There was only the breath. Inhale, exhale. His body doing what it did twenty thousand times a day, except this time he was mindful of it.
And this time.
And this time.
The brief meditation and the vodka sent warmth through his veins. He felt decontaminated.
He opened his eyes and headed to the Vault.
33
A Lot of Variables
Benito Orellana.
That was the name of the man who had called the Nowhere Man for help, the man Evan was to meet tomorrow at noon.
At least that’s what the caller had claimed his name was.
Evan approached each pro bono job with the same meticulous mission planning with which he’d once plotted the assassination of high-value targets. The First Commandment: Assume nothing.
Including that the client is who he says he is.
Or that he might not be planning to kill you.
Evan had parked himself behind his sheet-metal desk in the Vault, sipping vodka in the pale glow of the monitors neatly lined up before him. From here he could access hundreds of state and federal law-enforcement databases. This required only a single point of entry: a Panasonic Toughbook laptop hooked to the dashboard of any LAPD cruiser. Because officers rotated through a squad car with every shift change, the laptop passwords were generally straightforward, often simply the assigned unit number: LAPD_4012. Over the years Evan had broken into various cruisers from various stations and uploaded a piece of reverse-SSH code into their dashboard laptops. Firewalls face out to keep people from breaking in. They don’t regulate outgoing traffic. When Evan needed to access the databases remotely, he initiated his hidden code, prompting the police computer to reach out through its firewall to him. Then he could sail right through the open ports and browse wherever he liked.
He’d already learned much about Benito Orellana.
An undocumented worker from El Salvador, he’d received amnesty in 1986 under the Immigration Reform and Control Act. His tax records showed Benito holding down three jobs — a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant downtown, a valet parker, and an Uber driver. Over the years he had diligently reported cash tips. If the information Evan was collecting was real, it revealed an honest, hardworking man.
Benito’s wife had died in February. Medicaid test results from last year showed black spots on a chest CT scan, and the L.A. County death certificate listed lung cancer as her cause of death. It had been fast. Benito had one son, Xavier, who had taken a few courses at East Los Angeles College and then dropped out around the time of his mother’s diagnosis. No other information on Xavier was to be found. Benito’s financials seemed to be clean until recently; he’d racked up debt in the form of credit-card charges to Good Samaritan Hospital. The house in Pico-Union was leveraged, a second mortgage with a predatory lending rate gaining momentum by the month.
Evan looked over at Vera II. “The guy seems legit.”
Vera II said nothing.
Evan took the last expensive sip of vodka, fished out what was left of the ice cube, and rested it in her serrated spikes. An ice cube a week was all the watering the fist-size aloe vera plant required.
He removed the Samsung cell phone from his pocket — the one he’d stolen from Van Sciver’s man in Portland — and turned it on. No messages. There was a single coded contact. Push the button and it would ring through to Van Sciver. That would prove useful at some point. Evan turned the phone back off and charged it.
He started to get up, but Vera II implored him.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
He called up feeds from the hidden security cameras in the Burbank safe house.
He found Joey at the wooden table, chewing on a Twizzler, tapping at the keyboard. She had her own laptop set up next to the Dell now, connected with a cord. After a time she got up, fished in her rucksack for something, and retreated to the couch.
He couldn’t see what she was staring at.
Finally she shifted, and he caught a vantage over her shoulder. She was reading the Thanksgiving card again, tracing her finger across the handwriting as if it were braille.
She looked forlorn there on the couch, leaning against the arm, her legs tucked beneath her.
Evan glanced at Vera II.
“Fine,” he said.
He called Joey’s burner phone. He watched her start, and then she crossed to the table and picked up.
“X?”
“How are you doing?”
She glanced at the laptops. “Making headway.”
She’d misunderstood what he was asking about. It seemed awkward to backtrack now.
He said, “Good.”
She went into the kitchen and slid a pack of ramen noodles into a bowl.
“Do we have an ETA?” he asked.
“We’re dealing with ten thousand virtual machines,” she said, filling the bowl with water and shoving it into the microwave. “There are a lot of variables.”
“We need to—”
“Sprint the marathon,” she said. “Right. Consider me chained to the laptop. When I’m done with this, maybe I could stitch some wallets for you.”
An unfamiliar ring sounded deep in the penthouse, and Evan stood up abruptly. It had been so long since he’d heard it that it took a moment for him to place what it was.
The home line.
When he’d moved in, he’d had it installed so he could have a number to list in the HOA directory. Aside from a telemarketer three months ago, no one had called it in years.
“I’ll check in on you in the morning,” he said to Joey, and hung up.
He raced out of the Vault, through his bedroom, down the hall to the kitchen, and snatched up the cordless phone. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
Hearing her voice caught him completely off guard.
34
The Job to End All Jobs
“I know we decided not to be in touch,” Mia said, her voice light and nervous over the phone. “But, I don’t know, you seemed messed up when I saw you in the parking garage last week.”
Evan cleared his throat.
“And…” she said. “I know you were gone for a while. I saw your truck back in your spot tonight and figured… I guess I figured maybe you could use a home-cooked meal.”
In the background he could make out some Peter-related commotion. She muffled the receiver. “Put the lid back on that!” she shouted. Then she was back. “Anyway, it was just a thought.”
He heard himself say, “I’d like that.”
“Really?”
He was asking himself the same thing. He’d responded before thinking. What part of him had that answer teed up, ready to deploy?
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay. Well, come down in twenty?”
“Okay.” He was, he realized, pacing nervously. There was something else he was supposed to say here, something he’d heard people say on movies and TV shows. The words sounded clunky and robotic in his mouth, but he forced them out. “Can I bring anything?”
“Just yourself.”
That was how the script went. He’d watched it dozens of times but now he was inside it, saying the lines.
There was some other rule, too. Her job was to say no, but his job was to bring something anyway. Except what did he have to bring? Cocktail olives? An energy bar? A Strider folding knife with a tanto tip for punching through Kevlar vests?
Ordinary life was stressful.
He said, “Okay,” and hung up.
Jack had trained him for so many contingencies, had made him lethal and worldly and cultured.
But not domestic.
Checking the adjustment of his nose, he padded back to shower.