Evan wasn’t a master hacker by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d made his way unattended into various cruisers and uploaded a piece of reverse SSH code into their laptops, leaving a virtual back door open for himself.
Now, tucked in the hidden room, Evan cruised the information superhighway to his heart’s content, gathering particulars for tomorrow’s mission and sipping the last of his fragrant tea.
* * *
For the past forty-five minutes, Morena Aguilar had been sitting on the overturned recycle bin on the front porch of the dilapidated tract house, her hands wedged beneath her legs so her thin arms bowed outward. Her bare feet bounced nervously on the splintering wood, her knees jerking. Her dark hair was cinched back so hard that it conformed precisely to her skull before tumbling curly and wild from a rubber band. Darting eyes, ducked head, a hint of sweat sparkling at her temples.
Scared.
Parked past the intersection behind a rusting heap of an abandoned car, Evan scanned the street again through a detached rifle scope. On a patch of dead grass in the front yard across from Morena’s house, a teenage mom, also Latina, emerged with a diapered infant under her arm. She set him down to play in an aluminum-foil turkey pan filled with sand. The child looked to be mixed race, bright green eyes offset against caramel skin. As he started digging in his makeshift sandbox, she lit up a Marlboro Red and blew a stream of smoke at the sky, scratching at a strawberry birthmark on the underside of her arm. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen, but her face was grim. A cell phone bulged her back pocket. Another teenage mom shoved a baby stroller up onto the dead lawn next to her. The first one flicked a cigarette up from the pack in offering. They didn’t speak. They just stood side by side, smoked, and watched the street. Two young women with nothing else to do.
Once Evan was convinced they were harmless, he lowered the scope, picked up a black metal briefcase, and got out of the truck.
As he approached, Morena saw him coming and rose, clutching one arm at the biceps. He stepped up onto the porch. The years were heavy on her face, stress lines and a hardness behind her pretty brown eyes. The smell of hair spray was strong.
“I’m hawking reverse mortgages door-to-door,” he said. “You’re not interested. Shake your head.”
She did.
“I’m going to go around the block, loop through the backyard. Your rear door is unlocked. Please keep it that way. Now look annoyed and head inside.”
She banged through the screen door, and he stepped off the porch and kept on up the street.
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.
After all, Evan never knew when he’d have to vanish. He held a place of honor on numerous most-wanted lists, but none that could be advertised. He had to be careful at airports, borders, and embassies, though he’d been to an embassy only once in the past five years, and that was to neutralize a clerk who’d been a key player in a human-trafficking ring.
By the time Evan reached Castle Heights, the setting sun bathed the building’s side in an orange glow. He parked and headed through the lobby, passing a half dozen kombucha bottles floating in a tub of melted ice on the refreshment stand. Apparently the beverage initiative had not been the rousing success the HOA had hoped for.
In the seating area across from the door, the L.A. Times sports section rustled and dipped, Johnny Middleton’s face appearing above the top of the page. He was staking out the kombucha.
Evan sped up. The swish of nylon sweatpants accented Johnny’s slide off the cushioned chair. “Evan. Evan!”
Evan had no choice but to halt.
Johnny caught up. Clearly peeved, he glanced over at the forlorn beverage tub. When he looked back, a smug expression filled his round face. “You should really come by for a workout.” He tapped the martial-arts logo on his sweat jacket, which showed two fists colliding. Innovative. “I can get you a free pass.”
Before Evan could respond, Johnny feinted at him with a jab.
The fist came in lazy and offline. Evan saw the angles with perfect clarity—a double-hand deflection, gooseneck the wrist, shatter the bone and rake the elbow tendons, then a chicken-wing arm control for the takedown, his knee crushing Johnny’s floating rib upon impact with the floor.
Instead he flinched slightly. “Not really my thing,” he said.
“Okay, chief,” Johnny said, backing away, arms spread in a show of magnanimity. “Consider it an open offer.”
Even walked over to the elevator and stepped inside when a tumult by the door to the garage drew his focus. Mia and Peter stumbled into view, their arms laden with grocery bags. Evan held the elevator for them while they shuffled inside, crowding him. As they ascended, he could barely make out Peter beneath the oversize shopping bags.
“Need a hand?” Evan asked.
“We’re good, thanks,” Mia said.
An iPhone rang somewhere on her person, the theme from Jaws. Kneeing apart the various items she was carrying, she fumbled for her purse. A plastic drugstore bag slid off her hand, and Evan caught it before it hit the floor. The phone stopped ringing, and Mia sighed with resignation, then began hoisting various bags back into position.
Evan became aware of Peter’s stare on the side of his face. Peter lowered his head, scrutinizing Evan’s ankle. Evan subtly tugged up his pant leg, a ta-da move to show off the sock. Move along. Nothing to see here.
The intense stare returned to Evan’s face.
“Evan what?” the boy asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What’s your last name?”
“Smoak.”
“Like from fire?”
“But spelled different.”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Danger.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Nothing. And then the boy gave the faintest grin.
Mia looked away to hide her own smile.
The elevator dinged its arrival at the twelfth floor. “If you’re done giving Mr. Danger the third degree…” Mia said, mussing Peter’s hair and tugging him out after her.
Too late, Evan looked down, noticing Mia’s drugstore bag still twisting in his fingers. He reached for the doors as they bumped shut, and then he was riding up to the penthouse level with her belongings. Returning them would have to wait.
Tonight he had work to do.
* * *
He tossed Mia’s plastic bag on the kitchen counter and consulted the vodkas neatly arranged in the freezer, settling on the flask-shaped bottle of Jean-Marc XO. Made using four varieties of French wheat, the vodka was distilled nine times, then microoxygenated and charcoal-filtered. As he poured two fingers over ice, he noticed that a box of Band-Aids had partially slid out from Mia’s drugstore bag onto the counter. Muppet-themed, of course. The gaudy colors, so out of place against the gray slab and stainless steels, leapt out at Evan. He found something unsettling about the Day-Glo oranges and vibrant greens, though he could not put a name to the feeling.
He slid the box into the bag again and sipped his drink on his way back to the Vault. The vodka felt silky going down his throat, the texture of purity.
Morena Aguilar had armed him with two things: her on-call cell phone, now resting on the sheet-metal desk next to his trusty aloe vera plant, and a name.
Bill Chambers.
There was no scarcity of information on William S. Chambers of the LAPD. As a result of several big, well-timed busts, he’d worked his way up from patrolman to detective II, finally landing a spot in the coveted Gang and Narcotics Division four years ago. That explained how he’d managed to carve out his own little despotship in the middle of Lil East Side–controlled Boyle Heights. He was in an ideal position to do favors for the gangbangers if they helped him in turn. And so they left him to his concubinary of coerced girls, maybe even threw influence to protect him and guard the block he’d turned into his personal labor camp. Evan uncovered multiple Internal Affairs investigations, all of them hindered by misplaced evidence or about-faces by key witnesses. Next he searched the money. Chambers’s bank accounts showed multiple cash withdrawals and deposits just below the ten-thousand-dollar threshold for mandated bank reporting. Questionable activity. But not ironclad proof.
And the First Commandment demanded ironclad proof.
Evan picked up Morena’s on-call cell, a crappy plastic unit with a smudged screen, as light as a toy phone. It was a disposabl
e model out of Mexico. When he thumbed up the text message history, he felt a sudden drop in the temperature of the Vault, a coolness at the back of his neck. A number of explicit texts from a recurring phone number contained sexual directives and instructions for Morena, some including photo references of clearly underage Latina girls in particular poses. He stared at the face of a child who couldn’t yet have been fourteen. Her features were leached of affect, the dead, red-rimmed eyes wholly detached from her body and what it was doing.
He traded the phone for his drink but found he’d lost his taste for vodka. Or anything else. Indignation burned, and he had to evoke the Fourth Commandment: Never make it personal.
In the years he’d been doing this, he’d never broken a Commandment, and he wasn’t willing to do so now.
Back to the databases with renewed energy. The phone number of the sender Evan sourced to a batch of prepaid phones bulk-sold to Costco last year. A simple bit of reverse-proxy code let him slip behind Costco’s firewall, and he checked data files at the store locations nearest Chambers’s home address. Nothing. Next he looked at several Costcos between Chambers’s house and various locations including Boyle Heights, finally ringing the cherries on a store en route to LAPD Headquarters. An account in the name of Sandy Chambers. The membership photo showed Bill’s wrecked shell of a wife, wan-faced and slight beneath the industrial lights, her shoulders hunched as if she were trying to fold in on herself and disappear. She’d managed a smile, but it looked separate from her face, something pasted on.
Starting several quarters back to coincide with the date that the batch of prepaid phones had shipped, Evan scanned Chambers’s purchase records. Cases of Heineken, Trojan condoms, deck furniture, jumbo food purchases, a digital camera. And there, seven disposable phones, bought February 13 along with a set of oven mitts and a pack of soft-bristle toothbrushes.
There was no denying that taken as a whole the facts had a certain heft to them, but the evidence could be configured a variety of ways, telling a variety of stories. When Evan got involved, there was a single outcome, and that outcome demanded certainty before the fact. He lifted his melted drink and wiped the condensation ring with his sleeve, leaving the desk surface spotless.
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