Prodigal Son

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Listening for the two roving guards, Evan eased around a small-scale cathedral with caskets slotted into its rear wall. At the end of the lane, bent in the thickening darkness, the woman reached for a marble statue at the foot of a tomb.

  As his eyes acclimated to the night, the age-old statue came into focus—a baby swathed in cloth, the newborn’s likeness preserved in marble. The woman’s head was angled mournfully, her face lost behind the wide brim of the hat, her hand resting on the baby’s stone chest as if feeling for a heartbeat.

  Evan’s inhalation hitched ever so slightly in his throat. He became aware of a hike in his heart rate, the hot night air wrapping itself around his neck.

  As he breathed himself back to steadiness, he admired the woman’s tradecraft. A grief-steeped mother paying respect to a lost child—a clever ruse designed to turn a key inside him, to access some long-buried vulnerability.

  It almost worked.

  More important, it meant they suspected he was watching.

  As he drifted back out of sight, he sensed movement mirroring him on either side behind the mausoleums. Sure enough, as he came to the next intersection, the two roving bodyguards stepped into view to his left and right.

  10

  A Dog’s Breakfast

  Evan faced ahead, favoring neither side, keeping both bodyguards in his peripheral vision.

  “Hello, friend.” The guy to his left spoke in a voice that was theatrically low, with an excess of patience that a large, dangerous man could afford. Lightly accented English—either he’d gauged Evan’s gringo skin or knew who he was. “Is there some reason you’re following the lady?”

  Evan stared straight ahead at the darkness. Neither man reached for hip or lapel; they assumed this could be handled without firearms.

  Too bad they didn’t have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the First Commandment.

  Evan said, “She asked to speak with me.”

  “Did she, now,” the man said. Not a question. “I find it unlikely that Ms. Veronica would ask anything of you. I think you shouldn’t be stalking women around cemeteries after hours.”

  “I understand your opinion on the matter,” Evan said. “But it doesn’t interest me.”

  The other spoke up. “We have encountered many men who weren’t interested in our opinions. Their broken bodies are now at the bottom of the Río de la Plata. You will see them soon enough.”

  He took a step forward. His counterpart paralleled him on the left side.

  Evan said, “This isn’t a good idea.”

  The second man chuckled, leaned back on his heels. They each had at least four inches and fifty pounds on Evan. “You don’t look like much.”

  Evan said, “That’s why this isn’t a good idea.”

  The man sidled forward, resting a firm hand on Evan’s shoulder. The clenched grip was supposed to be intimidating, but it accomplished little more than making the man’s limb available.

  Evan said, “We’re really gonna do this, then?”

  “We are.”

  Evan said, “Okay.” He grabbed the man’s hand and rolled it outward, snapping wrist and elbow with two percussive pops. A savate piston kick staved in the guy’s knee from the side, and he grunted and sank a few inches, evening out the height differential.

  Before the bodyguard to the left could react, Evan reached across the injured man’s broad back, gripped him beneath the armpit, and pinwheeled him into his partner. Hurled sideways, the man hit his colleague at mid-leg, hyperextending both knees with a pleasing crackle. They tumbled into a stone edifice, the first man’s head smacking the wall from the momentum of their fall, the second’s after Evan clipped his chin with a well-placed jab, driving his skull into the granite.

  They weren’t unconscious, but they couldn’t manage anything more than breathing, wet rasps and shudders. Evan looked down at them, doing his best not to consider how satisfying it felt to knock the rust off his fighting-muscle memory. It had all the dark deliciousness of giving in to a bad habit. He knew too well the costs of surrendering to it and yet couldn’t shake the sense right now, with the night air keen at the back of his throat and the rush of blood in his veins, that this was in fact the thing he was meant to do.

  The greater the gift, the greater the curse.

  Evan patted the men down, finding on each a Bersa Thunder .45, the predictable choice for an Argentine strongman.

  The corroding door of the mausoleum had wedged halfway open, exhaling a faint waft of rot and mold. Evan rolled the men through the gap, letting the dank interior swallow them. Their pained exhalations floated out, ghostly echoes.

  Evan dropped the magazines from both guns, cleared the rounds in the chambers, and tossed the pieces into a nearby trash can.

  Then he started back toward the spot where the woman—Veronica?—had posed in feigned vigil over the child’s tomb.

  The third bodyguard stood in the middle of the next lane, perfectly backlit, the glow from the distant high-rises bleeding around his silhouette. His gun was out, aimed at Evan.

  They confronted each other a few feet apart.

  Evan said, “Bersa Thunder .45, huh?”

  “A nicely weighted gun.”

  “I always found it lacking. The trigger-return spring gives out after a few hundred rounds.”

  The man shifted his weight. He was barrel-chested, the glow of the streetlamps limning the side of his face, highlighting muttonchop sideburns. “I hadn’t noticed.” His accent was thicker, with the Italian lilt that qualified the Spanish here. He kept the pistol aimed at Evan’s heart. “Slide-lock issues, though.” He made a clucking sound to voice his disapproval.

  He took a slight step forward. His gun hand stayed steady. Not his first rodeo.

  Evan eyed the frame-mounted safety at the rear of the pistol. It was off. The man’s thumb was under the safety lever, not riding on top of it, a tell that he was not as experienced an operator as he projected. The .45’s heavy recoil could cause the thumb to slip on the grip and accidentally engage the safety.

  The man flicked his head at the darkness behind Evan. “My men?”

  “They’re alive.”

  The man sidled forward a bit more, bringing the muzzle within a few feet of Evan’s chest. With its mishmashed frame angles, oversize levers, and aggressively angled trigger, it was a dog’s breakfast of a pistol.

  Which made it a nice match for the man’s face.

  He smiled, revealing beautiful square teeth inside a dense beard. “My name is Raúl. I am in charge of Ms. Veronica. I am under specific orders not to let anyone near her.”

  “Were those orders given by Ms. Veronica?”

  “This is not your business. And you are unarmed. I understand you got past my associates, and that has given you confidence. But they are boys. You are about to find out what happens when you meet a man.”

  Evan nodded, chewed his lip. “Let me be clear. I’m a nice guy by choice.”

  Raúl grinned again. “You are a nice guy who is about to—”

  Evan’s hand flashed out, slapping Raúl’s thumb upward, engaging the safety an instant before Raúl pulled the trigger. Raúl’s eyes dropped to the Bersa, and Evan drove a wing chun bil jee finger jab into his larynx. Raúl clutched at his throat, releasing the pistol. As it fell, Evan caught it by the slide, his hand rising in an uppercut, the metal curled in his fist like a roll of quarters. When he struck the jawbone, he heard those beautiful teeth splinter.

  Raúl went down, shoulder blades slapping concrete. His hands pressed to the bottom of his face, which was no longer the shape it had been an instant prior. Evan stepped over him carefully and turned the corner.

  The woman was still before the tomb with the baby’s carved likeness. But she was standing now, staring directly at him. She was poised, exceptionally so, shoulders back, swanlike neck, her hands at repose at her narrow waist like those of a ballerina in first position. Given the gloom and the eclipse of her black summer hat, he could see no
thing of her features. And at this distance he was confident that she could see nothing of his.

  Unsure what to expect, he started for her. Moonlight glossed the edges of the mausoleums. The air was heavy with the sweet-rot scent of dead flowers.

  She didn’t move as he drew near.

  And then her arms straightened nervously, one hand picking at the hip of her dress. A resonance in his chest caught him off guard; it was as though she’d teleported her trepidation to him. But how did he know she was apprehensive?

  And more to the point, why was he?

  He was aware of his arms swinging heavily at his sides, the distance closing one painstaking step at a time. And then he was standing before her. Her breathing had quickened, her chest rising and falling, her collarbones and the hollow of her neck pronounced.

  Trace of lilac. The faint pressure of her breath in the air. The total black of her face.

  She reached tentatively for his cheek and then seemed to lose her nerve. Her hand froze, wobbling in the air.

  An exhale escaped her, putting more slack in her posture. Averting her gaze, she looked down to one side. A straw-yellow glow from a streetlight beyond the cemetery’s wall caught half her face, mascara-laden lashes casting a shadow down her cheek, doubling the smoky look of her eyes.

  He looked at her wide cheeks and dark shimmering eyes.

  And knew it was her.

  Something beneath the surface of her pale skin, something deeper than an expression or even bone structure, a physical resonance no less profound than the one that had transmitted her apprehension to him.

  Ms. Veronica.

  The woman who’d given birth to him.

  In the pit of his gut, he felt something knot and release simultaneously. It was a yielding and a hardening, though into what and against what he did not know. His face felt hot, an uncharacteristic flush creeping north from his throat. Moments before, he’d engaged three large men without so much as an uptick in heartbeat, but now he sensed his breath moving irregularly in his throat.

  She lowered her hand all the way. “Evan,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She removed her hat, and he looked at her.

  She was so much more attractive than he was, her age showing only in the textured skin of her neck and hands. She looked keenly vulnerable, almost lost, and he sensed it was not an expression she wore often.

  For a moment they regarded each other.

  And then the sky above exploded, a police helicopter swooping down and laying a spotlight across them. Even through the glare, Evan could make out the lettering on the side: POLICÍA DE LA PROVINCIA DE BUENOS AIRES. Rotor wash flapped the summer hat in Veronica’s hand as a second helo banked into view to the east, quickly joined by a third. All around the cemetery, he heard tires squealing, sirens blooping, brakes whining.

  He glanced back at Veronica. Any trace of seriousness had evaporated from her face. She looked around with cynical amusement, her mouth tugged to one side in what would have been a smirk had she bothered to put more effort behind it.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, her voice like a sigh. “I forgot Raúl already called for backup.”

  11

  Just Fucking Perfect

  They stood for a moment in the wash from the helos overhead. Veronica had to raise her voice to be heard over the thump-thump-thump. “What happened to my men?”

  “They threatened me.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said, lacing her arm in his and heading calmly for the exit. “Matías is a bit excitable.”

  “Matías?”

  “The minister of foreign relations.” She seated the hat back on her head. “I’d wager that you’ll meet him in a moment.”

  “How do you know the minister of foreign relations?”

  “I’m dating him, dear. At least when I’m in this hemisphere.”

  Well, Evan thought, that’s just fucking perfect.

  Her arm stayed woven around his, their flesh touching. Evan pulled free, rested his hand on her back, and steered her to the neighboring lane to dodge the spotlight and the wreckage of the bodyguards.

  Control.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked.

  “LeGrande.”

  “French?”

  “Oh, honey, I’m a mutt.” She cast a sideways glance at him. “Though not as much as you.” She pressed her lips together, smoothing the lipstick veneer. “It was an Ellis Island botch job that my grandfather renovated into something swankier than the original. I’m sure it was actually Legonski or something appalling.”

  A loudspeaker out front was blasting directives in Spanish, but the crackle of static blurred it to unintelligibility. The gate drew into view up ahead, sets of headlights blaring through the black iron bars, fuzzed by the creeping mist.

  He halted. She turned to face him.

  “How did you get my number?” he asked.

  “Years ago I tried to find you.”

  “How did you know where to start?”

  “I’d always kept track from afar. Every few years or so. I’d found out belatedly that the arrangements I’d made for you with that couple in Silver Spring had fallen apart. The Krausses. And that you’d been moved from placement to placement, and I used some of my relationships to … intervene. And get you to a more stable environment.”

  “The Pride House Group Home,” Evan said, “was certainly a stable environment.”

  “One had to consider the alternatives.”

  He just looked at her. She looked away.

  “So you knew where I was,” he told her. “All those years.”

  “No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t muster the nerve to see you. But two years ago I realized that I wanted to … I suppose I needed to meet you.”

  He could smell the perfume of chardonnay on her breath. She laid her hands on his shoulders, feeling his muscles, the mass of him. It was so odd to be touched that way, a sensual experience that wasn’t the least bit sexual. Her face radiated a kind of maternal pride as alien to him as the red dust of Mars.

  He shook himself free. She seemed neither wounded nor deterred.

  “Then what?” he said.

  “I started prying around the foster-care system for records. And someone caught wind of it and called me back. A man. John?”

  Heat crawled beneath Evan’s scalp. “Jack.”

  She nodded. “That’s it.”

  His throat clutched. “When?” he said. “When was this?”

  “It was Thanksgiving Day,” she said. “Easy to remember.”

  Despite the nighttime chill, a wash of heat moved through Evan. That day was impossible for him to forget as well. The day Jack was killed. Which meant Jack had called her when he knew he was heading to his death.

  Minutes left to live and he’d reached out to Veronica. Why? Was Jack—ever the father figure—trying to set things right? Was this setting things right or a colossal mistake?

  Overhead the helos darted like hummingbirds, trying to pick them up again.

  Veronica was talking. “He told me that you were chosen out of the boys’ home. To do good. Some sort of pilot program. He said you were very successful. I was so proud. He told me you help people. I need you to help someone now.”

  Evan almost fed her the rote answer, that he was retired, but he stopped himself, taking a moment to find his bearings. “What else did he tell you?”

  “That based on the demands of your job, you prefer to stay off the radar. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Some sort of State Department analyst? A war-crimes attorney who has to keep a low profile? Hostage negotiator?”

  She was beaming, and he realized that this was a story she’d carried with her like a precious stone, that she’d polished in her mind’s eye until it gleamed with potential. The promise of her lost boy having turned out to be something so much better than what he was.

  It was a kind of discomfort he’d never experienced, a cramping at the base of his skull that reached down through
him, pulling strings in his spine, his chest—and perhaps even deeper than that.

  She was watching him still, that prideful shimmer in her eyes, and he felt a sudden horrible weight descend on him. He’d never had the experience of having someone else’s hopes wrapped up in him. Of knowing that he’d come up short of the imagined mark. That he’d be found lacking.

  Everything was moving so fast—the rattle of SWAT gear beyond the gate, the choppers veering above, the spotlights scanning the tombs, the cascade of unfamiliar sensations setting his nerves on fire.

  And the awful responsibility of deflating this woman’s expectations.

  The loudspeaker blared again, staticky Spanish demanding that they come out, but they both ignored it.

  He wanted so badly to tell her that yes, he was a cyberterrorist analyst, a prosecutor at the Hague, a hostage negotiator capable of defusing situations with a talking cure.

  His mouth was dry from the wind hammering down from the rotor blades, or maybe from something else.

  “No.” It took a moment for him to work up the words. “I was trained to kill people.”

  She recoiled.

  Took a halting step back.

  Painful as it was, he held eye contact so she could see who he was. He watched revulsion and fear ripple beneath her features, barely visible through the cracks in her tough façade. And then she closed ranks within herself and it was like looking at any other face in the world.

  The smell of dust and stone intensified. Lights strobed through the gate, muted by the thickening fog. The loudspeaker commands sharpened, telling them to exit immediately. The choppers swooped above, their beams searching the tombs all around, throwing wild shadows.

  They were standing in full view, and yet no spotlight had found them. The gate clanked open, and four men entered, pistols drawn. They spread out, darting up separate lanes, one heading directly for them.

  “We’d better show ourselves,” Veronica said, “before someone gets shot.”

  She reached down and took Evan’s hand. Stepping forward, she ushered them into the faint light of an antique lamppost.

  Releasing his hand, she waved an arm. “Over here!”