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.”