Ten minutes later they were seated across from each other in torn lawn chairs in the tiny living room of the house. Evan faced the grease-stained front window. On the coffee table before him sat his locked black briefcase. If the combination was input incorrectly, it threw off eight hundred volts of electricity. It contained a voice-activated microphone, a pinhole lens, and a wideband high-power jammer that squelched any surveillance devices.
And it held papers.
The stifling air stank of birds. A ragged parrot rustled in a cage in the square adjoining bedroom. The open door looked in on two mattresses on the floor, a dresser and cracked mirror, and a battered trumpet case leaning against a long-disused fish tank.
“Carrot, please!” the parrot said. “Please! Please don’t!”
Over Morena’s shoulder Evan could see the street clearly, the two young mothers still smoking silently in the yard across from them. The baby’s wails grew audible, but neither mother made a move to comfort him.
Evan shifted on the chair, and at his movement Morena’s back went arrow straight. Perspiration spotted her shirt, a stiff button-up with a BENNY’S BURGERS decal and a peeling name tag. She made fists in the fabric of her polyester pants.
“You’re nervous,” he said. “That I’m here.”
She nodded quickly, and at once she looked like a kid again.
“Do you know how to handle a gun?”
The pause drew out long enough that he wasn’t sure if she was going to respond.
“I’ve shot some,” she finally said, and he could tell she was lying. She blotted sweat from her hairline. Her plucked brows arched high, and an empty pierce hole dimpled her nose.
He removed his pistol from his hip holster, spun it around, and offered it to her. She stared at it there on his palm.
The Wilson Combat 1911 high-end variant had been custom-built to Evan’s specs. Semiauto, eight rounds in a stainless-steel mag with number nine slotted in the chamber. Extended barrel, tuned with ramp-throat work for flawless feeding and threaded to receive a suppressor. The straight-eight sights were high-profile so that the suppressor, when screwed in, wouldn’t block them. Ambidextrous thumb safety, since he was a lefty. Grip safety on the back to ensure it couldn’t fire if not in hand. Aggressive front-frame checkering, eighteen lines per inch, and Specialized Simonich gunner grips so the gun grabbed him back when he fired. High-ride beavertail grip safety to prevent hammer bite on the thumb webbing. Matte black so it disappeared in shadow, giving no glint.
He gestured again for her to take the pistol. “Just while we talk. So you don’t have to be nervous.”
She lifted it gingerly from his hand, set it on the cushion beside her. When she exhaled, her shoulders lowered a bit.
“I don’t … I don’t care about me no more. It’s her. Mi hermanita—my li’l sis, Carmen. Me, I been a screwup from the beginning. But that kid? She never done a wrong thing in her life. She’s in school right now. And she’s good at it. She’s just eleven.”
Evan glanced over at that battered trumpet case in the bedroom, then back at Morena. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.” She took a gulp of air. Another lengthy pause. She seemed unaware of how long she let her silences go. She wasn’t sullen, but withdrawn.
“My dad left when we was young. Mi mamá found out he died a few years ago. She … um, she passed away last year. She had the ovarian cancer. And then he came in. He took over the rent for our house. He keep us here in it.”
Across the street the baby cried and cried. One of the mothers reached out and grabbed the stroller, pushed it back and forth soothingly. “Carrot, please!” the parrot squawked from the bedroom behind him. “Please! Please don’t!”
Evan focused on Morena. He did not want to ask any questions. He wanted her to have space to tell her story her way.
She tugged a cell phone from her snug pant pocket. “He gave me this. So he can text me whenever he want. I’m on call, right? But it’s okay. He only use me. Until now, I mean. My sister, she’s getting older. She’s almost out of time. He said she’s ‘coming mature.’” At this, Morena’s upper lip wrinkled. “He wanted to already, with her, the other night. I … distracted him. Like I know how. But he said next time … next time…” She bit her lip to stop it from trembling. “You don’t understand.”
“Help me understand.”
She just shook her head. Outside, tinny rap music announced a car’s approach. A guy sat in the rear of a flipped-open hatchback, holding a big-screen TV in place as his buddy drove. The car vanished, but it was a time longer before the sound faded.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” Evan asked.
“My aunt. She in Vegas. But it don’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
Morena leaned forward, suddenly fierce. “You don’t get it. He say if I take her anywhere, he’ll hunt us down. They have them databases now. He can find anyone. Anywhere.” And just like that, the anger departed. She made a fist, pressed it to her trembling lips. “Calling you, it was stupid. Just don’t say nothing to no one. I’ll figure out something. I always do. Look, I gotta go to work.”
He knew that her shift didn’t start for two more hours and that the burger stand she worked at was only a seven-minute walk away. He remained sitting, and she made no move to exit.
She swayed a little. “I just don’t want…” She blinked, and tears spilled down her smooth cheeks. “I just don’t want her to be all broken like me.”
She lifted a hand to wipe her cheeks, and he saw on her inner forearm what looked like an angry inoculation mark. But it couldn’t be, not given her age.
It was a brand.
Evan’s eyes shifted to the young mothers across the street. The first raised her cigarette to her mouth, and it struck him now that the strawberry birthmark wasn’t a birthmark at all. His gaze dropped to the arm of the other woman, pushing the stroller back and forth. Sure enough, a similar maroon splotch marred her skin in the same place.
Morena noticed his attention pull back to her, and she lowered her arm quickly, hiding the brand. But not before he’d registered the burned circle. About the size of a .40-caliber gun barrel.
Like, say, that of the Glock 22 that was standard issue for the LAPD.
He replayed Morena’s words: He can find anyone. Anywhere. The ultimate abuse of power. Human slavery right here in the open. Those girls across the street had on-call cell phones, too. And babies. He understood now the grimness of their faces, the hollowed-out resignation.
Morena rose to leave. She smoothed the front of her work shirt, then tilted her face back so no tears would spill. “Thanks for coming and all,” she said, “but you don’t get it.”
“I do now,” Evan said.
She looked at him.
“The whole street?” he asked.
She sank back into her chair. “The whole block.” Again her voice faltered. “I just don’t want him to get my little sister.”
Evan said, “You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
4
I’ll Be Waiting
On his way home, Evan ran the circuit of his safe houses, checking up on them. He owned numerous properties spread throughout the area — a town house on the Westside, a cottage in the Valley, a ranch-style home in the crappy neighborhood beneath the LAX flight paths. He made sure the lawns were watered, junk mail cleared off the porches, lighting-control systems varied. The banal façades hid alternate vehicles, mission-essential equipment, weapon caches. Jack had always stressed the importance of maintaining multiple “loadouts,” gear prepped for a grab-and-go.