Columbus by Derek Haas

stamped on his mug like an advertisement for desperation. And I wanted a guy with a family.
    On the third day, I clocked the same man coming off the night shift, a sad-sack, overweight guy with a moony face expressing a permanent look of bewilderment. On my way out, I asked him for a lighter in English without making any hand gestures and he produced one from his two-pocket shirt. He spoke English, or at least understood it, and that would help.
    He rode a Vespa and I followed him from a casual distance until he reached a tiny apartment resembling a college dormitory. His wife barked at him from a window before he even cut the engine of his bike. She was holding an infant. He would do.
    I stood in his living room when he came out of his bathroom, wiping his hands on his pants. His eyes had trouble conveying to his brain what he was seeing, a stranger in his living room, holding a pistol in one hand and a stack of cash in the other. His wife was in the bedroom, breast-feeding the baby.
    “I need a favor from you.”
    His eyes wouldn’t leave my hands, as though his neurons had stopped firing, his mind had shut down. Finally, he searched my face for some sort of sign he wasn’t hallucinating.
    “I’m going to need you to get me inside the jail and bring a prisoner to me in the north yard, alone.”
    He blinked, but nothing came out of his mouth.
    “If you do this for me, you’ll have the ten thousand euros in my right hand and you’ll never see me again. If you fail, or you fuck me in any way, then your wife and your baby are going to get what’s in my left. Nod your head if you understand.”
    Carrots or sticks. Sometimes, if you want to be sure, you choose both.
    I can hear Doriot coming before he rounds the corner. He is spitting curses in French, propelled against his will by the moon-faced guard I threatened. He had probably just racked out for the night in his cot and was surprised to be awoken, singled out, and shuffled outside to the yard.
    He turns the corner and his eyes peel open, all signs of sleep vanishing. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows dryly. He reels back against the guard, but the man holds him there, firm.
    “Hello, Doriot.”
    Doriot tries to swivel his head to meet the guard’s eyes. “He’s a killer! He’s here to kill me.” But the guard just shuffles away.
    “That’s debatable. Why’d you sell Ryan down the river?”
    It doesn’t matter what his response is, I’m watching his eyes. His French accent is thick; it seems to pull his whole face down when he speaks, but his eyes don’t waver or blink. “I didn’t . . . you have no right accusing me of this thing, Columbus.”
    “Your client wants me dead.”
    His eyes slide back and forth, like he’s puzzled, searching for an answer. “What is this you’re telling me?”
    “The man who hired me to put a bullet in Anton Noel.”
    “Yes?”
    “He’s upset.”
    “Why should he be upset? You fulfilled the contract.”
    “It was sloppy.”
    There is a glint of hope in Doriot’s eyes now, like he can sense we aren’t on the same page and his life might be spared because of it. “Sloppy? What is this sloppy ? My client would have cared nothing if you’d blown up a rail platform with five hundred people on it just to kill that bastard Noel.”
    I chew on this, turning it over in my mind so I can see it from all angles. The little man in front of me isn’t faking his response. I believe him. Or at least I believe he isn’t involved. But that’s a far cry from his client not being involved. His client might have been equally upset with Doriot and not used his services for this particular bit of cleaning up.
    “Why’d you let yourself get thrown in here?”
    “Reasons that have nothing to do with you.”
    “You see how easily I got to you?”
    He lowers his eyes. “Yes. That does concern me. Yes.”
    “What is your client’s name?”
    “You know that I cannot—”
    “If he’s happy as you say he is, then he’ll