Orphan X Page 20

  His mind still back on the dead parents, Evan took a moment to process the transition.

  “Do you have mac and cheese?” Peter asked.

  Evan opened the refrigerator, scanning the sparse shelves. A jar of gherkins, cocktail onions, two saline bags in the fruit drawer. “I have caviar and water crackers.”

  “What’s a water cracker?”

  Evan extracted one from the box, set it on a dinner plate before Peter. The boy took a bite, the crumbs landing everywhere but on the plate beneath him. He made a face.

  “What?”

  “There’s no flavor.”

  Evan found a hunk of Manchego in the back of a drawer, cut off a few wedges, and placed them on the crackers. “This’ll help.” He knocked the counter with a fist. “Start your homework.”

  Peter opened his notebook and set about writing.

  Evan hurried back to the bedroom suite, locked the door behind him, then stepped through the shower into the Vault. Settling into his chair behind the sheet-metal desk, he unpaused the surveillance feeds and observed Katrin White being Katrin White. She sprawled on the futon. Drank orange juice from the carton. Dug dark nail polish from her purse and painted her toes. He clicked to speed up the feed, watching closely to see if she made any gesture that could be interpreted as a signal—opening the bathroom window, reaching for the phone, sliding something beneath the front door—but she just whiled away the boring hours on Charlie Chaplin fast-forward. It was looking increasingly likely that nothing was going to break before his meet with Memo Vasquez tomorrow morning.

  Evan had caught up and was observing Katrin in real time when he heard a cry from somewhere in his condo, then a clattering as something crashed to the floor.

  He leapt up and rushed out, swinging shut the hidden shower door behind him. When he barreled out of the bedroom and into the hall, Peter was standing there, blood snaking down his hand.

  Half slid out of its sheath, the katana lay on the floor at his feet, fallen from its acrylic wall pegs.

  “I’m sorry.” Peter squeezed his thumb, fighting tears. “I just wanted to see it for a sec.”

  Evan went down on a knee. “Give me your hand.”

  A nick through the pad of Peter’s thumb—the blade must have barely touched him. Given the sharpness of the sword, the kid was lucky he hadn’t lost a finger.

  Evan brought him into the bathroom, washed it under cold water, then applied pressure with a Kleenex. He set the bloody tissue by the sink, then took out a tube of superglue from the medicine cabinet.

  “You’re gonna glue my thumb shut?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I scratch my cheek and the superglue glues my thumb to my face?”

  “Then you’ll look like this for the rest of your life.”

  Peter regarded Evan’s pose with alarm, and then his face softened. “Ha, ha. You’re sure this is okay?”

  “Trust me,” Evan said.

  Peter did.

  Afterward he regarded the wound. “Do you have any Muppet Band-Aids?”

  “No,” Evan said.

  They walked back out into the hall, regarding the fallen blade. The sheath, a wooden shirasaya, featured an etched and inked sayagaki—the hallmark of a long-dead sensei. The hairline crack ran straight through the sensei’s signature. There were three people in the country who could properly make the repair; fortunately, one of them lived in Marin. Evan crouched over the scabbard, fingering the damage. As soon as he completed this mission, he’d take the drive up the coast and have the shirasaya fixed.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said. “Homework is boring.”

  “I can imagine.” Evan picked up the sword, slid it back into its sheath.

  Peter asked, “What is it anyways?”

  An eighteenth-century katana, splendidly forged, with Bizen-styled choji-midare in the hamon, or blade pattern. Hand-carved bohi and sohi for balance, sashikomi polish, flawless gold-foil collar at the base of the gleaming blade.

  “A sword,” Evan said.

  He steered Peter back to the counter, then took the damaged sword down to his Ford F-150 in the parking garage and locked it in one of the truck vaults overlaying the bed. Getting it repaired would be his reward once he completed the mission.

  When he came back up, Peter was sprawled on the couch, textbook on his chest, asleep. Worn out, no doubt, from the samurai-sword incident. Evan stood for a moment, unsure what to do. Thankfully, the doorbell rang.

  When he answered, Mia looked exhausted. “God, Evan. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “As okay as it’s gonna get,” she said. “How ’bout here?”

  “Everything’s fine. He got a little cut on his thumb.”

  “Oh? From what?”

  Evan cringed a little.

  Fortunately, Mia drifted past him into the penthouse without awaiting an answer. Her gaze moved to her son on the couch. “They’re so quiet when they’re sleeping,” she said.

  She packed up his things, slung the backpack over an arm, then stooped to pick him up. “He’s impossible to wake when he’s like this. Just gotta get him downstairs.” She struggled, his limbs flopping around, the backpack slipping off her shoulder.

  Evan stepped in. “I got him,” he said.

  35

  Hymn to Freedom

  They stepped inside Condo 12B, Evan bearing Peter’s slack body like some distorted pietà, Mia bobbling her briefcase and Peter’s backpack. She kicked off one heeled shoe, then the other.

  “Will you please just put him in bed? I have to get out of these clothes.” She colored. “Not like that. I just mean—”

  “No problem.” Evan carried Peter to his bedroom and nestled him into the race-car bed. He stood a moment in the still of the room, trying to recall if he’d ever slept that soundly.

  He walked back out into the living room, hearing Miles Davis playing somewhere deep in the condo. A bright new Post-it called out from the post by the kitchen pass-through: “Treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping.”

  He wondered what exactly that meant.

  He wandered back to Mia’s bedroom, nearly colliding with her on her way out. With a nervous laugh, she skipped back a half step. She wore a long sleep shirt that drooped to midthigh. They stood close enough that even in the soft light of her bedroom he could make out the faint scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her unbound hair fell across her face, so she took it up in a fist atop her head, her sleep shirt stretching tight across her body. He caught a hint of lemongrass—the smell of her skin, of her.

  The tune ended and another started up, a delicate piano riff.

  “Oh,” Mia said. “Oh, no. Not the Oscar Peterson Trio.” She swayed a little to the music lazily, one hand still holding up her hair. “I had this psych class once in college. A lecture on meditation. You ever meditated?”

  “Some,” he said.

  “The professor, she had us pair off and ask our partner the same question over and over again: ‘What makes you happy?’ Just that, time after time. And then we switched. When it came my turn, my first answer was, ‘Hymn to Freedom.’ This song. Listen to the trill right … here.” She dropped her weight a little, let her hair go. The birthmark at her temple peeked out from a fringe of curls.

  Her gaze was very direct. “Want to play?”

  He said, “Sure.”

  “What makes you happy?”

  He thought, Long-range precision marksmanship.

  “Rhodesian ridgebacks,” he said.

  She made a soft noise, gave a half smile. “What makes you happy?”

  He thought, Jujitsu double-hand parries.

  He said, “French wheat vodka.”

  “What makes you happy?”

  This time there was no space between his thought and the words. He said, “Your freckles.”

  Her mouth parted ever so slightly. She ambled a few steps backward into her room. Starte
d to say something. Stopped herself.

  “Do you want me to go?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do, yes.”

  She stepped into him and him to her, her hands rising to his cheeks even as their mouths met. She pressed her body against his, her face tilted back, lips soft, that wavy hair sliding lushly through his fingers. They broke apart, forehead to forehead, their breath intermingling, and then she said, softly, “No.”

  He pulled back from her.

  She scrunched up her face. “Nononononono.”

  He waited.

  “This is a huge mistake. Huge. I have too many complications to have … complications.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “If Peter saw anything, it would be so confusing for him. I’m sorry, but you should probably go.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning for the door.

  “It’s just really a bad time, and—” Her traffic-monitor hands went up, halting the conversation, her own train of thought. “God, you’re so … unflappable.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “I don’t know. Argue with me. Make it my fault. Get angry.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No,” she said. She blew out a breath, frustrated. “Yes? Maybe?”

  “That doesn’t interest me,” Evan said.

  “Mom?”

  They both swung their gazes to the doorway where Peter had appeared, grinding the heel of a hand into one eye. He squinted at them, exhausted and confused. “What are you guys doing in here?”

  “Oh, honey, hi, yes … um. I was just asking Evan here to help me…” Mia’s hand circled a few times, looking to pluck a good excuse from thin air. “… move the furniture.”

  “Why do you need him?” Peter asked. “Is it heavy furniture?”

  Evan said, “I like to think so.”

  Mia stifled a laugh, covering her mouth with a hand. “Come on,” she said to Peter. “Let’s get you back down.”

  “’Kay.” Peter looked across at Evan. “Night, Evan Smoak.”

  Evan headed out, ruffling Peter’s hair. “Night.”

  When he stepped out into the corridor and closed the door of Mia’s condo behind him, he was enveloped in a sudden quiet. The elevator hummed pleasantly as he ascended.

  When he entered his penthouse, the ambient light through the armored sunscreens reflected faintly off the door of the Sub-Zero, throwing the edge of a child-size handprint into relief on the stainless steel.

  He stood in the near-perfect silence of his condo, staring at the smudge mark, feeling something stir inside, an echo of some ancient battle fought within himself that he’d never known was being waged. In the pristine reflection above the handprint, he saw only himself, wearing an expression of mild vexation. The roll of paper towel, floating on a steel rod beneath the cabinet, beckoned to him.

  But instead of wiping away the mark, he walked down the hall toward the master suite. At the edge of the sink sat the red-spotted tissue from Peter’s cut. Evan stepped past it into the shower, resting his hand on the hot-water lever and rotating it the wrong way.

  Returning to the feeds from the loft, he brought himself up to speed on the ordinary doings of Katrin White. All the while the thought of that dirty handprint, marring the refrigerator, stayed lodged in the back of his thoughts, scratching like a bug fighting its way out.

  He refocused on the monitors, pushing his discomfort away. Once he’d caught up to the feed, he exited the Vault, climbed into bed, and lay in the darkness. The bug scratched and scratched, burrowing through his thoughts, an unwelcome guest. An hour passed. Another.

  Finally Evan got up and padded down the concrete hall to the kitchen.

  He wet a paper towel and eliminated the handprint from the stainless-steel door of the Sub-Zero.

  36

  Special Girl

  Between rickety hillside houses and a run-down school, an ice-cream truck jingled up the tight lane, hailed by a cluster of sprinting kids out for morning recess with their teacher. Evan had checked out the van earlier, buying a water from the elderly driver as a pretext to eyeball the interior. In fact, he’d spent hours surveying the surrounding area, scanning for any sign that a trap was in place. Everything looked normal, or at least Elysium Park’s version of normal. Evan waited for the ice-cream truck to pass, then got out of the Taurus and finally started for Memo Vasquez’s house.

  Evan approached the meet with extreme suspicion, even by his own standards. He’d observed Katrin for more than sixty hours. She’d exhibited not a single sign of deceit. There was the possibility that she was aware that she was being watched, but Evan had installed the loft surveillance himself, ensuring that it was impeccably concealed. For two and a half days, she’d shown no consciousness of the hidden lenses—not the slightest sideways glance or body-language tell—which Evan knew from experience was hard to fake. So now his distrust was sharpened for Memo.

  Evan stepped up onto the creaking porch, knocked twice, and pivoted to the hinge side of the door, putting his shoulder blades to the clapboard. He was a half hour early by design, intending to catch Vasquez off guard.

  The door opened, and Evan swung into the gap, propelling Vasquez backward into the tiny front room.

  Vasquez, a rounded man with a broad graying mustache, held his hands up. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t.”

  Evan heeled the door shut, swept Vasquez’s legs, catching his weight to soften his landing on the floor. He flipped him, frisking him even as his eyes scoured the space. Evan produced soft flex-ties from a front cargo pocket; they wadded up much easier than their stiff plastic counterparts, making them easier to carry. He looped a set around Vasquez’s hands, cinching the braided nylon fabric tight. Vasquez grunted.

  “Stay,” Evan said.

  He moved swiftly through the tiny house. The bare-bones interior contained scarcely the basics. One couch. A card table with two plates, two cups, two forks. Empty cupboards save for a pot and a pan, both scalded. Two mattresses on the floor in the sole bedroom, one with a tangled sleeping bag, the other with a pink teddy bear, its ear chewed to a stiff nub. A stack of cardboard boxes in the corner held T-shirts displaying different baseball players’ names and numbers. Evan moved on to the bathroom. A four-pack of toilet paper on the chipped tile. Sliver of dried soap in the shower stall. Two toothbrushes on the sink, one pink, one blue.

  The house hardly looked lived in, which meant one of two things: Either Vasquez had only the bare essentials, which made sense, since people living below the poverty line didn’t accessorize. Or Slatcher’s team had hastily staged the place to sell the fact that Vasquez resided here.

  From the warped floorboards, Vasquez’s breaths grew labored. Evan hoisted him up and deposited him on the couch. Rolling the rotund man to one side, he removed the wallet from the back pocket of his Carhartt work pants. The wallet’s plastic window held no ID, a corroboration of Vasquez’s illegal status. Instead it displayed a ragged-edged photo of Vasquez with a squat, bowlegged teenage girl hugging him from the side. She had heavily lidded eyes, a flat nasal bridge, her thick lips shaped into a joyful smile, one hand clutching the pink teddy bear. Vasquez embraced her with one arm, his other hand holding a kite string. Their faces, upturned to the wind.

  Vasquez looked at Evan through sagging, wounded eyes. “I thought you were going to help me.”

  Evan said, “And if I trust you, I will.”

  “Trust me?”

  Evan took up a post by a gap in the plywood boarding the front window, keeping his eyes on the street. The earth sloped precipitously here, the houses clinging to the hillside, giving Evan a clean view of the road leading up. Dodger Stadium rose in the distance, a great concrete chalice. The smell of weed laced the faint breeze through the gap.

  “Tell me your story,” Evan said. “Make me believe you.”

  Vasquez strained on the couch, sweat dappling
the front of his T-shirt. “Can you please cut my hands free?”

  Evan cut the flex-ties and returned to his watch at the window. “Where did Morena find you?”

  “I was at a meeting. For the alcoholics.”

  “AA?”

  “Yes. I drove to Las Vegas to bring mi hermana a washing machine. I cannot miss a meeting for one night. Morena—she was there.”

  “Why was she there?”

  “She said she went to the meeting to find someone like me. Someone who needed help. Who was on the verge of the slipping.”

  Evan had to admit, it was an ingenious place for Morena to seek out people on the edge. Even so, he couldn’t keep skepticism from coloring his tone. “You announced your problems? In front of the group?”

  “No. But I wanted to drink. And she perhaps sensed how badly I was.” Perspiration sparkled on his forehead. “I am driven to drink when I feel how useless … how powerless I am.”

  “Why do you feel powerless?”

  “You see I am not a rich man.” He jerked his chin to indicate the humble surroundings. “But I am an honest man. It is just me and my Isa. From the picture. Her mother passed away during the birth. I brought Isa here for a better life. It is hard for her in Mexico because of her … condition. I make los Dodgers T-shirts and sell them in the parking lot before the games. I rent a small space in el distrito de textiles to make the T-shirts. One night the bad men come to my shop. They had wrapped the—what’s the word?—yes, the packages. Of la cocaína. They say la policía are on them. They need to hide the packages in my shop. They have the guns and the blade, like this.” His thick fingers measured off a bowie knife. “El jefe put the blade in the face of my Isa. If I tell anyone, he say they will take her. He do not say for what. Just—they will take her.”

  His eyes glimmered, and his breathing grew wet. “I did not know what to do. If I refuse, they will take my Isa. If I run, they promise they will hunt me. If I go to la policía, I will be deported. So I say … I say okay. I will do this.”