glass-topped coffee table so the kid could get a good look at his hand-stitched, calfskin Moreschi wingtips. Put style in front of his face, maybe it’d seep through his skull.
“He gave me two. You have them.”
“Neither is right. One is hers, and one is his, but neither one is right.”
“Carlos’s house was clean. So was his bag.”
“What about his pockets?”
The kid looked nonplussed. Dax Blackwell didn’t like to be asked questions for which he didn’t have ready answers.
“Didn’t check,” he said eventually. “I hadn’t been asked to. You told me get two phones; I got two phones. But I also don’t think he’d have kept one unless he knew its value. Did he?”
This was both more attitude and more inquiry than Gerry wanted from the kid, but he wasn’t wrong to ask the question. Carlos had no idea what the phone was worth. Gerry didn’t know anything about the phone other than that he was supposed to hand it to the German.
One thing Gerry had learned over the years was not to ask too many questions about what went on above your pay grade — hell, not to think too many questions about it — and he surely did not want to begin thinking about what the German needed from this cell phone. What he was willing to extend his personal curiosity to, however, was what would happen if he disappointed people above his pay grade, and he didn’t have to work too hard to imagine the outcome.
He needed that phone.
“Police found Carlos’s body,” Gerry said. “If he had the phone, it’ll be in evidence lockup, and I’ll get it. But I don’t think he had it.”
“I don’t either. If he was going to make a mistake like that, he’d have done it a long time ago.”
Again, more confidence than Gerry wanted to hear, more swagger, but also, again, not wrong.
“Probably. Which means it’s missing somewhere between here and there.”
Dax Blackwell thought about this, nodded, and then said, “He needed two phones, so he grabbed Oltamu’s and grabbed the girl’s. Dumb mistake, but that’s probably what he did, and he didn’t pause to check properly, so he missed the third. By the time they’d cleaned the scene and I picked them up by the river, the phone you needed was gone with the cars.”