The Survivor

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Cielle went back to her cuticles. Silence. Just beyond her line of sight, Janie regarded Nate imploringly.

  He gritted his teeth. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry—”

  Cielle’s head snapped up. “So he can stay?”

  “No.”

  Cielle sank her chin beneath the frayed collar of her oversize sweater. “He could help if those guys come back.”

  “What’s he gonna do? Scare them off with his music?”

  With a sleeve bunched over her fist, she wiped her nose forcefully, as if to tear it off. “You don’t get it.”

  “No.” His voice was low, but hard as stone. “You don’t get it. We could all get killed, Cielle. Him included. How you gonna feel if he winds up with a bullet in his chest?”

  Her expression shifted abruptly, the wrinkles smoothing from her forehead. Reality slapping her. For a moment he thought she might start crying, but whatever twinge of guilt he felt was drowned out by the roaring necessities at hand.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, breaking the silence. He stood with some difficulty, stiff from myriad bruises, and checked the ID.

  Janie read his face and said, with all-too-familiar disappointment, “Work.”

  He pulled the phone open. “I can’t,” he said into it.

  Sergeant Jen Brown sounded unimpressed with his opening salvo. “Pregnant woman raped and stabbed to death in Griffith Park a few hours ago. Picnickers just found the body.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Husband’ll be home from work any minute. Doesn’t know a thing yet.”

  “I can’t.”

  “He’s on the Westside, ten minutes from your door. If you don’t go, I’ll have to send Ken.”

  Nate’s head was bent, his neck tightening up, the heat of Janie’s and Cielle’s gazes boring through his back. Ken Nowak serving a death notification to a man who’d just lost his wife and unborn child—Nate’s chest cramped at the thought of it. He did his best to stand still, to avoid squirming, to try to hold the course.

  Instead he heard himself say, “Last time.”

  Janie blew out a soft breath of disappointment, and Cielle’s head snapped away to face the wall.

  He hung up, defeated, and turned to face them. “Look, I won’t be an hour. It’s an impossible one. This guy—”

  Janie waved a hand. “I understand. Go ahead.” She slumped back down next to Cielle.

  Nate lingered a beat, but neither seemed interested in kick-starting this particular argument. He didn’t blame them. Trudging downstairs, he breathed in the fragrances of the house—carpet cleaner, the lingering afterscent of a honey candle, a trace of ash from the fireplace. A faint rain tapped the roof, and the refrigerator hummed. He patted the dog on the head and stepped out onto the porch.

  Halfway down the walk, he paused.

  He turned around, gazed back at his house, at the square of his daughter’s window. There was a movement at the curtain, and then Janie and Cielle appeared, looking down at him. Something inside him swelled and broke, and he felt weak and emancipated all at once. Squinting against the flecks of rain, he stood for a time, night air crisp at the back of his throat, staring up at them, them staring down, the three of them motionless and silent as if the slightest movement would shatter this unspoken dialogue.

  Then he pulled out his phone and dialed.

  Jen answered gruffly.

  “I’m not going,” he said. “I’m taking some time off.”

  “Ken left for home already. What if I gave you an order to handle this?”

  “Then I’d tell you what you can do with your order.”

  A long silence, punctuated only by Jen’s breathing. He could have sworn he sensed her mouth shape into a smile on the other end.

  “Hear that crackling?” she said. “Must be hell freezing over.”

  He hung up and started back inside. His head was bent against the drizzle, but with each step home he felt the warm gaze of his wife and daughter overhead.

  Chapter 25

  Cielle’s scream shattered Nate’s sleep, and he bolted up from the couch, slamming his knee into the coffee table. For a moment he had no bearings—apartment or house? nightmare or real?—but then he snapped to awareness, clawing his way past the furniture toward the stairs.

  Casper followed him up, two steps at a time, lunging as if fording water. Janie swung out of the master, nearly colliding with Nate at the landing, and then parents and dog were hurtling toward Cielle’s door. They found her backed as far as she could get from the window, turned sideways as if trying to burrow through the wall.

  “What is it?”

  “Are you okay?”

  Cielle was shuddering beneath her T-shirt and boxers. A fall of dark hair covered one eye, the other wide and glossy. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She lifted a hand and pointed to the window.

  Shoulders lowered, Casper slunk four steps toward the window and issued a growl seemingly too low even for his deep chest. Janie moved to Cielle and Nate toward the bare pane, setting each foot down slowly, heel to toe. He paused beside the dog, who hummed with menace, a stone grinder rumbling.

  Four more cautious steps brought Nate to the sill. There lay the front yard, twin ellipses of mowed grass split by the snake of the front walk. The sturdy magnolia, its wrinkled, elephantine trunk dark with rain. Planters brimming with subdued lavender and juniper. And beyond, the wide street, the friendly façades of Craftsmen and Cape Cods looking on, observers at a parade. This panorama he knew in his bones, each lineament traced in memory, the curves and shapes of a cherished photograph. Comfort exemplified.

  Except.

  A dark figure stood centered on the patch of grass directly beneath Cielle’s window. From the shadowed head, huffs of cigarette smoke rose, beaten flat by the rain. The face tilted up at the window. Legs confidently spaced. The man did nothing more than stand and smoke, but his presence there, at this hour, was invasive, horrifying. Large boots sank into the saturated sod—sod Nate himself had rolled onto the primed soil a few months after moving in. The sight pinballed around his insides, striking nerves at random, playing fears too primal to be named.

  “I got up to pee and…” Cielle’s words flared off.

  “What is it?” Janie’s breaths were audible.

  Keeping his gaze locked on the dark oval of a face, Nate said, “Yuri.”

  The phone’s ring sounded like a scream, scaring Cielle into a yelp. After the second ring, Nate found his legs again and unburied the cordless from a sea of decorative pillows on the futon.

  Mrs. Alizadeh’s voice seemed to arrive from a different dimension.

  “No, no,” Nate said, moving back to the window. “Everything’s okay. Yes, it’s me. I’m back at the house again.” Across the street, through the diaphanous silk of the old woman’s bedroom curtains, he could make out her silhouette, down to the apprehensive curl of her shoulders. The two of them, like prisoners on their respective second floors, terrorized by a man on a lawn. The ridiculousness of this broke through his alarm, fired the breath in his throat. “It’s probably just some lookie-loo, tracked me down after the whole bank thing. You heard about the bank thing?”

  “No,” Mrs. Alizadeh said. “I did not.”

  “Better just to ignore whoever it is,” Nate said.

  “He’s scaring me. I will call 911.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I do not like this, Mr. Overbay.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Nate said.

  He hung up, threw the phone at the futon, and started for the door.

  “You’re going out there?” Cielle asked.

  “Lock the door behind me.”

  Janie and Cielle followed him down. Stepping onto the porch, he waited for the thud of the dead bolt; seconds later two worried faces appeared in the living-room window.

  His bare feet squished in the grass. The form waited patiently as Nate neared, the face becoming recognizable by degrees in the dim light.

/>   “Get the fuck off my lawn.”

  “It is not even your lawn anymore.” The cigarette flared orange. “Pavlo will watch you and your family as he please. Through my eyes or through someone else.”

  Rain spit at them. Nate lifted his eyes past the big man’s shoulders to Mrs. Alizadeh’s perch by her upstairs window. She drew back slightly at his movement. Yuri’s gaze ticked left past Nate, no doubt taking in Janie and Cielle. Two men squaring off on an unlit stage of grass, a can’t-look-away spectacle. The wetness brought up the scent of the night-blooming jasmine. One wrong move and violence would explode here in the perfumed air of Santa Monica.

  “You’re scaring the neighbors. Someone’ll call the cops.”

  “We don’t worry about police. You must worry about police.” The cigarette bounced at the brink of Yuri’s mouth, a prop from a black-and-white movie. “You must pray we stay free men. If you let us get taken in by police, well…” His lips clamped the cigarette and curled up at the edges. The loglike arms made a slashing gesture, the fists gripping the handle of an imaginary rescue saw.

  “Get off my property,” Nate said. “Let me do the job you need me to do.”

  “No, I think I will stay awhile. Finish my cigarette.” Yuri splayed a hand toward the house. “Go back to your beautiful women.”

  Nate took a step forward, and Yuri stiffened ever so slightly, a gathering beneath his great dark coat. Standing ready, he made a scolding noise through pursed lips, a ticking of the tongue.

  Nate’s breath clouded about his face. He let the rain dampen his temper. Let it sizzle the rage until it was safe to move. To retreat.

  Walking back, he kept his eyes trained on Janie and Cielle, their faces disembodied behind the pane. When he reached the porch, he finally turned.

  The front yard, empty.

  A cigarette butt smoldered in the wet blades, a last gasp before it was extinguished by the needling rain.

  Chapter 26

  Despite waking up on the couch, Nate felt as though it was almost a normal morning. He changed the dressing on his shoulder wound, took his pills, put coffee on for his soon-to-be ex-wife, and flipped through the soggy newspaper to the bleeding obits.

  An avid golfer, Kevin Struthers leaves two daughters, Nancy and Olivia, both pediatricians, and (as he tenderly called them) a “brood” of seven grandchildren. His wife, Elsie, predeceased him.

  Nate raised an orange-juice toast to good old Kevin and washed down the bitter aftertaste of the riluzole and antibiotics.

  Glancing through a window, he checked the front yard. Nothing there but two boot-shaped indentations in the soggy front lawn. He withdrew from the late-morning gloom and sat at the kitchen counter, listening to the coffee percolate and flexing his hand, testing the muscles. The numbness had crept from wrist to forearm. With mounting dread he regarded his arm. Maybe the stress had accelerated the disease. He wondered if his body would give out before he could get done what needed to get done.

  After Yuri’s intrusion last night, he and Janie had sat on Cielle’s bed for hours to honor an unspoken agreement to stay with her until she drifted off. They were all three wired from the encounter, tension jumping from one to the other. It wasn’t until the morning sun crept through the windows and overtook the shadows that Cielle had dozed off. After an awkward moment at the top of the stairs, Nate and Janie had parted ways.

  She shuffled into the kitchen now, rubbing her eyes, a snarl of hair raised in the back. Drawn by the scent of coffee. Cielle was still slumbering; there’d been no question she’d miss school today.

  “Don’t you look all perky and ready to go,” Janie mumbled.

  “Got a date with the bank.” He poured her a cup and slid it across.

  Her gaze snared on something on the counter. His left hand, trembling slightly against the marble. Involuntary. He pulled his hand into his lap but in doing so knocked over one of his pill bottles, which rattled more loudly than seemed probable. The silence made an awkward return.

  “You were really gonna do it?” Janie said. “Kill yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Idiot.” She took a sip. “Why? Because of the disease?”

  He thought about it. Given the monumentality of the decision, it struck him as odd that he had no ready answer. “I wasn’t killing myself because of the disease,” he finally allowed. “I was killing myself because there was nothing left but the disease.”

  She leaned against the doorway to the study. “You couldn’t find something? Anything? To make it worth it for another day, another week?”

  “Like what?” he said. “I’m not researching the cure for cancer. I’m not Lou Gehrig—don’t get to make a speech in front of a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium. All I had left was to inflict this on myself and others.”

  Her face stayed firm, whether from grief or anger, he didn’t know.

  He got up and started digging through the kitchen drawers, leafing through take-out menus, old receipts.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I need a pretense to get back into that private viewing room at the bank. Best bet is bringing something official-looking to put in my safe-deposit box, something I can just leave in there.”

  He was pulling together a few old pieces of mail when Janie said, “Take this.”

  Something in her voice sounded different, and he stopped what he was doing and looked up. She was offering up a stapled document. Even from across the room, he could see what it was.

  He took a beat, because he didn’t trust his voice. “You sure?”

  “Of course not.”

  He stayed put by the kitchen drawer, unsure what to do next.

  At length she nodded. “Yes. I’m sure.” She shook the divorce papers impatiently.

  He crossed and took them on his way out.

  * * *

  The line at the bank offered a good vantage to the private viewing rooms. There were two of them, an added complication that Nate was none too keen to account for. A wizened man stepped into the desired room as Nate neared the front of the line, forcing him to stall by pretending to fill out deposit slips. When the man at last shuffled back into sight, Nate hurried forward to the next available teller and was buzzed through. The security guard waited, the same older gentleman from round one. As they stepped into the vault, he studied Nate with eyes as small and hard as marbles.

  “Two twenty-seven, right?” he asked.

  Nate offered his best grin even as his hand left a sweat stain on the divorce papers. “Two twenty-six.”

  The guard said flatly, “Senility must be comin’ on stronger than I imagined.”

  Nate got his safe-deposit box and strolled as casually as possible into the open private viewing room. The watercolored girl at the beach—still there. He hastened the pneumatic door closed with an elbow, then tossed down the box and rushed to pluck the painting off the wall, flipping it over.

  At first he could scarcely believe it was still there. The business-size envelope taped firmly to the backing. So many worst-case scenarios had flashed through his mind in the past twenty-four hours that he’d half convinced himself he’d willed one into existence. But no, the envelope easily peeled free. Stepping out of a sneaker, he folded the envelope three times and hid the dense rectangle beneath the insole. He pulled the shoe back on, laced it tighter than necessary.

  As he placed the divorce papers inside the safe-deposit box, bade them good-bye, and lowered the lid, he couldn’t help but note how the contraption resembled a coffin. This was one burial he didn’t mind a bit.

  The security guard helped him deliver the box to its resting place within the vault, refusing to return his smile. As Nate headed out, the thrice-folded envelope dug into his arch, but he felt like he was walking on air.

  Chapter 27

  “Should we open it?” Janie asked.

  “No,” Nate said at the precise moment Cielle said, “Dunno.”

  The three of them were pulled into the kitchen t
able, the envelope sitting untouched on the otherwise blank surface like some unsavory dish. Outside, the hunched clouds seemed to be giving way to dusk, a transition from gray to grayer.

  Janie’s laptop glowed on the counter opposite, open to the home page for New Odessa restaurant, complete with the number for reservations. Beside the computer stood the cordless phone. Nate’s impatience burned beneath his skin. He wanted to call the restaurant to see if Pavlo was there and willing to take early delivery.

  “Did Shevchenko ever say anything about opening it?” Janie asked.

  “He didn’t even mention what it was.”

  Cielle took the envelope and held it up against the overhead light. They’d each given this a try, hoping for a better result. A single sheet, folded, no writing or typing visible.

  “What could be so important that it could fit on a single piece of paper?” Janie asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Nate said, rising. “Let’s just get it to the man and call it a day.” He’d reached the counter and was thumbing the area code into the phone when he heard a ripping behind him.

  Cielle, sliding her finger beneath the flap.

  Nate hung up.

  She tilted the envelope, and the folded paper fell out. She reached for it delicately, laying it open. Janie rose, leaning over the table. She gave a faint, dismayed groan.

  “What?” Cielle said. “I don’t get it.”

  Nate’s legs carried him across, and he stared over Cielle’s shoulder, seeing what the paper held as Janie answered in a voice flat with regret, “A list of names.”

  There they were. Eight of them. Handwritten. And beneath each one an address in the L.A. area. The top name was crossed out.

  Nate felt his stomach lift, as if he’d fallen off the edge of something. “No.” His voice was loud, almost a shout. “You were safe. You were in the clear.”

  “What is it?” Cielle asked.

  Nate took a mental snapshot of the first few names, turned back to the laptop, and typed furiously. The sole crossed-out name at the top, Patrice McKenna, and then her neighborhood, Brentwood.

  “What, Mom? Why are you guys being so weird?”