“Take a load off them dogs, Big Chief.” The Candy Man gestures convivially at a chair, setting himself down on a huge, tufted-leather swivel behind the desk.

  “I’ll come straight to the point,” Oswald says, settling down on a stiff armchair. The air reeks of sweet leaf and rotten old caulk.

  “Slow down, Big Chief, pop a chill for a second.” The Candy Man fishes in a drawer, then pulls out a freshly rolled doobie the size of a Kosher dill. He sparks it with a pipe lighter. The long tendril of flame dances in the pimp’s ebony pupils.

  Oswald wrings his calloused hands. “The thing of it is, I need work.”

  “Work, huh.” The Candy Man utters the words around the end of the joint with an existential stoicism as he sucks a rush into his lungs, the bud crackling. He exhales noxious smoke and then offers it to Oswald. “Why don’t y’all have a toke and a smile?”

  Oswald takes the spliff and drags one off it. The hot smoke bathes his throat, shoots down his lungs. His eyes water. “I’ll do it for a G-note.”

  “Say what?” The Candy Man takes the joint back and then lavishes it with more attention, a wreath of haze circling his ’fro. “Going outta business sale?

  “No, man, nothing like that. I just... I’m going through a... I got bills need paying.”

  The Candy Man looks askance at him. “Excuse me, Chief, but you ain’t in no condition to scoop up the horse’s shit. Last one you done, you pretty near got pinched. Pretty near got me pinched.”

  Oswald licks his lips. “I’ll do it for five hundred.”

  A long pause here.

  Oswald is nodding. “Seriously. You got somebody needs dealin’ with, I’ll do it for five hundred. I’m serious, Candy. Serious as a crutch. If there’s somebody you got in mind, I’ll do them for five C’s. I ain’t too liquid, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Constipated?”

  “Money issues... I need cash. You got somebody on the hit parade, I’ll do ’em fast and cheap and good. I do ’em, they stay done.”

  The pimp grins through a cloud of chartreuse smoke, showing a mouthful of gold teeth. “There’s always somebody needs a talkin’ to.”

  “Gimme the word, it’s a done deal.”

  The pimp narrows his eyes, thinking it over, smoking some more. “The fuck’s wrong with you, Chief?”

  Oswald swallows hard. “Nothin’s wrong, I just—”

  “I know, I heard you the first time, you need the Benjamins.” A pause here, a forensic sort of pause, much pondering visible on the pimp’s face. “Once upon a time, you was the best there ever was, the motherfuckin’ gold standard.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Lemme guess: y’all never went to that headshrinker I told you about, did ya?”

  Oswald looks at his hands. “I’m gonna see him, Candy, I swear to God, soon as I get a chance.”

  The pimp lets out a sigh. “You can’t run away from that shit, Chief. You got issues.”

  “I’m gonna be fine.”

  The pimp carefully tamps the blunt against an ivory ashtray, an expression approximating concern knitting his glistening brown features. “That shit don’t go away, that childhood shit.”

  “I said I’m fine.” Oswald looks at his lap. He feels the presence of ghosts behind him, the skin on the back of his neck prickling. “I’m fine.”

  “You gotta let go of that shit—”

  Oswald suddenly blurts: “Goddamnit, Candy! Enough with the psychology!”

  The pimp freezes at the sheer volume and timbre of Oswald’s voice.

  Oswald stiffens in his chair, realizing he has just pulled a major boner. The Candy Man calmly rises and comes around the desk.

  Oswald feels his heart thumping. “That came out wrong—I totally apologize for that. I’m not myself today.”

  The pimp goes over to the door, carefully shutting it and latching it. Then he turns to Oswald. “You need to get your head screwed on right, my brother.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m gonna let it slide this time.”

  “I do thank you for that, Candy.”

  The pimp sucks the inside of his cheek for a moment, considering something. “You definitely got issues.”

  “You’re right, you’re absolutely right... I need some therapy, and I’m gonna get it, I’m gonna get some therapy as soon as I get outta here.”

  A long, agonizing pause.

  “Tell you what...” The Candy Man goes back around his desk and fiddles in a drawer for a second. He pulls out a business card and pushes it across the desk with a burnished index finger. “I want you to take care of this dude. I’ll pay the goin’ rate.”

  Oswald picks up the card. It’s a LaSalle Street address, a major law firm. “Legal eagle, this guy?”

  “A Motherfucker is what this dude is, thinks he can steal product and skim off the sides.”

  Oswald puts the card in his pocket. He will memorize the information later and then burn it. “I really, really, really appreciate it, Candy.”

  The pimp looks at him. “Do this one righteously, do it clean. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Abso-posi-fucking-tively.”

  “Do this, and you’ll be back on the map.”

  “You got it.” Oswald rises on his tree-trunk legs. The room spins. He holds onto the back of the chair. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Also: I need this thing done, like, five minutes ago. If you’re lucky, you can catch this motherfucker tonight, after hours, down by the Rusty Spoke.”

  “Right.”

  “Usually tucks his piece-of-shit Beamer a block away, in an alley behind Hubbard.”

  “Got it.”

  “Perfect place to disappear that greedy-ass motherfucker in private.”

  “Will do. Thanks again, Candy.” Oswald turns to leave but pauses at the door and looks back at the pimp. “And I will see that therapist.”

  3.

  After Oswald leaves, the Candy Man lingers behind that closed door for a good five minutes. The pimp can hear the muffled rumble of driers outside his door as he sits at his throne, dialing a Chicago exchange on his cell. He’s confident nobody’ll hear what he’s about to say into the phone.

  “Levinson, Cohen, Pearl and Roth,” comes the flat monotone of a receptionist.

  “Gimme Jeff Harkness,” the Candy Man says into the cell.

  After a minute: “Harkness here.”

  “Go somewhere private.”

  Another minute passes, the soothing tones of “Girl from Ipanema” crackling in the earpiece, when at last the attorney gets back on the line.

  “As I told you last week, it’s just a matter of time until I get the vig,” the voice says in strained whisper in the Candy Man’s ear. “And I assure you that I am almost there.”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “This is your lucky day, motherfucker,” the Candy Man says, his smile full of precious metals.

  4.

  Jeffrey David Harkness, Esq.—avid narcotics trafficker and corporate rainmaker at Levinson, Cohen et al—hangs up the conference phone in a flurry. His heart races as he tears out of the private meeting room and then hustles down the lavish corridor of deep-pile carpet, mahogany, brass, and fichus. What did Candy Man mean by “one last chance to avoid that ol’ steel valentine”? Was Harkness on the hit parade? And if so, why in God’s name would the pimp tell Harkness the exact place and time of his execution?

  “Courtney, something’s come up,” Harkness mutters as he blows past his secretary’s desk. His sun-kissed blonde hair dangles in his eye. “I’ll need you to go ahead and take messages the rest of the day.”

  “What about the 3 o’clock?”

  Harkness is already in his inner office, rushing around behind his desk, rifling through drawers, grabbing his iPad, his cell, and his attaché, calling over his shoulder: “Tell Mr. Cohen—what—tell him I’m dealing with a—what—a family emergency! Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I’m dealing with here, I’m dealing with a family emergency. I’ll be out of a box until tomorrow. I’ll check in later, though!”

  Harkness grabs his thousand-dollar Burberry raincoat without even breaking stride.

  The secretary stands at her filing cabinet as Harkness clamors past her toward the elevator. “Mr. Harkness, what about the—?”

  “I’ll touch base later, check in from the road,” Harkness assures her as he presses the DOWN button and fidgets in front of the elevator doors with the twitchy restless energy of a bug on a griddle. “Or not,” he murmurs as the doors rattle open.

  He lurches on board, the doors rattling shut, and then he’s gone.

  The downstairs buzzer barely registers to Laura “Gerbil” Goldstein’s traumatized ears. She is curled on the end of her Salvation Army futon, chain-smoking Camels in front of a rebroadcast of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the TV’s sound dialed down in deference to her raging boom box. Right now, a frenzied meat-grinder of a song by the Minutemen blasts out of its frayed speakers, filling the little low-rent studio with glorious 1980s post-punk.

  The buzzer keeps groaning. Somebody’s down there leaning on it. At last Gerbil acknowledges the sound with a grunt. She lifts one emaciated leg and angrily prods the volume knob down with her black-painted toenail. “Jesus Christ! I’m coming already.”

  She makes her way over to the door with a tattered Army Surplus blanket wrapped around her skinny, malnourished form. “Jesus! I’m coming! Hold your fucking horses already!”

  When she opens the door to the landing she sees a massive Pachyderm of a man in faded denim and chambray, standing on her threshold, looking pale and sick and nervous.

  “Thank God you’re home,” he says, brushing past her and entering the apartment. He wears a threadbare jeans jacket, and his thick black hair looks more unkempt than usual. The metal screw-top of a cheap bottle of booze sticking out of his pocket, he walks with the lame gait of a wounded bull. “C’mon, we got work to do.”

  “Fuck are you doing, Ozzy?” Gerbil demands, lingering by the door, her hands on her bony hips. A skeletal young lady with jailhouse tats on her scrawny neck and chainsaw-ragged hair dyed India-ink black, Gerbil Goldstein is not the type to follow people—or follow any other norm of civilized social discourse. She hates doorbells. She also hates landlords, salespeople, Republicans, clergy, the IRS, policemen, psychotherapists, and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  Hate, in fact, is Gerbil Goldstein’s best friend. It’s her form of personal empowerment. She even has the word HATE tattooed on her cadaverous left knuckles in some sort of ironic homage to the old Charles Laughton film Night of the Hunter. The only difference is, in the movie, Robert Mitchum’s sociopathic preacher also has the word LOVE tattooed on his opposing hand. LOVE is missing from Gerbil’s extremities.

  * * *

  Laura Goldstein—aka “Gerbil,” aka “Punk-Ass,” aka “Who-zit,” aka “Naz” (short for Nasty)—grew up in a hellish pile of reeking stone and brick officially known as the Illinois State Children’s Orphanage. Situated in an antebellum village downstate, the place opened for business in 1865 under the auspices of post-war legislation known as the Latham Act. From that day forward, “all qualified parentless children” would hereby be warehoused in this shithole for an indefinite period of time (or until they turned eighteen and could be dumped into the back streets, hobo camps, and stew-bum squats of the rapidly industrializing towns up north). Gerbil was deposited in the orphanage as a baby—following the death of her prostitute mother—and grew up as mean and ornery as the Catholic nuns charged with her care. For most of her teenage years, she considered the festering, ancient redbrick dormitories a penal colony and treated them accordingly, making numerous escape attempts. On countless occasions she was subjected to whippings with a rubber hose in the bowels of the school building.

  Oswald found her about ten years ago, late one night on Chicago’s Rush Street. He caught her unscrewing the faceplate of an ATM and taking the ready cash back to her apartment in Uptown. At first, she figured he was an undercover cop. Or maybe a pervert who had followed her home. He seemed just a little too interested in her situation, a bit too quick to ask if she wanted a job. “In my line of work,” he had explained to her that night, “I could use a budding criminal to provide assistance, somebody with a strong stomach.” But what Gerbil Goldstein didn’t know at the time—and to which she remains oblivious to this day—is that Oswald had been searching for her for years. Oswald had a very specific reason to find her, and try and help her (or at least keep an eye on her). All of which is why he enters her apartment tonight as though he is her Dutch uncle.

  “Slow down, for shit’s sake,” Gerbil grumbles, scurrying after the big Indian, who, as fate would have it, is the only individual on earth whom Gerbil doesn’t outright despise. In fact, if she were tied up, laid out on a rack, had her nipples hooked to a car battery, and maybe was threatened with an acid bath, she might—just might—admit that she almost sort of likes the big hooligan. “How’s Tilda doing?”

  Oswald is already halfway across the room. “Fine... actually not so hot.” He says this over his shoulder as he stomps into her studio. “Hence, I got a job needs immediate attention.”

  Gerbil makes her way back into her hovel and finds him pacing in front of the window. “You’re wasted,” she observes tartly.

  “And you need to put on some weight,” he says, pulling a small, dog-eared logbook from his breast pocket. Oswald keeps no records of his work, and he notates only necessary information in his little spiral-bound in a coded shorthand, which Gerbil still finds difficult to decipher.

  “I asked you how Tilda’s doing.” Gerbil has met the man’s mysterious wife only once—at a Fourth of July picnic at Oak Street Beach into which Gerbil had stumbled almost accidentally three summers ago—and she remembers being impressed by the woman. The lady was tough, self-possessed, and smart—Gerbil’s kind of gal. One would have to be this kind of woman to put up with Oswald. “Seriously. I want to know. How’s she doing?”

  Oswald gives her a weird look. “She’s been better. Anyway. I got this thing needs to get done.”

  “I’m slammed down at work, Oz.” Gerbil searches for her Camels, finds a half-smoked butt in an ashtray, and sparks it back up. She blows out smoke on an exasperated sigh. She works sporadic hours behind the espresso machine down at the Java Joint on Halsted Street, but lately she needs as many hours as she can get to keep her in patchouli oil and piercings. “Is this, like, shit you’re gonna need this week?”

  “It’s, like, shit I’m going to need tonight.”

  “Excuse me?” She picks a fleck of tobacco from her lip and flicks it away. “Did you say tonight?”

  “Already have the recon, the target’s patterns, all that.” He scribbles in his notebook as he paces, brushing past her TV set, nearly knocking it over. “Gonna need you to spot. Around 10... 11 o’clock tonight. In the vicinity of the Rusty Spoke.”

  “Tonight?” She stares at him. “You’re doing this one tonight?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gerbil gawks for a moment. This is not how things are done. This is not how a good contract killer is supposed to conduct his work. Sure, Oswald’s been drinking with a vengeance lately, but there’s still a level of craftsmanship to maintain, and the craft demands a certain amount of prep work. A carpenter measures twice and cuts once. That’s what Oswald always used to say when he was training Gerbil to be a spotter.

  Oswald tears a page out of his spiral-bound. “Gonna need you to meet me on—”

  He halts abruptly and glances across the room, his expression changing, his eyes dilating and firing suddenly with the torments of the damned. He sees ghostly silhouettes of the dead behind Gerbil’s drapes. These are restless spirits for whom he’s responsible. “ Not now!”

  “What?” Gerbil glances over her shoulder at the empty studio. “What is it?”

  Oswald stares at the phantoms. “You’re dead!”

  Gerbil cocks her head, looks around. “I’m what? Are you referring to—?”

  “Leave me the fuck alone!” Oswald covers his ears. He slams his eyes shut. “You’re worm food, okay? Deep six—!”

  “Hello? Oz?” She waves at his face. “Earth to Oz! Who the hell are you talking to?”

  He opens his eyes, looks at her. “Nobody... I’m sorry.”

  “Nobody?”

  “Do you have any Kaopectate?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Oswald rubs his neck. “My wife came home to die this morning and I got stomach cramps like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Hands shaking like an old crone on a crack binge, Jeff Harkness packs the silver-plated Smith and Wesson .38 snub-nosed revolver into his workout bag. The handgun has a pearl inlay on the stock and the firm’s LCP&R insignia engraved on the muzzle. A gift from the senior partners on the occasion of Harkness’s triumphant win over the Chicago Housing Authority three years ago in the Oxidine v. CHA case, the gun has always had a special place in the attorney’s heart.

  Harkness also stuffs a carton of hollow-point Remington Ranger XTS rounds into his bag.

  Over the intervening three years since the CHA victory, Jeffrey Harkness has fired the weapon only on two occasions: once, when Old Man Cohen dragged all the junior partners out to the Barrington Gun Club to have an old-fashioned turkey shoot and picnic, and one other time, about a year later, when Harkness had gotten paranoid about a gangbanger client who had gotten sent off to Marion Max on a nickel’s worth due to Harkness’s negligence with filing deadlines. On the latter occasion, Harkness had spent an entire sweaty, paranoid Saturday afternoon making holes in paper silhouettes.

  Now he zips the bag closed and quickly slips into his Air Jordans.