Into the Fire

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Once I take care of Petro and his goons and Max is in the clear, I’ll send him into a police station with that thumb drive. If they know the names of the bottom feeders, it’ll help them put a ribbon around the case later, tie up the loose ends. Plus, I want to make sure I know the extent of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This mission already telescoped on me once. Last time I thought it ended with Terzian. Then I found out about Petro. I could do without another eleventh-hour surprise.”

  Joey reached down, unplugged a zip drive from a port, and tossed it to Evan. “Here’s a copy. I’ll keep chipping away at the original.”

  Evan squatted to scratch the dog’s ears. “Okay. Take care of Dog.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Heading out, he glanced at the Victorinox fob watch clipped to his belt loop. In less than an hour, he was due to meet with the jackass who had mugged Ida Rosenbaum—Jerry Z of the frequent typos and the rationalized orthography. As if Evan didn’t have his hands full already with money launderers and organized-crime outfits.

  Evan said, “McDonald’s.”

  Both Joey and Dog the dog cocked their heads at him in concert.

  Evan said, “You know that thing about how owners start looking like their dogs?”

  He ducked the Big Gulp flying at his head and closed the door behind him.

  29

  A Man Moves Through the Night

  Due to its West Hollywood location, the McDonald’s at the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset aspired to be high-end. That meant clean booths, ample napkins, and additional seating upstairs.

  As Evan neared the entrance, two moms with gym-attenuated limbs passed by, pushing strollers and sipping kombucha. They cast a wary eye at the fast-food joint, as if it were a den of iniquity. No line-caught salmon or free-range chicken in there.

  Evan entered, hit with a stream of ketchup-scented air-conditioning, and looked around. A few high-schoolers comparing iPhone pics. A homeless guy bundled into a booth, hands encircling a cup of water. A musclehead in a gym tank top plowing through a Big Mac with lawn-mower efficiency.

  None seemed likely suspects.

  As Evan mounted the stairs, his RoamZone rang.

  He paused, checked caller ID, then answered. “Now’s not the best—”

  “It’s sixty-four yards off the ground,” Trevon said. “The first measurement you asked for. And the second distance is six hundred seven yards. They say ‘as the crow flies’ but that doesn’t make any sense ’cuz crows fly all sorts of ways—”

  “Can I maybe call you in a—”

  “—like if they’re hungry or see a worm or maybe they’re coming to land on a telephone wire. So you don’t really know how they fly, do you, which makes it an imprecise standard of measurement.”

  “Trevon, thank you. But I have to call you back.”

  Evan hung up the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and continued up the stairs.

  The tables were sparsely populated—a few couples, a group of kids with Fairfax High sweatshirts, a pair of elderly women.

  And a heavyset white guy clad in an Adidas sweat suit with thick gold chains, pierced ears, and orange-tinted Oakley Razors worn backward so the lenses rode the fat rolls on the nape of his neck.

  Evan circled the table, bringing Jerry Z into view. Steps notched into the sides of his light blond hair. A wispy beard clutching his chin. Pebble eyes set in a wide, boyish face. At the moment those eyes were fixed on the elderly women, no doubt considering the pearl necklaces resting against the folds of their blouses.

  Evan sat before him.

  “You Jean Pate?” Jerry Z pronounced the first name hard, like “Gene.”

  “Yes. Do you have the necklace?”

  “You a cop?”

  “No, I’m not a—”

  “You hafta say, you know. Or it’s like entrapment or some shit.”

  “No. I’m not a cop. May I see the necklace?”

  Jerry Z hunched forward, his massy chest pressing into his picked-over tray and bringing forth a waft of body odor that smelled vaguely like barbecue potato chips. He shot a glance over his shoulder, taking in a couple holding hands at the booth over by the stairs. They looked like models. Or fitness trainers. Or television doctors.

  “I always forget how many faggots there are all over WeHo,” Jerry Z said. “Always checking out my shit.”

  Evan noted his gel-sticky hair, the unwashed scent, the 1989-vintage shaved lines in his hair. “I’m sure they find you irresistible.”

  Jerry Z reached into his sweat-suit jacket, retrieved a black velvet bag, and spilled its contents onto the table next to his tray. A jumble of rings, several necklaces, solid-gold bracelets hinged open like horseshoes.

  A diamond earring with dried blood on the post.

  Evan imagined Jerry Z sidling up behind a woman and tearing her earrings straight through the lobes. He pictured Ida Rosenbaum in her bed, one hand raised self-consciously to block the bruising that had turned the right side of her face into a mottled mess. I’m an eighty-seven-year-old widow. That’s about as unspecial as you can be. And that young man today proved it. Compared to Ida, Jerry seemed like a different species. A man of his size hitting a woman of hers. Closed-handed. In the face.

  Evan set his jaw, reached for the First Commandment: Assume nothing.

  “Whoa,” he said, in his best Jean Pate–from–San Bernardino impersonation. “You’re not a fence, are you?”

  “What? No.” Jerry Z’s stubby fingers picked through the jewelry and plucked out Ida’s necklace. “I get all my shit legally. Trust me. I procured this particular item myself.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  Jerry’s smile conveyed more menace than joy. “My granny.”

  Evan reached across the table and lifted the necklace from Jerry’s hands.

  “Your grandmother was into Victorian marcasite, was she?”

  “Yeah, you fucking racist. Or classist. Or whatever the fuck.”

  Evan turned the glinting amethyst pendant around. An inscription on the back, worn from a thousand touches. TO IDA, I’LL ALWAYS BE HERE BY YOUR HEART.–H.

  “And she was named Ida?” Evan said. “Your grandmother?”

  Jerry flattened his hands on the table. His face tensed, a fan of crow’s-feet bunching his left eye. Trying to figure out how to play it. He swung his Oakley shades from the back of his head to the bridge of his nose. Crossed his arms. Leaned back.

  “Fine. Tell me what you wanna hear. My cousin runs a pawnshop?”

  The group of students headed out, two of them arguing vehemently, a girlfriend on tilt. “Well, maybe if you stopped dating your phone…” The others weighed in, offering support, stoking the fire. The attractive couple by the stairs were tucked into their Quarter Pounders, occupied with chewing. In the reflection of the Oakleys, Evan could see the elderly women behind him lost in conversation.

  He pooled Ida’s necklace in the palm of his hand. Pocketed it.

  “The money,” Jerry Z said.

  Evan held up a wait-a-sec finger. Then he plucked the straw out of Jerry’s orange soda.

  “The fuck you think you’re doing, bitch?”

  Evan folded the straw twice, gripped it so the triangle of bent plastic protruded a quarter inch from between his index and middle fingers.

  A makeshift push dagger.

  He couldn’t risk a fight, not after the concussion. He didn’t want to raise his heart rate. He didn’t even want to break a sweat. Any action he took would have to be efficient and immediately debilitating.

  “Okay,” Jerry Z said, leaning in and conveniently bringing his forehead into range. “I been cool about all this. But you’re about to find out who I really am.”

  Evan dealt a single quick strike, the edged straw slamming into Jerry Z’s forehead.

  At first the big man didn’t move. He stared at Evan, shock enlarging those pebble eyes. His forehead was split neatly in a five-inch line ab
ove the brow, a cracked egg that had yet to seep.

  Then the blood came.

  A controlled rush into both eyes.

  Jerry blinked once, twice, sagging forward. Evan palmed the top of his head and slammed his face into his tray. The plastic muffled the noise, but it was enough to put him out.

  Evan rose and set his chair back in place. Heading down the stairs, he removed his phone, changed the settings, added a voice filter, and dialed 911.

  “You’ll find a man bleeding and unconscious on the second floor of the McDonald’s at Sunset and Crescent. He has thousands of dollars of stolen goods in his possession.”

  As he reached the main floor, commotion erupted upstairs. A manager shouldered past Evan, lunging for the stairs.

  Unseen and unnoticed, he stepped out into the cool night breeze.

  Walking away, he dug the necklace from his pocket. The pendant spun gently beneath his fist, the cursive words coming clear at intervals: I’ll always be here by your heart.

  What had Max said? That when you love someone, you never move on. They get into your cells, live inside you even when they’re gone.

  Evan had been trained to remain aggressively alone. To never show vulnerability. To ignore pain. To protect the mission at all costs.

  Intimacy, it seemed, required the precise opposite. It required baring yourself to the best and worst that the world could generate. It required living alone in a bedroom filled with old photos and memories long after the warmth and light of a relationship had faded to ash. It required giving someone a marcasite necklace to wear after you’re dead.

  He thought about Max, broken down by life and the loss of a baby, helpless in the face of his then-wife’s suffering. Everything I tried just made things worse. I would have done anything. You understand? Anything.

  Max had reached a breaking point where he couldn’t take any more pain. And Evan had judged him harshly for that. He’d judged him for trying and failing at something that Evan lacked the courage to even attempt.

  Closing his hand around the antique necklace, he wondered at the myriad elements that constituted bravery and counted those he was lacking.

  * * *

  The door to 6G floated a half inch above the threshold. Sometime before midnight Evan crouched above the welcome mat and slipped a crisp envelope beneath. The bump within caught a bit of friction, but the package slid through.

  He had written nothing on the envelope, and there was no message inside. It was empty save for a piece of jewelry with a lifetime of sentiment attached to it.

  He’d cleaned the necklace upstairs with dishwashing liquid and water, removing any oil and sweat residue. The envelope, fresh from the box, contained no fibers or trace DNA. His fingertips were coated with a thin layer of superglue, and he wore latex gloves on top of that. He’d glitched the hallway security camera to ensure that his late-night visit would not be memorialized.

  He would have indulged these habits even if he didn’t share a building with a perspicacious district attorney who had her eye on him in mostly unflattering fashion. But knowing that Mia was here six floors up made him pay even more meticulous attention to every last ritual.

  He had to be perfect.

  Especially in light of the impossible task he was going to undertake tomorrow.

  Perfect meant invisible, autonomous, without emotion.

  He rose and stood a moment in the empty hall.

  He was never here. He wasn’t even here now. He had no fingerprints, no footprints, no image captured by the eye of the lens overhead.

  It was a koan worthy of Jack: If a man moves through the night and no one sees him, does he really exist?

  Sometimes even he wondered.

  30

  Trapped Sweat and Spilled Blood

  If you looked at the side of the building, you’d see nothing at all. If you squinted hard, perhaps you’d discern the faintest bulge at the fifth floor, the sandstone façade curving outward.

  What you wouldn’t detect was the semi-stable folding platform, two feet wide and five feet long, cantilevered out from the ledge of the open bathroom window. You wouldn’t see the mechanical bracketry rigged to the mouth of the sill and braced against the wall outside because it was all—the platform, the bracketry—painted the precise color of the sandstone.

  Nor would you see the man atop the shooting platform, literally suspended in midair in a supported prone position sixty-four yards above the sidewalk.

  He wore a Crye sand-tan pullover combat shirt, matching cargo pants, and a matching pair of Kevlar-and-leather aviator gloves. Cammy paint on his face and wrists, also the shade of a desert dune, further blended him into the backdrop.

  For the short time before engagement, Evan Smoak was nothing more than a slight disruption of the visual field, a tiger standing in tall savanna grass.

  Spray paint had worked fine on the Remington 700. There was no need for any intricate design, just enough shading to break up the outline of the rifle. To further ensure his invisibility, he used a killFLASH honeycomb, a metallic anti-reflection device clamped over the scope to dampen any glint or glare.

  He’d required a vantage into the courtyard of the Three Monkeys Café that didn’t exist, a shooting position floating in space. A seemingly unsolvable problem that he had, with a little help from his friends, solved.

  His toes hooked over the sill behind him, protruding into the room above the row of urinals. The bathroom door was locked, a cleaning cart positioned in the hall outside, accessorized with a mop tilting from a yellow bucket and a RESTROOM BEING SERVICED A-frame sign. The cart featured a canvas basket nicely sized for carrying industrial laundry loads or a portable sniper hide.

  A 607-yard shot from a sixty-four-foot elevation wasn’t a hard shot. It wasn’t an easy one either. Especially not with a head sporadically swimmy from a concussion.

  The built-up Remington had been modified to accommodate a detachable mag that took ten rounds, which were all Evan would require. The rifle was set up on a bipod, the Manners stock resting against his left shoulder. He was so still that he might have been statuary carved into the building itself, a gargoyle with a sniper habit.

  Getting the measurements from Trevon in advance was enormously helpful. Evan had already checked the range card taped to the stock, so he knew how much holdover he needed for the distance and how much cosign compensation the downhill angle required. The combination baseline for scope and rifle was zeroed at four hundred yards, and he’d already ascertained his hold for the round he was using, a 168-grain Federal Gold Medal Match. Knowing ahead of time where to hold on the optic meant that there was no need to mess with the scope.

  There Alexan Petro was, tucked into his café table in the restaurant courtyard, sipping espresso and talking on his Turing Phone. He sat alone, which seemed only to enhance his status: Important Man Conducting Virtual Business. Five of his bodyguards were spread around the courtyard and restaurant. Nineteen minutes ago Evan had watched them enter, counting them off like cattle headed to the abattoir. Only two of the men inside were visible at the moment.

  That would change quickly.

  The sixth member of Petro’s core team waited outside by the armored Town Cars, leaning against a fender and thumbing at his phone.

  But Evan wasn’t focused on the bodyguards now. He was focused on Petro.

  A handsome man by any standards. That rich mane of silver hair. A certain grace of movement. The overcompensatory noblesse oblige of the newly affluent.

  Evan’s world narrowed to a circle marked by stadia reticle increments. He felt his vision get loose, verging on blurry, but he squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, everything he saw obeyed the normal rules of physics. He was a left-eye-dominant shooter, a stroke of luck since the dilated right pupil was harder to coerce into cooperating at the moment.

  His earpiece activated on voice command, sparing him the slightest movement. “Dial.”

  The RoamZone in his cargo pocket complied
.

  Through the scope he saw Petro pull the Turing Phone away from his cheek to check caller ID. His features set in a show of amusement. He clicked over, and a moment later his voice spoke in Evan’s ear. “Hello, boy.”

  “Petro.”

  The man’s face, magnified in the scope, tightened. “So you found a name. Am I supposed to be scared?”

  “Not by that.” Evan kept gentle, steady pressure against the comb of the stock and gauged the come-up, adding the superelevation below the horizontal line.

  Petro smirked. “Then by what?”

  “By the fact that you had Grant Merriweather killed. And a doctor and two nurses. And Lorraine Lennox. And that you tried to take out Max Merriweather.”

  “You think those names mean something to me?”

  “No,” Evan said. “I think they mean nothing to you. Or to your men.”

  A low ticking laugh came across the line and then the purr of that ten-grit voice. “The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think. Expand your perspective, boy. At least for the few remaining days you have on this earth. My men have done things for me you can’t even imagine. I’ve watched them take people apart piece by piece while keeping the heart beating until the very end. Do you have any idea how much skill that requires?”

  “Anything you’d like to say?”

  “Before?”

  “I mean, any last words?”

  Petro’s eyes darted around. Then he relaxed back in his seat, smoothed the lapel of his suit, and grinned. “If you expect to scare me, you don’t know me at all.”

  “How about your men? You want to ask them if they’re scared?” Evan made a microscopic adjustment, dropping the crosshairs to the spot where Petro’s arm met his trunk. The Timney trigger split the pad of Evan’s index finger. “At least the five within earshot right now?”

  It took a quarter second for the words to clear the Turing Phone’s encryption. Another quarter second for Petro to register their meaning. His neck corded, a sheet of muscle as his flesh tightened with panic.