Into the Fire Page 9

  Before Evan could react, a rap sheet had magically come into being on the monitor at his elbow. Papazian’s priors included violent rape, battery, possession of illegal firearms. Numerous plead-out charges and a few short prison stints. Current address unknown.

  By the time Evan looked back, Joey had decrypted the barcode image from the ticket, revealing a six-digit number.

  Evan said, “How…?”

  Joey shot up her wait-a-sec finger, and he clamped his mouth shut. Now she was using the six-digit passenger ID and Papazian’s last name to log into the airline’s website. All of a sudden, Evan was looking at Michael Papazian’s frequent-flier number, travel preferences, credit-card information.

  And address.

  “You’ll find him there.” She flicked a hand at another monitor in the circle that showed Papazian’s Netflix account. He was currently streaming an episode of Luther. “Distracted.”

  Evan shoved up from his lean on the desk. He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Good work.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was.” Her tone was morose, her face sullen.

  Like Evan, she’d come up through a variety of foster homes. It had been harder for her because of assholes like Papazian. She didn’t like to talk about it, and he never pushed her.

  She glared at the Instagram picture. “Before you kill that predacious douchenozzle,” she said, “tell him that the adjective is ‘Hawaiian.’”

  Evan looked at her blankly.

  Her lip curled with disgust. “As in ‘Heading to Maui to slay some fresh young Hawaiian ass.’”

  Evan cleared his throat and said, gently, “I’ll do that.”

  16

  System Overload

  Michael Papazian nodded off on his couch, his injured arm supported by a pillow. On the TV, Idris Elba stalked through gray London streets.

  One room over, the screen door clanged softly in the desert breeze. There was nothing beyond his porch but a dirt driveway and a half mile of dunes leading to a trailer park and the horizontal bar of the 138 Freeway as it cut through Palmdale.

  The screen clanged once more, louder than before, straightening Papazian on the couch and tightening his good hand around the Browning P-35 pistol resting on the cushion beside him.

  He stared across the unlit stretch toward his front door.

  First there was darkness.

  Then a pair of hands, pale and floating.

  A face.

  Two strokes of the shoulders.

  A form, advancing. Papazian found his feet, squinting at the man inside his house.

  The man stopped in the doorway of the room, his lower half still lost to shadow. The faint glow from the TV played tricks, illuminating edges of his face, a collection of Picasso parts.

  “I wanted to resume our interaction,” the man said. “The one we started outside Grant Merriweather’s office. I want to know who the Terror is. I want to know how many of you there are in the money-laundering ring. I want names and addresses.”

  Papazian lifted the pistol and aimed it with a shaking fist. He wasn’t used to shooting with his left hand. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with, chief.”

  “Also,” the man said, “the adjective is ‘Hawaiian.’”

  Papazian cocked his head. “You cray-cray, bitch?”

  “You’re in a heightened state of alert,” the man said calmly. “Your heart rate’s up over a hundred beats a second. Which means your fine motor skills have already deteriorated and your gross motor is compromised.”

  Papazian jabbed the gun at the air. “Say what, motherfucker?”

  Evan stepped forward into the room. They faced each other across the couch.

  Riding Evan’s back in a sling, angled like a samurai sword, was a matte black Benelli M1 combat shotgun. He made no move for it.

  Instead he studied the pistol aimed at him, the barrel tip three feet from his forehead. The Browning P-35, known more widely as a Hi-Power, was one of the first successful double-stack mag nine mils. The thirteen-round capacity made it a favorite of many of the world’s militaries since World War II, a sidearm of choice from Aussies to Venezuelans. Nonstop production in Belgium and licensed countries for nearly a century had put it so heavily into circulation that it could be considered nontraceable.

  As with all self-loading semiautos, the Hi-Power cannot fire when the slide isn’t locked fully forward in battery. A mechanical disconnector prevents the hammer from dropping.

  A design element easily exploited when someone held the weapon within reach.

  Evan shot his hand out, cupped the top of the slide, and pushed it back a quarter inch.

  Papazian tugged the trigger, but nothing happened. His face frozen with disbelief, he yanked it once more, the pistol bobbing in their shared grip.

  Evan twisted the weapon to the side, hyperextending Papazian’s elbow, and jammed the heel of his free hand into the forearm. There was a grinding of bone and tendon and the pop of the radial head unseating.

  Nursemaid’s elbow redux.

  Now Papazian had a matching set.

  Evan stripped the pistol from Papazian’s hand and flung it behind him. It clattered across the floor, pinging off the wall in the darkness. Evan reached over his shoulder, unsheathed the shotgun from the sling, and whipped it down to rest on Papazian’s shoulder.

  The boom was bone-shuddering. Behind Papazian digital London transformed into a cloud of splinters.

  Papazian staggered but kept his feet.

  Evan said, “Now you’re near two hundred beats per minute. Your cognitive processing is starting to go. Time dilation, visual narrowing, auditory exclusion.”

  He popped the shotgun up over Papazian’s head, thunking it down on the other shoulder as if knighting him. He pulled the trigger again, the stock kicking back. Another boom, this one biblical.

  Evan raised his voice so Papazian would hear over the concussive din in his head. “You’re spiked over two fifty now. System overload. Perceptually shut down. Full-blown tunnel vision. Voiding instinct. That warmth you feel spreading down your leg? You might think you’ve already been shot, but it’s just piss.”

  Papazian’s eyes looked like dinner plates. His breaths came in hiccups.

  Evan lowered the shotgun to aim at his knee. “Next time it won’t be.”

  * * *

  Mr. Omar answered his door wearing boxer shorts and a tattered blue bathrobe that was oddly feminine. He blinked up at the two men in the hallway. Cuffed sleeves, pressed slacks, polished shoes.

  The taller of the two wore an LAPD baseball cap. “I’m Detective Nuñez, and this is Detective Brust.” For good measure, he nudged the badge dangling around his neck on a lanyard. “I understand you’re the landlord here?”

  Omar scratched at his thigh. “Landlord no. Building manager yes.” He smiled, revealed perfectly straight, large yellow teeth. “Instead of cashing the checks, I deal with much hassles. Not a fair trade-off if you ask me, my friend. But my rent is free, and—”

  Brust tried on a smile as he cut in. “Have you seen Max Merriweather?”

  “No. His apartment has been broken in, and he is missing. The other cops came and took the report. They told me not to fix yet. That it is evidence.” Omar lifted a finger skyward. “And I have not.”

  “We saw that report, thank you,” Nuñez said. “We’re from the Hollywood Station, investigating a different aspect of the case. We need to know if Mr. Merriweather has been in touch with you in any way? If he’s come by here?”

  Omar shook his head. “I’ve been much worried about him. Always behind on the rent, but he is good man.” His eyes were baggy, raccoon-ringed with darker skin. He tugged at his wattle. “But he vanished like this.” A snap of his fingers.

  Brust stepped forward and handed Omar a card. His partner was impeccable, but Brust had a coffee stain on the left side of his shirt, a brown dribble that wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon. “If you hear anything—anything at all—please call us.”


  Omar pinched the card at the corners so it bowed inward. He stared at the number, brow twisted with worry. “Yes, I will. I will.”

  When he looked up, the detectives’ faces were clouded with concern. “He’s in grave danger,” Nuñez said.

  “What danger?” Omar asked. “How much danger?”

  The detectives had started for the stairs, but Nuñez paused and looked back, his expression heavy. “More than he’s even aware of.”

  17

  Right Side Up and Upside Down

  Evan—or more precisely the Benelli combat shotgun—had convinced Papazian to give up what information he had in exchange for a painless exit. Evan now had to stage the next phase of the mission, which meant getting to the databases and buckling down. By the time he returned to Castle Heights, an early-morning buzz had already filled the lobby. The tenants were clustered around the love seats, some dressed for work, others lounging in retiree leisure wear.

  Evan lowered his head and vectored for the elevator.

  “Ev. Ev! Come over here. My God, you won’t believe what happened to Ida.”

  Lorilee’s face looked Saran Wrap–tight beneath the bright lights of the lobby. He glanced down and halted at the sight of the crimson mist across the toes of his boots.

  He had not been counting on prework social hour in the lobby.

  He glanced at the group. “Maybe you could tell me later.”

  A storm of objections assailed him, the loudest from Hugh Walters, 20C. Hugh was the HOA president and never tired of reacquainting the residents with that fact. “I think you need to hear this,” he said, his long face drawn longer with stageworthy distress. “It represents a security threat to this building’s residents. And it can’t wait for tomorrow’s HOA meeting.”

  Evan’s shoulders lowered another notch. He’d made a great effort to forget about the HOA meeting and the “nibbles” he was tasked with providing.

  Stalling, he snuck another glance at the dappled red on his Original S.W.A.T. boots. There was no way he could join the others without their noticing. He raised one foot as if to scratch the opposing calf, wiping Papazian’s blood onto the back leg of his cargo pants. He had to do the same with his left boot without looking obvious.

  And without looking like he was performing a rain dance.

  Everyone waited on him expectantly.

  He had no choice but to shift his weight and fake-scratch at his other leg.

  At that moment a burst of music exploded from his pocket: AAAH LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE!

  He fumbled out the RoamZone, saw Joey on the caller ID.

  YOU OTHABROTHAZ CAN’T—

  He thumbed the green button to stop the atrocious ringtone.

  Joey’s voice came through. “Well, did you find him? What happened?”

  Turning slightly from the stunned residents, Evan said in a low voice, “Impeccably bad timing. And the ringtone? Better go away.”

  “Oh,” Joey said. “Oh, yeah. Sorry ’bout that.”

  He hung up, gave a quick check of the wiped-clean toes of his boots, and approached the love seats. As long as he faced the others, they wouldn’t see the blood streaks on the backs of his pant legs.

  He said flatly, “What happened to Ida?”

  “Okay,” Lorilee said, shouldering her way to the front. “Well, I was stuck at my place last night because the cleaning lady was coming. And then I had to rush out to Pilates and, let’s see, grab an açai bowl for dinner—”

  “Lorilee.” Evan told his face to smile but managed only an impatient twitch of the lips. “What happened to Ida?”

  “Right. Sorry. So I got back late and found her bleeding on the sidewalk right out front.”

  Evan felt his irritation harden into something sharper-edged. “What happened?”

  Lorilee’s face broke, an approximation of sobbing. She threw her arms wide. “Can you just hold me?”

  Evan said, “No.”

  But it was too late. She collapsed into him, crying. Her breasts had about as much give as cannonballs.

  Awkwardly he patted her back twice and extracted himself. “What happened?” he asked again.

  “She got robbed,” Johnny Middleton said. “That classy necklace she was showing off? A guy clocked her and ripped it off. Sounds like some fucked-up shit, man. If I was there, I woulda…” He made a few choku-zuki punches in the air, his fist position too low and then too high. It looked like semicoordinated flailing. “I mean, who the hell decks a eighty-something-year-old lady?”

  “It’s important that we all take proper precautions,” Hugh said. “Until this maniac is caught.”

  “Is she at the hospital?” Evan asked.

  “She’s back home now,” Hugh said with a paternal nod. “Resting.”

  Evan felt that sharp-edged anger shift inside him again and reminded himself that Ida Rosenbaum and her antique jewelry were not his concern. He wouldn’t let anything derail him from the mission objectives.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” Evan said. “I’ll keep an eye out.” He backed away toward the elevators, not wanting to expose the bloodstains at his calves.

  Everyone was still looking at him. He found himself offering another little wave, a ridiculous flare of the hand that had inexplicably become his trademark.

  It wasn’t until the elevator doors closed behind him that he realized he’d been holding his breath.

  * * *

  The instant he’d shut his penthouse door, Evan stripped naked. Using his boots as a tray, he carried his clothes across the great room and laid them before the freestanding fireplace. He fished two steel shanks from the ashes and a scorched watch fob, all that remained of his outfit’s last iteration, and then fired up a trio of cedar logs. Once the flames were sufficiently robust, he fed them the clothing he’d worn to Papazian’s house.

  Then he padded down the rear hall to the master suite and scoured himself in the shower. After drying off and stepping into boxer briefs, he went to his dresser.

  The top drawer held a stack of unworn 501s on the left and a stack of unworn cargo pants on the right. Each item was folded so crisply that it looked stamped from a mold. After putting on a fresh pair of cargo pants, he donned a V-necked dark gray T-shirt that he peeled from the leftmost of three identical columns housed in the second drawer.

  He’d switched around which drawers held which articles of clothing at least a half dozen times over the past year. His brain told him that the compulsion came from seeking maximum efficiency, but his mind sent a different message, that he was enacting the ritual to soothe some part of himself that needed soothing.

  He could handle chaos in the world as long as there was order at home.

  The closet came next. He removed a new Victorinox watch fob from its packaging and clipped it to his belt loop, then grabbed the top shoe box from the tower in the corner and stepped into a fresh pair of Original S.W.A.T. boots. Ten Woolrich shirts hung from hangers in perfect parallel, as equidistant as the slats in a set of vertical blinds. Careful not to disturb the spacing of the others, he slid free a shirt and pulled it on, the magnetic buttons clapping together.

  He exited the closet, stepped into the still-wet shower, and placed his hand on the hot-water lever. A brief delay as it scanned his palm print, and then an electronic hum announced the opening of the door hidden in the wall tiles. It swung inward, differentiating itself from the wall, the lever serving as a handle.

  The Vault didn’t look like much.

  The four hundred square feet of walled-off storage space was accessible only through the secret door. The unfinished box of a room trapped the night cold. Toward the rear the ceiling crowded down in the shape of the public stairs above that led to the roof.

  An armory and a workbench lined the back wall. A sheet-metal desk shaped like an L held a profusion of servers and computer towers. But there seemed to be no monitors.

  At least until Evan clicked his keyboard and three of the four walls came to life. The OLED screens
, made of meshed glass, were invisible when not animated, clear panes showing nothing but the rough concrete walls behind.

  Now they displayed a menu of hacked security feeds from Castle Heights and an abundance of links to federal and state databases. The screens to his left held the status of several of his bank accounts, including the main one, hidden in Luxembourg under the name Z$Q9R#)3 and protected by a password consisting of a forty-word nonsensical sentence. As Orphan X, Evan had been issued enormous sums of money straight off the presses from Treasury. Jack had helped him stash it in numerous accounts in numerous nonreporting countries, buried beneath beaver dams of trusts and shell corporations.

  When Evan had operated as Orphan X, it was essential that he be fully funded and fully self-sufficient. His job had been to enter territories the United States could not and commit acts that it would not. He knew the target he was to neutralize and nothing more. The ultimate cutout man, he had no useful information to relinquish if he were captured no matter how enhanced the interrogation got. The very government he served would deny any knowledge of him, leaving him to be tortured in a Third World dungeon or worn to a nub in a hard-labor camp.

  By the time he’d bolted from the Program, he’d known where a lot of the bodies were buried; he’d buried most of them himself. If he’d been killed by now, plenty of people at the highest level in D.C. would be able to sleep more soundly.

  He let his eyes scan across the digital offerings that wallpapered the Vault.

  His e-mail, the.nowhere.man@gmail.com, showed no messages. He and Jack used to communicate inside the Drafts folders, but since Jack’s passing, the e-mail had lain largely dormant.

  Evan fired up his hardware and hit the databases, connecting through a four-step process of anonymous proxies and encrypted tunnels. The last step obfuscated any remnant of a digital address that might have remained, hiding Evan’s imprint in a sea of noise, a droplet in the ocean of the Internet.