Prodigal Son Read online

  22

  A Lifetime Ago

  The pressure of the knife on Evan’s Adam’s apple was light, unsure. A professional would have placed it to the side, resting over the stem of the carotid just before it split. Plus, a professional would be standing offset to protect his stomach and groin from a backward strike.

  All in all a poor showing.

  Evan cleared his throat. “You’re gonna want to grab my head and pull it back to bare the neck,” he said. “Or you’ll get hung up in the sternocleidomastoid.”

  “The fuck?” the guy said, the knife tension easing. “You fucking crazy?”

  Evan grabbed the wrist, rolled it outward, shot an elbow back into the sternum, and stepped to the side.

  The guy stumbled back a few steps, doubled over, coughing. To his credit he kept the knife. When he straightened up, Evan blinked twice to stimulate his night vision and make sure he was seeing correctly.

  It was Duran.

  He waved the blade in front of him. The handle was chipped, the steel rusted.

  Evan said, “Is that a bread knife?”

  Duran regarded it. “Steak knife, I think.”

  “No,” Evan said. “I’m pretty sure it’s a bread knife. That curved end is gonna give you problems unless you plan to saw me to death.”

  Duran considered. “Maybe I’ll just nick you and let you die of tetanus in five months.”

  Evan glanced up at the stars, listened for that buzz announcing impending doom, but there was nothing in the air except a few amorous crickets chirping away. He doubted that whoever was behind all this would risk another Hellfire on domestic soil, especially near a populated apartment building, but nearly having his ass incinerated had dented his confidence in his ability to prognosticate.

  Evan said, “We should get off the street.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can stab me in private.”

  “No,” Duran said. “Not until you answer a few questions first. Like, why you stalking my wife and kid?”

  “I’m looking for you.”

  “You with them other folks? The ones who killed Jake Hargreave?”

  “No.”

  Regarding Duran directly, Evan experienced the same unnerving déjà vu he’d felt when he’d caught his first clear glimpse of Veronica. Some flicker of recognition beneath the surface, a dreamlike recollection at once foreign and familiar. Duran’s handsome face looked worn beyond its years, brown skin, stubble flecked with white. An accent mark of a keloid scar punctuated his right eyebrow, a darker shade of brown than the surrounding skin.

  “Then what the fuck you want with me?” With each word Duran jabbed the rusty knife in the air.

  “I was asked to help you.”

  “By who?”

  “Veronica LeGrande.”

  Duran moved back, his step faltering, and lowered the knife to his side. Just then the front door hinged open and the white-haired woman from the laundry room ambled out, gargantuan purse swaying from the crook of her elbow. She labored down the stairs, grunting from the effort, and paused when she spotted Duran.

  “Andrew Esau Duran,” she said, wagging a finger. “Is that you? Where you been, boy? Don’t you know your daughter needs a father?”

  Duran held his knife hand behind his back, looking exceptionally suspicious standing among the plants that framed the front of the building. “You’re right, Mrs. Hamilton. I’m gonna set that right. I just … can’t right now.”

  Mrs. Hamilton’s face made clear what she thought of that. “One of these days, you gonna run outta tomorrows, son.”

  Duran nodded sheepishly. Under other circumstances his transformation from would-be badass to humbled little boy would have been amusing. But he looked so heartbroken it was hard for Evan to find humor in it. “Please don’t mention to Bri you saw me here.”

  Mrs. Hamilton held a withering glare on him for a few moments, though his eyes stayed lowered. Then she bestowed her disdain on Evan. Finally she hiked her purse higher on her arm and ambled off.

  Something she’d said to Duran stirred a memory in Evan.

  “Look,” Duran said, jarring him back to the here and now. “Ms. LeGrande’s always looked out for me, but she has no idea what this is.”

  Evan said, “I’m guessing you don’t either.”

  “I never shoulda called her. I need to stay underground. You’re just gonna put me at risk. My family, too. You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You shouldn’t have either.”

  That seemed to hit a nerve, Duran’s lip curling. “Lemme make this clear: I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t want your help. Leave me the fuck alone.”

  Evan took Duran’s measure. Found no chink in the armor. Again and again his experience had proved the old adage that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

  From the stubborn set of Duran’s face, Evan realized that his little detour from retirement had drawn to a close.

  “Okay,” he said, and started off up the walk.

  He got two steps before a bolt of recognition pinned him where he stood.

  He pictured Mrs. Hamilton’s wagging finger. Andrew Esau Duran.

  And he thought back a lifetime ago to a boy with a crazy-ass biblical middle name that no one knew how to pronounce. And to the time Danny had shoved that kid into the kitchen counter, opening up his forehead. The wound had required seven stitches and left a scar like an accent mark over the right eyebrow.

  Evan turned around. Duran was still there among the fronds, waiting for him to leave.

  Evan said, “Andre?”

  Duran didn’t move, but his face rippled with emotion, his scalp shifting. He looked confused, undone.

  Andrew. Dr. Dre. Dre-Dre. Andre.

  “It’s Evan.”

  “Evan? Evan.” His pupils dilated, the dime dropping. “What the hell are you…?” His voice trailed off into a husky rasp, as if his throat had dried up. “Why are you here?”

  Evan wasn’t sure which layer of the question to address first.

  “I wound up in L.A. because of you,” Evan said. It was, he realized, more of a statement than an answer.

  “What?” Andre’s forehead was shiny, sweat trickling toward his eyes. “Why?”

  “The palm trees. The big-ass Cadillac.” Evan could hear his voice falling into an age-old cadence he thought he’d long outgrown. “Did you ever find them? The blondes on Rollerblades?”

  Andre dipped his head, his lips twitching as if he might smile, and all of a sudden Evan saw him clear as day, the boy with the spiral sketchbook and the infectious grin.

  “Not like in my head,” Andre said. “I went to Venice Beach, sure. And there they were. But they smelled like weed. And they had no interest in a fool like me.”

  “What happened to you?” Evan asked.

  Andre recoiled, amusement freezing on his face, turning hard, and Evan could see the shame beneath. Andre had mistaken the question as a judgment on how he looked, who he’d become, rather than as the inquiry Evan had intended.

  Andre’s mouth twisted. “You don’t know me. Not anymore. You don’t know shit about me.” He flung the knife down at his side, where it stuck in the soil. “Like I said, leave me the fuck alone.”

  He shoved through the plants and darted up the alley. Evan pursued him. A gate clanged open and shut loudly at the end, and as Evan neared, Andre twisted a padlock back into place and sank the U shackle home with a click.

  Evan looked up, but the gate was topped with razor wire.

  They stared at each other through the chain-link, close enough that Evan could smell the fear on him.

  Andre was panting, more from emotion than exertion, it seemed, his face awash in fear and humiliation and confusion. He looked utterly lost. A guy whose bank account couldn’t break forty bucks. Banished from his own home. A half-assembled jungle gym in his backyard, built for a daughter who never visited. So much hope, so much grief. And despair running beneath it, dimming his eyes, the
eyes of a man who’d fallen off the edge of the earth.

  “Wait,” Evan said. “Slow down. Just talk to me.”

  Andre stepped back, sweat gleaming at his hairline. Lozenge-shaped shadows from the fence broke his face into diamonds. “You can’t help me,” he said. “No one can.”

  He stepped back again, darkness enveloping him, and then there was nothing but the tap-tap-tap of his footsteps sprinting away.

  23

  A Statue Garden of Zombies

  By the time Evan neared the side street where he’d stashed his vehicle, his heart rate had settled no more than his thoughts. The F-150 wasn’t just a truck, it was a war machine, every last security measure invisible to the untrained eye. Like the laminated armor windows. The custom push-bumper assembly up front. The run-flat self-sealing tires. The flat vaults in the bed stocked with a virtual arsenal.

  The vehicle had been built to spec by his trusted friend Tommy Stojack, a nine-fingered armorer who worked out of Vegas. Tommy provided Evan ghost weaponry as well: guns with no serial numbers, taggant-free explosives, innovative tech a half breath out of DARPA.

  The streetlights all up the block had been shot out, no doubt a tactical choice given the deals going down on various porches in the vicinity. A few guys called after Evan in Spanish, and a lady whistled an invitation through sloppy orange lipstick, but he kept his head down, hands in his pockets. His eyes picked over the surroundings, scanning for threats, but part of his brain floated in years past. The gritty taste of generic mac and cheese. Andre on his top bunk, sketch pad propped on his knees, gnawed pencil scratching on paper. Van Sciver leering down at Evan, his knuckles scraped. The taste of blood in Evan’s mouth, cracked asphalt skinning his palms, his knees, his chin.

  He’d done his best to lock himself off from the past, and yet here it was again, rearing its head, threatening to buck him like a horse. Why Andre? And how the hell did Veronica know him?

  He dialed her prepaid phone, but the number had been disconnected. If she were to be believed, she’d be in the air now heading to Los Angeles. He’d have to wait until their meet time tomorrow to get any further information from her.

  As much as he was loath to admit it, the mission had sunk its fangs into him. He could see no acceptable response except to return the favor.

  He knew what would have to come next. Figuring out who Inmate TG3328 was in Kern Valley State Prison, which would be relatively easy. And then getting in to visit him, which would be relatively not.

  To do so he’d require the help of the best hacker he knew. Who also happened to be an incredibly obstinate sixteen-year-old girl.

  Curiosity crept up on him, a tingle beneath the scalp. What had Brianna called inmate TG3328? A childhood friend. The tingle grew warmer, unpleasant, turned to an itch.

  The more he scratched, the deeper into his childhood this venture seemed to dig. He had no answers, not yet, just a clot of questions.

  He halted, shouldering against a brick wall, and called up the serviceable CDCR website on his RoamZone. As he thumbed in the inmate number, he noticed a burn in his chest, a held breath growing impatient.

  The screen reloaded and spit out a result.

  Daniel Gallo.

  A complete shock and totally predictable all at once.

  Danny who flew in and out of juvie like it was a revolving door. Danny who’d play-shoved Andre into the counter, giving him that beauty gash on the forehead. Danny who last Evan had heard was serving out a ten-year term in Chesapeake Detention Facility for armed robbery.

  He and Evan hadn’t been particularly close. They’d moved at the periphery of the circle, Evan keeping his head low to dodge Van Sciver’s wrath, Danny occupied with untangling his own various strands of trouble. One time Danny had shared with Evan a Coke he’d bought at the gas station using pennies salvaged from a wishing fountain in a strip-mall pupusa joint. With crystalline clarity Evan remembered the coolness of the bottle, the intoxicating fizz, how it had offered a few moments’ respite from the baking Baltimore sun. It had been a small act of kindness, delivered with no pomp and circumstance, but small acts of kindness were all they had to give or receive in that summer heat. A few sips of Coke might as well have been a king’s ransom.

  The past could be so fickle, a moment boomeranging home twenty-seven years later with a palpability greater than the concrete beneath his boots.

  The woman who’d given birth to him. Winging to L.A.

  Andre Duran. In the wind.

  Danny Gallo. Locked in a box.

  How would these threads knit together?

  Evan shoved off the wall and resumed his course, cutting between two banged-up lowriders onto the side street.

  As he neared his truck, he spotted the bearded meth head and his crew from the house neighboring Brianna and Sofia’s apartment complex. They’d circled the F-150, peering in the windows hungrily. The bearded man bent over, plumber’s crack on full display above filthy sagging jeans, and pried a loose cinder block from a low barrier blocking in a dirt yard.

  He held it overhead, staggering back toward Evan’s truck.

  Evan stepped into sight. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  The man sneered, yellow teeth seeming to spring from the beard itself. Most of them had caved inward, but his incisors remained in place, pronounced and tusklike. His crew tittered, rippling around him.

  “You gonna stop us?” he asked.

  Evan paused, hands still in his pockets. He tilted his forehead to the truck. An invitation to proceed.

  The man smiled again, eyes glistening. Then he let the cinder block’s weight tug him toward the passenger window. He let go at the last moment. The cinder block struck the polycarbonate thermoplastic resin glass with an impotent thud, bounced back, and knocked him square in the forehead. He tripped over the curb and lay sprawled on the sidewalk, unconscious.

  Evan removed his key fob from his pocket and gave it the chirp-chirp.

  The others stood frozen, a statue garden of zombies, unblinking eyes and crooked shoulders.

  “Excuse me,” Evan said.

  He threaded delicately through them, stepped over the unconscious man, got into his truck, and drove away.

  24

  An Unusual Relationship

  Evan watched the peephole for a shadow, but Joey opened the door of her apartment without checking.

  He said, “How many times have I told you to look who’s at the door before you open it?”

  “How many times have I told you I have pinhole cameras installed in all the heating vents so I can watch you shuffle up here all unannounced like you own the place?” She waved her Big Gulp at him. “Oh, wait, that’s right. You do own the place.”

  After Joey had washed out from the Orphan Program, a series of unlikely circumstances had landed her in Evan’s charge. Eventually he’d gotten her to California and set her up in a Westwood apartment building that had failed to meet his standards for security. So—through an array of shell corporations—he’d bought the place to make improvements and keep her safe, an arrangement he believed he could hide from her. But outwitting Joey was a virtual impossibility; she’d not only deduced the chain of ownership but hacked into the legal records, intent on reassigning ownership to herself.

  He’d found out and threatened to ground her.

  She’d relented.

  It was an unusual relationship.

  She was wearing eyeliner for the first time, just a hint that made her emerald eyes pop even more. Curious. Her hair was styled with a more severe undercut than usual, shaved tight on the right side, a black-brown wave waterfalling across her cheek in an uncharacteristically styled fashion. She’d traded in her wife-beater undershirt and baggy flannel for something resembling an actual blouse. And a scent wafted off her, different from her usual fragrance of Dr Pepper and Red Vines.

  He said, “Why do you smell like orange blossom?”

  “What?” Her blink rate picked up, a nonverbal tell. “It’s nothing. Probably j
ust soda.”

  “It’s not soda. More … flowery.”

  “There’s nothing flowery. You’re hallucinating. C’mon, X. Hugs not drugs.”

  A Rhodesian ridgeback snout shoved between Joey’s thigh and the doorframe, the dog whimpering to get at Evan. Evan had placed the dog in Joey’s care thinking the companionship would be good for them both, and Joey feigned resentment at the responsibility. It was one of many dances she and Evan did around unspoken emotions and unacknowledged stakes.

  “Can I come in?” Evan asked.

  “I’m kinda busy,” she said. “Plans.”

  “Since when do you have plans?”

  “Since I’m an independent young woman who doesn’t have to answer to a controlling uncle-person type.”

  “Josephine,” he said.

  She returned his glare. Then sighed, her shoulders rolling forward. “Fii-nuh.” She drew the word into two syllables. “But it better be quick.”

  She stepped back, retreating to her workstation, a pod of monitors and computers that served as her hacking nerve center. The ridgeback went crazy, wiggling against Evan, shoving into his thighs, demanding to be petted. The pup had bulked up to at least a hundred pounds, his coat looked shiny and healthy, and the scars from his bait-dog days had healed nicely. An expensive-looking fabric collar, candy-cane-striped for the holidays, gleamed against his russet-tan fur. Contented with Evan’s affection, he trotted away and plopped down on his plush bolster bed.

  He hoisted his hound eyes at Joey, who was already typing away at her station, and gave a gentle whine for her attention.

  “Quiet, Dog,” she said. She’d refused to name the dog because she didn’t want to grow attached to him.

  Which she definitely wasn’t. Attached to him. Not at all.

  “Fancy new collar,” Evan observed.

  Joey kept her gaze unbroken on the monitors. “It was on sale.”

  “And the bed. Is that a pillowtop?”

  “It’s just what some website recommended for big dogs. ’Cuz their joints or something. I don’t know.”