Prodigal Son

by Gregg Hurwitz

The Fresno Valley Shooting Society was sunk in a vale between two desiccated hillsides in Visalia, far enough from society and Route 216 that no one could be bothered by the snap, crackle, and pop of gunfire from the outdoor ranges. Queenie parked the Avis Corolla at the edge of the parking lot, pointing downhill.

  The location was remote and discreet, features becoming to a firing range.

  For once Declan was dressed down, a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans and an untucked navy-blue T-shirt, the better to fit in.

  They’d parked here a few minutes after sunrise, staking out the best surveillance position. Sure enough, their target had strolled in at 8:00 A.M. sharp, military punctual for his weekly outing.

  They’d watched him disappear into the pro shop to check in and were waiting for him to emerge.

  “The doctor’s pretty unhinged,” Queenie said. “I guess someone showed up yesterday asking questions about Hargreave.”

  “You know the doctor,” Declan said. “He prefers playing offense to defense.”

  Queenie laughed a throaty, womanly laugh. “Don’t we all.”

  “We have to figure out who the hell is helping Duran.”

  “Duran.” Queenie shook her head. “It is weird that guy could get any kind of backup. I mean who the hell is he anyway?”

  Declan shrugged. “He’s a nobody.”

  “A nobody with a zero in his bank account and a job at an impound lot.” Her sigh smelled of Big Red chewing gum, cinnamon and sugar. “God, what a life most people have.”

  Up ahead their target emerged from the pro shop, clutching his gun case and a few fresh boxes of ammo. Nodding at the range master, he headed up the walkway toward the open-air ranges, the Padres symbol showing on his backward baseball cap.

  Queenie reached across and adjusted Declan’s hair, smoothing a wayward lock down around his ear. Time to go now, little brother.

  Declan got out, the firecracker fury of gunfire suddenly louder. A revolver pop-pop-popped and then was drowned out by someone unloading a semiauto. He strolled toward the shower of noise.

  Rather than head for the main walkway, he cut behind the toilet shack. The men’s-room door was open, a waft from inside carrying a swirl of black flies and the fish-and-iodine stink of well-used urinal cakes. A sign warning of lead poisoning hung crookedly from the warped planks.

  Declan emerged past a kink in the walkway, out of view of the range master, who he could hear giving instructions, his voice raised to be heard through ear protection.

  All the shooters stood parallel on the firing line, sealed off on either side by sound-absorbing transmission barriers that blocked their view of one another. Declan drifted behind them, unseen and unheard. Each of them faced away, focused on the plastic Corflute targets affixed to bales of hay. A sloped sandbag backstop rimmed the retaining wall. The pistol ranges here were shorter, targets positioned from ten to twenty-five meters. Oblivious to Declan’s movement behind them, the shooters fired away, cases spinning to the dirt below.

  Simple tepees of shingles roofed the firing points, providing shelter from the San Joaquin Valley heat. Gunfire thundered all around, punctuated with the flat thwack of rounds punching plastic and hay. Bright orange wind flags flopped lazily from thin flexible poles. The air smelled of gun oil and burning nitrocellulose. Declan turned his face to the sun. It was a beautiful day.

  He found the target in the seventh firing lane, his back to the walkway.

  Rafael Gomez stood in a modified Isosceles Stance, torso square to the range, knees slightly flexed to absorb recoil. Declan watched him shoot, watched the recoil shudder his shoulder blades and blur the Padres logo on the turned-around cap. He couldn’t get a clear look at the pistol, but it sounded like a .22.

  A gun case lay open on the bench behind him, the ammo dumped into a gray rubber tray. A few other handguns rested on the convoluted foam inside the case, including a SIG Sauer nine-mil, the air force service weapon of choice.

  No more than five feet away, Rafael switched out his magazine and kept on firing. He’d chosen old-school Birchwood Casey targets and was dumping round after round through the nine ring, a few edging the red.

  The shooters on either side thundered away, the percussion and echoes deafening even over the sound-absorbing transmission. Unlike Rafael’s firing cadence, theirs were sporadic and uneven, recreational sportsmen doing their Saturday best.

  Declan stepped beneath the floating roof. Using a gun-cleaning cloth, he plucked the SIG from the case. A pair of magazines rested on the bench, conveniently loaded. Manipulating the cloth like a glove, Declan slid the mag into the well.

  He watched Rafael shooting, so proud, so consistent, timing the pops.

  He waited for Rafael to fire again and clicked the magazine home, the noise disguised by the bang. The cloth formed a barrier between Declan’s palm and the grip, his finger and the trigger.

  Around them countless guns roared and roared.

  Stepping forward, Declan raised the barrel so the muzzle floated two inches off the Padres logo at the back of Rafael’s skull.

  He fired.

  Folding the cloth into his pocket, he crouched over Rafael and dug through his pockets.

  Wallet, keys, a folded day pass granting him leave from the reintegration center. His back pockets were empty save for a small piece of folded paper.

  It contained a phone number and nothing else.

  1-855-2-NOWHERE.

  Declan’s veins turned to ice.

  He walked away swiftly past the other firing lanes. Cutting back around the bathroom shack, he ducked inside, dropped the gun-cleaning cloth into the toilet, and heeled the metal prong of the flusher.

  Across the parking lot, back into the maroon Corolla, his chest heaving.

  Queenie looked over at him. What’s wrong?

  He said, “We’ve got a problem.”

  50

  Dummyproof

  Evan walked Joey up to her apartment because he wanted to see Dog the dog. He waited in her place while she retrieved the ridgeback from up the hall. The boy lost his mind at the sight of Evan, wagging his tail so hard his whole body hot-dogged back and forth. He shoved his rear end into Evan so he could scratch him just above the tail, and Joey slumped into her oversize leopard-print beanbag and watched them with reluctant amusement.

  “Gawd. Get a room.”

  She pulled her phone out and thumbed around, then flung it down next to her. The whole drive back to Los Angeles, she’d been checking it constantly with an undercurrent of irritation.

  “It’s a giant butt pain having that dog around, you know,” she said. “Every time I want to go somewhere, I have to go deal with the neighbor lady, and she always invites me in and wants me to drink tea.”

  “The horror.”

  “I should fix you up with her, since you’re all schoolboy skittish about Mia. This lady’s just your type. You two could be, like, the lamest-haircut couple ever.”

  Evan sat on the floor, the better to pet Dog. “What’s wrong with my haircut?”

  Joey rolled her eyes and flung her hands wide, apparently stunned at his inability to grasp the obvious. “It’s just a total generic guy cut.”

  “I’m a generic guy. And it’s good for you to have to interact with other humans. Weren’t you just complaining that you long for ‘real life’?”

  Dog tilted his head up to slurp the underside of Evan’s chin.

  Joey scowled. “I meant real life without…”

  “Responsibility?”

  “I didn’t say that!” She considered. “But yeah.”

  “Responsibility’s where you find meaning.”

  “Oh, yeah, Fortune Cookie Head? If responsibility’s so great, why are you retiring?”

  “I’m not retiring today. I’m heading to Creech North.”

  “Yeah, right.” Joey dug in her pocket, pulled out a vape pen.

  Even from across the room, Evan caught a whiff of weed. “What the hell, Joey?”

  “Chillax, X. T
his isn’t what you think it is.”

  “It better not be.”

  “If we really want to know what’s going on, we need you to get into the network at Creech North. We both know that Hargreave’s parking sticker is only gonna buy you a little time. You said you need a cover—”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “—and you’ll need to sneak a hacking device inside the base. What’s the least suspicious electronic device imaginable?” Joey twisted the vape pen, opening up a hidden inner core that showed off a circuit board.

  “How do I use it?”

  “You, like, toke.”

  “Josephine.”

  “JK! Don’t worry. It’s dummyproof. Even for you.”

  She snatched up her phone once more, glared at it, threw it back into the beanbag.

  Evan said, “What’s with your phone?”

  “What?” She reached over her shoulder again and started digging at that spot on her back. “Nothing.”

  “You keep—”

  “Look, it’s fine, okay? Gawd.” She stretched back, grabbed a Speed Cube from the windowsill, and started playing with it. It turned to a blur of colors in her capable hands, a magic orb. “Bicks is ghosting me. I was just checking if he texted me back, but he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Hard pass.”

  Dog nosed his empty Red Vines water bowl and whimpered. Evan stood and carried it into the bathroom. On the counter an array of lipsticks rose like rockets, and there were two kinds of concealer despite the fact that Joey had flawless skin. The sight brought him up short. How hard she was trying to fit in.

  He filled the water bowl and brought it back to Dog and sat down again as the ridgie slurped and drooled on the floor. Joey kept spinning the cube, eyes down. Easier to focus on the plastic toy than on a human.

  Evan waited.

  She solved the cube, spun it on her finger like a basketball, then attacked it again, fingers flying. Now it was checkered. Now striped. Her proficiency was staggering.

  He waited some more.

  “I mean, what do I care if he posted a picture of him with Sloane last night? It’s his problem if he wants to date some stupid rich girl who exfoliates with whale semen and only eats panda meat.”

  “Whale semen? Is that a thing?”

  “Duh. They’re mammals.”

  “I meant the facial-care application.”

  “No, X. And she doesn’t really eat panda meat either. I’m just saying. He can go back to his life and his mom landlord and fuck right off.”

  She winced, pulling her head to one side, contorting herself again to get at that knotted muscle by her shoulder blade. Her face looked suddenly full, a heaviness in the cheeks, beneath the eyes.

  He remembered her once telling him about when she was fourteen, barely hanging on in the Orphan Program. After having an ear blown out from a demolition charge, she’d been left to find her own way to her pickup point. Stumbling along, she’d come across a father rocking his baby on a park bench, murmuring, You are safe. You are loved. After she’d conveyed this memory to Evan, she’d stared at him, her eyes glimmering, and said, Can you imagine?

  He couldn’t. But since knowing Joey, he’d been starting to imagine how to impart something like that.

  Right now it had to be without words. Without eye contact. For the millionth time, he wondered what Jack would have done. When Evan was young and guarded and lost, Jack had always known exactly how to find a way in, what not to say. This was the domain of other people—of Mia, of parents, even fathers like Andre who at one time had held the weight of Sofia’s life in his arms.

  Until he’d chosen not to.

  Evan cleared his throat. “If you need—”

  “I don’t need anything, okay?” Flash of anger, her expression hard, impenetrable.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t need you. I don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  Dog slumped down on the floor with a harrumph and panted contentedly. He smelled like musk and sunshine. Over on the beanbag, Joey strained even harder to reach the sore spot in her back.

  Evan said, “Can I help you get that?”

  “No.”

  “You need to learn to accept help.”

  “Why? You never do.”

  Evan said, “So you can teach me.”

  She still didn’t bother to look up. Meeting his gaze would be too much for her, but he could tell that she was selling it to herself differently, that he wasn’t worth looking at. Not a blemish on her face and two kinds of concealer on the bathroom counter. However hard it was for him to decipher the rules of ordinary life, it was harder for her. Sixteen years old with a labyrinth ahead and endless potential if she could just find the right route through.

  She kept trying to get at that muscle. He sat, watching her frustration mount.

  Finally she said, “Fine. Just ’cuz I can’t reach.”

  He crossed to her and took her place on the beanbag, motioned for her to sit down on the floor in front of him. Facing away, no eye contact. That was good.

  He set his hands on her shoulders. Her right one was a good two inches higher than the left, curled slightly forward, the muscle fiber locked up. He found the pressure point with his thumb. Applied pressure, the angry knot yielding nothing.

  He gripped the ball of her shoulder, hunched and tight. The problem was there. He held it gently, set his knee in the space between her shoulder blades, and applied gentle pressure, peeling the shoulder back.

  “Breathe,” he said. “And release.”

  Her inhalations came in jerks, the exhalations shuddering. Her shoulder trembled, moved back a quarter inch. Fought forward again, muscles and tendons rippling beneath his fingers, in spasm.

  “Steady,” he said. “Let go. Just let go.”

  “I am,” she said, her voice wavering.

  Joey let her head grow heavy, made a sound between a groan and a growl. Dog the dog’s collar jangled as he lifted his head.

  Her breath evened out. He kept the pressure on, gentle and insistent. Her skin grew suddenly hot. And then her shoulder peeled back and away, opening up, a sudden smooth movement that set it in line with the other.

  She tipped her head forward more, let it go lax.

  She shook a little. He wasn’t sure what was happening until tears spotted her jeans.

  “Damn it,” she said softly. “Damn it damn it damn it.”

  * * *

  Evan drove back to Castle Heights to gear up for the trip to Creech North. Any plan to get him in and out of the top-security compound in one piece would require maximum flexibility and a wildly inventive cover.

  So far he had a vape pen and a parking sticker.

  It was going to be a challenge.

  He parked in the underground lot and made his way through the lobby, sufficiently preoccupied that he barely noticed the person sitting in the sofa area.

  Lorilee Smithson.

  For once she didn’t leap up at the sight of company; she didn’t even look over at him as he moved quietly to the elevator. She was staring out the windows onto Wilshire Boulevard, half her face painted with the late-morning sun. Her jaw was set in contemplation, a grave bearing he had not thought her capable of.

  He could have continued on to the elevator unseen. But something about her expression made him pause.

  He looked back at the elevator. Behind the security counter, Joaquin was watching him, eyebrows raised at this break in Evan’s routine. Joaquin didn’t speak or move, like a nature photographer gone motionless to avoid spooking the wildlife.

  Cutout construction-paper snowflakes danced across the walnut facing of the security desk, Evan close enough to see the sloppy crayon penmanship signing the lowest one: PETER HALL, AGE 9.

  That kid was constantly decorating the lobby, Easter Bunny piñatas and Thanksgiving tissue turkeys and customized drawings for every resident’s birthday. Evan flashed on
Peter sitting on the couch in his dead father’s dress shirt—I don’t have anyone to be proud of me—and the image about wrecked him. How could a kid that fundamentally good ever have to wonder if he was good enough for someone to be proud of?

  With quiet awe Evan considered the upbringing Mia had given Peter that let him interact with the world so purely, so freely, so unabashedly. That was what kids were supposed to do: say how they felt and have fun and create joy before life wore them down and dulled their clarity. Joey had never had that chance, and neither had Evan.

  Was his decision to leave the Nowhere Man behind some misguided attempt to fight his way backward to some kind of freedom? To the childhood he never had?

  He thought about that moment at Lorilee’s going-away party when she’d paused amid the dancing to stare balefully at her HAPPY TRAILS! banner, contemplating a future that was unsure and maybe even impossible.

  Was that it, then? The thinnest thread connecting him to her? He’d always viewed her as a member of a different species. If they were alike in some distant, tiny way, what did that mean? Did he owe something different to her? To himself?

  He was still standing there motionless in the lobby, Joaquin’s eyes on him.

  And then he reversed course.

  He walked back to Lorilee and sat opposite her. He was unskilled at small talk, uncertain how to initiate it. But he was here, breathing the same air, tinged with her perfume.

  She slowly registered him, more dazed than languid. “Oh. Hi, Ev.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just … you know.” She removed a tissue from a bright pink purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Just a lot going on.”

  “With the move?”

  She looked back out the window again and considered the sidewalk, her Botox-smooth and filler-plump features helpless to hide the anguish beneath. “I’m not going anywhere, Evan.”

  For the first time, her voice had no youthful singsong element, no forced musicality. She was just a grown woman talking in her natural voice, and there was something bare and human in it.

  “I don’t think I was ever gonna go through with it,” she said. “Can’t change who I am. Wherever I go, I’ll still be me.” She blotted her lower lids with the tissue, a practiced gesture that preserved her eyeliner. “Part of me didn’t know. But part of me knew all along.”