Prodigal Son

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “I was trying to take him out of the fight as quietly as possible,” Evan said. “Whether that killed him or not was secondary.”

  A flash of disgust in Andre’s eyes. Fear, too. “The fuck are you, man?”

  Evan grabbed his arm, urging him forward, their shadows thrown before them, two irreconcilable parts of an imperfect whole.

  They half jogged toward the front gate, Andre turning to take in the rest of the bloody aftermath. “Jesus God.” He was crying quietly.

  “I’m gonna get you back to your place, okay?”

  Andre looked glazed, descending into shock.

  They got into the truck, Evan dropping the gearshift into drive. Andre looked wrecked.

  “I told you not to come,” Evan said, a hard edge beneath the words. Guilt?

  Andre’s lips barely moved. “I’m sorry.”

  “This is why you’re not coming to talk to the sensor operator either. Understand?”

  Andre’s nod looked like a tremor. “Okay. Okay.”

  Evan peeled out, drove forward a quarter block, and screeched to a halt just before the lonely stall of the First Union Bank ATM. “Open your door.”

  Andre obeyed.

  “Lean back and cover your ears.”

  Andre did as asked, closing his eyes for good measure.

  Evan drew the ARES 1911, aimed it across Andre’s chest, and shot out the ATM’s surveillance camera.

  He peeled away, the passenger door slamming shut from the thrust.

  Ten blocks later Andre still hadn’t opened his eyes.

  35

  Science for Two Hundred

  Queenie splayed her fingers atop the steering wheel and applied another coat of Her Majesty’s Red, a high-shine polish from Butter London. Declan climbed out of the passenger seat, slotted a third tranche of quarters into the parking meter, and got back in. The meters in El Sereno took credit cards, which would make matters easier, but of course that would memorialize their being here, parked outside the All Saints Catholic Church.

  The gasoline scent of nail polish laced the air, heady and keen. He watched his sister lean forward, purse her glossy scarlet lips, and blow across her fingertips. She regarded them approvingly, then flipped down the visor and checked her hair.

  “Queenie,” Declan said. “Relax. You look beautiful.”

  “Yeah?” she breathed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Remember Mom…” She bared her teeth and squeaked a finger back and forth across her incisors, though there was no lipstick smudge. “‘All that glitters isn’t gold. But if it doesn’t glitter, it’s got no shot.’”

  Declan felt the familiar twitch tugging at his right eye. He scrunched his eyes shut hard to overpower it, then looked down and picked lint from his lapel. He realized what he was doing, Queenie’s words still hanging in the air, and stopped himself.

  “We might not get to feel good,” Queenie said. “But we can look good.”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  She shrugged. “Coming up on thirty, baby brother. Means I’m starting to see beneath the surface.”

  “Maybe what’s beneath the surface isn’t worth looking at.”

  Across the street the meeting spilled out of the church onto the sidewalk. Ragged folks huddled close, sucking on cigarettes and sipping coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Declan scanned the crowd, but they were the same faces as the night before and the night before that. No Andrew Duran.

  A stout lady in a pink pantsuit walked over from her parked car bearing a bakery box. She lifted the lid and tilted it to show off a cake to the onlookers. Even from here Declan could make out the white lettering across the dark chocolate frosting: HAPPY TWO YEAR BIRTHDAY. KEEP COMING BACK!!

  The burner phone in the cup holder animated. Queenie had Bluetoothed it to her Corvette, her custom ringtone issuing through the speakers: “99 Red Balloons” in German.

  Careful not to smear her nail polish, she pressed a button on the steering wheel to answer.

  Declan said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Six dead.”

  Declan said, “Excuse me?”

  “Six dead,” the doctor repeated. “I’m considering it an R ‘n’ D expenditure. This many lost assets make clear that someone’s helping Duran.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m looking into it. This elevates the priority level, the urgency. I need you to produce results.”

  “We’re almost ready to move on the second target.”

  “No,” the doctor said. “Duran first. He actually saw it.”

  Queenie flipped the visor back up, dropped the car into gear, and crept out from the curb. We’re doing everything we can.

  “We’re doing everything we can,” Declan said. “Right now we’re staking out—”

  “Maybe you have a different understanding of what ‘results’ means,” the doctor said, calm as ever. “Do you need me to acquaint you with my definition of the word?”

  Declan clenched his teeth, his neck cording, and let the silent scream vibrate his whole head.

  Queenie reached over, stroked his thigh. No. No, sir.

  Declan exhaled until he felt the purple leave his face. “No. No, sir.”

  “I have teams watching the ex’s place and the child’s school. They’ve been alerted to the escalation. If he rears his head, they’ll take it clean off. In the meantime you’d better figure out another approach. Friends, co-workers, distant family.”

  “We’ve looked at everyone and everything,” Declan said.

  Queenie banked hard onto the freeway ramp and opened up the 650 horses. Don’t argue with him. He wants blood. We need to give it to him.

  Declan looked at her. We already took that one guy apart top to bottom.

  Then we’ll take another apart. And send pictures.

  That won’t get us anywhere.

  You’re being too literal. It’s not about getting somewhere right now. It’s about satisfying the doctor.

  The doctor had said nothing. Not a pleasant silence.

  Declan said, “We have another person we can talk to.”

  “Good,” the doctor said. “Because you won’t like it if I run out of patience.”

  He hung up.

  A few minutes later, Queenie exited the freeway and crawled through a dark neighborhood. Prefab houses set imprecisely down on plots of dead weed. Flaking paint. Rusted mailboxes. Disgust curdled in Declan’s chest. As hideous as their childhood had been, Mom had always made sure the house was a place of pride. Spit-shined counters. Beds made with boot-camp precision. Kitchen floor you could eat off.

  These people lived like animals.

  Queenie coasted up on a double-wide positioned crookedly at the far edge of a dirt lot. Vinyl siding splayed up at intervals, exposing rotting wood-chip board sheathing beneath. A decrepit BMW at the curb.

  As Declan climbed out, Queenie popped the trunk. He slid off his Brioni jacket, gave it a dead-man’s fold to avoid wrinkles, and laid it precisely across the leather backseats. The trunk held his fine-leather kit. He’d sterilized the tools and the nails since their last use. It was a matter of professionalism.

  A surgeon had to keep his implements pristine.

  Queenie had her personal phone out, the iPhone case studded with crusted faux rubies. Its camera had an array of filters and HDR that really brought a tableau to life.

  She handed it off. “I’ll wait out here. Whistle if you need me.”

  “You know we won’t get any answers.” His voice came high and wheezy, irritating even to his own ears.

  “I know, baby brother. But sometime you just gotta feed the beast.”

  Declan took the phone and crossed the dirt lot, cautious not to scuff his Ferragamos. He removed his cuff links and rolled his sleeves above the forearms.

  The front door was open to vent the heat of the stovetop—something reheated and preservative-intensive. A TV murmured calmingly inside, a game show with lots of applause: I’ll take Science for two hundred,
Alex. The screen yawned open with the groan of a rusty coil.

  The man sat on a ripped La-Z-Boy facing away, watching Jeopardy!, the volume too loud.

  Toolkit in hand, Declan glided through the narrow galley kitchen into the living room. The threadbare carpet silenced his loafers as he approached. He paused right behind the man’s chair, watching the TV over the back of his head.

  The scent of Old Spice was strong here, overpowering the kitchen smells. The man stayed fixated on the screen, oblivious. Declan rubbed the catch of the leather kit with his thumb, closing his eyes into that bloodred glow, letting the other part of himself take charge.

  The game-show host wore a two-button herringbone Ted Baker. He rested an elbow on his podium. “There are two hundred and six of these in the adult human body.”

  “Wait, I know this one,” Declan said, and Juan just about fell out of his chair. Declan flicked the catch, the weight of the implements causing the leather kit to unfurl with a snap.

  Now his words came forth low-pitched and sonorous. “What are ‘bones’?”

  36

  Four-Letter Word

  Coasting through light traffic into Westwood, Evan dialed Joey’s number again. He’d delivered Andre to his woeful room above the Chinese restaurant. After rinsing off Keller’s blood and changing into a new set of clothes from his truck vaults, Evan had extracted a promise from Andre that he wouldn’t leave except to eat. Andre had been shaken enough to concede with minimal complaining, especially after Evan pointed out that takeout was literally a flight of stairs away. He’d left him with a few hundred dollars to cover anything he’d need until Evan could return, and Andre had placed the bills in the zippered pouch that he handled with great care.

  Halting at a stoplight, Evan glanced over to the passenger seat where he’d rested the dragonfly drone, the encrypted clearance sticker for Creech North Air Force Base, and the parking hanger for the veterans’ facility.

  The spoils of victory.

  Joey’s line rang and rang. Just when he was certain the call would dump into voice mail once more, she picked up. “What?”

  “Why aren’t you answering?”

  “Uh, ’cuz I’m not, like, a child slave sitting around all day stitching Nikes and just waiting for you to—”

  Evan said, “I need you to get my name on the visitor’s log at the California Veterans Reintegration Center for tomorrow.”

  “I’m gonna write some dialogue for you,” Joey said. “This is what it sounds like when actual humans call each other. ‘Hi, Joey. How are you? How were classes today?’”

  “How were classes today?”

  “I dunno. I cut.”

  “Josephine.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go back to nonhuman talking. The California Veterans Reintegration Center—and by the way, that name? like, Eastern European communist creepy much?—has no-fooling-around security, like I told you.”

  “You got me into prison.”

  “Prison is easy by comparison. No one wants to sneak into prison. Well, except you. Like you said, this is a military compound protecting vulnerable human assets who know confidential shit. They’re not trying to keep people in. They’re trying to keep people out.”

  “I have the best forged passports in the world—”

  “Oh, well, then. Maybe bring a note from your first-grade teacher, too? Pin it to your sweater?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re gonna need more than a fake ID. You’re a military-age male, X. You’re exactly the demo they’d be on high alert for. Even if you are getting long in the tooth.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’m not getting long in the tooth.”

  “Says the prune-juice-drinking retiree. Look. I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

  “I’m almost at your place.”

  “What? No. No.”

  “Yes. I found a microdrone with a logo on it—”

  “A friggin’ microdrone now?”

  “—and I already ran an image search on Google, but nothing’s coming up. I need to identify it ASAP. Guess what else doesn’t come up anywhere online? Creech North Air Force Base. Which is what the parking sticker from Hargreave’s rig says.”

  “Wait—you went to the lot?”

  “With Andre. They were watching that rig, that sticker, and ready to kill anyone who came near it. Six private military contractors followed us in.”

  “How many came out?”

  Evan let that pass. “We need to figure out what exactly Creech North is and who the person is behind all this—a guy who they call ‘the doctor.’ I need you to—”

  He thought he heard a doorbell in the background, and then Joey said, “Don’tcomeovercallyoulaterwhenIhavemoretimebye,” and hung up.

  It took a moment for the quarter to drop.

  Bridger “Bicks” Bickley.

  With his soul patch and his distressed leather black belt and his boy-band jawline. Grab you tomorrow? Like eight o’clock? To “hang out.” With Joey.

  Evan glared at the dashboard clock. It was 8:13 P.M. Bicks couldn’t even be on time.

  He noted that his hands had gone bloodless atop the steering wheel.

  He ran the red light, eliciting a few honks, and accelerated through Westwood Village, cutting off a guy with robust hair in a Jag convertible who gave him what-the-fuck hands. He leaned into the pedal, the Ford F-150 zooming around the corner just as Joey and eighteen-year-old Bridger emerged from her building.

  Joey wore a sleeveless shirt, cypress green to bring out her eyes. It took a moment for Evan’s brain to process the fact that she was wearing high heels. Bridger ran a hand across her shoulders and took a hit from a vape pen.

  Joey’s shoulders.

  A fucking vape pen.

  Evan tucked into the curb behind an SUV and kept the engine running.

  Up ahead Joey pointed a key fob at a Ford Focus with a ZIPCAR.COM sticker emblazoned across the back. The brake lights bleeped twice, and then she opened the passenger door for Bridger.

  Her. Holding the door. For him.

  She climbed into the car-share vehicle and drove off.

  Evan transitioned into a rolling surveillance position, leaving two vehicles and a half block between them. He tightened up at the choke points and fed her more leash once she banked onto Wilshire Boulevard.

  A few blocks up, Joey threw a right-hand signal but drove straight through the light.

  She’d spotted him.

  Damn Orphan training.

  With nothing to lose, he swept into position behind her, giving her a few car lengths. At the next light, she stopped even though it was green. Evan stopped behind her. He could see her angry eyes skewering him in the rearview. Vehicles clogged up behind him, horns blaring.

  He waited. The light turned yellow.

  “Don’t do it, Josephine,” he said.

  Now red.

  Cross traffic flooded the intersection from either direction. At the last moment, Joey punched the gas and shot through the gap, motoring away and leaving Evan stranded at the light.

  He seethed.

  As the Ford Focus drifted off, the brake lights flared. It took a moment for him to realize that she was tapping them in a pattern.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  Then tap-hold.

  Morse code.

  For “ha.”

  Joey zipped through the next intersection and was gone.

  Rather than wait for the light, Evan cut right, inserting himself into the traffic flow, then jogged left, ran a parallel street hard for five blocks, and popped back over onto Wilshire.

  There she was ahead, her signal broadcasting a right turn.

  Overconfident.

  After she went, he crept to the turning lane, counted off thirty seconds, and then eased up the same street. She’d just parked ahead in front of a newsstand. He watched her get out and hesitate at the meter.

  She patted her pockets. No change. She looked at Bridger, who was predictably us
eless. She walked to the newspaper stand, liberated a brown paper bag while the worker was distracted helping a customer, and put it over the parking meter upside down.

  A quick and easy out-of-service scam.

  Evan felt his temperature tick up another degree.

  Bridger led her into the Italian restaurant next door.

  Evan moved to the opposite curb and parked, watching across two lanes of traffic as they were shown to a window table.

  A poor countersurveillance move. Joey still had much to learn.

  Which was precisely why she shouldn’t be out on a date with an eighteen-year-old named “Bicks.”

  Bridger hit his vape pen once more and handed it across the table. Joey stared a moment. Then took it. She gave a few puffs. Even at this distance, Evan could see the effort it took for her to pretend to enjoy it.

  Last straw.

  He climbed out, unlocked one of his truck vaults, and removed a long-range laser listening device, headphones, and Steiner tactical binoculars. Back in the driver’s seat, he rested the apparatus in the V between the slightly open door and the frame of the truck, training the microphone on the restaurant window.

  Inside, Bridger took back the vape pen, then removed something from his pocket and set it on the table in front of Joey.

  The invisible infrared beam detected vibrations in glass, translating them into sound, amplifying them, and filtering out ambient noise. “—oh, nice,” Joey was saying in a hyperfeminine tone Evan barely recognized. “A candle. Thank you so much.”

  Evan lifted the binocs, put the stadia crosshairs on the gift: Misty Cashmere, fancy glass vessel, forty hours’ burn time.

  Cloying.

  As Joey and Bridger made cute-talk, Evan held the mic steady with one hand and scrolled through his RoamZone with the other, running a background check.

  “’Scuse me one sec,” Bridger said. “Gotta drain the main vein.”

  As he headed to the bathroom, Joey picked up the candle and sniffed it, closing her eyes.

  Evan dialed. Watched her expression harden as she glanced down at her phone. She screwed a Bluetooth earbud into her ear angrily and tapped the screen to answer.

  He watched her lips move, the sound reaching him on a slight delay. “What do you want? I lost you for a reason.”