“You can’t just call me up when you’re outta mascara and I roll up in a pink Cadillac.”
“No. But that would be awesome.”
Tommy glared at him, but already his hound-dog eyes had softened. “Hell,” he said, “it’s my own damn fault. If I didn’t keep failing retirement, I wouldn’t have to deal with the likes of you.”
“Listen,” Max said, leaning over. “I just want to say I really appreciate—”
“Don’t talk to me,” Tommy said. “I don’t know you.” He looked at Evan. “I don’t know him.”
He sucked a good half inch off his Camel Wide with a single inhale, shot the smoke up at the underpass, walked back to his dually, and got in. The passenger side.
“Uh,” Max said. “You sure about this?”
Evan said, “No,” and got out.
He walked over and hoisted himself up into Tommy’s driver’s seat. The two men sat side by side a moment. Evan lifted his boots, sunk to the ankles in discarded Starbucks cups, Red Bull cans, and empty ammunition boxes that clustered around the base of the seat.
“Sorry ’bout the truck mulch,” Tommy said. “But that’s how you get a vehicle, you know. You grow it from the ground up.”
“I’ll take good care of it,” Evan said.
Tommy flicked his chin at the lead-bitten Ford F-150. “Yeah, you seem to really baby your gear.”
“Look, with my truck, I need you to—”
“I know. I’ll deliver it back to you good as new. With all the fixings.” Tommy winked, the crinkle at the edge of his eye fanning down across his cheek. “It’ll cost you.”
“How much?”
“An arm. A leg.”
Evan nodded at Tommy’s tattered Strider Knives T-shirt, the breast pocket torn clean off. “Get you some new duds.”
“Shit,” Tommy said. “My version of dress for success is two extra mags.” He jerked a thumb to the backseat. “Your FN Ballista’s back there in the Hardigg Storm Case. Take good care of her. She’s a Tommy special. The mall warriors ain’t getting their mitts on a beauty like that.”
Evan started to protest again that he didn’t need a rifle, but then he recalled the dozen men he’d seen spill out of that van, SWAT-ready and armed to the teeth, and kept his mouth shut.
Tommy flicked his cigarette out the window, sucked a stray bit of tobacco through the gap in his front teeth. “You put metal on meat with that baby, fuckers’ll be DRT.” A wicked grin. “Dead Right There.” He reached for the door. “All right, get your boy outta your truck and we’ll be on our respective ways.”
“He’s gotta go with the truck, Tommy.”
Tommy did a pronounced double take that for anyone else would have seemed theatrical. “I know my ears are shot to shit, but I could swear you just said you want me to take that Strange Ranger over there with me.”
“The group that’s after him, they’ve got their tentacles sunk deep throughout the city. I need you to stash him somewhere out in the desert.”
Given the reach of Stella Hardwick’s group, the last thing Evan could afford was having Max near anybody who could be connected to him—especially after his contact with Violet and Clark. He needed to clear out way beyond city limits and let Evan do what had to be done.
The Ninth Commandment: Always play offense.
“I hope you have a lotta money,” Tommy said, “’cuz babysitting’s not on the list of services any more than mascara delivery is.”
“I do have a lot of money,” Evan said.
He thought of the meeting minutes from Stella Hardwick’s power summits in her conference room on the seventh floor. And then of Tommy tripping over gear and ordnance in his lair.
“I need one more thing,” he said.
“Shocking,” Tommy said.
Evan told him the last item he required.
“Fine,” Tommy said. “Let me get less fucking annoyed before I draw you up an invoice. If I did it now, you wouldn’t like what you’d be looking at.”
He shouldered the door open, braced his ankles and knees for the slide out, and hit the dirt with a grunt.
“Tommy,” Evan said. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Well, shit,” Tommy said. “It’s getting so saccharine in here I might hafta self-administer insulin.”
He slammed the door and ambled over to Evan’s truck.
57
Taking Steps
Evan had lost track of how long he’d gone without sleep.
Walking through the Castle Heights lobby, he felt faintly intoxicated, his feet like foreign objects he had to operate with every step.
Ida Rosenbaum, with the aid of a walker and a physical therapist, moved at a snail’s pace around the love seats, working on regaining her balance. The bruises on her face had faded to a sickly yellow. She wore a brick-red sweat suit with reflective stripes down the sleeves and legs, high-visibility precautions in case any traffic came blazing through the lobby.
“It’s good to see you up on your feet again,” Evan said.
“If that’s what you call this,” Ida snapped.
The physical therapist, a young Hispanic woman, said, “Would you mind watching her for a moment so I can use the restroom?”
“I don’t need watching,” Ida said.
Evan wanted nothing more than to get upstairs and lie down, but he paused and rested a steadying hand on the walker. “No problem.”
An awkward silence ensued after the woman departed.
“I heard you got your necklace back,” Evan said.
“I did. And they arrested the crook who took it.”
“But you’re not wearing it.”
“No.” Ida waved a dismissive hand. “I’m done with that nonsense. Acting like I’m something to look at.” She shook her head. “At my age.”
“Don’t give him that.”
“Oh, please.” She shoved the walker at him, the tennis-ball sliders squeaking on the marble floor, and he had to skip back. Firming her shoulders with pride, she took a surprisingly strong step. “Spare me your bumper-sticker aphorisms.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. To have real concerns.”
“No, ma’am.”
The physical therapist returned, thanked Evan, and took over. As he walked away, he heard her say, “You’re really improving, Mrs. Rosenbaum.”
“Sure,” Ida said. “I’ll be ready for the hundred-yard dash in no time.”
* * *
Evan had just closed the penthouse door behind him when his phone rang. He clicked to answer and held it to his face.
Joey said, “Hang on,” with great annoyance, as if he’d called and interrupted her. A rustle as she slid the phone aside and then muffled shouting. “Get off that! You chew my Das Keyboard one more time, I’ll get you fixed.”
“He’s already fixed,” Evan said, heading down the hall toward the master suite. The nausea was back, creeping beneath his skin, turning his flesh clammy.
“Well, I bet it’s just as unpleasant the second time,” Joey said. And then, “I spent all morning scrubbing the jail footage, which would’ve been way easier if you weren’t so incompetent.”
The sheets remained, a dirty swirl atop the floating mattress, fuzzed with dog hair. He had to squint against the sight of it.
He stepped through the bathroom and into the shower stall. “How am I incompetent?”
“Where do I start? I told you in advance where the cameras were.”
“I thought I avoided them pretty well.”
“Perhaps by your low standards.”
His hand swiped at the hot-water lever and missed. He reached for it again. A quick turn and he was through into the Vault. “I was busy trying to not get killed.”
“You should be used to that by now.”
“Fair enough,” Evan said, dropping into his chair with relief. His jaw started watering, a warning signal.
“Have you been resting?”
“Sure.�
�
“How’s the concussion?” Joey asked.
Evan hit MUTE, slid over the trash can, and threw up into it violently enough to strain his intercostals. He wiped his mouth, unmuted the phone. “Okay,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “You sound fresh as a daisy.”
He gripped the edge of the table to try to stop the room from spinning. Vera II looked on with moral support.
“I just wanted you to know you’re free to retire now. Your tracks are completely covered. Once again I swing to your rescue. You’re such a damsel in distress. I mean, if I hadn’t found the hidden files on Grant’s thumb drive, you’d still be—”
His Gmail account, projected onto the wall before him, showed an e-mail message.
No sender. No subject line.
“Joey,” he said. “I have to go.”
He hung up on her while she was still mid-insult.
With a trembling hand, he clicked to open the e-mail.
A single sentence: Have you considered my offer?
The president, checking in on the status of the informal pardon.
Beneath the single sentence was a familiar phone number, a code word, and an extension.
(202) 456-1414. Dark Road. 32.
The informal pardon would put an end to the race he’d been running since the age of twelve, when he’d stepped off that rest-stop curb and into Jack’s car. No more knife wounds and concussions. No more dogfighting pits and shooters in shadowy parking lots. No more police-station raids and voluntary jail stints.
No more missions.
He’d always thought that being the Nowhere Man was his way of paying penance. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe risking his life for others again and again and again gave him the only sense of purpose he could find.
Would he be able to find another purpose as true as that?
He looked at Vera II. “What do you think?”
She seemed skeptical.
This wasn’t the time for debate. He still had a makeshift SWAT command on his ass and a cabal of city leaders to exterminate.
He returned Vera II’s haughty glare. “I know, I know. ‘Miles to go before I sleep.’ I just need a sec to lie down.”
Vera II gave him more passive-aggressive silence.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll have a quick peek. But that’s it.”
As he plugged Bedrosov’s thumb drive into his computer, he felt a pang of guilt for hanging up on Joey. Despite that, he didn’t regret cutting off her bragging about discovering the hidden files on Grant’s thumb drive.
He froze, hands a few inches above the keyboard. He looked at Bedrosov’s thumb drive, protruding from the computer tower like a stubby arrow.
Given the cascade of discoveries, he hadn’t checked it for hidden files.
He right-clicked on the icon, selected the option to run as administrator. Then he typed in “attrib-s-h-r /s /d.”
A single cloaked folder came into view.
Police and court documents with highest classification markings. Of course they’d been hidden behind one more layer of protection for Bedrosov; they pertained to his investigation alone. They had likely been fed to Grant so he could know more specifically what charges he needed to play defense against as he shell-gamed Bedrosov’s money.
The documents didn’t merely detail the case against Bedrosov. They also showed a flurry of activity surrounding the simple wire-fraud charges that had been leveled. Filed motions. Internal memos from the district attorney’s office. Annotated interview transcripts. Copies of court orders. Interview requests for the DA investigator. Demands for Lorraine Lennox to reveal her confidential sources. And a host of search- and electronic-surveillance warrants looking to expand the investigation. A few even targeted the players at the edge of Stella Hardwick’s empire—David Terzian, Alexan Petro, Detectives Ignacio Nuñez and Paul Brust.
Someone was looking to expand the case.
Evan’s muscles had locked up, his shoulders a sheet of stress pulling at the tendons of his neck. He knew in his gut who that someone was even before he found the matching signature at the bottom of each and every warrant.
* * *
In her conference room alone, gazing out at the mediocre view of downtown with her Turing Phone pressed to her ear, Stella Hardwick received the update with a ramrod spine and a stiff upper lip. She permitted no change of her expression or rise in the volume of her voice.
“So they failed,” she said. “You failed.”
There was a pause as Fitz seemingly gathered himself. “The man helping Grant’s cousin had a truck with discreet armoring.”
“An armored truck.”
“That’s right. Yes. Look—I’m sorry. We’ve been scouring the streets. We’ll get him.”
“Yes. You will. But now we can’t afford to hold off anymore.”
“On what?”
“We can’t take any risks. Clean up the rest of it.”
Another long pause, interrupted only by the crackle of static over the line. “I know we’ve taken steps before,” Fitz said. “But this is a whole other level. We’re talking about a Los Angeles County district attorney. To be clear—”
“I am being clear,” Stella said, and severed the connection.
* * *
All the signs had been there.
And Evan had missed them.
Every time he’d seen her, she’d been on the phone with her office, pushing for search warrants, forging into blowback, fighting to keep her investigation on track—the investigation he’d unknowingly collided with at every turn. She’d been up late and up early, cycling through court suits and spending most of her waking hours trying her long-cause trials downtown.
Stella Hardwick and her cabal had proved they were willing to kill to protect what they’d built. It seemed certain that with the walls closing in on them now, they’d be willing to assassinate a DA as well.
Agitated, Evan stood up. His vision filled with snow, and he reached for the desk, missed it, and fell over. He lay on the cold floor a moment, his head buzzing, and then he pulled himself back up into his chair.
He brought up the folder containing the files he maintained on every resident of Castle Heights. Mia’s was just as invasive as the rest of them, with zero-day exploits granting him access to her iPhone, her work calendar, the DA databases, and virtually everything else.
He hovered the cursor over her name.
Hesitated.
He could only imagine the ire Mia would unleash if she knew he was about to illegally pry into her life.
He recalled Max’s anguish at walking away from Violet to save her. How he’d done the one thing she would have least wanted him to do.
Because he couldn’t bear not to.
Evan opened Mia’s file.
58
Beautiful, Furtive Choreography
Mia jammed her thumb into the crosswalk button at South Grand and 6th, the downtown traffic so solid it looked like a wall before her. She’d donned sneakers for the long walk over from her office, stuffing her ankle-strap flats into her overburdened purse.
A last-minute mystery witness had stepped forth, e-mailing her from an anonymous account and promising to reveal incriminating evidence about a pay trail leading to the dirty detectives who’d been killed at Hollywood Station last week. The witness had claimed that she was flying out first thing in the morning for her own safety and requested that Mia take her statement in the privacy of her room at the Standard Hotel.
Mia checked her watch. Five minutes to 4:00 P.M., which meant Peter would be at language lab. Another late evening for the case that stubbornly refused to break open.
The light changed, and she crossed the street.
She did not notice the white van idling at the crosswalk. The two large men occupying the front seats. Or the bulkhead partition hiding the others in the rear.
The driver signaled to two SUVs parked across the street.
They pulled out after Mia, shadowing her as
she stepped up onto the opposing curb, her satchel briefcase swinging. She weaved along the sidewalk, the van and the SUVs rotating in the background, enfolding her in expert surveillance.
As she made her way toward the hotel, the SUVs accelerated past her and parked on parallel cross streets. Two operators emerged from each, leaving the vehicles behind. They wore bone-conduction headsets wrapped around their left ears. The inconspicuous units conveyed sound waves as auditory vibrations that passed through the bone behind the ear into the cochlea. The men shuffled into the various streams of pedestrians, riding the currents in a swirl around Mia. The lead operator peeled off, slipping through a side door into the Standard Hotel.
The van slithered through traffic, coasting past her. Oblivious, Mia neared the hotel entrance. A man glided up on her heels. Two more approached from opposite directions, splitting and overlapping.
A beautiful, furtive choreography.
The dance continued through the lobby as she headed for the elevator, men rotating around her, menacingly close and somehow inconspicuous. One paused to linger by a pillar. Two more vectored to the stairwell, blending into foot traffic, merging with the bustle of an average evening.
Mia stepped onto the elevator, knuckled the button for the twelfth floor. One of the operators was waiting inside, shouldered to the rear behind a cluster of women with oversize shopping bags.
The doors closed.
As they rose silently, Mia checked her e-mail, confirming the meet in Room 1202. A screen embedded above the buttons flashed glammed-up images of the restaurant, the gym, the spa-blue swimming pool on the rooftop.
She watched her screen. The man watched her.
When the doors opened on the twelfth floor, Mia exited, head down, reviewing notes on her phone.
The operator sidled out weightlessly behind her.
They walked up the corridor. The stairwell door opened silently behind them, and another operator eased out. A third emerged from an intersecting hall. Seconds later the neighboring elevator car delivered a fourth.
Into the Fire Page 33