The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “The fingerprint cracked things open, sped up the investigation. The Bureau is piecing together a RICO case on top of murder, kidnapping—the usual suspects. Cassaroy paid top dollar to rent gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel, as you know. A few young men and women have gone missing from the neighboring counties, and there are some bizarre assault claims floating around as well. The agents found similar groupings of disappearances and complaints near the last several mansions Cassaroy rented—Albuquerque, Cabo San Lucas, Brussels.” Jack tugged off his jacket, heaped it atop the rack. “They’ve got meticulously maintained financial and medical files for the victims, helicopter flight logs, and a dead disreputable hematologist—Dr. Franklin? But no René Peter Cassaroy. He’s vanished.”

  Evan sat down with his oatmeal over the stack of printouts. “I’ll find him.”

  “If you do, Van Sciver will be waiting. Like you said, he’s already shown he can track René. He cracked his encryption once, he’ll do it again.” Jack shook off his boots. “He’ll spring a trap on you.”

  “I’ll spring a trap on his trap.”

  Jack settled into the chair opposite. He always sat still so as to limit any information given up by nonverbal tells. As a kid Evan had learned the same from him and from an interrogation specialist who’d rapped his knuckles with a metal file every time he made a hand gesture. He and Jack faced each other now, paralyzed grand masters contemplating their next move.

  “How did you get out of that parking structure?” Evan asked.

  “I stumbled from the rear stairwell right after you. I had a man in the area. He picked me up half dead, got me to an old friend at Walter Reed. I woke up stitched back together.”

  Evan struggled to get his head around it. Jack must have had a Smoke Contingency also, a plan to disappear. Stashed papers and hidden accounts and a cabin in the Alleghenies. Eight years. Eight years.

  “So those men I killed that night,” Evan said. “The men who shot you—they were Van Sciver’s men?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many are there?”

  Jack looked at him blankly.

  “Orphans,” Evan said.

  “From what I can glean, only a half dozen or so left under Van Sciver’s control,” Jack said. “It’s hard to get a precise count because, you know. Orphans.”

  “Van Sciver’s hunting down those of us who got out. Those of us who were deemed higher risk.”

  “He’s hunting some more than others,” Jack said pointedly.

  “They’re neutralizing us.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “I been working sub rosa, helping the ones who need it most.”

  “You always knew. Even way back when, before you met me in that parking structure. You sent me the fake assignment to kill Van Sciver because you knew I’d refuse and go to ground. You knew I’d never kill one of my own. It was a play.”

  Jack broke the mannequin standoff, rubbing his eyes. “It was more complicated than that. Van Sciver was tasked with killing you. If you’d found out, you would’ve destroyed everyone in your path.”

  “Yes.”

  “The directive came from the highest level. You would have tried to kill your way right up the chain.”

  “Yes.”

  “You would have died. Even you, Evan.”

  “I would have died for the truth instead of running from a lie. That’s what you did to me. Eight years I’ve been running from that goddamned parking lot—”

  “Eight years you’ve been alive.”

  “That’s all that matters to you?”

  “Yes!” Jack brought his fist down on the table, making the bowl jump. “That’s all that matters to me.”

  “I thought I killed you. I forced you to break cover to meet me.”

  “I told you it wasn’t your fault. I told you it was my choice to meet you. I told you—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what happened.”

  “I knew you’d never run. Not as long as you thought I was alive. At some point you’d stick your head up, make contact with me, and they would get you.”

  “Like you did now?”

  “I found out you were in trouble. And I moved heaven and earth to get to you. You’re still a son to me. Look at me. You’re still my son.”

  “Do you have any idea what I’ve lived with?”

  “How about what I bear?” Jack said. “Taking you from that foster home. Stripping you of … human warmth. Putting you in harm’s way to do harm. I dragged you into all this. I wanted you to get out. I wanted you to have a chance.”

  “At what?”

  “At a life!” Jack flared a hand angrily around the cabin. “That isn’t this. A wife. Maybe even kids. I tried to free you. I didn’t think you’d scurry right back to it, Assassin for the People.” He tapped his palm on the table, a judge’s gavel. “That is what you do now, isn’t it? Freelance jobs? For others, people who can’t—”

  “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

  “From afar,” Jack said. “I couldn’t let you go. I could never let you go. I know you can’t see it this way right now, but it was a sacrifice, what I did.”

  “A sacrifice.”

  Jack firmed at Evan’s tone. “You’ve never been a father.”

  Evan felt the pulse fluttering his neck. “A father? You weren’t my father. I wasn’t a son to you. I was a weapon. You shaped me into what you needed and used me until I was used up.”

  Jack stiffened. The skin around his eyes shifted, and for an awful moment Evan thought he might cry.

  Jack cleared his throat. “You know that’s not true. However angry you are, you know that’s not true.”

  “I have been paying penance,” Evan said. “For the blood on my hands. Including yours.”

  Jack sagged back in his chair. “I couldn’t risk losing you, Evan. Not after I lost Clara.”

  “You swore. You swore you’d never lie to me. It was the one thing I could count on. The one solid thing I could trust in the world. You don’t know what my first twelve years were like. In that home—in all the homes. You … you were the one thing I could ever count on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck you.” Evan stood and stuffed the stack of printouts inside his jacket. He grabbed the cash and the fake license and walked out.

  For a long time, Jack sat in his chair, staring at the empty seat across from him.

  His breathing grew harder.

  He raised a hand and pressed it over his mouth. Tears forded his knuckles, spotting the rough wood of the table.

  He did not make a sound.

  62

  That Gnawing Feeling

  The boy’s phone number, a 301 area code, was branded on Evan’s brain. It had guttered across the cracked screen of the RoamZone only a few times, but he’d committed it to memory. He turned the ten digits over now in his head. As familiar as a remnant from a dream.

  Bouncing along the bitter interstate in the passenger seat of the semi he’d hitched a ride with, he snatched a pen from the cup holder and jotted down the number on the back of his hand. He stared at the scrawled digits. That same feeling gnawed at him again, that he’d seen the number before.

  “You all right, bud?” the trucker asked, exhaling the smell of Red Man tobacco.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Where do you want I should drop you?”

  A sign flashed overhead as they crossed Baltimore city limits.

  “Anywhere’s fine.”

  “You from around here?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Well,” the trucker said, “welcome home.”

  Evan hopped out at the next gas station. He found a pay phone at the side, right between the bathrooms.

  He called the only person left on the planet he could trust to deliver what he needed.

  It rang three times before the gruff voice answered. “Crazy Daisy’s Flowers. Something for every occasion.”

  Evan said, “I need a backpack cutting torch,
an H&K MP5SD, a compressed-air grappling hook strong enough to take the weight of a jungle penetrator, and a skiff with two hundred-and-fifty-horsepower engines to meet me in Daytona Beach by tomorrow at noon. I’ll tell you a location. I don’t want to see any faces. Just the stuff waiting at a pier.”

  There was a long pause.

  “This,” Tommy Stojack said, “can be arranged.”

  “Good.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” Evan smirked. “Advil.”

  “You going full Somali pirate on me?”

  “I assure you,” Evan said, “it’s for a good cause.”

  “Good cause or not, you’re gonna have sticker shock. I have to work it cross-country. Plus, you know, discretion. I got a hook at Camp Blanding, he’s our people. Something like this, I can’t just use some clown-for-hire. After all, you never know who’s who in the zoo.”

  “Just tell me the price. And I’ll pay it.”

  Evan hung up.

  Now, on to the boy.

  He hauled up the tattered Yellow Pages dangling from a security cord and searched out the nearest cybercafé. There was one a few miles away—$4/hr! Terminals clean-wiped after every logout! We accept Bitcoin! Cabs were scarce, so he hoofed it, walking fast enough to stave off the cold. The chill crept into his shoulder, and he had to remind himself not to hunch to favor it. The tendon, muscles, and skin had to stretch in order to heal properly.

  At last he stepped into the java-scented shop, peeled a hundred off the roll Jack had set aside for him, and requested a workstation and a universal phone charger. He plugged the RoamZone into a desktop outlet, fired up the computer, and ran a quick search.

  Reverse-phone-number directories proliferated. He found a free one and keyed in the kid’s number. Sandwiched between various pop-up ads was the result:

  No record of this number exists.

  Evan stared at the screen, his discomfort growing.

  One workstation over, two teenage girls laughed at a YouTube video, all gleaming white teeth and vanilla-scented hair spray.

  Evan called up a second directory, keyed in the number again, and waited as the loading bar filled.

  Number last used in 1996.

  He stared at the screen, his stomach roiling. How the hell had the boy called him from a line that had been retired twenty years ago?

  The previously associated address was available provided he endure a fifteen-second car commercial. His fingers drummed the desktop as he waited through a jingle promising 0-percent APR for seventy-two months.

  That gnawing feeling made some more headway, chewing through his assumptions.

  He glanced nervously over at the RoamZone plugged into the outlet by the mouse pad. No lights, no bars, no indication that it was charging. Slowly, he reached across, picked up the shattered case. He unplugged the charger, plugged it in again.

  Nothing happened.

  The phone wasn’t just out of juice. It was completely smashed, an untenable mess of broken glass, fragmented circuit board, and obliterated SIM card.

  It had never worked.

  Not since René had crushed it underfoot that first morning Evan had woken up in the chalet.

  In the harsh light of the Baltimore day, it seemed painfully obvious. A phone that withstood a Godzilla stomping, that never ran out of juice, that magically got reception in a far-flung valley under a snow-thickened sky. Evan thought about how the gas had poured through the heating vent, tipping him into a drugged stupor. The blood-loss hallucinations he’d experienced at the end as he staggered for the summit.

  The unconscious pulling strings, opening trapdoors, spinning its webs.

  Of course.

  A sheen of sweat covered Evan’s body.

  On the computer the car commercial ended, the link to the address springing up. Dazed, he dropped the ruined RoamZone into the blue recycle bucket under the desk and swung his attention back to the monitor. He felt drunk with disbelief. His hand reached for the mouse, clicked the link.

  An instant before the fresh screen came up, the truth dawned on him, setting his skin tingling. He knew what it would show even before it loaded.

  An East Baltimore address.

  He knew it well.

  63

  The People No One Wants

  The battered row house leaned against its neighbors, the whole lot of them tall and narrow and crooked, drunkards staggering arm in arm from a bar. The flaking paint was a different shade of green now. Same front window that the pack of kids used to peer through when the Mystery Man made his mysterious appearances. Same basketball courts across with the same chain-link fence surrounding the same cracked asphalt. Same handball walls layered with new graffiti.

  The Lafayette Courts projects that used to loom in the background were long gone, replaced with a health clinic. Satellite dishes perched pigeonlike on balconies and rooftops. A licensed marijuana dispensary now squatted on the plot that once housed the apartment building that had gone up in smoke when Jalilah’s nana dozed off smoking a blunt.

  Evan turned back to the dilapidated row house. Bumblebee hazard tape crisscrossed the front door, orange cones lining the sidewalk in front. Bulldozers and backhoes lingered in the wings, construction workers chewing sandwiches, shooting the shit. Flyers fluttered from telephone poles, announcing that the building was slated for demolition.

  The street had been blocked off, a crowd gathered at the sawhorses as crowds did in East Baltimore. The same faces on different bodies. Crack-ravaged cheeks. Coyote eyes. Elaborate press-on nails. A few industrious souls rolled coolers across the chipped concrete, selling bottled water and Doritos to the spectators for a buck a pop. Dinner and a show.

  Evan walked over to a worker crouched near a spool of cable.

  “Mind if I take a closer look?”

  “Not safe, pal. The boom’s kicking off in a half hour. Don’t wanna get your hair blown back, ya feel me?”

  “I feel you.”

  The worker swept an arm at the piano-key row of façades. “I wish we could take down the whole lot of them. You wouldn’t believe what a shithole the place was.”

  “What was it?”

  “Housing for the elderly—and I use the term loosely. ‘Housing,’ that is. My cousin had his mother-in-law here, said it was worse than the dog pound. Asbestos in the ceiling, mold in the drywall, rats beneath the floorboards. Used to be some kind of facility for retards and before that a foster home for boys.”

  “I’d heard something about that.”

  “All the people no one wants. They cram ’em in, let ’em rot. It’s a crime, really. Not that anyone gives a shit to do anything about it.”

  Evan stared at that front window, saw his own twelve-year-old face pressed against the pane with all the others. Danny and Jamal and Andre. Tyrell, who caught shit because his sister was a whore. Ramón, so skinny his hips could barely hold up his stolen Cavariccis.

  “Look, man, I’m sorry, but you gotta clear out before my supervisor comes over.”

  Evan nodded and withdrew.

  He circled the block, cut through the glass-strewn alley next to Mr. Wong’s ancient dry cleaner, where they used to loot the dish of Tootsie Pops every chance they got. The back of the row house appeared at the alley’s end.

  In his memory the rear slat fence towered overhead, a castle wall. Now it came up to his chest. Resting his hands on the top, he looked down onto the stamp of crumbling concrete that passed for a backyard. When he hopped over, his shoulder was none too happy about it.

  Hazard tape blocked the back windows and door. The kitchen pane had been shattered, shards poking up from the frame like teeth. He peered through the mouth. Explosive charges had been placed on the walls and ceiling to make the building implode. It would collapse in on itself like so many of the lives lived here.

  Carefully, Evan pulled himself through and climbed down off the sink. Piles of beer cans. A heap of stained blankets. Cigarette butts worming up from a pickle-jar lid. The pl
ace had been abandoned for a time, no doubt in preparation for the demolition. But the bones were the same.

  There was the ghost of the kitchen table where plates slopped with generic, no-brand mac and cheese had conveyor-belted across the days and nights, a neon orange blur.

  I’m trapped here. There’s never enough food.

  Here the counter edge Danny shoved Andre into, earning him seven stitches across the forehead.

  I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it.

  And across in the living room, the spot where Papa Z reclined in his armchair, remote in hand, Coors nestled in his crotch.

  No one cares. If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?

  Evan walked over and stepped on the floorboards two feet inside the threshold. Sure enough, they gave off a creak.

  He and the boys had done a lot of sneaking in and out of the Pride House Group Home.

  Staring at the ragged carpet of the living room, Evan saw a specter of the scene that had played out between these walls so many years ago: the Mystery Man talking to Papa Z about the boys, weighing pros and cons, a chef at a butcher counter. And Evan and the boys spying from down the hall, elbowing and whispering and wondering what the hell it all meant.

  In the hall the det cord wrapping an exposed beam in the mold-eaten drywall was a few inches off the stress point. Probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Next to the gaping hole, the wallpaper seam bubbled out. Evan grabbed a lifted tab and peeled it away, revealing a dagger of the old wallpaper, an awful plaid pattern that Tyrell had christened White Man Pants. Evan stared a moment, the memory vibrating his cells.

  Then on down the hall to the bedroom he’d lived in for two and a half years, a submarine-berthing area crammed with bodies. Closing his eyes, he pictured the bunk beds lined side to side like livestock pens.

  You should see how they keep us here. Like cattle, all lined up.

  He stepped inside the room. It smelled the same—rot, dust, desperation. He crossed to where his mattress used to lie on the floor. The other foster kids would trample him half inadvertently when they hopped out of their bunks. He looked at the ceiling, found the crack that forked into a lightning bolt. The one he’d gaze up at in the dark like it was some kind of wishing star and wonder who he was.