The Chaos Kind

by Barry Eisler

  “Same thing a soccer mom is doing dropping her off.”

  Delilah didn’t know what that meant. Some kind of inside joke. God, they really were flirting. And just a half hour earlier, she’d been worrying about how he was reverting to his old, killing self.

  Delilah leaned toward the passenger-side window. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Delilah.”

  “Good to meet you,” Yuki said. “Tom said you’d be coming.”

  John glanced toward the back of the van. “The kids aren’t here this time? Rina and Rika, right?”

  One quick exchange—which Delilah herself had initiated—and she was just the driver again, an afterthought.

  Yuki nodded. “You have a good memory. They stay up later these days than when you met them, but not this late. Actually, they’re going to be waking up soon. Luckily I have an understanding husband who’s going to take them to school while I sleep in.”

  Delilah wondered whether the husband reference was for her benefit. It irritated her to think she might have unintentionally shown something the woman was responding to.

  “Maya?” John said, leaning forward to look past Yuki.

  The girl nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Tom told me what happened tonight. I’m sorry.”

  The girl nodded again. The dog whined and licked her face.

  John got out, holding the Glock low alongside his leg, and scanned the area. Then he walked around to the passenger side of the van and opened the door.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  The girl came out, holding her dog. John escorted her to the back of the SUV, his head swiveling as they moved. She looked exhausted, her face puffy, no doubt from crying. He closed the door behind her, then went to Yuki’s window.

  “You should go,” he said. “Your brother is careful, and I seriously doubt anyone would have followed you—they would have been here already. Still, you might want to take an indirect route home. Go through some residential neighborhoods where there’s no traffic. If it seems like anyone is following you—”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Tom says you micromanage.”

  John did another scan of the lot. Now that they had Maya, he seemed focused again. “He’s probably right,” he said.

  Yuki looked past him toward the back seat of the SUV, then back at John. “Take care of her. She’s really . . . She’s having a rough time.”

  John nodded. “It was good seeing you.”

  “Same.” She glanced at Delilah and added, “It was good meeting you, Delilah. Thanks for helping Tom.”

  “Of course,” Delilah said, trying to inject a note of warmth into it. “It was good meeting you, too.”

  Yuki rolled up the window and drove off. Delilah watched as the taillights hit the street. “Nice woman,” she said.

  John nodded. “Yeah.”

  The taillights disappeared. Delilah pulled forward. “Attractive, too.”

  He was looking at the sideview. “Yeah,” he said again.

  Okay. Either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he was focused, as he needed to be. Or both.

  Probably she should drop it. Or at least, bring it up later. After they’d picked up the other two and were done caring for all these strays that had been thrust upon them.

  chapter

  forty-three

  LARISON

  After dropping off Manus at the airport, Larison had driven to the Silver Cloud Inn—a hotel overlooking Commencement Bay in Tacoma. Dox had suggested it as a random place to regroup and spend the night. Larison knew the randomness had something to do with it, but figured if it overlooked a body of water, Dox was hoping for a little ambiance, too. The man was so head-over-heels about Livia it almost pained Larison to give him a hard time about it. Not that a little pain was a sufficient impediment, of course.

  They’d cut Hamilton loose at the Motel 6. Nobody wanted to babysit her, and being around the five of them was obviously causing the woman freak-out levels of cognitive dissonance. They’d told her she needed to take a vacation—Don’t go home, don’t go to the office, don’t use your cellphone or credit cards—until they’d figured out how to put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. She seemed to get it. But Larison thought there was at least a fifty percent chance that once she was away from them, it would all start to seem unreal, and she would rationalize what had happened at the hotel, rewrite the rest of it, and go back to her life and the normality most people clung to. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other. The one thing he knew she wouldn’t forget was what he’d told her before he and Manus headed out.

  “I want you to know something,” he’d said, looking at her so she could see it in his eyes. “From my standpoint, you have no more benefit to offer us. Meaning you’re pure liability. So if it were up to me, I’d leave you here with a bullet in your head. The only reason I’m not doing it is because some of these people have qualms I don’t, and I respect them enough to go along with their wishes. Sometimes. But if you ever say a word about any of us, next time it’ll be purely up to me. And I promise, I’ve killed people a lot harder to find than you, Sharon Hamilton.”

  He’d held her gaze for a moment after saying it—just long enough to see the color drain from her face.

  On the way back from the airport, he’d picked up takeout from a place called Indo Asian Street Eatery—dumplings, rolls, satay, rice bowls. He’d dropped off half for Dox and Livia. Now he and Diaz were sitting on the floor in their room, eating their half. Well, Larison was eating. Diaz was devouring.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I didn’t know what you’d want, but it’s better to stay off the phone.”

  She swallowed what she’d been chewing. “Sorry. Yeah, I was starving. This is great.”

  He liked that she was hungry. Some civilians, when they found themselves suddenly in the shit, broke down. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping, got withdrawn. Set themselves up for a vicious cycle. Others were more adaptable. Larison had no patience for the former variety. He wasn’t like Dox, who had weird scripts running through his head about the importance of protecting the weak. For Larison, if you couldn’t carry your own weight, it wasn’t up to him to carry it for you.

  “So you know Livia?” she said, around a mouthful of Thai basil chicken.

  Larison nodded. “Mostly through Dox. You?”

  “Through work. And I take her classes. Women’s self-defense.”

  Larison nodded again. He didn’t think much of most self-defense classes he’d ever come across. But if Livia was teaching, it would be all right.

  “What’s up with her and Dox?” Diaz said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. She never mentioned him to me. I mean, her private life is pretty mysterious, and I’m beginning to understand why.”

  “I don’t know. They’ve got some kind of on-again, off-again thing.”

  “There’s some kind of connection there. I can see it when she’s looking at him.”

  Probably the topic was harmless, but Larison wasn’t comfortable discussing Dox’s love life. Maybe because of the danger it would lead to questions about his own. And while he’d gotten used to what Rain and Dox and company knew about him, that didn’t extend to the rest of the world. At least not yet.

  “She’s complicated,” he said. “What about you? How’d you get into this line of work?”

  She shrugged. “I hate bullies,” she said. “People who take advantage of other people just because they can.”

  It felt like a PR statement, probably one she’d trotted out in every job interview she’d ever had. People claimed all sorts of high-minded motives for the shit they did. The truth was usually something else.

  Still, there was a coldness in her eyes that made him wonder if there was something more to it. Just because she might deploy it as some kind of résumé mission statement didn’t mean it was only that. And maybe it was such an
obvious bromide, so appealing an explanation for someone in her line of work, that she used the glittering public-relations aspect to distract from some darker foundation of truth.

  “That ever happen to you?” he said.

  She looked at him, and he could see she was put off by the question.

  He smiled. “I don’t mean to pry. But hey, you brought it up.”

  She looked away. A beat passed. Then she said quietly, “My stepfather. When my brother and I were small.”

  It was obviously something she wouldn’t ordinarily share. He wondered why she was trusting him with it now. Probably the feeling of the everyday world in abeyance, the four of them, and now just the two, at sea together, adrift, detached. When Larison had been a soldier, he had hitchhiked a lot. And was frequently astonished at the personal stories people would share after picking him up. One guy, who had been having an affair with his own sister-in-law, had said to Larison, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Well, I guess, who are you going to tell, right?” The truth was, most people had a deep-seated need to unburden themselves. It was just a question of the right timing, and circumstances, and confessor.

  “Where is he now?” Larison said.

  “Dead.”

  “That why you became a prosecutor? Because you couldn’t punish him?”

  “What are you, my therapist? Anyway, what makes you think I didn’t punish him?”

  Larison doubted it, but he said, “I hope you did.”

  There was a pause. She said, “Well, I didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about you? How did you get into . . . whatever it is you do?”

  He swallowed a mouthful of chicken and rice. “Long story.”

  “Are we going someplace?”

  He smiled. He liked Diaz. She wasn’t as tough as she thought she was, but with a little luck, she would be.

  “It started with the rah-rah stuff,” he said. “Flag and country and all that. But really, I just didn’t want anyone to ever be able to fuck with me. You know. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, ’cause I’m the baddest motherfucker in the valley.’ But it didn’t take long to figure out the rah-rah was just bullshit and marketing. A racket.”

  “Well, at least you got the baddest motherfucker part, right?”

  He laughed. “I don’t know about that. But yeah, people tend to leave me alone if I want them to. And if they don’t, I can make them.”

  For a moment, her eyes were far away. “I wish I could have done that,” she said, and he knew she was remembering the stepfather.

  He nodded. “There’s a cost, though.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “Parts of you wind up . . . cauterized.”

  He stopped, amazed he had said so much. Well, the hitchhiker principle worked both ways.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be. These people have been good for me. That fucking Dox . . . He can wear you down. Anyway, what about you? What are you going to do when this is over?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to be able to go back to the law, and the rules, and all the sanctimonious bullshit and pretend it’s not all just, you know, a racket?”

  “It’s not all a racket,” she said.

  He liked her enough not to want to disabuse her.

  “Anyway,” she said after a moment. “I knew Schrader had allies. Livia warned me about what I’d be facing with an indictment. But even she didn’t see . . . how far they’d go. Although maybe she did. She kept trying to get me to be more careful. I thought she was being alarmist. God.”

  “There’s a saying I like. ‘Denial has no survival value.’ If you’re going to play, you have to at least recognize what the game is.”

  She nodded. “Well, now I know.”

  “And on the bright side, there’s a good chance Schrader spent the last hours of his life screaming for it to stop. And who knows? Maybe they’re not done with him. Maybe he’s screaming right now.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t feel like justice.”

  “It beats someone killing you, and Schrader walking free.”

  She smiled. “Well, when you put it like that.”

  He smiled back. Yeah, she was all right.

  “This whole thing,” he said. “It’s about the videos, right?”

  “It seems that way.”

  “That’s what all the bigshots are playing for. But maybe the videos will wind up with you. Who’ll be the baddest motherfucker then?”

  “That’s not what I would do with them. Those videos are evidence of crimes. I’d use them for new prosecutions.”

  “Well, that’s one way. But you want to hear another expression I like?”

  She didn’t answer, and he went on.

  “‘Don’t bring a lawbook to a gunfight.’”

  chapter

  forty-four

  EVIE

  Evie was at the checkout desk in the library. Other than the flicker of the computer screen and the ambient glow from the parking lot lights outside the windows, the cavernous space was dark. It was so quiet she could hear the hum of the computer, and the air had a trace of must—that unmistakable book smell, which she had always found comforting but that now felt surreal and discordant.

  Dash had passed out on a couch, under the multicolored afghan Ms. Symons typically kept folded across her lap and that, along with her overlarge glasses, had become her trademark as the school librarian. Evie was relieved he was sleeping. He’d reacted better than she had feared: if Marvin said they shouldn’t go home until he could make sure the house was safe, they shouldn’t go home. Evie couldn’t answer his questions beyond that, so he would save them for Marvin, who he trusted so completely.

  But the first questions would be only the beginning, and when the answers proved unsatisfactory, the questions, and the doubts, would grow. Dash wasn’t a little boy anymore, to be bought off with stories about scavenger hunts and games as the reasons they had been on the run, or vague explanations that Delgado was a bad man who had been trying to hurt them because he thought Evie had information Delgado wanted, and that Marvin had made Delgado go away. Dash had always believed Marvin’s vague assurance that he had been one kind of contractor, for the government, and now had become another, the kind that builds houses. And while she knew Dash wouldn’t indulge those fictions forever, she had always hoped he would hold on to them for longer.

  She glanced at the clock on the screen. Not yet five. She was tired, but she didn’t want to go to one of the couches, or even to nod off. After the custodians had finished cleaning and left for the night, she had put her and Dash’s cellphones in her office as Marvin had instructed. But with a twist—she had turned on FaceTime on each phone, and was now monitoring the feeds from the checkout desk computer. If anyone entered her office, she would know.

  Not that she was really expecting anything like that. But . . . it couldn’t hurt to be careful. Just in case.

  Dash moaned in his sleep and she glanced over at him. Curled on the couch in the faint light from the parking lot, he looked smaller than he was. Like the little boy he’d been and not the teenager he’d become. She felt a wave of desperate love for him. And an underlying ripple of terror that somehow, she had put him in danger.

  She rubbed her eyes. She wished it would get light. Everything would feel better then. More sane.

  Through the computer speaker, she heard a soft electric buzz. It stopped, then started again.

  She looked at the feed. She didn’t see anything. But whatever sleepiness she’d been feeling was instantly gone, replaced by an adrenalized alertness.

  The buzz continued, then abruptly stopped. She heard the unmistakable sound of a lock clicking open.

  Her heart started hammering and her mouth was instantly dry. She stared intently at FaceTime through the camera aimed at her office door.

  The door opened. A man came through. Her heart wa
s beating so hard she was afraid someone would hear it.

  She had left a desk light on in the office. It wasn’t enough to make out the man’s features. But she could see the brown uniform. The UPS guy she had seen at the house.

  He was holding something in his hand. It might have been an electric toothbrush, but she knew better. It was an electric lock-pick gun. That’s what she’d heard buzzing. The man slipped the pick gun into a pocket and began moving stealthily through her office.

  She was convulsed by a wave of terror. 911, she thought. Call 911.

  But the cellphones were in her office—

  She realized that in her panic, she’d forgotten all about the landline. She grabbed the receiver, shocked at how badly her hands were shaking, and brought it to her ear.

  No dial tone.

  Wait, wait, you need an outside line. Hurry—

  She managed to punch the 9 button. Dial tone. Thank God.

  She punched in the three digits. A single ring. Then a man’s voice: “911. What is your emergency?”

  “My name is Evelyn Gallagher,” she whispered. “I’m a teacher at the School for the Deaf. There’s a man in my office. I think he’s going to hurt us.”

  “Where are you now, ma’am?”

  “At the school.”

  “In your office?”

  “No. In the library. But I think—he’s looking for us.”

  “All right. Stay where you are. We’re sending units right away. Do you want me to remain on the phone?”

  “No. I have to wake my son. Just please, hurry.”

  She placed the receiver back in the cradle, her hand still shaking badly. She got up to go to Dash, but heard a faint buzz through the FaceTime feed, different from the sound of the pick gun. She glanced, and saw the UPS man reach into his uniform and pull out a cellphone. He held it to his ear and listened. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Maybe she heard me. Doesn’t matter. I’ll meet you there.”

  She shook her head, confused. Meet who, where?

  The library.