Out of the Dark Read online

  Big Face let his boots thunk to the floor, and he leaned forward over the blotter. “Do you know what you did wrong?”

  Trevon didn’t, and he wanted so bad to cry but he didn’t, because we don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.

  Instead he said, “No, sir.”

  “I’m an importer. In a particularly cutthroat business.” Big Face’s voice was calm, but it was fake calm, like when Uncle Joe-Joe got real mad. It sounded weird, stuffed-up-like but also deep. “Do you know how long I’ve been doing business successfully?”

  Trevon shook his head.

  “Forty-four years. How do you think I’ve gotten by this long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it’s by letting myself be taken advantage of?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Last Friday you were working the night shift at SoCal First Bonded Warehouse when my container arrived from Suriname.”

  “Yes, sir. Intermodular container, series one, number BL322-401. It weighed in at 29,456 kilograms. External dimensions: nineteen feet and ten point five inches by eight feet by eight feet and six inches. Internal dimensions—”

  The voice was quiet, but it cut him off like a blade: “Do you know what it held?”

  “Frozen fish.”

  “Sure,” Big Face said. “Eighteen million dollars of frozen fish. My profits of forty-four years put on the line for this deal.”

  Trevon said, “That’s expensive fish.”

  Big Face breathed a few times. A vein squiggled in his throat, and his face was red. He looked like he might explode, but then he breathed himself back to calm. “Yes,” he said. “And this container—my container holding my profits of forty-four years—was supposed to go in the front and right out the back before the customs officials got there for the CBP examination. That was my understanding with Chava.”

  “Chava got food poisoning.”

  “But he told you what you were to do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I had another container, a replacement container, right there, ready to be scrutinized. You just had to smile and look the other way.” Big Face picked up a letter opener and put the pointy tip into his finger and twisted it. “But you didn’t, did you?”

  Trevon’s throat was dry. He couldn’t find his voice, so he shook his head.

  “Instead you called customs and went home for the night. And now here we are. Me with my problems. And you with yours.” Big Face’s teeth clenched. “Do you think my … trading partners will cover my losses? Do you think they’ll say, ‘Oh, there was a mix-up? That’s okay. We’ll cover your losses. We’ll send you another shipment.’”

  “Oh!” Trevon said. “One time I bought berries at Trader Joe’s, and when I got home the ones on the bottom were all moldy-like, and so I took ’em back.…”

  Big Face’s eyes got wide, and Trevon figured he didn’t like his story so he stopped telling it ’cuz that was something Mama had taught him about reading social cues.

  Mama.

  Big Face said, “You didn’t listen to Chava.”

  Trevon wiped at his forehead again. “Where’s Chava now?”

  “Chava? Chava is dead.”

  Trevon felt his throat closing up, trying to make him cry, but he wouldn’t. “He is? Oh, no. Musta been really bad food poisoning.”

  Muscley One and Raw One laughed behind him, but then Big Face looked up at them and they went silent.

  “In direct violation of Chava’s orders—of my orders—you called customs,” Big Face said. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “’Cuz that’s what the rules say. And it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Are you happy with where that got you?”

  “I don’t … I don’t know. What are you gonna do to me?”

  “To you? Oh, I’m not gonna touch a hair on your head.” Big Face leaned forward, and his chair made a creaking noise. “Instead I’m gonna tell you a story. When some piece of shit commits an act of terror in Israel, do you know what the Israeli army does?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They demolish the houses of the raghead’s family. Every last family member. Every last house. Because, you see, merely punishing the offender doesn’t work as a deterrent. It doesn’t help ensure that this will never happen again.” Big Face took a few more breaths. “What the Israeli army does is a fine policy. But my trading partners? They make what’s going on in the Middle East look like a playground. They could well imagine that with my coffers low and my merchandise flow interrupted I am weak. They are uniquely attuned to smelling weakness. So I require a show of strength. One that reminds them that I am not weak but that I am to be feared. Which requires measures much more severe than those used by the Israelis.”

  Trevon felt pins and needles all over his body.

  “Jesus Christ.” Big Face looked up at his friends. “I’m dealing with someone who is literally too stupid to appreciate how fucked he is.” He stood. “I’ll try’n break it down for you clearly, Trevon. Everything that happened to your family? Everything that is going to happen? It’s all your fault.”

  Trevon tried to talk, but his throat was all dried up. He swallowed and tried again. “What else is gonna happen?”

  “I’m going to eliminate your people from the face of the earth. I will kill every relative and loved one you have. Wipe away any trace that you exist outside of the terrible thoughts bouncing around inside your damaged, useless skull.”

  Trevon thought of his cousin Aisha on the lawn chair and Auntie Tisha on the lawn and Mama in her chair.

  Mama.

  Big Face interrupted his thoughts. “Your grandmother? In the nursing home?”

  Trevon’s voice sounded like a croak. “Gran’mama?”

  “My associates mixed weed killer into her morning yogurt. She’ll die, certainly. But it will take hours.”

  Trevon shook his head back and forth hard, trying to make the pictures in it go away.

  “Your brother Leo? Home right now with his jaw wired shut? My friends here replaced his meds with emetics. Can you imagine what it’s like to vomit again and again when it has nowhere to go?” Big Face twisted that letter opener into the pad of his finger, bringing up a tiny bead of blood. “It took him nearly twenty minutes to suffocate.”

  Trevon waited, forgetting to breathe, his chest burning and burning.

  Somewhere inside his brain, he realized that Big Face hadn’t mentioned Kiara, which was good ’cuz Kiara was his favorite and she was in Guatemala helping folks and she barely never even checked e-mails no more.

  She was safe. Kiara was safe.

  But Gran’mama. And Leo. And Mama.

  Mama.

  Big Face was talking some more. “Your lineage has been exterminated. And not just backwards but into the future. Forever. If you ever date, if you ever marry, if you ever have kids, we will be there. We will take everything and everyone from you as you took forty-four years of hard work from me.”

  Big Face nodded, and Muscley One and Raw One came forward and grabbed Trevon’s wrists to control his hands. He screamed and tried to fight, but they were way, way too strong.

  They shoved Raw One’s folding knife into Trevon’s hand and made him grab the sticky handle before taking it away. Then they did the same thing with a machete and a gun and a pill bottle. They put all the stuff into a plastic bag.

  Big Face nodded at the bag. “Do you understand what this means?”

  Trevon shook his head.

  “These murder weapons have your fingerprints on them. If you go to the cops, if you talk to anyone, we will make sure these weapons are found. You will be known as the psycho retard who murdered his entire family. And I can promise you, you will not fare well in prison among real murderers. And rapists.” He licked the dot of blood from his fingertip. “Do you understand now?”

  It took some effort for Trevon to make his head move up and down.

  “Maybe one day you’ll decide that you can t
ell a police officer. Share your burden with a co-worker. Maybe you’ll think you can run away, leave the city, go to Mexico. If you think I won’t find out, think again. You don’t do what I do over four decades without building connections everywhere. I will know.”

  Big Face walked around his desk now in front of Trevon and crossed his arms and looked down at him. He smelled of fancy cologne.

  “You exist now for one purpose and one purpose only. To be an advertisement to my trading partners, to my workers, to the world in which I move that no one is ever to take steps to harm my interests. You will wake each morning and breathe and suffer as a living testimony to my power.”

  Trevon leaned over and vomited on his shoes.

  Big Face said, “Get this imbecile the fuck out of my office.”

  Muscley One and Raw One lifted Trevon by the arms. His legs didn’t work, so they carry-dragged him back out through the front room, into the gravel lot, and over to the truck.

  Muscley One reached into the backseat and threw a little towel at Trevon’s face. “You’re cleaning your ass up before you get in my new truck.”

  Trevon wiped at his mouth and his shirt. Then he held the little towel tight in his hands as they put the trash liner back over his head and pushed him in. The air smelled like the blue tree he’d seen dangling from the rearview mirror.

  As they drove off, the Scaredy Bugs went crazy inside Trevon, running around so fast he wished he could unzip his skin and crawl out. He tried to hum to himself, but it didn’t help any. His hands were shaking and his arms were shaking and his legs were shaking. He twisted the little towel between his fists and rocked himself, but that didn’t help any.

  The Scaredy Bugs had won.

  15

  Outside the Purview

  After a roundabout trip home—an early-morning flight from D.C. into San Francisco, a commuter plane to Long Beach Airport, a vehicle switch at a long-term-parking lot, and another at one of his many safe houses—Evan drove his Ford pickup through the Wilshire Corridor. The harsh midday sun glinted off the glass of the condo high-rises thrusting up on either side of the boulevard.

  Evan turned in to the porte cochere of his own building, the pompously named Castle Heights Residential Tower.

  Mia Hall sat on the bench by the front doors with her nine-year-old son, Peter. They were eating ice cream, though more of Peter’s seemed to be dripping over his fist than remained on the cone. He smiled a chocolaty clown smile and gave a wave that would have been visible several blocks away.

  Evan slowed as he passed, the valet jumping at the chance to—for once—park Evan’s truck. Evan put a traffic-cop “stop” hand up at the valet, who sank dejectedly back into his chair, and then looked through the passenger window. It couldn’t roll down. The Kevlar armor that Evan had hung inside the door panels prevented the glass from retracting. That was one of a variety of hidden security measures with which he’d outfitted the F-150. At a glance it looked like a regular pickup.

  Just as Evan looked like a regular guy.

  Peter leapt up from the bench at the sight of him. “Evan Smoak!”

  Evan opened his door and stepped up onto the runner so he was looking at Mia and Peter over the roof of the truck.

  Mia was eating mint chip and doing an elegant job of it. Her wavy chestnut hair had been cut shorter, which accented her cheekbones and her wide-set eyes.

  Not that he paid attention to things like that.

  “I’ll park and come back around?” he said, realizing too late that he’d pulled the sentence up at the end like a question.

  “Sure,” Mia said. “But don’t expect me to share my ice cream.”

  Evan slid back into his seat. He tipped the valet a twenty, because it wasn’t the kid’s fault that Evan wouldn’t let him touch the war machine, and then he zipped down into the subterranean parking lot.

  He came up the stairs, through the lobby, and out to the front of the building. Peter ran at him. “Catch me!”

  The kid, sticky fingers and all, was airborne.

  Evan barely had time to get his arms up before Peter koala-clamped onto him. Evan patted his back twice awkwardly and set him down. It took Evan a great effort not to scrutinize the chocolate finger marks left on his shirt.

  “Where were you?” Peter asked in his raspy voice.

  At the White House, plotting to execute the president.

  “A boring work thing,” Evan said.

  Mia paused from attending to her cone, her lips slightly pursed. Her gaze, which she’d cultivated as a Grade III district attorney, conveyed equal measures of incisiveness and skepticism. “No luggage, huh?”

  He couldn’t tell if there was a suspicious edge in her voice or if he was reading into it.

  Mia did not know what precisely Evan did professionally, but she knew that he was not an importer of industrial cleaning supplies as he claimed to be. Over the years she’d gleaned that his actual work fell outside the purview of what she or her office would find acceptable.

  Or legal.

  Evan mustered a smile, though he felt it sitting flatly on his face. “I travel light.”

  “As one does. For boring work things.”

  Peter was tugging at Evan’s chocolate-stained shirt. “Guess what happened to Ryan?”

  “What happened to him?” Evan asked.

  “No, not Boy Ryan. Girl Ryan.”

  “What happened to Girl Ryan?”

  “In Ms. Bracegirdle’s class—”

  “Wait,” Evan said. “Stop right there. You do not have a teacher named Ms. Bracegirdle.”

  “I swear to God I’m not lying,” Peter said.

  “It’s true,” Mia said, rising from the bench at last, leaving her satchel briefcase behind. “It seems Roscomare Elementary went with a Dickensian motif this hiring season. I’m thinking if Peter fails out, he can become a chimney sweep.”

  “So Girl Ryan?” Peter continued, undeterred by the sidebar. “Girl Ryan’s dad went on a trip, and, like, he always brings home presents, because, you know, that’s what dads do.”

  Peter’s own father had died six years ago, and though the boy’s delivery was just-the-facts-ma’am impassive, Evan thought he might have detected a note of longing in his voice. Out of the corner of his eye, Evan saw a shift in Mia’s face, emotion flickering to the surface.

  Peter steamrolled ahead. “And her dad got her…” He paused for dramatic effect, hands fanned like a magician before the prestige, charcoal eyes wide, his blond hair lank save for the perennial cowlick in the back that hinted at improper combing. “A Eiffel Tower kit. You build it with wood microbeams—”

  “Microbeams,” Evan said.

  “I know, right? And you cut ’em yourself and glue ’em, and then when you’re done, the whole thing lights up, and she brought it into class. But during nutrition break, Jesse M. played with it and it caught fire.”

  “So what’d Ms. Peerybingle do?”

  “Bracegirdle,” Peter said. “She got really mad and turned all red. Which looks even funnier since she has orange hair that sticks out and sorta a mustache. She looks like the Lorax.”

  “Who’s the Lorax?”

  “You know, the guy who saved the trees and flew away. And so Ms. Bracegirdle stomped out the Eiffel Tower, but she wears these hippie skirts, and, you know.”

  “First-degree burns,” Mia said. “Class canceled.”

  “So that’s why you’re eating ice cream?” Evan asked. “Celebrating the injury of Ms. Flintwitch?”

  “We are celebrating a half day off school,” Mia said as Peter ran into the lobby to throw out his ice-cream wrapper. “And. The successful conclusion of a particularly important case of mine.”

  “Which was?”

  “Stalking, criminal threats, forcible rape, three counts of injuring a spouse, dissuading a witness—who happens to be the defendant’s four-year-old daughter—from reporting a crime. Seven felony counts. It was tough for a rat’s nest of reasons I won’t bore you with. But.
I went seven for seven. That’s what happens when I get mad. And then? I eat mint chip ice cream.”

  Mia popped the end of the cone into her mouth and came closer. She wore what he’d grown to recognize as her court outfit—shadow-striped slacks and jacket with a sleek silhouette, fitted blouse, no jewelry. Freckles were scattered across her nose in an undisciplined fashion, which he found unbearably charming. Her wavy hair was unbound and by all conventional standards should have been considered a mess but instead looked amazing.

  “This was one of the ones that keeps you up nights,” she said. “I mean, the domestic-abuse photos alone.” She paused. “I interviewed the four-year-old. Dirty clothes, tangled hair, and she had this untreated rash covering one whole side of her torso. When the social worker asked her what her name was…” She shook her head, her eyes misting. “This beautiful little girl said it was ‘Idiot.’” She looked away, squinted the incipient tears into submission, took in an uneven breath. “Worst thing I ever saw.”

  Evan gave her a moment. Then he said, “I’m glad it was you who caught the case. And that you’re good at what you do.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “There’s always the next one. And the next one. Guys like that piece of shit, they think they’re above the law. You know what I mean?” She caught herself, smirked darkly. “Don’t answer that.”

  She held out her arms, and he hugged her, and she leaned into him. He could feel her stomach against his, and it was the best thing he’d felt in a month and change.

  There had been a time when their chemistry had quickened to the point that it seemed they might be on the verge of an actual relationship, whatever that was, but the conflict between her profession and what she knew of his made it impossible. There were whole swaths of his life about which she could make no inquiries, and if she had, he could offer no answers. If she learned anything about it, she’d be obligated to prosecute him. And she also thought correctly that if they were together, the dark underworld in which Evan operated—even the tiny bit she knew of it—could pose a threat to Peter. On that front Evan also agreed.