The Twelfth Card

1863, great anti-black sentiment throughout NY state, lynchings, arson. Risk to property owned by blacks.
      • Letter 2, to wife: Charles at Battle of Appomattox at end of Civil War.
      • Letter 3, to wife: Involved in civil rights movement. Threatened for this work. Troubled by his secret.

Chapter Seventeen
    Walking down a street in Queens, carrying his shopping bag and briefcase, Thompson Boyd paused suddenly. He pretended to look at a newspaper in a vending machine and, cocking his head in concern at the state of world affairs, glanced behind him.
    Nobody following, nobody paying any attention to Average Joe.
    He didn’t really think there was a chance of a tail. But Thompson always minimized risks. You could never be careless when your profession was death, and he was particularly vigilant after the close call on Elizabeth Street with the woman in white.
    They’ll kill you in a kiss . . . .
    He now doubled back to the corner. Saw no one ducking into buildings or turning away fast.
    Satisfied, Thompson continued in the direction he’d been heading originally.
    He glanced at his watch. It was the agreed-upon time. He walked to a phone kiosk and placed a call to a pay phone in downtown Manhattan. After one ring he heard, “Hello?”
    “It’s me.” Thompson and the caller went through a little song and dance—security stuff, like spies—to make certain each knew for sure who was on the other end of the line. Thompson was minimizing his drawl, just like his client was altering his voice too. Wouldn’t fool a voiceprint analyzer, of course. Still, you did what you could.
    The man would already know the first attempthad failed since the local news had broken the story. His client asked, “How bad is it? We have a problem?”
    The killer tilted his head back and put Murine into his eyes. Blinking as the pain dissipated, Thompson replied in a voice as numb as his soul, “Oh, well now, you gotta understand ’bout what we’re doing here. It’s like everything else in life. Nothing ever goes smooth one hundred percent. Nothing runs just the way we’d like. The girl outsmarted me.”
    “A high school girl?”
    “The girl’s got street smarts, simple as that. Good reflexes. She lives in a jungle.” Thompson felt a brief pang that he’d made this comment, thinking the man might believe it referred to the fact she was black, a racist thing, though he only meant she lived in a tough part of town and had to be savvy. Thompson Boyd was the least prejudiced person on earth. His parents had taught him that. Thompson himself had known people of all races and backgrounds and he’d responded to them solely on the basis of their behavior and attitudes, not what color they were. He’d worked for whites, blacks, Arabs, Asians, Latinos, and he’d killed people of those same races. He could see no difference between them. The people who’d hired him all avoided his eyes and acted edgy and cautious. The people who’d died by his hand had gone to their rewards with varying degrees of dignity and fear, which had nothing to do with color or nationality.
    He continued, “Wasn’t what you wanted. It wasn’t what I wanted, bet your bottom dollar. But what happened was a reasonable possibility. She’s got good people watching her. Now we know. We’ll just rerig and keep going. We can’t get emotional about it. Next time we’ll get her. I’vebrought in somebody knows Harlem pretty good. We’ve already found out where she goes to school, we’re working on where she lives. Trust me, we’ve got everything covered.”
    “I’ll check for messages later,” the man said. And hung up abruptly. They’d spoken for no more than three minutes, Thompson Boyd’s limit.
    By the book . . .
    Thompson hung up—there was no need to wipe prints; he was wearing leather gloves. He continued down the street. The block was a pleasant strip of bungalows on the east side of the street and apartments on the west, an old neighborhood. There were a few children nearby, just getting home from school. Inside the houses here Thompson could see the flicker of soap operas and afternoon talk shows, as the women ironed and cooked. Whatever life was like in the rest of the city, a lot of this neighborhood had never dug out of the 1950s. It reminded him of the trailer park and the bungalow of his childhood. A nice life, a comforting life.
    His life before prison, before he grew numb as a missing arm or a snakebit leg.
    A block