Bennie smoothed his mustache. His lip was quivering. “I owe her,” he said at last. “Can you help me or not?”
At that moment Rooster realized he had been lying to himself for a long time. The job had never been temporary for Bennie. The two of them had long been headed toward this terminal of a moment, with Bennie asking for more.
Somehow Rooster hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe this is a common lie, telling ourselves we’re helping someone, even as we’re escorting them to ruin. Maybe that’s the lie that lets us live with ourselves.
Rooster tore up the ticket. “You want more work, I can give you more work. I can’t promise anything more than that—”
Bennie kissed his uncle on the forehead. Rooster didn’t push him away, didn’t even flinch. He just looked tired, like he’d lost a staggering bet. It wouldn’t occur to Bennie until much later that a guy who spent his days in a cramped booth and was beholden to a mobster named Veedy knew something about being trapped. Bennie didn’t hear their conversation as Rooster’s vicarious bid for freedom. Not until years later, that is, when he tried to get his own daughter to run away and save herself.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Rooster. “Don’t get so excited. Welcome to real life, you dope.”
Chapter 4
THE FIX
When the call came in, Zeeshan was at a neighborhood park, sitting atop a warped picnic table, reading a tatty copy of a book called The Fix: Break Your Addiction in Ten Minutes. The wind mussed the tops of the linden trees, but the air under the pavilion was muggy and still. More like August than October. Zeeshan had been out here less than a half-hour, and already the paperback cover was beginning to curl. The silk lining of his trousers stuck to his calves. Zeeshan wanted to take off his shoes and socks, but that’s not the kind of person he was, nor had been for a long time.
About Zeeshan: he was tall and thin, with hair that was still more pepper than salt. If you’d walked by the park that day, you’d think he was a professor who had slipped away from campus. Not just because of his houndstooth jacket; there was something about his demeanor that made him look like he was submerged in his thoughts, swimming his way back to the world.
The big idea behind the book in his hand was simple: when a craving hit you—for drink, smoke, pills, sex, whatever your addiction—don’t tell yourself no. That’s too hard. Instead, tell yourself to wait a little bit. Sit with the need. Let it howl. Let it writhe. For ten minutes, think about your choices, and why you’re making them.
Zeeshan was gifted at waiting. Patience was his signature virtue. For that reason, The Fix felt like the right book for him, even if he didn’t technically have an addiction. But the thing was, there were no books for recovering hitmen. No rehab centers, support groups, prescriptions or twelve-step programs. There was only one step—stop killing people—and Zeeshan had to take it alone. Or, now, with the help of this book.
Your old patterns are polished with time and practice, wrote the author, a man named Kleinfelter. The photo on the back cover showed a bald man with a white beard and the hard, glassy eyes of a crow. He didn’t look bad for a guy who’d haunted the shooting galleries of Cherry Hill for a decade. His junkie exploits were detailed in the first section of the book, ostensibly to give the author some cred on the subjects of addiction and recovery, though all his war stories carried a weird whiff of nostalgia.
In the second section, though, the sepia tone fell away and Kleinfelter sounded like a mix between a pop psychologist and a coach. The neural pathways of your addiction are as slick as bobsled tracks; it takes conscious effort to blaze new trails. It’s hard—unbelievably hard—and you’ll fail a lot, but you can do it. That’s the hope as well as the curse. If only you couldn’t succeed, you could stop trying.
Zeeshan wasn’t looking to reroute all of his pathways. He wasn’t going entirely straight. He would still run his leg of the operation, transporting migrants from the Mohawk reservation on the Canadian border down to Baltimore. He’d maintain his contacts in Kashmir, mostly around Gulmarg where he grew up, to keep the pipeline full of new émigrés. He was just done with killing Veedy’s enemies. He wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Wait ten minutes. You can stave off the beast for that long. As you watch the seconds bleed away, ask yourself a few questions. Why do I do this shit? What do I really want? Will this give me what I really want?
Why did Zee kill? Because he was good at it. Because Veedy asked him to do it, and Veedy was the one who paid him. Because, like so few things in life, it was expedient and final. Because the benefits ramified: eliminate one problem, and you quell a dozen threats. Because it kept the operation running smoothly. In short, killing was good for business.
Those would have been his reasons a few months ago, anyway. But when Veedy was arrested for human trafficking, it made him stop and think. What about the downside of a hit—didn’t that ramify, too? Every job opened up new frontiers of liability. Every job was an invitation for future payback, either by the state or an ally of the mark. How many invitations could you send out before someone RSVP’d with a bullet?
He set the book down on his knee. The wind picked up and the empty swings swayed hypnotically, chains creaking. Zeeshan was thinking about leaving the park when the phone rang. The screen said UNKNOWN CALLER. He picked up, but didn’t say anything.
“I can hear the wind,” said the caller. “Where are you?”
“A park.”
“Sounds nice,” said Veedy.
Zeeshan was sure it did. A trash barge would probably sound nice to Veedy just then. He’d been held without bond since his arraignment when the judge decided that a man who specialized in the import/export of the human variety might pose something of a flight risk.
“What are you doing in the park?” asked Veedy.
“Meditating,” Zeeshan lied.
“I didn’t know you were Buddhist.”
“You don’t have to be Buddhist to meditate.”
“Lucky for you,” said Veedy. “You’d make a shitty Buddhist. You know, most of those guys wouldn’t kill a fly, much less—”
“Speaking of which,” said Zeeshan. “I wanted to talk to you about our problem. I’m looking at alternative ways of solving it.”
“So I heard,” said Veedy. “Hey, tell me about the park.”
Zeeshan stiffened. So he heard? Who had he been talking to? And what exactly had they told him? Veedy, who was not known for his patience, waited all of two seconds before prodding him. “City park or neighborhood park? Trees or a playground? Draw me a picture.”
“This is why you called?”
“Humor me.”
Zee cleared his throat. “Playground. Standard set-up. Slide, swings…Those little animals on a spring.”
“What about the weather? Give me some context.”
Zeeshan shifted on the picnic table. A dead leaf fell through a crack to the concrete with a little click and skated away on the wind. “I’m not sure you understood me earlier. The way I used to solve our problems? I’m not doing that anymore.”
“The air,” said Veedy. “What’s it smell like?”
Disruption, wrote Kleinfelter, is the key to breaking patterns. Stall. Interrogate yourself. Punch yourself in the thigh. Whatever it takes to hijack the routine.
“Like nothing,” said Zeeshan. “Like air.”
Silence on the line. Zee could sense the