“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
The dishes were done. As Evan thanked Mia for dinner, Peter emerged and gave him a little fist bump on his way out. It left his knuckles sticky with fruit punch.
Back upstairs, Evan stared at his dinner plate where he’d left it on the gunmetal gray counter. The ahi steak, uneaten, centered on the white plate. The subway tiles of the backsplash gleamed darkly, throwing off a multitude of reflections, his tiny form bathed in the soothing blue light of the cityscape.
Scraping the fish into the garbage disposal, he noticed the knuckles of his right hand, tinged a faint red from the fruit punch.
He circled the island and washed his hands.
6
Please Don’t
Killing a cop was no small business.
Evan sat in the dark of the cramped bedroom that Morena Aguilar shared with her eleven-year-old sister. The chair, dragged in from the kitchen, barely fit between the twin mattresses. In his loose fist, he held one end of a common household string that arced across the room to where it was tied to the lever handle of the closed door. Perfectly still, he waited.
The drawn curtains glowed faintly from the streetlights beyond, and he heard distant voices from various yards. Even here in the locked room over the stench of the birdcage, he caught the faintest whiff of barbecue.
The Victorinox watch fob clipped to his belt loop showed 9:37. He’d been in position for over an hour, and still twenty-three minutes remained until Detective William S. Chambers’s scheduled rape of Carmen Aguilar.
“Please don’t!” the parrot squawked. “Carrot, please!”
On Evan’s right knee rested Morena’s on-call cell phone, on his left his Wilson Combat 1911 with the suppressor twisted on. He’d painted a tiny arrow onto the steel of the suppressor so he could index it to the identical position every time. In addition to the magazine in the pistol, he carried three more in his cargo pockets. They were go-to-war ready, validated in the desert on a makeshift range. As Jack used to say, The loudest sound you’ll ever hear in action is a click.
Generally Evan preferred Speer Gold Dot hollow points, but tonight he was loaded with 230-grain hardball. The heavier round traveled at 850 feet a second, just below the speed at which it would break the sound barrier. The suppressor would take care of the sound signal of the gun’s firing, but given the bustling neighborhood, Evan needed to ensure the bullet didn’t make noise on its own.
The parrot shifted from claw to claw in the darkness, the cage clanking. The faded yellow sheets mussed on one of the mattresses were patterned with watermelon slices. The dinged-up trumpet case leaned in the corner by the door. A single red Converse shoe lay on its side in the closet, the toe worn through. Elmo looked out from a peeling sticker on the stained, empty fish tank, reminding Evan of Peter and his lively Band-Aids. Then Evan thought of the grown man en route to this room.
“Please don’t!” the parrot squawked cheerily. “Please don’t!”
Evan breathed. Never make it personal. Assume nothing. Never make it personal. Assume nothing.
He felt the weight of the pistol resting on his thigh. The weapon, it was always there for him, tried and true, a constant. Steel and lead, they responded predictably. They were finite, unchanging, able to be mastered. He could count on them. People failed. He couldn’t rely on flesh and blood, sinew and bone.
Too often it ended badly.
There is still dark at the windows of the dormer room when the alarm screeches, but Evan is already awake. Most of this first night in Jack’s house he has spent staring at the ceiling. He rises and regards the room. The rolling chair is perfectly centered at a desk, and the shelf above holds a row of books ordered by height and a cup filled with unsharpened pencils. Shutters are folded back from a bay window, letting in the first glow of dawn. There is no trace of dust, of disorder. Every item squared up, aligned, stacked with precision.
Evan’s new home is a two-story farmhouse set behind an apron of cleared land in Arlington, Virginia. His window looks out on a green blanket of oak trees. It is like nothing he has seen outside of television.
He finds Jack downstairs in a study lined with dark wooden bookshelves. He is reading a volume on something called the Peloponnesian Wars. Classical music issues from an old-fashioned record player. On a side table rests a picture of a woman in a tarnished silver frame. She has long dark brown hair down to her waist and a slight chin, and her eyes are smiling behind large glasses.
At Jack’s feet Strider lifts his Scooby-Doo head and notes Evan’s presence. The dog is at least a hundred pounds with a reddish tan coat and a wicked-looking strip of reverse fur running down his spine.
Evan waits for Jack to look up, but he does not. He sits as motionless as a carving, focused on his book. Everything about him seems different from the Mystery Man with his slender face and sallow skin, always lurking in shadows, peering through the chain-link, flicking up a flame to catch the tip of a new cigarette.
Finally Evan asks, “Why’d you pick me?”
Still Jack holds his gaze on the page. “You know what it’s like to be powerless.”
The intonation is that of a statement, but Evan realizes it is in fact a question. More precisely, something he is being asked to answer.
Evan’s face burns. His lips firm, but he forces the answer. “Yes.”
“For what we are about to embark on,” Jack says, the book at last lowered to his knee, “I need someone who knows that. In his bones. Don’t ever forget that feeling.”
Evan would do anything to forget it but knows better than to say so.
“No one can ever know your real name,” Jack says.
“Okay.”
“What is your last name?”
Evan tells him.
“You like it?” Jack asks.
“No.”
“Want to pick a new one?”
“Like what?”
A long silence ensues. Then Jack says, “My wife’s maiden name was Smoak. With an a in the middle and no e on the end. Want that one?”
Evan notes the past tense and recognizes that this is a gift. As he weighs the cost of accepting it, he does his best to keep his eyes from the framed picture on the side table. Then he says, “Sure.”
“You will use that name in your personal life only,” Jack says. “The people you work with will never know that name.”
“What will they know me as?”
“Many things.” Jack rises, keys in hand, his face severe. “It’s time,” he says.
Leaving Strider with a full bowl, they take a truck instead of the sedan, which makes sense since most of their journey proves to be off-road. After a half hour, they turn sharply uphill and bounce violently along a trail, branches screeching against the windows. They emerge at the back of a barn.
Evan follows Jack into the barn. It smells of hay and manure. Jack shoves the heavy door closed behind them. There is only a dangling lamp swaying slightly over the stables, throwing insufficient light.
Evan feels his heart rate tick up, and he looks at Jack, but Jack does not look back.