The Survivor

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Guess we’ll know something tonight,” Janie said. “One way or another.”

  The rest of the day, they stayed holed up in the house like fugitives, which Nate supposed they were. Though he did his best not to fixate on the upcoming meeting, he grew more antsy as night fell, his mood exacerbated by Cielle and Jason. The honeymoon had ended, and again they were quarreling like … well, teenagers.

  Preparing dinner, Janie and Nate could hear them down the hall.

  Jason’s voice first. “I didn’t say she was hot,” he backpedaled. “I just said I didn’t think she was ugly.”

  Checking the stove, Janie murmured to Nate, “He said she was hot.”

  Cielle’s reply now, at equivalent volume: “Christina Verducci. As in, ‘OMG, I would, like, so kill for a mani-pedi. Like, see how much time I save through my clever use of abbreviation?’ If you find that ‘hot,’ what are you doing with me?”

  Janie poured pasta into the colander. When the hiss died away, the debate had intensified.

  “In telling me to shut up,” Jason said, “you’re clearly not shutting up.”

  Janie, again with the color commentary: “She did just tell him they both needed to shut up.”

  Cielle, back on the offensive, her voice echoing down the hall: “You’re so wrong, I wish we had a tape recorder just so you could hear the extent of your total wrongness.”

  “I wish we had a tape recorder to rewind this conversation to prove I never said Christina Verducci was hot.”

  “If we asked, like, a hundred people, ninety-nine would agree with me.”

  “Sure. And Rosie O’Donnell is gay.”

  “She is gay, dipshit.”

  “I meant not gay.”

  Strident as it was, the youthful banter did provide, Nate had to admit, a respite from the oppressive heaviness of the wait. Janie handed him a stack of plates, and he set them on the wooden table, the knock of ceramic and the jangling of flatware momentarily drowning out Lincoln and Douglas. When he’d finished pouring water into the glasses, things had grown quiet down the hall.

  Janie cocked her head. “What now?”

  “Forest,” Cielle was saying.

  “Nah.” Jason’s husky voice, barely audible. “Too hippieish. Carson?”

  “No. I knew a Carson in elementary school who used to eat his eyebrows. How ’bout Taylor?”

  “I like it. Taylor Hensley.”

  “No, Taylor Overbay.”

  Nate thunked the final water glass into place. “Oh, Jesus. Are they…?”

  “I believe they are,” Janie said.

  They listened. Nothing.

  “Silence is bad,” Janie said, but already Nate was moving.

  He stormed down the hall and into the study. They were upright, thank God, but making out on the leather couch. He cleared his throat angrily, and they scrambled apart and gave him Garfield eyes.

  “No, okay?” Nate said. “Just … no. Now, come eat.”

  They followed him sheepishly, Jason muttering, “Dude, we were just kissing. We weren’t all boom-chicka-wah-wah.” Nate held up a finger, and the boy silenced.

  In the kitchen Janie had lit candles to avoid turning on the overheads, the effect soothing and inadvertently elegant. The pasta steamed on the plates, but by some unspoken agreement none of them started eating. There was no sound save the faint crackling of the candle and Casper at his dinner, his collar dinging the salad bowl into which Nate had emptied a can of dog food. Nate stared down at the woven place mats, the folded napkins, and understood fully for perhaps the first time in his life why people said grace before meals. For a brief stretch, they’d managed to forget about what awaited them beyond the comforting walls of this borrowed house. Sitting down at a well-set table threw their situation into sudden relief. Even Shithead Jason kept his mouth sealed.

  Cielle broke the stillness first, tentatively picking up a fork, and they followed suit, eating almost shyly.

  With dismay Nate realized that his jaw quickly tired from chewing, soreness radiating out from the hinge of the bone. The first weakness to reach his face. The invasiveness of this—the increased proximity now of the illness to his brain—seemed dire and insurmountable. The irony was sickening; he’d finally found the will to crack free of the frozen suspension that had kept him from his family, and now his muscles were fighting to paralyze him. Struggling to contain his reaction, he set his fork aside.

  “You okay?” Janie asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just not hungry.” He dabbed his lips with his napkin. “Excuse me a sec.”

  He walked back to the master bathroom on wobbly legs and splashed water on his face. His fingers slipped over the faucet without purchase, so he knocked the water off with an elbow and stared at himself in the mirror. “Hold it together,” he said.

  He took a leak and used the heel of his hand to depress the flusher. He had trouble tucking his boxers back into his jeans, his hand gone numb, and he shoved at the fabric, frustration driving him to the verge of tears. He finally succeeded, but then the buttons wouldn’t heed, and it struck him that he’d soon have to buy pants with elastic waistbands.

  The time for his meeting with Abara was fast encroaching, and he needed his limbs to function if he hoped to get through it. His left arm was in worse shape, so he tried to use his right thumb to knead the muscle, pressing as hard as he could to feel something—anything—familiar. But no matter how hard he dug, the ache stayed foreign, a new shade of pain. In short order his right hand, too, began to lose its strength, and he stared it down, willing it to grip tighter, to obey the signals he was straining to send.

  A faint knock at the door. He said, “Just a minute.”

  Janie pushed into the bathroom. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I’m … I’m … Nothing.” He was having trouble getting any strength into his voice.

  Her stare moved across him. Belt unbuckled. Left arm curled to his stomach, his right hand still groping at it weakly. He was mortified to think what he looked like.

  Stepping forward, Janie reached down and gently tugged the top button of his jeans through the hole, then fastened his belt. He stayed motionless, as if that might help him disappear. His arm shuddered against his stomach. His right hand clasping, clasping, yet barely denting the skin.

  She took his arm firmly in her warm grasp. He pulled away from her, his hand quaking, but she held on tight.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  Her gaze was steady, those blue eyes shining right through him, forcing his gaze to meet hers. He and his arm were going nowhere.

  “Stop fighting,” she said.

  His words from the riptide in which they’d met.

  With effort he relaxed, releasing his arm to her, and she compressed his wrist gently. Stilling it. He drew in a quick, surprised breath. The motion of her hands resumed, working the muscles of his forearm, squeezing the feeling back into them.

  A melancholy smile touched her mouth, faint enough to miss.

  “I got you,” she said.

  Chapter 42

  By the time he left, Nate felt better, the muscular fit having subsided under Janie’s touch. His grasp of the steering wheel remained firm if stiff all the way up and through the dark bends and grassy slopes of Griffith Park. The municipal parcel of land, hemmed in by three freeways at the eastern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, was L.A.’s answer to Central Park, only larger and more untamed. Nate passed turnoffs for the zoo and the merry-go-round, then the observatory where causeless James Dean had faced down a pack of baddies with a switchblade and his trademark smolder.

  During the day the park was a democratic gathering place for the city, an explosion of movement and color. But at night shadowy foliage predominated. Every idling car and solitary wanderer took on an ominous cast before the headlights, a reminder that the city with its temptations and vices was as close as the obscured freeway pushing white noise through the California oaks.

  A nine-acre sprawl at
the northern bulge of the park, Travel Town was part gymnasium, part museum, a place for kids to climb on retired cabooses, throw levers, or woo-woo around the wooded perimeter aboard a miniature Pullman.

  Nate left the Jeep at the edge of the lot. Given his grip, he had difficulty scaling the wrought-iron fence and had to walk the perimeter until he found a shed roof he could use as a launch pad. He tumbled over and rose from the dirt, brushing himself off. The grand trains, perceptible only as impressions on the darkness, recalled nothing so much as an elephant graveyard. Moving among the freight cars and trolleys, he felt the place tug at his heart, all these battered servants saved from the scrap heap, put out to pasture here where they could soak in the laughter of children. It was a hopeful, sentimental interpretation, and Nate realized upon second reflection that it had less to do with repurposed machinery than with his own impending demise. Unsettled, he kept on, searching out Abara’s meeting place.

  The giant locomotive loomed ahead, number 3025, a hundred-plus-ton oil burner that had pulled a few presidential specials in its day, conveying Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson up the rocky Coast Route to San Francisco. Years ago Nate had taken Cielle aboard this very engine for a third-grade classmate’s birthday party. Pausing, he recalled the cone hats and plastic tablecloths, how her tiny fist had yanked the cord and made the big brass bell clang.

  He thought about the two curved and worn photographs from his apartment, now tucked safely in the back pocket of his jeans. Janie and him laughing through their first dance at their wedding. And Cielle’s childhood soccer picture, her eyeteeth missing, her face still slender. A year or so after that photo was snapped, he’d brought her here to that birthday party. And a few months after that, he’d shipped out to the desert. The distance between now and then seemed endless and minute at the same time, a long sleep or the blink of an eye.

  He climbed aboard the venerable train, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. Abara’s form resolved up front, reclining in the engineer’s chair. Nate ambled up and sat beside him. The air was rich with oil and tasted of metal.

  Abara glanced over, his stare snagging on Nate’s forehead. “Nice butterfly stitches.”

  “Like I said, we got out just in time.” Nate took a breath. “Where are we with everything?”

  “I dug around, but…” Abara’s tone torpedoed Nate’s hopes instantly. “Witness Security is an even bigger deal than I thought. It requires a sign-off by the attorney general. As in the attorney general.”

  “So we’re not gonna get it.”

  “You’re not gonna get it.” Abara rubbed his eyes. A thin gold chain fell from his collar, attached to a holy medal that glinted in the darkness. “I know it’s faint consolation, but the witnesses to that car crash? They’re out of danger for now. Thanks to you.”

  Nate managed a nod. “I’m glad.”

  “We got them into protection until they’re needed to testify next month against his daughter. Luis Millan even sent along an apology to you. Let’s just pray Shevchenko doesn’t find out their names. It’s much safer without him knowing who he’s looking for.”

  “He knows us.” Nate made a faint noise of amusement. He wiped his mouth. “I don’t suppose you could get my family the same protection. Even for a month.” He already knew the answer, but he had to throw some words out to keep despair at bay.

  “In short order you’re gonna be charged with committing a terrorist act,” Abara said. “You’re not exactly beloved in the law-enforcement community right now.”

  “No,” Nate said. “I suppose not.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how much shit I’m catching for letting you go before arraignment. If the DA had it her way, you’d be in a cell waiting for—”

  “Abara,” Nate said. “I know this isn’t your fault.”

  The agent paused, catching up to himself, his face boyish in the darkness. “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “There have been some unauthorized searches of your name in the databases. And your wife’s name. And your daughter’s. From different departments in different states. I backtracked a few, and the logins don’t match up. Which means—”

  “People are logging in under their colleagues’ names. To cover their tracks.”

  “Right. Information like where you’ve checked in to hotels or used a credit card, it’s not hugely classified. Unfortunately, people do favors like that all the time, whether running a background on a prospective nanny for a friend or trying to track down a cousin’s deadbeat husband.” He blew out an annoyed breath. “It’s not hard to run a basic search.”

  Nate knew. Hadn’t he done it himself on the databases at work?

  His mouth had gone dry. “That’s how they knew about the plane ticket.”

  Abara nodded. “I looked into the requests and got a bunch of fuzz and static.” A labored breath. “So progress with the assumption that Shevchenko has a few purchased friends keeping an eye on various monitors.”

  “Where’s that leave us?”

  “Don’t trust anyone.”

  “I was looking for something a bit more specific.”

  “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to hang on till we can remove Shevchenko from the equation. Your family’s not gonna be safe unless we can get this case tied up.”

  “How’s it looking? The case?”

  Abara’s thumb worked the medallion’s edge.

  “Abara?”

  “Not great. We pulled Danny Urban’s financials, looking for payments from Shevchenko, but your boy, he knows how to cover his tracks. All we found were several wires originating in Moldova and you can imagine what the trail looks like from there. If we can’t establish a connection between Urban and Shevchenko—”

  “Then you can’t get Shevchenko for the murder or solicitation.”

  “Right. It all stops with a dead hit man. For Pavlo we got motive. That’s it.”

  “And given his lawyers, motive alone won’t get you far.”

  Abara lifted his hand, palm up, then let it clap down on his knee. “I don’t know how to help you, Nate.”

  As he gazed across the locomotive controls, Nate caught the faintest glimmer of an idea.

  He remembered Abara’s snicker when asked what the DA would need to make a conviction airtight. Flipping his daughter, maybe, in exchange for immunity on the drunk-driving murder.

  And he’d told Nate earlier across that interrogation-room table, After the hit-and-run, she ran to Nebesa, a Ukrainian club—she’s there every fucking Tuesday.

  He pulled his phone out and stared at the date stamped across the blue LED screen: October 30, Tuesday.

  “Maybe,” Nate said, “I can figure out a way to help you.”

  Abara’s face swung around, and Nate could feel the weight of his stare. “I can’t be party to involving you in an investigation.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Good.” They sat in the locomotive, staring through the windshield, going nowhere. After a time Abara bobbed his head thoughtfully. “But you know my cell-phone number already. If you wanted to send me a text, there’s not much I could do to dissuade you.”

  “No, I suppose there’s not.”

  Abara rose, slapping Nate on the shoulder as he headed out. “I would say, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ but that’s all you seem to do.”

  Chapter 43

  Gauche and trendy, Nebesa lived up to every stereotype of an Eastern European club. Movie-premiere searchlights swept the sky, Range Rovers and limos gleamed in parking spots, and the towering sign above the valets glowed violet. Many of the girls trickling in were indistinguishable from hookers, and the neckless doorman looked like an icebox in a knockoff suit.

  With a neat stack of folded twenties in hand, Nate stepped past the red velvet rope and approached the overhang of the entrance, doing his best to firm his weak left ankle and keep his foot from dragging. The doorman gauged his approach, scowling, hands crossed at the crotch, one gripping t
he other at the wrist, a posture no doubt studied at bouncer school. He stared down at the bills, unimpressed, and then his eyes flicked up at Nate. His bearing and mien matched those of the other Ukrainian heavies, and sure enough the accent did, too: “Cannot come in.”

  “Why?” Nate asked.

  “You are not pretty enough.”

  “Explains why you’re out here.”

  The man had no eyebrows, but the glossy bulges of flesh above his eyes rose. He shifted slightly, his loafers inching out to shoulder width. Balancing his weight.

  Another bouncer of equivalent size steamrolled out through the dark-tinted door. “Iss there problem?”

  “No. Our friend is just leaving.”

  The man nodded and withdrew back inside.

  “I’m here on behalf of Pavlo Shevchenko,” Nate said. “I have a message for his daughter. He will be displeased if you interfere with his directive.”

  The doorman sneered. “You do not look like friend of Mr. Shevchenko. You do not sound like friend of Mr. Shevchenko.”

  Nate remained in place, keeping his stare even and, he hoped, menacing. Thumping bass vibrated through the walls of the club, and two women across the parking lot greeted each other with squeals of delight. The cut on Nate’s forehead tingled beneath the butterfly stitches.

  The doorman breathed down on him for a moment or two. Then, affecting a bored expression, he calmly removed a slender but wicked-looking knife from inside his lapel. He touched the tip to just beneath Nate’s eye.

  Nate didn’t flinch, didn’t take a step back.

  The man let the point skim down across Nate’s lips, his throat, and come to a rest on the ball of his shoulder. He applied a bit of pressure.

  Nate stepped forward into the blade.

  It broke the surface tension of his skin cleanly, a spot of crimson spreading on his white shirt. The doorman pulled the knife back quickly, alarmed, but Nate gave him no space, leaning in until the hard edge rested across his own throat. He stared up at the bouncer’s wide face.