Two shapes came out of the dark and turned into two men. One had the kind of outlined muscles you don’t find in nature but you see sometimes on TV. He had a tattoo of a half skull on each forearm, and Trevon could tell that if he held his arms together, they would make a full skull.
The other man reminded Trevon of how Uncle Joe-Joe always described that Johnson boy who lived around the block—raw and lean and all hungry-looking like.
They approached. They were wearing white gloves like the surgeons do on TV, and the gloves were stained red like they’d just performed surgery.
“Please,” Trevon said. “Don’t.”
The raw one smiled, and his pointy tooth glinted in the glow from the BBQ. “Don’t what?”
Trevon pointed at Mama and Auntie Tisha and Uncle Joe-Joe in the pool even though you couldn’t see him in the dark anymore.
“Oh. That.” The silver tooth gleamed again. “Nah, we got something better in store for you.”
“Damn,” the muscley one said. “Those are some Coke-bottle motherfuckers.”
It took a sec, but then Trevon figured out he was talking about Trevon’s eyeglasses, ’cuz that’s what Clyde Johnson called them.
The muscley one said, “You’re Trevon Gaines, right?”
Trevon said, “Uh-huh.”
“Night watchman at SoCal First Bonded Warehouse?”
Trevon said, “I was Employee of the Month in February and April.”
The men looked at each other.
“This should be easy,” the muscley one said. He walked over to the trash can by the BBQ, lifted out the liner, and dumped the trash on the lawn. “He’s a fucking retard.”
“No,” Trevon said. “I’m high-functioning.”
“Either way,” the raw one said, flicking open a folding knife, “you’re coming with us.”
The muscley one put the trash bag over Trevon’s head, and everything went dark, and he got panicky and sucked in, but the bag filled the whole inside of his mouth.
Then a hand palmed the back of his head and something punched through the trash liner into his mouth and nicked the side of his cheek, and then he could breathe through the slit in the bag, but only barely if he sucked in and blew out really hard.
The Scaredy Bugs were running crazy inside his body, but he breathed as hard as he could to get air and told the Scaredy Bugs they weren’t in charge, that he was the boss of them, and when the men shoved him to walk toward the gate, he didn’t complain, because we don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.
13
Good Little Lamb
From Terre Haute, Indiana, to the outskirts of D.C. was a straight shot on 1-70, ten hours and change without traffic.
But traffic had gotten worse in the past 1,779 days, and by the time Judd Holt steered the shitty Nissan Maxima into the motel parking lot, it was full dark.
He’d no sooner parked than the flip phone buzzed in his pocket. He thumbed open the clamshell and read the message: RM 7.
Okay, then.
Public housing loomed all around. A crackhead jittered across the crosswalk, head back, lips parted, ruinous yellow teeth grinning at the moon. Dealers were out, sitting on the hoods of cars, floating by in lowriders, working on their scowls.
Knox Hill wasn’t the worst neighborhood Orphan A had operated in. Next to Jalalabad, it felt like Palm Beach.
He got out of the Maxima, ambled over to the row of bushes hemming in the parking lot, and took a long and satisfying leak.
He didn’t like to head into trouble with a full bladder.
He walked over to Room 7 and knocked.
There was no point bothering with surveillance or a cautious approach. They wouldn’t have had him drive all this way just to put him down.
The door opened. The guy inside was not what Holt expected.
White boy, soft from good meals and good living, some college-athlete muscles in there attempting to hold on. He wore a gray plaid suit like it was 1955 and sported one of those beards that was trying too hard to be noticed.
Holt said, “Who the fuck are you?”
The guy bristled. Stepped back.
Only once the door was closed behind them did he say, “I’m our mutual friend’s deputy chief of staff. The fact that I’m here personally should show you the importance of what we’re about to discuss.”
Holt sat on the bed, bounced a bit to test the mattress. “The fact that I walked out of a federal penitentiary showed me the importance of what we’re about to discuss,” he said. “So I don’t need no foreplay.”
“The Orphan Program is no longer what it was,” the man said, sitting on the other bed and facing Holt so their knees almost touched. “It’s virtually shut down, and there are … compliance issues with our former operators.”
“Meaning they know shit that could be trouble for the Man.”
“Because of your shared history, there’s a level of trust between you and the president.” The man licked his lips. “You’re the only Orphan he ever interacted with directly.”
Holt pulled his shoulders back and down, stretching them. He’d gotten used to it in the box, all the small, compact movements to keep his muscles from languishing.
He thought back to when Bennett was a star on the rise at the DoD. As the inaugural Orphan, Holt had been tasked with reading him in on the Program. He’d also helped Bennett in the operational planning of the first missions he’d overseen.
“He wasn’t like the other DoD suits with their shiny little Glocks,” Holt said. “Naw, he was steel. Could’ve just as easily been on our side of the fence. Yeah, we saw eye to eye.”
“That’s why we want to entrust you with this essential job.”
“Doing what?”
“Eliminating Orphans.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.” The guy reached for a briefcase on the ugly-ass comforter next to him and popped the brass catches like he was in a spy movie. He removed a few files. “As you can imagine, information has been scarce. But we’ve managed to locate a few.”
Holt lifted a hand, palm up, and flicked his fingers inward. “Give ’em here.”
He took the files and flipped through them.
The first contained a phone bill with a few matching numbers circled and nothing else.
The second showed a woman in her late thirties, now a single mother of two in Albuquerque. Holt stared at her face, the PTA makeover. As a former Orphan, she’d be harder to catch off guard than her appearance dictated, but she had kids, so there’d be strings to pull, levers to tug, plenty of incentive for her to go to slaughter like a good little lamb.
The third held a surveillance-screen grab from Grand Central Station. The Orphan looked unwell, a bulge at the waistline, gaunt cheeks, eyes wide and paranoid. He’d be rusty. Holt studied the wrecked face and thought about where he’d place the bullet.
He thumbed through the remaining files, most of them sparse. Each Orphan’s personal background information and operational history had been redacted; all that remained was intel that pertained to tracking them down.
“As you can see, we’ve been hard at work these past months.” The guy clearly feared a good old-fashioned silence. He loosened his tie and undid his top button. Then he fished up a lanyard and showed off the flash drive dangling from it like a pendant. “We have it cached digitally as well, but I was told you were more old-school.” The drive vanished into his collar once again, and he tidied himself back up. “These files—like the Program—are deep black, totally off the books.”
Holt scratched at the stubble curling from his jawline and stared at the man. Aggressively. To his credit, the guy held Holt’s gaze, but Holt could smell the fear coming off him, leaking through the pores.
Holt said, “What’s your name, son?”
“Doug. Wetzel.”
“Wetzel. Let me tell you something. This is all well and good.” Holt dropped the stack of files back into the kid’s lap. “And I will get to them.
I can promise you that. But it’s gotta wait. There’s something I need to take care of first. When I’m done, I’ll come back and we can run the table with these fuckups.”
“What’s so pressing that you’d turn down a presidential order?”
“I think you know the answer to that. You didn’t move heaven and earth to get me released to handle this non-urgent bullshit. So refine your sales pitch instead of trying to walk me into a honey trap.”
Wetzel folded his hands. His fingers looked like little sausages. “Our interests are aligned.”
“No shit. I want Orphan X. He’s got the most dirt on Bennett.” Holt stood up. “This meet? Didn’t need to happen. All you had to do is unlock that cell door and leave me the fuck alone.”
“Sit down,” Wetzel said. At Holt’s stare he quickly held up a hand. “Please,” he added. “There’s more.”
Holt said, “Speak.”
Wetzel told him about the assassination threat and the sniper rifle they’d found with the photographs of dead Orphans.
Holt sat back down, the springs complaining under his weight. “What about the Secret Service?”
“The Secret Service can’t hunt.” The knot of Wetzel’s tie was still pulled to the right side from his show-and-tell with the flash drive, but the rest of his getup was unrumpled, butter smooth. “We’ll get you anything you want. Guns, rifles, explosives.”
“I’ll let you know. For now I’m gonna go—What’d you call me? ‘Old-school.’ But I do need one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Cannon fodder. Going up against X, I’ll need numbers.”
“This is totally covert. I don’t know how we can provide you—”
“At my prison,” Holt said, “there were two brothers, went by Sound and Fury. They’ll do just fine.”
“You want us to release these men?”
“You said you’ll get me anything I want. Well. I want.”
“What are they in for?”
“Torture, rape, homicide.”
Wetzel said, “Oh.”
They stared at each other some more.
Wetzel finally said, “You expect me to free convicted rapists and murderers from prison?”
Holt said, “Yes.”
Wetzel smoothed his beard. “I don’t know that that’s—”
“You want to get a job done, you need the right tools,” Holt said. “Wade and Ricky Collins are the right tools.”
Wetzel sipped in a breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You said you’re the deputy chief of staff. Act like it.” Holt dug in his pocket, removed the flip phone, and snapped it in half. He handed Wetzel the pieces. “I bought me a new phone on the way here.” He told Wetzel the number. “Got it?”
Wetzel nodded. “I’ll be in touch to coordinate our efforts, and we’ll give you a contact number at the DoD. We have people there we trust more than the Service. We’d like you set up away from the president but always nearby. You can shadow his movements, run your own reconnaissance ahead of our advance teams, surveil from a slight remove.”
“Like X is.”
“Just so. You’re the only one who can see this situation through his eyes.” Wetzel grinned. “It takes an Orphan to catch an Orphan.”
Holt wondered how long he’d rehearsed that line.
“I ain’t gonna catch him,” Holt said. “I’m gonna end the motherfucker.”
Wetzel nodded, his chin tight against the tie. “If you’re caught, you’re on your own. This is a full cutout operation.”
Holt considered punching Wetzel in the throat for being obvious. Instead he just stared until Wetzel cracked, fiddled with his briefcase, and rose.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Wetzel said. “This room is paid up for the next month. There’s forty thousand dollars in the nightstand drawer next to the Gideon Bible. It can be replenished as needed.” Producing a disposable phone, he thumbed in the number that Holt had told him, let it ring once, and then hung up. “That’s the contact number you’ll use should you need me.”
He started for the door and then paused. “There is one more thing.” He set the briefcase down on the cracked wooden table, opened it, and removed a last file. “Your arrest, your records, your trail in and out of the penitentiary have all been scrubbed clean. No one will remember anything or care to. Except. The prosecutor, as you might recall, is a shark. Takes cases personally. Perfect record. Dots every i, crosses every t. And, we’re told, keep tabs on every last conviction.” Wetzel rested the file on the table, tented his fingers on it for a moment as if blessing what lay within. “Provide photographic evidence when it’s done.”
“To be clear,” Holt said. “We’re talking about a federal prosecutor.”
Wetzel lifted his hand from the file and exited quietly.
Holt stood for a time in the motel room, breathing in the scent of mold and Lysol. Then he pulled open the nightstand drawer and scooped up the cash.
On his way out, he took the file from the cracked wooden table.
14
Expensive Fish
Pitch-black.
The Scaredy Bugs were running like crazy beneath Trevon’s skin, and his mouth tasted salty from the blood, but he was trying hard not to notice. The little knife slit in the trash bag over his head was just enough to let the air trickle through if he worked really, really hard. His glasses were crooked, and he could tell they were foggy from his breath even though he couldn’t see almost anything.
He wondered why they were doing this to him, but then he remembered that Mama always told him that bullies were just jealous of people who were special ’cuz they didn’t feel special themselves.
Mama.
He bit his lip to keep it from trembling, but only for a sec, ’cuz he needed his mouth open to try’n get air.
They’d been in a car for a while—actually a truck or SUV, ’cuz he’d had to step up to get in the back. So far they’d turned left, left, right, left, right, left, left—and then he’d lost track ’cuz he thought of Mama.
Mama.
There was a slurping sound from the front seat.
Raw One’s voice said, “What’s that shit?”
And then Muscley One said, “Protein drink, fifty-four grams. Check out these sick gains.”
The seat belt made creaking sounds.
Raw One said, “Be sure’n take lots of gym selfies before your kidneys fall out.”
The trash liner was wet against Trevon’s face. “Um,” he said. “Excuse me? Could you please take this off?”
They both laughed, and Muscley One said, “Sure, we’ll get right on that.”
“Thank you,” Trevon said.
They laughed again, and he waited for them to help.
He kept waiting.
* * *
When they tore the garbage bag off his head, he gasped and gasped. As soon as he caught his breath, he said, “Thank you.”
They were standing in a gravel lot in the middle of nowhere. There was a tall fence surrounding them, and on top of the fence there was barbed wire, except not the type that looks like little stars but the big swoopy kind with razor blades.
Muscley One shoved him hard in the kidney, and he said, “Ouch,” but he moved where they wanted him to, toward a big cinder-block building that looked like a warehouse. It was dark, and there were no lights except for one over the only door he could see.
At the door Raw One tapped a code into a panel, and they stood there. Trevon looked at Muscley One’s half-skull tattoos, and Muscley One said, “The fuck you looking at?”
“Your tattoos. They’re scary.”
“Not as scary as what you’re about to see.”
Trevon said, “Oh, no.”
The door buzzed open, and they stepped inside.
They were in a front room, and there were seven other guys like Raw One and Muscley One, and they all had guns strapped to their hips like it was nothing, and they were leaning against the walls and tables and lo
oking all sullen-like. The walls were covered with eleven thick metal plates like it was some kinda shelter to protect them from a alien invasion.
Raw One said, “How’s his mood?” and Rat-Face One said, “How the fuck you think his mood is?”
Fat One flicked his chins at Trevon and said, “That the poor fool?”
Before anyone could answer, a voice came over a loudspeaker and said, “Bring him in here.”
Raw One and Muscley One pushed Trevon toward a closed back door that was all thick and metal. Next to it was a big mirror that took up half the wall.
The voice came back on and said, “Did you frisk him?”
“Believe me,” Raw One said, “it’s not a concern.”
And the voice said, “It’s always a concern.”
Then Raw One and Muscley One touched Trevon all over like they weren’t supposed to, and he thought about Stranger Danger and that he’d have to tell Mama later.
Mama.
Instead he could tell Gran’mama or Leo, because they were family and family will take care of you. He wished Kiara was here instead of running around helping folks in Guatemala ’cuz she was the oldest and the sweetest and his favorite, and she always understood him better than anyone.
The big metal door buzzed, and then Raw One and Muscley One pushed him through. It was a nice office here in the middle of the warehouse with a desk and a blotter and tables with scales on them like they weighed lots of stuff in here, and there was a man sitting behind the desk with his boots up on the blotter.
He had a big face.
Muscley One and Raw One shoved Trevon down into a leather chair facing the desk. Behind the desk were doors that opened onto other corridors with other doors, like the building kept going forever.
Trevon was sweating a lot, and he wiped at his forehead and straightened his glasses. He looked behind him and could see right through the mirror into the front room like magic, and then he realized it was like a interrogation room on a cop show. The other men were relaxed and joking, with big hand gestures and big smiles, and Trevon watched how happy they looked and couldn’t imagine ever feeling like that again.
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