Dark Men Read Online Free Page B

he look like?”
    “White guy, little dumpy to tell you the truth. Shaved head . . . just a regular guy, you know?”
    “Accent?”
    “I don’t know. East Coast, I’d say, but I don’t know. He didn’t say much. Just said ‘two grand, walk away, one hour.’ That was it. He handed me the money and I took off, you know? I don’t need any Mafia trouble if you know what I’m saying. Cooled my heels in Sharky’s down the street. Looked at my watch and the hour was up. Gave it an extra half hour just to make sure I didn’t walk in on something I didn’t want to see. But when I came back, everything was the same.”
    “Video?”
    “That was the thing. Of course, I looked over the last hour’s video. Or I was going to. But it was all erased, like the hour didn’t happen. I don’t even know how to work the console other than to hit rewind and play, but he knew how to do it. And there was nothing there.”
    He shakes his head, remembering. “I held my breath the next day, expecting to hear about some big theft, but nothing. No one ever complained, and no one came to me and said anything illegal happened, so I just . . .” He glides his hand out like an airplane taking off and says, “pssssh.”
    “Until today.”
    “Yeah.” Now he looks up and meets my eyes. His expression is resigned, like a kid caught stealing, sitting in the store manager’s office, waiting for his parents to show up and mete out some punishment.
    I stand, and he can’t help but exhale, relieved. Curiosity gets the best of him, though. “So what was taken?” He looks up with expectant eyes.
    I don’t answer and head for the door.
    “So that’s why you had Smoke put a file together on the security guard.” I had asked him to do so a few days before, and he had come through quickly. The file was green but not bad; it contained what I needed to make an effective threat.
    Risina walks next to me as we move north up State Street. We stop in a sporting goods store, and I move to a rack of ball caps.
    “Yeah. Like in most businesses, information is key. The more you have, the more specific you can get, the more effective your threats are. What you have to do is plant images in your mark’s mind and let the threat spread like a virus. Let his imagination do the job for you. You don’t have to be particularly intimidating, you just have to know a few pointed facts about his family, about their names, about their houses, and the mark wilts like a picked flower. That’s what a good fence does . . . gives you the information that gives you the power.”
    I pick out a blue Cubs hat and then move over to women’s clothing where I select a pair of baggy warm-ups and a large, plain T-shirt. “Try these on.”
    “You’re shopping for me now?”
    “Until you figure out how to blend in a little better, yes.”
    She looks over the clothes I hand her, wrinkles her nose, and heads to the changing booths. If she thought being a female contract killer meant leather pants and stiletto heels, she’s learning the opposite now. That shit looks good on a silver screen, but’ll get you killed in Chicago.
    After a minute, she exits, and it’s all I can do to keep from laughing. Her hair is tucked up under the cap and the clothes fit like a kid trying on her dad’s softball uniform. But the effect works: it’s impossible to see what kind of a body she has under the clothes, and with the cap lowered, the top half of her face is in shadow. It’s not perfect—you don’t want to go too far the other way so that someone thinks “why’s a beauty like her wearing dumpy clothes?”—but it’ll do for now.
    Archie’s office is in an old aluminum manufacturing plant on Harrison. Risina, Smoke, and I sit in a conference room, a stack of files on a long wooden table.
    “This is everything, Smoke?”
    “All the files in the last six months, plus a few Archie was putting together.”
    “Okay, each of us takes a third. Sing out if you read anything that