“Hang on.” A man threw open the door. Middle-aged, worn T-shirt from an old Stones tour, sandy blond beard, neatly trimmed. “Hi, can I help—”
The feminine voice shouted from somewhere behind him. “Honey! Have you seen my briefcase?”
“Sorry.” The man turned away from the door. “On the chest in the playroom!”
“You’re the best.” The woman blew into view, briefcase in hand, holding up earrings. “These dangly ones okay? I have closing arguments today.”
The man said, “I’d go with studs. More assured.”
“You’re picking up car pool, right?” She turned, noticed Holt standing there mutely. “Hi, sorry. Hi.”
Holt stared directly at her. “You don’t recognize me?”
She squinted, tilting her head as she slid a diamond stud into an earlobe. “No. I’m sorry.”
Holt studied her a moment longer. Made a game-day decision.
“Must have the wrong house.” He seated his hands back into his pockets and turned to walk away.
He’d reached the edge of the porch when he heard her voice behind him. “Wait! Four years ago — no, five. Possession of an illegal firearm, transporting across state lines.”
Holt paused, felt a weight bow his shoulders.
The sigh that left him made him feel every one of his fifty-two years.
Still facing away, he lifted the clawhammer from the deep inside pocket of his jacket.
Then he turned and moved swiftly for the open door.
22
The Small Gestures of Intimacy
Trevon Gaines’s South Central apartment was small but so clean it met Evan’s own diagnosable standards. Trevon sat on his bed scratching his biceps until his nails raised ashy streaks on the skin. He had on a pair of black-frame eyeglasses, thick lenses, one plastic temple secured at the hinge with a Band-Aid.
The bed was made up so tightly you could’ve bounced a sniper round on the comforter. Early-hours darkness still claimed the street, the quiet broken by the occasional car drifting past, music bumping from woofers. The building was close enough to USC to be relatively safe and far enough away to be interesting.
Evan stood in the shadow beside the bureau, away from the window, keeping a clear view of the bedroom door. He wore a Woolrich shirt held together with magnetic buttons that gave way readily in the event he made a quick grab for his weapon or someone made a quick grab for him. The shirt hid the Kydex high-guard holster riding his left hip, which held an ARES 1911 custom-forged from a solid block of aluminum, as untraceable as Evan himself. He’d fed the pistol a magazine filled with 230-grain Speer Gold Dot hollow points, a bonus round chambered in case a gunfight went nine deep in a hurry. Streamlined inner pockets of his tactical-discreet cargo pants hid extra mags and a folding Strider knife without showing so much as a bump. His Original S.W.A.T. boots were lighter than running shoes and looked perfectly ordinary with the pant legs pulled down.
The last words he’d spoken were, “Tell me everything you remember.”
That had been forty-five minutes ago.
The story took longer than Evan had expected, longer than any story he’d ever been told. Trevon recounted every last detail. That Mama used Kentucky bluegrass for her back lawn because it reminded her of home. That Muscley One’s truck was a Chevrolet Silverado kept very clean with a dangly tree air freshener that was blue which didn’t make sense because trees aren’t blue and they don’t smell like new-car scent. That Trevon had taken 978 breaths between when they’d put the garbage bag back over his head and when they’d dumped him in an alley downtown.
Evan thought of the Seventh Commandment—One mission at a time—and felt frustration thrum to life in his gut. He had already embarked on the biggest mission of his life — perhaps the biggest solo mission in history — and was eager to get back to it. To proceed he had to get into the Secret Service databases through Naomi’s phone. He’d booked his flight to Milan, to the one person with the hacking skills to possibly make it happen, and he was impatient to get airborne.
Mere hours ago he’d slipped out of the warmth of Mia’s bed. He’d wanted to leave a note on one of her trademark Post-its but had struggled mightily with what to write. This was where his upbringing failed him; the small gestures of intimacy escaped him every time.
He’d settled on, “Sorry. Work.”
He’d made it quietly across the room before pausing for a three count, his hand on the doorknob. Then he’d reversed course, moving silently, and added, “p.s.!”
He noted his own rising restlessness now and created distance from it, observing it from afar. Before him was a young man in desperate need of help. Evan was getting useful information. And some not-so-useful information. But then again he couldn’t yet know what would prove useful and what would not, so he cleared his mind and opened it wide. The First Commandment: Assume nothing.
As Trevon continued to describe what had been done to him, Evan forced himself to discard his anger. Anger was useless.
There were two tales unspooling, the one that Trevon was telling and the one that Evan was reconstructing in his head. When Trevon described the shipping container filled with $18 million of frozen fish from Suriname, Evan translated it to six hundred kilograms of cocaine smuggled inside large game fish that helped mask the scent from drug-sniffing dogs. The port of Paramaribo was a narcotics-transshipment point for cocaine of Peruvian origin, which meant Big Face was in deep to the cartel.
After another half hour, Trevon finally ran out of words. “I was just following the rules.” He shook his head. “I was just following the rules like you’re supposed to.”
He was trembling, skinny arms crossed at his stomach.
Evan felt a surge of admiration for the young man, but that reaction, too, was emotional. It wouldn’t get Evan from A to B, and right now that was all that mattered.
He leaned on the dustless bureau, his elbow touching the side of an old-fashioned TV with the bulk of an ice chest. “Here’s what’s going to happen next.”
Trevon looked over at him, his already big eyes magnified through the thick lenses. On the neatly made bed behind him, there was a stuffed-animal frog, tucked in up to its chin.
“The cops will come,” Evan said. “They’ll tell you that your family has been killed.”
“What do I tell them?”
“That you’re shocked and devastated. That you’re scared you’ll be targeted next. Act terrified. That shouldn’t be hard.”
Trevon’s teeth were chattering. “No, sir.”
“They’ll bring you to identify the bodies.”
Trevon covered his mouth and nodded.
“Your fingerprints are all over the house, but that’s fine. You said you visit your mom a lot, right?”
He nodded again and murmured, “Mama.”
“Don’t tell the cops you went to the house last night.”
“But you’re not supposed to lie to the cops. It’s against the rules.”
“If you follow the rules,” Evan said, “then Big Face will hurt you. And I don’t want you to be hurt. So I need you to listen to me, okay? I need you to follow my rules.”
“Okay.”
“Your cheek’s scuffed up a bit. If the cops ask where you got that, what are you gonna say?”
“I got it when Muscley One and Raw One threw me out of their truck.”
Evan gritted his teeth, searched again for patience, which was proving elusive. “You can’t mention them either, okay? Any of them. If you say anything about them, they’ll find out, remember?”
“Okay.”
Evan looked away to hide his exasperation. On the bureau beside him was a notepad with neat handwriting that read: