Into the Fire Page 3

  As promised, she insisted on going dutch, but she let him buy dinner the next night back in Los Angeles and the night after that. “No strings attached,” he said when he reached for the bill.

  “You mean I don’t have to sleep with you?” she said.

  “You don’t even have to make eye contact with me.”

  “Thank God,” she said, leaning into him.

  It wasn’t a fast and furious courtship, but their lives had slowly vined together. Texts during the day. A change of clothes left in a bottom drawer. Grocery shopping together.

  And then more.

  They’d been together almost a year when, after a midnight screening of Alien at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, she’d snuggled into him on the picnic blanket and quoted one of their favorite songs: “‘Let’s grow old together and die at the same time.’”

  He looked into her eyes and saw what she was really asking. “Prop plane going down over the Serengeti?”

  She smiled. “I was thinking tragic scuba accident whilst on geriatric travel tour.”

  In the flickering light of the projector there among the cinephiles and tombstones, he’d felt a surge of gratitude so intense it brought tears to his eyes. “Violet McKenna,” he said, finding a knee. “Will you?”

  “Hell yeah I will.”

  They kissed, and the folks around them, shushing them violently moments before, had burst into applause.

  After that, in their occasional overlaps, the Merriweather clan took to Violet. How could they not? In her, it seemed, they’d finally found something to recommend Max. They started inviting him—them—around more, folding him back into the family with Waffle Sundays and Taco Tuesdays. “Don’t screw it up,” his father told him at every parting, nodding at Violet and wearing a smile that wasn’t a smile at all.

  On the other hand, Violet’s parents, old money at least by California standards, disliked the idea of the relationship. That meant little to Violet. Between her kindergarten-teacher’s salary and Max’s construction work, they were getting by just fine, freeing her to cut the strings by which her parents had controlled her. If anything, their disapproval lent a Romeo and Juliet sheen to the courtship.

  When they’d asked Max to the inevitable brunch at the Sierra Madre Four Seasons, Max agreed, hoping for a fresh start. Once the twelve-dollar orange juice was poured, Clark cleared his throat. “So, Maxwell. What exactly is your angle?”

  Sensing now that it would be a short meal, Max folded the starched napkin back along its ironed lines and rested it on his place setting. “My angle is I love your daughter.”

  Gwendolyn blinked a few times through the amber-tinted sunglasses that she wore day and night. “If you saw fit to move on, we’d certainly be willing to ease the transition. Maybe buy you a car.”

  “A car,” Max repeated, unsure that he’d heard correctly.

  “I know it feels quite romantic between the two of you,” she said, sipping her Arnold Palmer, “but we’re from different worlds. Violet’s a complicated girl. How are you going to take care of her? By loving her?”

  She snorted as if that were the most naïve thing in the world.

  Which of course it was.

  Max took it not as an insult but a challenge. He worked extra shifts, put in overtime every chance he got. After a brief ceremony at the Van Nuys courthouse, they took a couple of friends to lunch at Chili’s to celebrate. They didn’t need anything more than that.

  With Violet’s encouragement, Max used what little they’d socked away to pay for night classes at Cal State Northridge. His twelve-hour days stretched to sixteen. He was going to get a B.A. and then maybe go to law school from there. With her at his side, he could be the person he’d always been afraid to be.

  When she came out of the bathroom one morning, hopping up and down with excitement and holding a purple wand with a plus sign for positive, he actually broke down and cried like a baby. They bought plastic plugs to cover the outlets, started reading about sleep training and homemade baby food, cleared out the walk-in closet, and painted the walls lavender.

  Those first notes of optimism, stirred into being by George Thorogood and a few lukewarm Bud Lights, had become a melody and now a symphony. They had become the soundtrack of his life.

  Little did he know he had only three more months of bliss before it would all go to hell.

  * * *

  Max came out of his reverie there in his truck, parked between two grocery store dumpsters, breathing in the smell of garbage. The alley walls rose up, crowding his windows, and the air pressed in on him, claustrophobic and thick.

  The one contact Grant had given him had a voice mail that was no longer taking messages. He had an envelope he wasn’t supposed to open. And a guy named “The Terror” on his tail.

  Max gripped the wheel again and then slumped forward and rested his forehead on his knuckles. He hadn’t been terribly fond of his cousin, but he owed it to Grant to figure something out as much as he owed it to himself to not get killed.

  He needed answers.

  Which meant going to the last place he wanted to be right now.

  5

  Social Environment

  Evan sat in the darkness of the subterranean parking garage under his residential high-rise, grocery bag on the passenger seat next to him. Line-caught salmon, lemon, dill, capers, butter, cracked black pepper, sparkling water. He caught a whiff of the meal to come, savory and rich. It would pair nicely with a smooth vodka, something grape-based.

  It was delightful here in his truck, a Ford F-150 pickup reinforced with as many discreet security measures as his penthouse. Right now, snugged into a parking slot between two pillars, he could be anyone else in the world coming back to the comforts of home, the evening ahead promising nothing but a well-cooked meal and a warm flush from a touch of alcohol.

  But he couldn’t be anyone else in the world.

  At least not yet.

  Grocery bag clutched in his arm, Evan started across the parking garage beneath the Castle Heights Residential Tower. At the top of the brief run of stairs, he hesitated at the door to the lobby, readying himself to switch personas. Among the building’s residents, he was known as a tenant who led a bland life as an importer of industrial cleaning supplies. He had an average build, the better to blend in, and kept his muscles toned but not bulky. Just another ordinary guy in his thirties, not too handsome.

  As he took a moment to seat himself firmly in his alias, he realized that he was on edge. Entering the humdrum world of Castle Heights could do that to him. Compensating for the wind drift of a sniper round was second nature to Evan. But engaging in small talk by the mail slots was torture.

  He stepped inside.

  The highly active and highly invasive homeowners’ association had recently voted to upgrade the lobby furniture in an effort to create a more social environment.

  Evan didn’t like social environments.

  Sure enough, a clot of residents had formed on the armless love seats by the Nespresso machine. Ida Rosenbaum of 6G, a wizened turtle of a woman, exhibited a vintage marcasite and amethyst necklace to cooing onlookers. “I finally got to the safe-deposit box to haul this stuff out,” she was saying. “I mean, I’m not getting any younger. Say what you will about my Herb, may he rest in peace, but he had an eye for fashion.”

  Evan slipped inside, easing the door shut with tactical precision. There were only two people in the building of interest to him—Mia Hall and her nine-year-old son, Peter. Mia and Evan had engaged in something more than a dalliance but less than a relationship. He found her mind and her body unreasonably appealing, and it seemed she had found some appeal in him, too. Unfortunately, their rapport was complicated by the fact that—as a DA—if she ever uncovered who he really was, she would have to have him arrested. After she’d gleaned the contours of his extracurriculars, they’d settled on an uneasy don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy that had worked out about as well as the Clintonian original. Their non-dalliance non-rel
ationship had not ended harmoniously.

  Evan was relieved to see that Mia was not among the crew roosting on the new lobby furniture now. Lowering his head, he beelined for the elevator.

  “Evan! What’s the big rush, chief?”

  Evan froze, a prey instinct, as if he could blend into the background.

  Johnny Middleton, who lived in 8E with his retiree father, spread his arms, a salesman greeting a customer on the showroom floor. His trademark sweat suit, which sported the logo of a mixed-martial-arts studio, was hiked up at the midline to reveal a middle-aged paunch. “Ida here was just showing off some of her old-school bling.”

  “Oh, don’t bother him,” Ida said with a dismissive wave of her liver-spotted hand. “He’s not interested in anyone but himself. Isn’t that right? You’re rushing up to your penthouse. No time to kibitz.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Evan said.

  The haze of her potent lilac perfume permeated the lobby. “Too good for the rest of us.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Lorilee Smithson, 3F, slipped a yoga-toned arm around Evan’s biceps. She’d been plastic-surgeried into a simulacrum of an attractive fifty-year-old, which might very well have been her age. She could also have been eighty.

  “Ev,” she said, “I’m charged with paper goods for Wednesday night’s HOA meeting, and as such I need to volunt-ask you to bring some nibbles, okay?”

  Ev? Volunt-ask? Nibbles?

  Deciphering Castle Heights argot was harder than figuring out Cantonese inflection. Enduring it was worse than being waterboarded.

  Evan cleared his throat, an uncharacteristic nonverbal tell, and said, “What?”

  She repeated the request. Then added, “Something simple. Ya know, homemade cookies, maybe a crudités platter.”

  “Crudités platter,” he repeated.

  He looked at all those faces looking at him. Living outside the mainstream had left him ill-equipped for everyday interactions, but he knew that some kind of nicety was required. He cleared his throat, summoned the words. “Good to see you all.”

  Mrs. Rosenbaum snorted.

  Evan backed away, offering a little wave that he instantly regretted. He turned around in front of the elevators and found himself nose to nose with Mia.

  She was brought up short as well, phone pressed to her cheek, bulging satchel briefcase in hand. Inexplicably, she was carrying a plaster of paris rendering of California in a pie tin.

  After they weathered the awkward hitch and stepped into the elevator together, Evan said, “I’m told GPS is more reliable.”

  Mia looked at him blankly. He gestured at the state sculpture. She looked down at it and then at him. She did not smile.

  Instead she returned to her phone call with renewed vigor. “I don’t care if he has brunch with the mayor every Sunday at the Bel-Air Country Club. I don’t care if he owns the Bel-Air Country Club. I have a detective who’s not afraid to request a search warrant of his place of residence. It’d be nice if my own boss weren’t more skittish about blowback than I am.”

  Her tone confirmed what he already knew: Mia was not a DA he’d want to tangle with.

  “Look, Don,” she continued, “we don’t know how far the tentacles reach on this thing. I’m busting my ass every night. I have Peter in math lab after school and the sitter picking him up from there. I’ve been running around all day with a friggin’ state replica because the plaster of paris didn’t have time to set this morning, and am I complaining?… Okay. But I mean before this?… Right. All I’m asking is that you let me do my job.”

  There was a time that she might have gotten off the phone when she saw Evan. There was a time when she might have smiled at him. Made direct eye contact, even.

  Instead they stood side by side, eyes on the floor-indicator lights above. He could smell her lemongrass lotion and the clean scent of her shampoo. Her lush, wavy chestnut hair was clipped up messily, escaped strands falling across her left eye. The highlights showed through, blond and burgundy.

  Not that he paid attention.

  As Mia shifted under her load, the backs of their knuckles brushed.

  They both tensed, and she took a half step away.

  Evan could hear her boss talking through the phone, not the words but the drone of his voice.

  She looked across at Evan, and for an instant emotion flickered through her eyes—something like wistfulness.

  Then she focused on the call again. “I understand,” she said. “But I only have so much patience.”

  Indeed, Evan thought.

  The elevator reached the twelfth floor.

  She gave Evan a cursory nod and stepped out. He listened to her walking away, the firm insistence of her voice. She’d head into 12B with a big grin. Her condo would smell of Play-Doh, some scented candle, and a trace of whatever the sitter had made Peter for dinner—probably chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. There’d be laundry on the couch, dishes in the sink, at least one crayon stomped into the carpet. To Mia’s dismay and secret delight, Peter would still be up, wired on sugar, waiting for a bedtime story, a glass of water, an under-the-bed check. She’d kiss him on the forehead beneath the cowlick swirl of his lank bangs and tuck him into his race-car bed. Then she’d shower off the workday, listen to some jazz, maybe the Oscar Peterson Trio.

  Slide into bed.

  How odd life was to bring him and Mia so close to something they could never have.

  He rose to the twenty-first floor, the smell of lemongrass lingering, and strode down the hall. When he closed his front door behind him, it met the frame with a weighty thud, sealing him in.

  The dark penthouse yawned before him, hard surfaces, high ceilings, and glass. Not a crumb on the counters. Not a smudge marring the windows. Not a drawer left open an inch or a millimeter.

  It was immensely comforting. And bereft of human warmth.

  How odd that both things could be true at once.

  After this mission was over, he’d have plenty of time to figure out how to integrate those opposites. Until then it was a waiting game, leaving him frozen between one chapter and the next.

  His footsteps echoed as if off the walls of a crypt. He reached the kitchen island and pulled out one of the barstools. It screeched on the concrete floor. He sat in the darkness.

  After a time he checked the RoamZone, but it showed no missed calls.

  He put it away and folded his hands.

  He would have liked something to do.

  6

  So Much More to Wreck

  The Spanish-style mansion, set behind a front lawn big enough to host a polo match, had a 1920s glamour. Through countless renovations Max had heard about countless times, Grant and Jill had maintained the original integrity of the house, whatever the hell that meant. All Max knew was that he’d gotten lost once trying to find the powder room.

  Crickets sawed away in the lush landscape rimming the grass, an ominous trill vibrating the night air. Behind the curtains of the big front room, Max could see shadows moving around, the bustle of a household fresh in mourning. He heard the voice of Michelle, the oldest, home from Tufts law school. She was a second-year now. She appeared to be comforting her mother. Even over the crickets, Max could hear Jill’s choked sobs.

  He couldn’t imagine her without her husband, and he doubted she could either.

  Pausing on the walk, Max checked the street behind him once more in case he’d been followed. An image flashed through his mind—the Terror savaging his mattress with that big knife—and he had to remind himself to take long, even breaths.

  Stepping up onto the broad porch, he rang the bell.

  Chimes sounded musically in the vast foyer, ringing off the high ceiling.

  A moment later Michelle pulled open the architectural door, her face red and puffy. She wore a fluttery sweater the length of a duster, clipped at the front. At the sight of him, she lightened. “Mighty Max,” she said, her breath hitching, and then she hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here. M
om’s losing her shit over the funeral arrangements. Like, who cares if we have a lily wreath on the coffin? And no one wants to talk about just being sad. And, like, missing him, you know? I mean, given everything, I know I’m super emotional, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

  He shot another glance at the dark street and closed the door behind them. Then he looked her in the eye. “Don’t let anyone else tell you how you’re supposed to feel, okay?”

  Her voice came out little-girl small. “Okay.”

  Jill’s voice echoed in crisply from the other room. “Who’s that?”

  Max walked past the grand staircase and into the immense front room. He wasn’t sure what it was called—a sitting room? a parlor?—but there Jill was, propped on one of the immense couches, her nose rimmed red, a cluster of broken blood vessels etching a fragile pattern beneath one eye. To her side a crystal vase the size of a trash can was home to a clutch of curly willow branches that resembled fingernails.

  One of the house staff passed through the swinging door into the kitchen. As it waved open, Max heard voices—a family get-together he’d not been told about. Michelle hovered at the edge of the big room, arms crossed, nibbling her bottom lip.

  Before he could offer his condolences, Jill waved a wrung-out tissue in his direction. “Why can’t anyone do anything? I mean, he was scared for days. And you know Grant—he didn’t get scared.”

  Max felt as though he’d walked in mid-monologue. From what Michelle had told him, maybe he had.

  “That’s why he was heading to the cabin in Big Bear,” Jill continued. “To keep us safe. Because someone was after him.”

  Max’s throat felt suddenly parched. “Who?”

  “He didn’t tell me. He’d never discuss specifics like that with us.” Jill eyed Max pointedly. “He always put his family first.”

  An accusation.

  Even so, she was right. Max knew that Grant would never bring anything explosive near his home, and it seemed the Terror had surmised the same.