“Never believe a man’s first reaction,” she said. “It’s one of two rules I live by.”
“What’s the other?”
“Nothing good ever comes of dating guys named Travis.”
He smirked, looked away.
She took a step closer, set a hand on his cheek. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “You’re still in denial about what you’re up against.” She turned his face until he was looking into her eyes. “You’ll never be able to pull this off by yourself.”
She lowered her hand and stepped back, the rain parting behind her and then resuming between their faces.
“You have the number I called you from,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you to come to your senses.” She hesitated. “Even with both of us, it’s as long a long shot as ever there was.”
She eased away again, the rain thickening between them. One more step and the darkness enveloped her.
He stood listening to the pounding rain and his own beating heart.
39
A Method to the Madness
Furrows of rain clouds turned the sky into a field of gray. Evan stood between the Taurus and his Ford pickup on the top level of the long-term-parking complex, his head still humming from his encounter with Candy McClure. Her offer seemed to be legit, but there was a reason that the first of the Commandments proclaimed: Assume nothing.
Given her exceptional dangerousness, he couldn’t trust his usual procedures to cover his tracks.
He had the rooftop to himself. Most travelers didn’t want to leave their vehicles up here, exposed to the elements, especially when there were so many spots available on lower levels. And now was the midday lull between morning departures and afternoon arrivals.
He stripped naked, threw his clothes and boots into the back of the Taurus, and then dressed in an identical outfit, which he’d stored in the trunk. He transferred his backpack and everything else from the Taurus into the rectangular truck vaults installed over the bed of his F-150 pickup.
Then he took a hose and a gas can from the truck and suck-started a stream of gasoline from the Taurus’s tank. When he had enough, he doused the car’s seats and his clothes and lit them on fire.
He left the Taurus burning on the rooftop, sending a plume of black smoke up to join the charcoal sky.
He arrived back at Castle Heights without further incident and hustled across the lobby to catch the elevator as the doors closed. Too late, he picked up the scent of old-lady perfume, but his momentum carried him across the threshold next to the stubby and venomous Ida Rosenbaum of 6G.
She glowered up at him, her eyes pronounced behind her glasses.
He nodded at her. “Ma’am.”
“Again with the ma’am.”
They rose a few floors in awkward silence, Evan gripping his backpack before him. He hoped his hands didn’t smell too strongly of gasoline. Her nose twitched once and then again.
Before she could ask anything, he quickly diverted her. “It’s nice out today.”
Her painted eyebrows rose. “Know what my Herb used to say, may he rest in peace?”
“No, ma’am.”
“That talking about the weather is dull enough. But to talk about the weather in Los Angeles? You have to be pathologically dull.”
“Copy that, ma’am.”
Mercifully, the elevator doors parted on the sixth floor and Mrs. Rosenbaum shuffled out with an absence of alacrity that signaled either a hip condition or deep-seated passive-aggressiveness.
Evan exited on Mia’s floor and removed the present he’d picked up for Peter in D.C., still wrapped in brown paper from the gift shop.
As he neared the door of 12B, it occurred to him that he had nothing for Mia. Given that his last visit had wound up in her bed, was this poor form? He hesitated, finger extended to the doorbell, arguing with himself. It wasn’t like he was empty-handed. But was a gift for Peter enough? Or did that make it more insulting that he had nothing for Mia? What did ordinary people do? A bouquet of roses? Chocolates? Both options seemed crass and vaguely humiliating, as if he took his cues from TV commercials.
He could elude half of D.C.’s police force, but this is where he fell down: negotiating the nuances of everyday relationships. Nothing in his background or training had provided any guidance on how an actual second date went and whether he was supposed to show up with a heart-shaped box of fucking truffles.
He rang the bell. Waited.
No answer.
He was surprised at how much relief he felt. This would give him time to fall back, rethink his position, and strategize.
He removed a notepad from the backpack and jotted on the top sheet, “Stopped by to say hi. Sorry I missed you.—Evan.”
Direct, efficient, to the point. He had to play to his strengths.
He slotted the note in the crack above the doorknob and started walking back to the elevator. Then he stopped and dropped the backpack, frustrated.
Returning, he unfolded the note and wrote “P.S. It was nice seeing you.”
He scowled at the bland addition. That sounded nothing like him. He crumpled up the sheet, re-created the first note, and left before he could rethink his position again.
Upstairs, he put away his gear and then settled into a cross-legged pose on the Turkish area rug in the great room. He veiled his eyes, holding them not entirely open or closed, letting the room turn into a blur. He sensed the weight of his body, the complaints of his sore muscles. And he listened to the sound of his breath through his nose, the hiss of air from a distant vent, the hum of the Sub-Zero way across in the kitchen. His body felt warm, sweat beading on his forehead, the old scar in his stomach pulsing with a faint heat. The aim was to feel his body as if for the first time. To enter this moment as if only this moment existed.
He was alert and relaxed. They weren’t opposites, not exactly. They were two opposing forces that held him steady in the center, the wave line of the yin-yang. A perfect balance, one foot in either domain, the eyes of the tadpoles.
He breathed and breathed some more.
An image sailed into the haze of his meditation. The naked Ukrainian girl, no more than fifteen years old, standing in the office doorway of an abandoned textile factory. Her haunted eyes, the skin around them black with toxins. The filthy mattress on the floor behind her. A metal cup and plate.
All those years ago, Evan had killed the Estonian gun dealer and left her with a cigar box stuffed with currency.
Could he have done more?
His eyes were open now, fully open. Rising, he headed to the nearest workout station.
It seemed he’d lost his stomach for meditation.
* * *
In the Vault, Evan had President Bennett’s schedule projected onto three walls. He pored over convoy routes, upcoming events, and travel logs. Then he analyzed the schedule changes to see if there was a method to the madness, but there was none that he could discern.
Sighing, he cocked back in his chair. From her bowl of glass pebbles, Vera II looked at him, clearly unimpressed.
“I’ll figure it out,” he told her.
She stared at him some more, smugly photosynthesizing.
“Okay,” he said. “You want to see some headway?”
He minimized all the projected windows from the Secret Service private network, cracked his knuckles, and switched tracks, refocusing on the Nowhere Man mission. He’d gotten two names out of the musclehead.
Terrance DeGraw, aka Raw One, was the other man who’d helped exterminate Trevon Gaines’s extended family. An address and a rap sheet filled with priors was quickly forthcoming.
DeGraw would get a visit soon.
But right now Evan was focused on the kingpin.
Russell Gadds.
Evan called up Gadds’s booking photo and slid it onto the opposite wall so the giant face stared back at him.
Trevon Gaines had nicknamed the man well.
Gadds had a thick, doughy nose, extra meat around the flanges, his
cheeks textured with pronounced pores. A thick tousle of shiny black curls hung over his forehead. His lips were too pink and too moist, almost beaklike. They might have looked sensuous on another face. He was striking and ugly, and yet there was a virile handsomeness to him. He made a forceful impression, as forceful men often did.
Building a picture, Evan went deep-diving through NCIC, CLETS, and a half dozen other state and federal databases. Gadds had served a few short stints in federal penitentiaries, mostly for pled-down drug charges. He’d been brought up on assault numerous times, often against women, and ordered to attend court-mandated anger-management courses. Hearsay linked him to several murders, and he’d been twice investigated for trafficking. The DEA had an active but stalled-out continuing criminal-enterprise case; the lead agent had assembled a list of eighteen known associates, whom he’d characterized as impressive in their depravity and blind devotion.
Gadds had seemingly learned his lesson from the CCE case, his personal and business addresses vanishing off the radar a few years back. Everything now was off-the-books or buried in shell corps, his bills sent to mail-forwarding services or P.O. boxes.
Evan knew that drill well enough.
He dug around in old criminal records until he produced a cell number.
He dialed.
It rang once, twice, three times. Just as Evan was about to cut the line, a man answered. “Who’s this?”
The voice was deep, sonorous, but also nasal, the septum blown out from cocaine.
Evan said, “Russell Gadds?”
“Who’s calling my private line?”
Evan had the man’s attention. That was good. The more distracted Gadds was, the less likely he’d bat Trevon around like a toy mouse.
Evan stared at the photograph of the big face still floating before him. “I hear you’re weakened. I hear you’ve lost your supplier. I want you to know: I’m coming for your business. I’m coming for you.”
The line crackled for a moment, and then Gadds laughed, a few booming notes that sounded wet and angry. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy who’s gonna kill you.”
Another laugh, this one wheezing and a touch strained. “Who are you?”
Evan hung up.
He rose, clipped his holstered ARES to his hip, and exited the Vault.
40
Making Good Choices
Russell Gadds kept his office dark because it reminded him of offices in movies, the ones with parchment-colored globes hiding decanters of scotch and walnut bookshelves with brass fittings. So when he’d bedded the operation down in this sprawling cinder-block building, he’d turned the central room into the study of his fantasies. He’d even selected the blotter online, a chocolate leather beauty with two swiveling fourteen-karat-gold-plated pen holders.
Before him, the bullet-resistant one-way mirror gave him oversight of his men in the blastproof front room. Behind him, halls wound back to various operation centers.
He was, he realized, still gripping his phone, though the dead line was bleating in his ear. As usual, Hurtada was standing just behind his shoulder, breathing heavily, the fat fuck taking his right-hand-man designation literally.
Gadds struggled to maintain his composure. It had been years since anyone had dared to threaten him directly. And now some anonymous bastard had dialed his private line—his private line!—and told him he was weakened.
The course had taught him to become aware of physical cues, to note what was happening when he was still between a One and a Seven. Seven was his personal Rubicon. Once he crossed Seven, he was no longer rational.
Right now he was redlining the barrier. Setting down the phone, he closed his eyes and paid attention to his body. Pulse rate elevated. Heat in his stomach. Fingernails indenting his palms.
“You okay, chief?”
“Is the room ready?” Gadds said. “I need the room ready.”
He noted the volume of his voice—high—and the pitch—higher. Two more cues to let him know he was on the verge of losing control.
He was supposed to search for other emotions swirling around inside him, the primary sentiments that his rage was covering for, but he wasn’t having much luck. His hands were balled up now, the knuckles bulging and bloodless.
Hurtada took a step back and held open the door on the left. “Sure it is.”
Gadds shoved back from the chair, sensing the heat welling up from his stomach now as he tried to shut out the memory of that smug-fuck caller—I hear you’re weakened—and peg his anger on that scale of One to Ten.
Seven now, and rising.
He charged down the hall.
The Rage Room’s door was padded and soundproofed, and it autolocked behind him. Inside were an array of items selected for their fragility. An antique lamp on a slender side table. A sixteen-piece china set arranged on a hutch. A variety of vases. A freestanding bookcase hosting a menagerie of glass figurines.
It was as though he’d stepped onto the showcase floor of a Beverly Hills furniture store.
A catcher’s mask dangled from a peg on the wall. He donned it.
The steel baseball bat was end-weighted, heat-treated, and double-walled—illegal for most men’s leagues.
He hefted it and confronted an old-fashioned stereo stack, the record player on top begging for the first blow.
He felt his anger cross the Rubicon, and he yielded to it.
For a time he raged.
It might have been fifteen minutes. It might have been thirty.
When he came to a halt, panting and winded, his hands cramped and sore, the Rage Room was decimated. It was much more satisfying to take his anger out on someone rather than something, but this was what his course leader had called Making Good Choices.
He tilted the bat against the wall beside a golf club and returned the catcher’s mask to its peg on the wall. He felt clearheaded now, ready to make some business decisions.
When he emerged, Hurtada was waiting in the hall, a gym towel folded over one chubby forearm as if he were a waiter from the Roaring Twenties. He wore the same nervous expression he always had when greeting Gadds outside the Rage Room.
“The way things are going,” Gadds said, “you’d best restock the room.” He snapped the towel off Hurtada’s arm and mopped his face. “This can’t stand. None of it. Charter a jet. I have to go down to South America. I’ll kiss a few rings, negotiate a goddamned dangerous new line of credit, and get the distribution flow unfucked.”
“On it,” Hurtada said.
Gadds was already moving up the hall, Hurtada wobbling along at his side. “Chief? Chief? I got an update for you.” Hurtada produced a fax. “On the other matter.”
Gadds snatched the paper and looked down at it.
Then he smiled.
This was good. A more pleasing target for his rage.
Someone always beat something.
“Let the retard know,” he said.
* * *
Trevon was sitting on the couch alone with himself and the Scaredy Bugs, and alone with them wasn’t a good place to be. He flattened his hand and pressed his palm to the side of his head, pushing hard, his head tilted. He didn’t know why it felt good, but it did, like he was holding all the pressure in, like he was holding himself when there was no one else there to do it for him. Mama told him it looked weird and he should be careful about doing it in front of other people.
Mama.
He was making noises now out of his mouth and hearing them like it wasn’t him, and he didn’t know what else to do since they wouldn’t let him work and there was no more family and he couldn’t talk to the cops or anyone else or Big Face would get him. He wanted to call his friend, the Nowhere Man, but Mama told him that friendships had to be reciprocal and you can’t just keep calling folks, you have to wait for them to call you back even if sometimes they never did.
He felt something touch his legs and he jerked back, but it was just Cat-Cat twining between his ankles. Cat-Cat looked
up at him and meowed twice, which meant he was hungry.
Trevon didn’t feel like he could move, let alone stand up, but he had to, ’cuz he was responsible to Cat-Cat and Cat-Cat was responsible to him. That was what the rules were, and the rules kept him calm and kept Cat-Cat fed.
He was shaking some kibble into Cat-Cat’s bowl when the doorbell rang.
The doorbell rang again, and he realized that he’d frozen there over Cat-Cat’s bowl. “Who is it?”
“Delivery.”
Trevon set down the bag, walked over, and peeped through the peephole. It was a FedEx guy.
“Okay,” Trevon said.
“Can you open up, please, sir?”
“How come?”
“I need you to sign.”
“Can I see your badge?”
“I don’t…” The guy scratched his nose. “I don’t have a badge.”
Trevon pressed his head some more.
“Sir? I don’t have all day.”
Trevon undid the chain real slow-like and opened the door. The guy stared at him a sec. Then thrust an electronic pad at him.
Trevon signed. His fingers were shaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.
The guy took a small box from beneath his arm and handed it to Trevon. “Have a nice day.”
“Thank you, sir. You have a nice day, too.”
Trevon shut the door and locked it and rehooked the security chain.
He got a pair of scissors and walked to the table, holding the closed blades in his fist like he was taught. Then he sat down and opened the box.
Inside was a small black clock.
But it didn’t tell the time.
It said 10 DAYS, 23 HOURS, 09 MINUTES, 11 SECONDS.
It was counting down.
But for what?
The only thing Trevon knew of that counted down was—
He dove away from the table, gathered Cat-Cat up in his arms, and huddled against the kitchen cabinets. He stayed like that for a time, Cat-Cat meowing to get back to his food.
After a while he let Cat-Cat go.
Out of the Dark Page 22
