Evan applied 3.5 pounds of trigger pressure, and a crimson rose bloomed on Petro’s shoulder. He toppled back in his chair, landing splayed in clear view on the stone of the courtyard.
The platform gave the faintest wobble from the recoil but held firm.
Through the earpiece Evan heard the clatter of the Turing as it struck ground. He cycled the bolt, the expended case spinning in a lazy arc past his temple, and buried the next round in the meat above Petro’s left thigh. Petro gave a pained animal howl, bellowing for help.
The next two bullets knocked out the visible bodyguards.
Evan swept the Remington across the restaurant rooftop until he saw the bodyguard standing rigidly before the Town Car, one finger pressed to his earpiece. He found the man’s sweaty forehead, badly bruised from its encounter with the bathroom sink. The instant before he squeezed off another round, his vision streaked and then doubled, the glare of the windshield turning into a comet of light.
The shot sailed past the bodyguard’s ear, shattering the polished windshield.
The bodyguard turned to stare at the Town Car in disbelief. By the time he tensed to run, Evan had partially regained his focus. He squinted to bring the two images of the bodyguard into one and found the forehead once again. The next round splattered the hood.
Gritting his teeth, Evan rotated to the courtyard again. An ache started up at the back of his head where he’d cracked it on the asphalt.
Pandemonium had erupted in the restaurant, the patrons pouring out. He’d counted on the crowd response, bystanders going one way, bodyguards the other.
Each party ran the pattern as predicted, but to Evan’s view they looked like smudges of color. Sweat trickled down his forehead; he armed it away before it could reach his eyes.
Slowing his breaths and trying to fight off his nausea, Evan locked the sights on a single point of entry for the courtyard. From here there were no tricky adjustments; if he could manage to hold position, he’d be able to get it done. As he’d anticipated, Petro’s cries drew his remaining men in neat succession, Evan head-shotting them in order. The men piled across the courtyard, heaped on top of one another, the last falling across Petro and pinning him to the ground.
Petro’s face had turned to a blurry oval. Then it floated apart like a cell dividing. A ghost image of Petro hovered above the man himself, a spirit debating whether to depart. Sweat stung Evan’s eyes. He laid the crosshairs on the nose of what he took to be the real Petro, blew out a breath, squeezed off his final round.
And missed.
A spray of chips flew up from the flagstones, shredding Petro’s ear. He twisted around and dug at the ground with his fingernails, trying to worm his way out from beneath the bodies.
Aggravated, Evan reached back to the rope bag on his right thigh and freed a lengthy two-inch-thick hawser rope. It unfurled to the side of the platform, feeding out until the bottom whip-snapped up and then settled to sway a foot above the sidewalk.
Nice to see that even Trevon could make a twelve-inch miscalculation.
Evan had already set the anchor in the platform, so he simply rolled off the side, leaving the rifle behind as he fell. Cinching the rope between his gloves and the insteps of his boots, he fast-roped down. The sandstone whirred by as he kissed thirty miles per hour, a firehouse-pole slide. The pavement flew up and caught him, a healthy jolt to the ankles and knees, and he flung the gloves from his hands with a single violent shake. They lay on the sidewalk, steaming with friction heat.
Roughly a half second had elapsed since he’d un-assed from the platform.
He took an instant for the pavement to stop spinning from the sudden exertion. The headache expanded, a pressure at the temples.
Finish it, he thought. Then you can rest all you want.
Despite the steel shanks, warmth rose through the soles of his Original S.W.A.T.s. His hands gleamed white from the latex gloves he’d worn beneath the aviators.
As part of his prep, he’d sliced and restitched his sand-tan combat shirt and cargo pants to make them tearaway, and he ripped them off now, a quick snap of his fists that left the fabric pooled on the ground. Beneath he wore a gray V-neck and jeans.
No passersby. No rubberneckers in the cars drifting past. The few people across the street remained distracted by the commotion over at the Three Monkeys Café.
Evan dug a Baggie out of the front pocket of his jeans. A wad of moist baby wipes waited inside. He freed a few and swiped at his face, brisk scrubs that cleared the cammy paint.
As he stepped off the curb, crossing the street to the restaurant, he looked like an ordinary pedestrian. His gait was unsteady, so he took great care to even it out.
He entered the side door to the kitchen. After the gunfire it had been abandoned hastily. Plates of lavash basked on the counters beneath heating lamps. Pans remained on the burners, hissing garlic steam. A pot boiled over, sizzling on orange coils. He felt the glare of the overheads in his spinal cord.
As Evan passed through, he turned the oven knobs off.
He emerged onto the main floor. Chairs knocked over, tables shoved clear, a high heel on its side.
Through the French doors, he could see the heap of bodies he’d left. The remains of Petro’s men.
Evan unholstered his ARES and stepped into the courtyard. The air felt humid, trapped sweat and spilled blood heated by the midday sun. The nausea swelled. His stomach thought about lurching, but he did not allow it.
Petro faced away, still clawing at the flagstones, trying to pull himself out from beneath the last of his fallen bodyguards. Given the destruction of his right arm, he was making little headway. One of his buffed fingernails had snapped off and lay shimmering on the ground, an ivory curl.
He was moaning repetitively. A fine mist of blood speckled the side of that glorious silver hair.
In Terzian the Terror, Max had thought he was facing one problem. It had led to a second problem in Petro.
Soon there would be no problems.
Evan was close enough now to offset the effects of the concussion. He raised the 1911, thumbed off the safety.
At the click Petro froze.
Then he rolled onto his side, regarding Evan over his shoulder. None of that well-cultivated confidence was on display, not anymore. Above Petro’s biceps tattered cashmere fluttered at the edges of the wound. A pair of reading glasses had spilled from his breast pocket and lay shattered on the ground beside him. The bent wire frames lent a small touch of humanity to the gruesome tableau.
At the end Petro was just a man, like so many Evan had walked past on the street or ridden next to on the subway or put in the earth.
The wail of sirens reached him now, still miles out. They both knew that help would not arrive in time.
Petro’s face trembled. “Who is Max Merriweather to you?” His voice held something more than fear. Something like outrage.
Evan said, “Someone who needed my help.”
Petro stared at him, his forehead twisted in disbelief. Spilled espresso snaked between the flagstones, joining a rivulet of crimson. The dead air smelled of dark roast and iron.
“Who are you to him?” Petro asked.
Evan said, “Nobody.”
Petro’s dark beard bristled around a wavering mouth. No words emerged.
Evan said, “But now it’s over for him.”
Petro coughed, and blood speckled his lips. He smiled a wobbly smile that put a twist in Evan’s gut.
The sirens notched up, ever louder, ever closer.
Evan sighted on his forehead.
A final round ended the mission.
31
The Whole Story
Evan found Max in the swampy backyard of the Lincoln Heights house, staring at his reflection in a brown puddle. His shoes were muddy, as were his arms up to the elbows. He held a wrench cloaked with slime.
When Evan stepped through the cracked sliding-glass door, Max started and grabbed his chest. “Jesus. Why didn’t you kn
ock?”
“I did.”
“Oh. I guess I zoned out … I don’t know, contemplating the human condition.”
“In a mud puddle?”
He shrugged. “Where better?”
Evan frowned, conceding the point. His eyes snagged on the wrench. Max followed his gaze to the dripping tool in his hands.
“I figured there was a broken connection down there. Usually the T-joint stubbing up to a sprinkler head.”
“But there are no sprinkler heads.”
“There used to be,” Max said. “See how the ground’s mounded up there?” He pointed with the wrench, but Evan saw only mud and more mud. “So I went in and fixed it.”
“For who?”
Max shrugged again. “I figured for once it might be nice to leave a place better than it was when I got there.” He looked at his hands, the dirt now cracking across the knuckles. “I don’t have a lot of ways to say thanks anymore.”
“To Violet?”
“To anyone.” When his gaze lifted, Evan was surprised by the dread it held. “What happened?”
“I took care of the other thing,” Evan said.
“How?”
Evan pictured Petro lying pinned beneath his bodyguard in the courtyard. That speckling of blood in his silver hair. He hadn’t raised an arm against the bullet like so many did.
Instead he’d smiled.
Evan hadn’t liked that smile. Had it held something knowing? Or was it merely a final show of pride, a refusal to give in to fear? Maybe it was that simple—he hadn’t wanted to give Evan the satisfaction.
Evan said, “They’re all gone.”
Max took a step back, his shoe plunking in the puddle. It pulled free with a sucking noise. Around them mosquitoes whined and swirled. “Am I safe now?”
Evan hesitated, caught a flash of Petro’s dying moment in his mind’s eye. He’d asked about Max. What had Evan said? Now it’s over for him. And then Petro had smiled.
Why the hell had he smiled?
Evan had eliminated Terzian and his crew. Unmasked the laundering ring. Run up the chain of command to the man at the top and left him lifeless on the flagstones of a courtyard beneath a mound of bodyguards.
It was done. Any peripheral players who remained no longer had an operation to plug into. Their leadership was dead, the files blown. They likely had no idea who Max Merriweather was, and even if they did, no incentive remained for them to harm him.
Joey would continue to do her best to match code names from Grant’s books to the bottom feeders in the scheme, but it was time to get the case back into the hands of the authorities, where it belonged.
What was Evan supposed to do? Keep Max holed up in a tear-down house indefinitely? Because of a smile?
“Am I safe now?” Max asked again.
Evan’s head throbbed and then throbbed some more. “Yes,” he said.
“So where … where should I go?”
Evan tossed Max the zip drive onto which Joey had copied all of Grant’s files. “Hollywood Station. Let them finish what your cousin started.”
Max wiped his hands on his jeans and pocketed the zip drive.
Evan said, “You never called me. You never met me. You never saw me. You went to Grant’s office alone, and a guy tried to shoot you. You got scared, went underground. That’s your story. The whole story. Understand?”
Max nodded.
The first thing Evan would do was remove the dried-out contact lens and climb into bed. He’d rest until his head stopped throbbing, the nausea receded, and his vision stopped playing hallucinogenic games with the world. He thought about the row of bottles in his freezer drawer, the world’s best vodkas chilled and waiting. Once the symptoms were gone, he’d go with something smooth and nuanced, like CLIX. Shake it so hard that crystals would mist the surface off the pour. A sprig of basil from the living wall. Maybe a stainless-steel martini glass to retain the cold. He wanted the first sip to make his teeth ache.
A nice reward after a long three days’ work.
But Petro flashed into Evan’s mind once more, interrupting his vodka reverie.
For a dying grin, it had looked awfully smug. As though Petro knew something Evan didn’t.
As if he had a secret.
Evan replayed the conversation they’d had, how readily Petro had deployed his braggadocio: The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think.
Max said, “Would you mind driving me to my truck?”
Evan resisted a temptation to clench his jaw. He wanted to squeeze the bridge of his nose, dig his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids to stave off that incipient headache. He wanted to put a check next to the mission, deliver Max back to his life, and then—for the first time—start his own. A life of his own making.
But yet. That smile.
“I don’t want you to go back to your truck just yet,” Evan said. “I’ll take you to a random street corner and call you a cab.”
“I thought you said it was safe.”
“It is,” Evan said. But I don’t like how a guy smiled right before I shot him. And my paranoia has no limits when it comes to interrupting a long rest and a good drink.
Was it paranoia? Or was he reluctant to let go? Because once he admitted it was over, then the Nowhere Man was over, too. And without the Nowhere Man, who the hell was Evan Smoak?
Max was squinting at him impatiently.
“We’ll destroy your disposable phone, and I’ll give you a fresh one,” Evan said. “Don’t turn it on unless you’re in trouble or until you’re done talking to the cops. Then call me again. I’ll go with you to your truck. And then to your apartment.”
“Why? Is this over or not?”
“It’s over,” Evan said. “But no one ever got killed by being too careful.”
32
Awful Shit
Alone in the backseat of the cab halfway to the police station, Max had a change of mind. “Hang on,” he told the driver. “Make a U-turn. I need to take a quick detour.”
“Your wish is my command,” the driver said, spinning the steering wheel with the heel of his hand like he was turning around a big rig.
Twenty minutes later they were coasting up a broad street, palm trees nodding overhead. The block was lined with parked cars.
“Looks like someone’s having a party,” the driver said.
“Could you slow down, please?”
As they passed the house, Max spotted the catering vans in the driveway and felt a familiar hollowness at his core. “Pull up here on the right,” he said. “Up a little farther. A little farther.”
The cab crept beside a tall hedge at the neighbor’s house. “If I didn’t know better,” the driver said, “I’d think we were trying to hide.”
Max opened the door, set one foot on the curb. “Would you mind waiting for me?”
“Your dollar, your desire.”
Leaving the idling taxi behind, Max eased out from behind the hedge, the Spanish-style mansion edging into view. On either side of the porch, immense concrete pots held artfully spiraled lilies, a tornado of white buds.
The post-funeral reception.
The front edge of dusk muted the sky, making the house lights pop. The drawn front curtains allowed a panoramic view of the expansive front room and the crush of well-wishers it accommodated—cops and cousins and colleagues. Scattered throughout, men and women with coiffed hair and impressive bearings seemed to have their own gravitational fields, drawing whirlpools of beholders. Community leaders, no doubt, like Grant.
Wearing an elegant widow-black dress, Jill was in the thick of it, directing traffic in between fusillades of cheek kisses. Despite her concerns she was managing the event with the family’s usual aggressive competence.
The swinging door to the kitchen emitted a steady stream of servers bearing silver trays laden with canapés. Failed actors in white shirts and black vests scurried from the catering vans, hauling Saran Wrapped serving platters, royal chafers, crates of g
lassware.
Standing among the impeccably trimmed juniper cones, Max suddenly felt quite small. Whatever he’d planned on saying, it wouldn’t get said. Not here, not now.
And yet he found himself unwilling to take his eyes off the scene inside. As he scanned the crowded room, he realized he was searching for Violet.
One of the servers hauling food from the van paused en route to the house and caught Max lurking there among the shrubbery. A flash of white teeth. “Hi. Are you with the party?”
Max’s T-shirt was rumpled, his jeans worn, and he was three days unshaven. He’d cleaned off his shoes before getting into Evan’s car, but smudges of mud remained at the outsoles.
“Yeah,” Max said. “But now I’m feeling a little overdressed.”
The guy laughed. His tray was spotted with what looked to be endives filled with candied walnuts.
Max said, “I was his cousin.”
“I’m sorry. That sucks. What happened to him.”
Max nodded.
“Well, come on in. There’s certainly plenty to eat.” The server hoisted his tray and vanished inside.
To avoid further attention, Max took a few strides to the side of the house. Two years and seven months later, and here he was blending into the vegetation, risking humiliation. Just to catch a glimpse of her.
The sounds carrying over the adobe wall signaled that the reception had already filled the backyard, too. The wall wasn’t much taller than Max’s head, but he wasn’t going to risk peeking over.
As he turned to leave, the hardwood arched gate clicked open and his father walked through, head lowered, extracting a cigarette from his shirt pocket. They almost collided, the Marlboro falling to the gunmetal-gray wood chips carpeting the flower beds.
“Oh, excuse m—” Terry looked up, recognized his son, and froze. “Max. I was just…” His hands circled as if to conjure up a better excuse. “Sneaking a smoke.” He patted the air. “I know, I know. I’m too old, they’ll kill me, lung cancer and blood clots. I just have the occasional stick. When I’m … upset.”
His expression slackened for an instant, and Max saw the grief he’d been holding in. His father had always loved being Uncle Terry to Grant. It was as though the image of himself he saw reflected back in Grant’s eyes was better than what he’d been expecting.
Into the Fire Page 18
