Lone Wolf, page 21
Beyond the two downed men, the remaining customers shifted on their feet, eyes shiny and alert. But Evan’s reaction had stopped them in their tracks. And the cramped space worked against them; they could only come at him in single file.
“We’re leaving,” Evan said. “Let us go. Everyone’s gotta wake up and work tomorrow, right?”
He kept squared to them. They didn’t agree but they didn’t advance either. On the floor, Jimmy hacked a few times and rolled up to lean against the bar, a glob of saliva at the side of his lips.
Evan peeled a hundred from his money clip and rested it on the jukebox. “Next round,” he said. “And apologies.”
Reaching behind him for Andre, Evan shoved him again toward the rear door. Andre rag-dolled along, unsteady on his legs.
Another two shuffled steps and a final push slammed Andre against the crash bar and out into the alley. Pivoting, Evan banged him against a dumpster, the metal thundering.
“I’m sick of saving your ass.” Evan’s words came hard through clenched teeth. “You start another fight, you’re on your own.”
“That’s why I’m here, dumbass. To be on my own.”
“You can’t just not answer your fucking phone,” Evan said. “You have a daughter. Your daughter’s mom. You have people counting on you.” He was angrier than made any sense. “Get it together, Andre. People have more to do than clean up after you.”
“You think I don’t know?” His lips were wobbling now, his face a confusion of sorrow and rage. “Your big fucking insights for me? You think I don’t know I fuck everything up? That I fucked it up with Bri?” He kept shouting at Evan through a hoarse throat. “I know, okay? I did.” He thumped his chest with a fist. “I couldn’t believe how good she was. That she loved me for me. No way, right? What’s the hustle? So I pushed to test it. To see. How ’bout now? How ’bout if I’m drunk? How ’bout if I don’t show up? How ’bout if I let you down? And again? And again? And finally she said, ‘Fuck. I give. I give up. I give up on you.’ And she was right to. And it’s not fucking fixable ever, and now and then I want a little rum. I just want a little rum and for everyone to stay the fuck out of my face.” He was cry-screaming, pathetic. “So get the fuck out of my face, Evan.”
Evan couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed anger to seep through him like this. He slammed Andre against the dumpster again, and Andre collapsed to the ground.
“Happily,” Evan said. “You piece of shit.”
He walked out of the alley, head down, boots rippling the pooled water, making the heavens wobble. He came around the corner, striding to the crosswalk. His palms were hot and he felt his heart thumping in his chest and he wondered how he could deal with lethal assassins and psychopathic CEOs while barely breaking a sweat and yet this useless drunk, a lost foster-home boy like him, could set his nerves on edge, infect him like a virus.
The Ten Commandments shielded him from letting in weakness, from drowning in shades of gray. He couldn’t open the door now. If he did, who else would come through? And how many more complications would they bring?
At a point it was too much. Joey with her needs. Sofia with her shitty little dog. Dr. Hill and Jayla. The Wolf and whoever had set her in motion. Allman plotting the digital overthrow of human civilization.
Evan had asked for help but he’d only gotten more mess, more problems, more responsibility.
He halted.
The F-150 beckoned across the street, shiny and clean, part war machine, part escape vehicle.
He pictured Andre as a husky kid back in Pride House, how he’d sit on his top bunk sketching in his notepad, drawing sexy girls and superheroes and Cadillacs, visions of a future where he wasn’t someone laid out drunk in the shadow of a dumpster behind a third-rate bar. He thought about himself groggy with vodka on the couch in the Tarzana safe house, Joey storming in with the RoamZone, throwing it at his chest. It’s not just you, you know. Jack standing amid the Virginia oaks. What if there’s no one to fix anything? Except you.
Lowering his head, he let a sigh seep through his clenched teeth. Kicked the toe of his boot twice into the pavement.
Then he turned around and walked back into the alley.
Andre hadn’t gotten up. He lay crumpled against the dumpster, arms splayed, the puddle soaking into his jeans.
Evan stood over him. Andre didn’t stir but his eyes ticked up, the whites shining in the gloom.
“Come on,” Evan said.
“Lea’ me alone.”
“Come on.”
Andre’s eyes were wet. He sounded like a little boy. “Fuck you.”
“Andre.”
“I’m not fucking perfect like you! Okay? I didn’t get a shot. Didn’t get rescued out of the home. I crawled out. And I’m still crawling, you arrogant motherfucker. I’m still…”
His hands went to his face, trembling, and he was sobbing as openly as a child.
Evan’s mouth was dry. He said, “Andre.”
Andre shoved his hands across his chest under his arms, hugging himself, eyes downcast, shuddering with grief.
“I’m sorry.” Evan’s throat was thick. “Andre.”
Nothing.
Evan put out his hand. “Brother.”
Andre looked up at him, sweat-damp hair in his eyes, face swollen.
He held out a trembling hand.
Evan lifted him up.
* * *
Brianna peered out at Evan through the two-inch slice allowed by the security door latch. She wore a bathrobe, a champagne-colored silk head wrap, and a scowl. She took Evan’s measure, undid the door, and walked away, leaving him to follow.
He did.
A fresh humidity from a recently cracked dishwasher heavied the air of the small apartment. There were vacuum lines in the carpet, and the counters were wiped clean, and an insulated lunch bag and thermos rested on a dish-drying mat by the kitchen sink. On the garage-sale desk in the corner, a stapler pinned down a stack of bills that looked taller than a month’s worth.
In the corner of the living room, a shrine to the missing dog had been erected atop two stacked shoe boxes. An Our Lady of Perpetual Help veladora flickered, giving off a discordant hint of coconut. The candle flame uplit a low-quality printout of Loco’s lolling tongue and mildly schizophrenic face.
Brianna turned to face Evan in front of the couch. She didn’t invite him to sit.
She crossed her arms, thickened dysmorphically by the terry bathrobe sleeves. “Well?”
“I found Andre where you said. Got him home. He’s okay.”
Her eyes darted away but he swore he read relief in them. She had thumbprint-size bruises beneath her lids, and in the dim light she looked worn-down, single-mom exhausted. “Was it ugly?”
“Yeah,” Evan said.
A door creaked behind Evan and then Sofia padded out. She wore a lime-green sleeping gown with tutu frills and a matching hair band.
“Is Dad okay?”
Evan said, “He’s okay.”
“Was he drinking?”
Evan looked at Brianna, got back a steely-eyed look. He said, “Yes.”
“Too much?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he didn’t call me?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes glistened and her mouth bunched up with angry determination. “’Cuz he cares about drinking more than me?”
“No.”
“Why’d he do it then? Get drunk instead of calling me like he promised? Like he was supposed to?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said. “People are messy. I don’t understand them.”
Sofia said, “That’s fucked up.”
The word in her little girl mouth sounded even more profane. And appropriate.
“Yeah,” Evan said. “It is fucked up.”
She eased forward on her bare feet one step, two, and then leaned into Evan. Just: tilted until her forehead met his sternum, arms dangling in a zombie hang between them. She wanted something. Proximity? Contact? Comfort?
She’d startled him, his arms floating idiotically up at his sides as if he’d just jumped off a cliff and was readying to flap his way to safety.
Behind Sofia’s back, Brianna implored him with raised eyebrows and an emphatic jerk of her splayed fingers: Do something, stupid. He felt as men have felt since time immemorial beneath the glare of superior feminine EQ—clueless and incomplete. Resetting, he lowered one arm across Sofia’s shoulders and gave the child a pat on her back. It was hard to believe the frailty of her bones beneath the skin, the ridge of the spine, the posterior ribs—like petting a baby bird.
Sofia didn’t move. She smelled like shampoo and soap.
“Bed now,” Brianna said, her voice thick. “Go on.”
Sofia tilted her weight back onto her heels and headed toward her room. She hesitated at the little altar, hit her knees, crossed herself, and then rose and scampered down the brief hall. The door closed, extinguishing the lavender glow of a night-light.
“That dog,” Brianna said, “he’s already dead, right?”
Evan shrugged. “He’s a survivor.”
“Like you. Like Andre.”
Evan shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Andre’s doing his best.”
“No,” she said. “Uh-uh. Don’t you try’n sell that here.”
Evan said, “Okay.”
“Let me tell you all I care about now.” Bri pointed down the hall. “That little girl. Not having her heart broke. Which is impossible. You know why? Because Andre is her father.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” Her arms were crossed again, her stare hard, accusatory, and Evan understood that he was being asked to answer for something more than himself.
He said, “Yes.”
Her glare softened and she loosened her arms and blew out a breath.
“You know,” she said, “there’s a hidden blessing in having someone in your life you can’t reach. It humbles you, your arrogance in thinking you could fix everyone if they just had the good sense to listen to you. And…” Her lips trembled. “It gives you gratitude for all the people who might be reachable.”
Evan didn’t like the feeling of her eyes on him. It felt like a challenge.
He nodded a good-bye and withdrew.
Out in the hall he heard the thump-thump-thump of the communal dryers working overtime. He paused a moment and shouldered into the wall, breathing in the relative quiet.
He had no idea what to feel.
39
Wolf-Eat-Wolf
“Who’s the visionary behind Youtopia?” Evan asked. The shitty speakers of the Dodge Neon crackled, but the connection held.
Despite the East Coast hour, Luke Devine had sounded perfectly awake when he’d picked up. “Visionary?”
“Someone Allman would consider a legitimate rival.”
Since he was already downtown, he’d decided to take a spin through Dr. Hill’s neighborhood on the off chance that Loco had returned to sniff around familiar ground. He laced through the surrounding blocks, scanning sidewalks and alcoves.
“That’d be Nathan Friedhoff, the CEO. Rumor has it he’s a bit wobbly of late.”
“Why’s that?”
“Too much power can crack a man as sure as too much suffering. Thin line between genius and madness. I could hum a few bars but I’m sure you know the tune already.”
Evan called up Friedhoff’s photograph on the Youtopia website. He wanted to see someone who could outcompete Allman on the scale of reprehensibility, someone willing to assassinate competitors with the ease of a Russian pakhan and eliminate their children after that. Friedhoff was a slender white guy in a suit and tie. His pose said: whimsical yet competent.
Evan tried to imagine the string of actions that led from this man to Jayla Hill asphyxiating on a butcher-block slab in her own home. Before any heat could gain purchase, the First Commandment backed him off: Assume nothing.
He’d get to Friedhoff. And extract the answers he required.
“Friedhoff, he’s up in Silicon Valley?”
“No,” Devine said. “L.A., like Allman. Youtopia took over Amazon Studios’ old digs in the Santa Monica Water Garden. I heard somewhere Friedhoff bought a designer home in the Hollywood Hills—one of those glass monstrosities.”
“I need to get in with him, too. Same ruse.”
“I don’t like taking orders.”
“Want me to fly out, ask in person?”
“No,” Devine said quickly. “That won’t be necessary. Why do you need to see him?”
“He had motive to wipe out Allman’s principal deep-learning scientist. Competing technology.”
“Tech is a wolf-eat-wolf world,” Devine observed. “What’d you think of Allman?”
“Nothing,” Evan said.
“That little?”
“No. I think he is nothing. He’s a void. He’s like … evolution. An unthinking force.”
Devine made a thoughtful sound. “Yes. He thinks that’s all any of us are.”
Evan said, “Friedhoff, ASAP,” and hung up.
The row of town houses materialized ahead, a rise of affluence. Evan drove the Neon right past the front of Hill’s place without slowing. No interior lights, dark as a tomb. Vehicles lined the metered street, many with post-market tinted windows. They stretched a full block up to the Burger King.
Looping around, he cut back through the alley where he’d nearly been steamrolled by the black Suburban just three days ago. A grizzly-bear swipe of crumbled stucco marred the east entrance where the SUV had buried itself after it had clipped Evan and transformed him briefly into a human Frisbee. He coasted through the narrow aisle now, headlights picking across the wind-strewn trash, searching out the mangy dog.
The back of Hill’s town house floated by on his left, a towering edifice of blackness.
He thought about the row of parked vehicles across from the entrance to Hill’s place. Pictured Jayla’s curled form in the hospital bed, that bandage across her throat, forcing her to push words out through her hands. Why does she want to hurt me? Because I saw her face?
An operational concern tingled to life in his brain stem. He paid attention, excavated it, forced it to the surface.
Parking on a neighboring street, he retrieved from the loadout bag in the trunk a pair of Steiner tactical binoculars equipped with state-of-the-art night vision.
On the building adjacent to Hill’s town house, he climbed the same fire escape he’d plummeted down days earlier. Belly scraping across the roof, he combat-crawled toward the edge, inching his way to the brink.
Barely breathing, he lay on his stomach, scanning the parked vehicles, making sure he offered only the faintest slice of profile above the rooftop. There was a beat-to-shit Prius, two Toyota pickups, a half dozen nondescript sedans, a dilapidated Hyundai Tucson, and a Yukon with mud splashed up the wheel wells. Streetlights bounced off the vehicles’ windows, turning the panes reflective, hiding the interiors. He paid closest attention to the SUVs.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. His breath misted faintly in the cold. The night air cooled the inside of his throat. His stomach itched but he didn’t move to scratch it. The only way he could get closer to the roof’s surface would be if he turned liquid.
He was about to draw back when the window of the Yukon quivered and then slowly eased down.
He caught a round glint—a sniper scope?—and almost jerked back before noting that it was doubled.
A set of night-vision binoculars just like his. Gloved hands curled around the lenses, towhead bangs framing a shadowed face.
He stared through his binoculars down at her.
The Wolf stared through her binoculars up at him.
Lying in wait for Jayla Hill to return home.
Lowering the Steiners, he gave the Wolf a little salute, two fingers tapping his forehead, a match of the gesture she’d given him outside Jayla’s hospital: See ya around.
The Wolf lowered her binoculars and flashed a smile.
The rising window, a reverse guillotine, claimed her head in a smooth chop. The Yukon rattled to life, screeched out from its spot, and was gone.
40
Permanent Damage
IT’S CALLED THE HOMEOWNER’S ASSOCIATION, the flyer screamed from the door to the Castle Heights lobby. SO LET’S ASSOCIATE!!!
Standing on the landing of the dim garage, enervated in the wake of Allman’s nihilist ramblings, Andre’s misery, and the Wolf’s competent vigilance, Evan was unsure what he was in the mood for, though he sure as hell knew it wasn’t weaponized cheeriness punctuated by an excess of exclamation points.
Smaller lettering beneath declaimed: Crafts ’n Chit-Chat at the Rez of Your Current HOA Prez! Tear tabs at the bottom, scissored into hanging chads, provided date, time, and Lorilee’s apartment number. All but one of the tabs had been torn off. Was it possible that a full dozen residents were desperate enough to partake of crafts ’n chit-chat? Or had Hugh Walters ripped them off himself in order to sabotage his nemesis? Either way, the escalating machinations over nominal political control of Castle Heights wore on Evan’s frayed nerves.
Setting his jaw, he pressed through the door.
The lobby was tranquil save for the faintest bump of Chicano rap from the direction of Joaquin’s security station. As Evan neared, Joaquin tilted forward on his chair and slapped at the radio, changing the station to golden oldies.
“Evening, Mr. S.”
As Joaquin adjusted his oversize blazer, Evan spotted a neck tattoo peeking out from his shirt collar. He felt an added measure of respect for the young man. That kind of ink meant Joaquin had some street in him. He’d always played his role here, doing his job and doing it well. Working an hourly wage made it likely he lived in a multigenerational household, maybe with his grandparents, a kid at home, as much an impostor in this world as Evan was.
“Put your music on,” Evan said. “Until someone complains.”
Joaquin summoned the elevator remotely for Evan, scratched at his throat where the tie chafed. “Someone already complained.”
