Gripping as hard as he could, he tried to free the sword. No such luck.
A few feet past him, he sensed Slatcher rising, his shadow creeping across the rooftop, centimeter by centimeter.
The sword jogged slightly in Evan’s hand, and he realized: He couldn’t loose the sword, but he might be able to turn it.
With all his strength, he twisted the handle like a motorcycle throttle. At first nothing happened, but then the sword spun barely in its makeshift housing.
The tiny movement knocked Slatcher down six inches.
Evan kept on, turning the cutting edge upward. The sword rotated jerkingly, Slatcher losing ground, his huge form swinging from the blade. His giant hands, torn and bloody, trembled violently.
With a roar Evan ripped the sword in a quarter rotation, the sharp edge now pointing at the sky.
There was an instant of surface tension, Slatcher’s wild gaze flying up to land on Evan, and then the katana did what it was designed to do.
The blade lopped Slatcher’s fingers off at the first knuckles. His arms began cartwheeling, a backstroke with no water.
He and Evan locked eyes, and then Slatcher fell. Evan watched him plummet in the reflection off the glass of La Reverie until that, too, was cut from sight.
He did not see Slatcher hit the purple Scion, but he heard it.
54
No
Evan looped the Ford down seven stories of ramp, reaching the street. The police sirens were still a few blocks away, the cops hung up in constipated Strip traffic. Encircled by a ring of horrified onlookers, Slatcher’s body was crumpled into the roof of his car, the damage from the fall leaving him nearly unrecognizable. Several of his fingers littered the pavement around him, confetti decorating the gruesome spectacle.
Pulling on a sweatshirt to cover his bloody shirt, Evan shouldered through the crowd, moving briskly and tilting his head downward in hopes no one would note his bruised face. “Excuse me! I’m a doctor!” Under the guise of checking for a pulse, he searched Slatcher’s pockets, finding only a slender metal case in the front pocket of his pants. The onlookers seemed too horrified to take notice of Evan, sneaking glances and snapping iPhone pictures. One young woman cried into her boyfriend’s chest, stamping her feet in agitation.
Evan slipped away, finding his shotgun in a hedge at the base of the parking structure. His Wilson 1911, on the sidewalk across the street by La Reverie, was being staked out by several workers, so he left it behind.
Hopping back into his truck, he pulled out and drove away just as the screaming cruisers screeched onto the scene. As he waited on the clogged freeway ramp, he pulled up his shirt to check his stomach. The sutures had torn through the skin, the wound gaping, but the artery had not ruptured.
He ran the freeway for a solid hour before pulling off and checking the silver box.
Ten fingernails. A contact lens.
He poked at the lens, and it animated, shimmering with a computer screen glow.
Okay, then.
He drove to a CVS pharmacy and bought contact solution. Back in his car, parked at the edge of the lot, he soaked the lens thoroughly in case it had been poisoned.
Then he popped it into his eye.
The fingernails pressed on with ease.
He waited.
A cursor appeared. It blinked red for a time.
And then green.
Evan waited, motionless.
A single line scrolled into existence. ORPHAN O?
NO, Evan typed, and logged off.
55
Silent Work
Later that night, after restitching his wound at home and cleaning himself up, Evan exited the elevator at the sixth floor of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard. Smiling at the charge nurse posted at the station, he lifted two weighty bags filled with mediocre food from the cafeteria downstairs. “Just coming back in with chow for my fellow car-crash victims.”
She noted his black eye and nodded him past.
A research session in the Vault had fulfilled his worst expectations, leading him here.
Strings of silver tinsel adorned the halls, Christmas decorations that felt more like an afterthought. Room 614 came up on his right, and he snatched the chart off the door and shouldered through the curtains, unsure how bad it would be.
A man lay unconscious, his head mummy-wrapped, his right arm in a cast, one leg in traction. A tracheal tube disappeared down his throat, but a quick glance at the screens showed him to be breathing above the ventilator.
Memo Vasquez had finally landed in the system.
Evan eyed the charts, noting the fractures, contusions, the collapsed lung, the intestinal perf. The drug dealers had exacted a payment for their missing drugs from Vasquez’s body. But had they also fulfilled their promise?
Evan set a hand gently on Memo’s arm, and a moment later the man stirred. Dark eyes peered out from beneath the bandages. His hand lifted an inch above the sheets, and Evan took it. Memo squeezed weakly. His head was cocked back at an uncomfortable angle.
Evan said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” He braced himself, then asked, “Did they take Isa?”
The ventilator shoved air into Memo’s lungs. Memo released Evan’s hand and made a small writing gesture. Evan brought him a pen and pad.
In a trembling hand, he wrote, “sí.” Then, painstakingly, he wrote, “yor face?”
“You should see the other guy,” Evan said. “Now, can you tell me where to find the bad men?”
The hand moved again. It took the better part of five minutes for Memo to write out the location of a warehouse. Not an address but a rough set of directions, a mix of Spanish and phonetic English. It would be sufficient.
Evan tore off the top sheet of paper. “Everything will be fine now.”
Memo gestured again for the pencil. With a loose grip, he etched a few more words. “they will deport us. i hav no kard i am ilegul.”
Evan set down the pad by his hand. “Not anymore,” he said. “Your name found its way onto the approved list in Immigration Service’s database. They’ll be mailing a green card to your house in the morning. A gift for the holidays.” He gave the chart a last glance and set it down on the tray. “They really worked you over.”
The stubby pencil scratched some more. “U shud see ather guy.”
Evan smiled. He sensed a glimmer of amusement in Memo’s eyes before they darkened with concern.
“Rest up,” Evan said. He patted the wrapped hand and turned to leave. “I got this.”
From the asbestos roof of the condemned warehouse, Evan slipped through the high, double-hung window, pivoting to grab the inside sill. His boots dangled ten feet above the concrete floor. He pushed off and landed on bent knees, letting his body collapse to the side so it wouldn’t absorb the impact all at once.
Though there was a torn twin mattress in the corner, the girl was sleeping on the floor. The small storage room was vacant, an excellent makeshift cell.
Bare walls conveyed the sounds of men arguing from the dilapidated manager’s office down the corridor. Through a skylight Evan had observed the three of them squabbling over digital scales — teardrop tattoos and prison ink and a security camera that possibly streamed to an off-site location. The rest of the former sweatshop was abandoned, one wall of the main floor collapsed, rubble strewn across rusted industrial looms.
Rising to his feet in the tiny space, Evan walked quietly to Isa, not wanting to startle her. As he drew near, he saw that she had forsaken the bed so her stuffed animal could sleep there. The pink teddy bear with the chewed ear was tucked in cozily beneath the sole sheet, its head resting on a pillow.