Buy a Bullet: An Orphan X Story

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Aside from the tattoo high on his neck, a missing incisor, and a general air of menace, he seemed pleasant enough. As the cart rattled into the room, two near-matching gentlemen entered at his heels and fanned out. Each carried an AK-47, a mistake in such tight quarters according to Evan, though no one asked his opinion. A pistol or an FN P90 would’ve been preferable, but both lacked the big-dick factor beloved by narcotraficantes, and these boys seemed to be cartel muscle through and through. Narcos generally called the Kalashnikovs cuernos de chivo—goat’s horns—due to the curved magazines. Choosing their spots, they brandished the AKs with a fetishistic air, posing as if Evan were about to snap their portrait.

  Two dogs, five guards, and counting.

  The tattoo on the side of each man’s neck featured Santa Muerte. A folk saint favored by narcos, Our Lady of Holy Death resembled Mother Mary, if you ignored the grinning skull head. Additional ink classing up eyebrows, cheekbones, and forearms indicated that the men had worked for the Sinaloa Cartel, responsible for at least half the drugs migrating across the border into the U.S. every year.

  They’d cleared space at the front door, making way for someone’s dramatic entrance. Evan anticipated a cartel leader, strong of jaw and mustache, but the man who appeared defied any expectations.

  He was Caucasian, with coffee-colored eyes that sloped down at the outer corners and a face ratcheted taut and shiny from too much plastic surgery. The lids seemed tight across his eyes, as if he were wearing another man’s face. Though the surgeries made his age hard to peg, he seemed to be softening into his late fifties, swells bulging the sides of his suit. His tie, vest, and shirt were all patterned, paisleys and plaids orchestrated in a way that eluded Evan’s sensibilities and yet conveyed an undeniable elegance. Somehow they clashed and didn’t clash at the same time.

  At his back hovered a refrigerator of a man, pale as the moon, with a shaved skull and soft, rounded features that made it look as though someone had Photoshopped the head of a newborn onto Lou Ferrigno’s body. Evan would have expected him to hum with steroidal rage, and yet he seemed calm, almost placid, as if fully aware that his heft gave him the advantage of not having to get worked up over anything. His enormous form tugged at a memory—was he the one who’d fired the wildlife-capture net? Unlike the narcos, he sported no obvious tattoos, though Evan caught flashes of color on the backs of his hands, as if he’d rolled them on a painter’s palette.

  “Your accommodations are good?” the man with the suit said, flaring a hand. His fingernails were slightly too long, buffed to a high shine. “I’m a touch OCD, so I wanted everything to be perfect.”

  Evan had long thought that people who announced themselves as OCD should be subjected to death by paper cuts, but this guy, with his elaborate yet understated suit, manicured nails, and done-to-a-turn jail cell-cum-bedroom guest suite, seemed the genuine article.

  Evan wondered at the kind of money it took to hire muscle away from the cartel.

  “Where are your manners, Chuy?” the man said. “Prepare the tray for our guest.”

  The narco who’d delivered the cart lifted the stainless-steel domes covers off the plates to reveal eggs, bacon, and hotcakes, then stood at attention with a mix of aggression and embarrassment, like a pit bull made to wear a dog sweater.

  The breakfast offerings provided an answer to one of Evan’s questions. Moments before, he’d been looking at the sunrise, not the sunset.

  He moved his gaze past Chuy at the well-dressed man. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “René,” the man said. “I know, a faggot name. I can’t help but feel that my parents might have gone with something with a bit more spine to it.”

  “Last name?” Evan said.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Now, please…” As he gestured for Evan to sit, he smiled, though his face did not fully obey. “I’d imagine you’re starving. You haven’t eaten anything not from an IV bag in three days.”

  Three days, then.

  Evan had been taken on Friday, October 14. Which meant it was Monday, October 17.

  Which in turn meant that he still had thirteen days before Alison Siegler was delivered to the Jacksonville Port Authority and whoever had purchased her.

  Unless the man was lying about the date.

  The First Commandment: Assume nothing.

  Evan eyed the rifles, then sat on the bed. As René stepped forward into the room, his men floated around him in perfect Secret Service diamond formation. The big guy’s round face peered over René’s shoulder like a second head. Through a break in the bodies, Evan could see the wide tips of his fingers on the small of René’s back, cheated to the side, ready for the hook-and-grab if Evan made a move. The big man’s position and body language made clear that he was the right hand, elevated above the cartel stooges.

  René shot a look back at him. “It’s fine, Dex.”

  Dex removed his arm, and Evan strained to catch a glimpse of what was on the back of his hand, but it was gone too fast.

  Chuy pushed the dining cart forward until it bumped lightly against the ledge of Evan’s knees. There was no knife or fork, just a flexible rubber spoon. Scents wafted up. A butter patty dissolved into the hotcake stack. Bacon beckoned. A cloth napkin was cinched in a segment of bamboo stem that acted as a ring, the fine linen bloused out on either side like butterfly wings. There was a fucking sprig of parsley.

  Evan thought, You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here,” René said.

  “You need me.”

  René’s moist lips pursed with amusement that wasn’t really amusement at all. He didn’t like being correctly anticipated. “I’m sorry?”

  “A bullet goes for around twenty-five cents. These arrangements cost a touch north of that. So you require me for something. Or you wouldn’t go to the trouble.”

  René’s stare, lasering out from behind that Saran Wrap skin, was as unnerving as it was direct.

  “Where am I?” Evan asked.

  “Think of this as a private-sector rendition.”

  “Where am I?” Evan asked again.

  “That’s not relevant.”

  “What’s relevant is relative,” Evan said.

  “Good point. It’s not relevant to me for the purposes of this conversation. And what’s relevant to me is the only thing that matters anymore.”

  René’s hand dipped behind a lapel and came out with Evan’s RoamZone phone. He held it aloft theatrically, then dropped it on the floor and smashed it with the heel of his dress shoe. He stomped on it again until the Gorilla Glass cracked and the innards showed. Then he picked it up and tossed it into the fireplace.

  Evan didn’t move his head but watched with his eyes.

  René turned, a bead of perspiration carving its way down his flushed cheek. “You are in my hands. On my time. There is no help coming for you.”

  “I don’t wait for help. I am the help.”

  “Well, you’re doing a fine job thus far.”

  “I haven’t started yet.”

  “Let’s hope you’re smart enough to cooperate. If you do, everything will stay precisely this pleasant.”

  “Pleasant,” Evan said.

  “Pleasant is relative as well,” René said. “Do you have a name?”

  Did he really not know who Evan was, or was this an act? Evan watched him closely for any tells. “I do.”

  “What is it?”

  “Evan.”

  “Your last name?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  René remained several steps back, safely tucked behind Chuy, who was still dumbly holding the stainless-steel domes. The cart, pushed up against Evan’s legs, had the added advantage of pinning him to the bed. Evan took a croissant from the tray and set it on the bedspread beside him. He removed the napkin from the slender bamboo ring. Dex watched him carefully, flat eyes peering out from their doughy recesses.

  René said, “I don�
��t know who you are, but we saw the wreckage you left behind at that house in Fullerton. Were you a client of Hector Contrell’s?”

  His tone, Evan noted, held no judgment.

  “No.”

  “You had a business conflict with him?” René asked.

  “No.”

  The steel gaze appraised Evan. “You’re too skilled to be an angry relative or the like,” he said. “So what were you there for?”

  Evan stared at him.

  Realization dawned, excitement asserting itself across René’s features. “You just didn’t like him. I respect that.” He wet his lips. “Who are you?”

  Evan stared at him some more.

  René said, “Your driver’s license appears to be real, but it’s not. No other identification on you. Your fingerprints turned up nothing.”

  Evan rubbed his thumb across his finger pads, only now noticing the faintest trace of blue ink among the whorls. Another violation.

  “We looked at the registration of your 4Runner,” René continued. “The vehicle is owned by a shell corp in Barbados. We kicked over that rock and found that shell corp held by another in Luxembourg. I have a feeling that the more rocks we kick over, the more rocks we’re going to find.”

  Evan picked up the bamboo napkin ring, peered through it like it was a telescope. It was about two inches long, which was long enough.

  “I think I understand,” René was saying, “this thing you’re playing at.” He circled a hand at Evan.

  Evan slipped the bamboo ring over his forefinger and middle finger. The hollow stem fit snugly, locking the knuckles.

  Turning the fingers into a weapon.

  “I’m not playing,” Evan said.

  He leapt to his feet and drove his sheathed fingers through Chuy’s eye, straight into his brain. Blood spurted over the white linen. As Chuy tumbled back, quivering in his death throes, René recoiled in horror.

  Two dogs, four guards, and counting.

  The remaining pair of narcos had their AKs raised, but Evan knew damn well they hadn’t gone to all this hassle to gun him down on an overpriced bedspread. Hurling the cart aside, he lunged forward. Dex looped an arm around René’s midsection, spinning him out into the hall.

  Before Evan could close the distance, he heard a hissing behind him. He wheeled around, sourcing the noise to the heating vent, only now grasping that it was—

  Chapter 10:

  The Strange Language of Intimacy

  Blood on his neck, swollen cheek, wrists still scraped raw from handcuffs. Evan’s small for a twelve-year-old, scrawny, and can’t remember the last time he had a full belly.

  He has undergone a daunting set of initiation rites to land here, in this passenger seat of this dark sedan, heading God knows where. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know what he will be used for. He doesn’t know anything aside from the name of the man driving.

  Jack Johns.

  Maybe this time everything will be different, and—

  Evan stops the thought. Hope is dangerous. In his brief life, he’s done his best to eradicate it.

  Jack clears his throat. “You no longer exist,” he tells Evan. “You went away for a felony and disappeared into the system.”

  “’Kay,” Evan says.

  Jack bobs his bulldog head.

  An hour later they cross the murky green water of the Potomac and forge west into Arlington, Virginia. The commercial district gives way to tree-lined streets, and then there are more trees and fewer streets. Finally they turn off between twin stone pillars onto a dirt road and wend their way back to a two-story farmhouse.

  The silence has grown oppressively thick in the car, and it feels risky to break it. Evan waits until they’ve pulled in to the circular driveway and gotten out by the old-fashioned porch. Then he asks, “Where are we?” and Jack says, “Home.”

  The house smells damp but pleasant, redolent of burned wood. Evan regards the foyer and the family room with suspicion. He doesn’t trust the maroon carpet runner up the stairs, the plush brown corduroy couches, the pots hanging from a brass rack in the kitchen. The spectacle of undeniable domesticity leaves him humming with distrust.

  “Would you like to go upstairs, see your room?” Jack asks.

  “No.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know what I’m here for.”

  “Later.”

  Evan gathers his courage, does his best to summon Van Sciver. “After everything I did to get here, I think I’ve earned some respect.”

  Jack regards him calmly. “If you have to ask for respect, you’re not gonna get it.”

  Evan does his best to digest this. The words feel less like a slap than a solid wall dropped before him from a lofty height.

  Jack says, “Someone smarter than either of us once said, ‘If you want a quality, act like you already have it.’”

  Evan stares at Jack, and Jack stares right back at him.

  Evan blinks first. “’Kay,” he says.

  They head up the flight of stairs to a dormer room with a wooden bed. On the mattress the sheets are folded crisply, ironed into neat squares.

  Jack’s voice floats over his shoulder. “I get paid for this. To have you here. It’s a job. The money is not why I took you or want you here. I don’t want you to find out later, for it to be a surprise.”

  “Who’s paying you?”

  “Later.”

  Jack walks to the desk, lifts the blotter, and uses a fresh handkerchief to wipe away an invisible speck on the polished wood surface. He folds the handkerchief neatly and inserts it back into his rear pocket. “Make your bed.”

  Jack leaves Evan alone in the room. Evan struggles with the sheets. He pulls and tugs but cannot get them on properly, let alone taut and wrinkle-free.

  He goes downstairs and pokes around until he finds Jack in the garage, meticulously cleaning a handgun. Evan stiffens at the sight of the weapon, then swallows down his fear.

  “The sheets aren’t right,” Evan says.

  Jack keeps his gaze on the skinny brush, poking it in and out of the bore. “The sheets aren’t the problem. I’ve used them to make up that bed many times.”

  Evan takes a breath. “Okay,” he says. “I can’t make the bed right.”

  Jack’s eyes tick up above the top of the barrel. “And?”

  It takes a moment for Evan to understand what Jack is waiting for him to say. He finds the words: “Can you help me?”

  Jack lays aside the gun. “Be happy to.”

  Back upstairs, Jack regards the sloppy bed as Evan squirms. Jack walks over, inverts the edge of the fitted sheet over his hand, and shows Evan how to flop it neatly over the corner of the mattress. Jack continues straightening the sheets, keeping his body out of the way so Evan can watch and learn.

  “I’ll never be able to do it that good,” Evan says.

  “You don’t have to. You just have to make it better than you did last time.” Jack snaps the top sheet into place, and it responds like something scared into competence. “Next time. That’s all that matters.” He finishes and pulls himself upright beside the pristine bed. He passes Evan on his way out. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  Outside, Jack gives a whistle, and a moment later a big dog bounds around the corner of the porch and joins them, keeping a few feet off Jack’s right thigh. The dog is at least a hundred pounds, with a honey-gold coat and what looks like a racing stripe of reversed fur on his spine.

  Evan says, “Can I pet him?”

  “Strider can be touchy. Let him get used to you.”

  Their shoes crunch pleasingly in the tall grass. They make their way up a slight hill, and the view is all leafy canopy and fields.

  “What are we doing?” Evan asks.

  “Walking.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “We’re deciding if we’re gonna like each other or not.”

  Evan’s training begins the next day, a test of will that puts the previo
us ones to shame. At knifepoint in a dark barn, he learns his destiny. His future is illuminated, each revelation like a burst of fireworks.

  To the world and even to his own instructors, he will be known only as Orphan X.

  As his handler, Jack accompanies him to every session. There is breaching and shooting and hand-to-hand, psyops and spycraft and espionage technology. Evan generally returns home exhausted and bloodied. Their days are regimented.

  In the evenings they set up in the study, just them and a framed photo of a woman, which rests alone on a side table. She has waist-long hair, a slender neck, and thick-framed eyeglasses from another decade. Evan sneaks glances at her now and then when Jack’s not looking. They read a lot, mostly biographies and history books. Evan finds them boring until Jack talks about them, and then the stories come to life. They listen to classical-music records, too. One night an opera is playing in the background as Evan tries to decipher a chapter about Thomas Jefferson.

  Jack’s voice interrupts the music. “Do you hear that?”

  When Evan looks up, he sees that Jack’s eyes are closed. The opera singer wails ever louder.

  “Nine high C’s. When Pavarotti sang this aria at the Met on February seventeenth, 1972, he had seventeen curtain calls. Seventeen.”

  Evan does not know what an aria is, or the Met, or a curtain call. So he asks, “Were you there?”

  “No.”

  Evan hesitates. “Where were you?”

  Jack closes the book around his thumb. The textured skin around his eyes shifts a bit as he seems to decide whether or not to answer. “Laos,” he says.

  With this response Evan senses they have broken through onto new terrain, and this is at once exciting and perilous. He ponders a reply, but even rehearsed in his head the words sound clumsy.

  He dares to gesture toward the tarnished silver frame. “How’d she die? Your wife?”

  Jack says, “An embassy bombing. In Kuwait.”

  “Was she a spy?”

  “She was a secretary.”

  “Oh.” Evan waits until Jack’s attention returns to his book. He hesitates, unsure how to proceed in this foreign tongue, the strange language of intimacy. Then he says, “Her eyes are friendly.”