Furrows of rain clouds turned the sky into a field of gray. Evan stood between the Taurus and his Ford pickup on the top level of the long-term-parking complex, his head still humming from his encounter with Candy McClure. Her offer seemed to be legit, but there was a reason that the first of the Commandments proclaimed: Assume nothing.
Given her exceptional dangerousness, he couldn’t trust his usual procedures to cover his tracks.
He had the rooftop to himself. Most travelers didn’t want to leave their vehicles up here, exposed to the elements, especially when there were so many spots available on lower levels. And now was the midday lull between morning departures and afternoon arrivals.
He stripped naked, threw his clothes and boots into the back of the Taurus, and then dressed in an identical outfit, which he’d stored in the trunk. He transferred his backpack and everything else from the Taurus into the rectangular truck vaults installed over the bed of his F-150 pickup.
Then he took a hose and a gas can from the truck and suck-started a stream of gasoline from the Taurus’s tank. When he had enough, he doused the car’s seats and his clothes and lit them on fire.
He left the Taurus burning on the rooftop, sending a plume of black smoke up to join the charcoal sky.
He arrived back at Castle Heights without further incident and hustled across the lobby to catch the elevator as the doors closed. Too late, he picked up the scent of old-lady perfume, but his momentum carried him across the threshold next to the stubby and venomous Ida Rosenbaum of 6G.
She glowered up at him, her eyes pronounced behind her glasses.
He nodded at her. “Ma’am.”
“Again with the ma’am.”
They rose a few floors in awkward silence, Evan gripping his backpack before him. He hoped his hands didn’t smell too strongly of gasoline. Her nose twitched once and then again.
Before she could ask anything, he quickly diverted her. “It’s nice out today.”
Her painted eyebrows rose. “Know what my Herb used to say, may he rest in peace?”
“No, ma’am.”
“That talking about the weather is dull enough. But to talk about the weather in Los Angeles? You have to be pathologically dull.”
“Copy that, ma’am.”
Mercifully, the elevator doors parted on the sixth floor and Mrs. Rosenbaum shuffled out with an absence of alacrity that signaled either a hip condition or deep-seated passive-aggressiveness.
Evan exited on Mia’s floor and removed the present he’d picked up for Peter in D.C., still wrapped in brown paper from the gift shop.
As he neared the door of 12B, it occurred to him that he had nothing for Mia. Given that his last visit had wound up in her bed, was this poor form? He hesitated, finger extended to the doorbell, arguing with himself. It wasn’t like he was empty-handed. But was a gift for Peter enough? Or did that make it more insulting that he had nothing for Mia? What did ordinary people do? A bouquet of roses? Chocolates? Both options seemed crass and vaguely humiliating, as if he took his cues from TV commercials.
He could elude half of D.C.’s police force, but this is where he fell down: negotiating the nuances of everyday relationships. Nothing in his background or training had provided any guidance on how an actual second date went and whether he was supposed to show up with a heart-shaped box of fucking truffles.
He rang the bell. Waited.
No answer.
He was surprised at how much relief he felt. This would give him time to fall back, rethink his position, and strategize.
He removed a notepad from the backpack and jotted on the top sheet, “Stopped by to say hi. Sorry I missed you.—Evan.”
Direct, efficient, to the point. He had to play to his strengths.
He slotted the note in the crack above the doorknob and starting walking back to the elevator. Then he stopped and dropped the backpack, frustrated.
Returning he unfolded the note and wrote, “P.S. It was nice seeing you.”
He scowled at the bland addition. That sounded nothing like him. He crumpled up the sheet, re-created the first note, and left before he could rethink his position again.
Upstairs, he put away his gear and then settled into a cross-legged position on the Turkish area rug in the great room. He veiled his eyes, holding them not entirely open or closed, letting the room turn into a blur. He sensed the weight of his body, the complaints of his sore muscles. And he listened to the sound of his breath through his nose, the hiss of air from a distant vent, the hum of the Sub-Zero way across in the kitchen. His body felt warm, sweat beading on his forehead, the old scar in his stomach pulsing with a faint heat. The aim was to feel his body as if for the first time. To enter this moment as if only this moment existed.
He was alert and relaxed. They weren’t opposites, not exactly. They were two opposing forces that held him steady in the center, the wave line of the yin-yang. A perfect balance, one foot in either domain, the eyes of the tadpoles.
He breathed and breathed some more.
An image sailed into the haze of his meditation. The naked Ukrainian girl, no more than fifteen years old, standing in the office doorway of an abandoned textile factory. Her haunted eyes, the skin around them black with toxins. The filthy mattress on the floor behind her. A metal cup and plate.
All those years ago, Evan had killed the Estonian gun dealer and left her with a cigar box stuffed with currency.
Could he have done more?
His eyes were open now, fully open. Rising, he headed to the nearest workout station.
It seemed he’d lost his stomach for meditation.
* * *
In the Vault, Evan had President Bennett’s schedule projected onto three walls. He pored over convoy routes, upcoming events, and travel logs. Then he analyzed the schedule changes to see if there was a method to the madness, but there was none that he could discern.
Sighing, he cocked back in his chair. From her bowl of glass pebbles, Vera II looked at him, clearly unimpressed.
“I’ll figure it out,” he told her.
She stared at him some more, smugly photosynthesizing.
“Okay,” he said. “You want to see some headway?”
He minimized all the projected windows from the Secret Service private network, cracked his knuckles, and switched tracks, refocusing on the Nowhere Man mission. He’d gotten two names out of the musclehead.
Terrance DeGraw, aka Raw One, was the other man who’d helped exterminate Trevon Gaines’s extended family. An address and a rap sheet filled with priors was quickly forthcoming.
DeGraw would get a visit soon.
But right now Evan was focused on the kingpin.
Russell Gadds.
Evan called up Gadds’s booking photo and slid it onto the opposite wall so the giant face stared back at him.
Trevon Gaines had nicknamed the man well.
Gadds had a thick, doughy nose, extra meat around the flanges, his cheeks textured with pronounced pores. A thick tousle of shiny black curls hung over his forehead. His lips were too pink and too moist, almost beaklike. They might have looked sensuous on another face. He was striking and ugly, and yet there was a virile handsomeness to him. He made a forceful impression, as forceful men often did.
Building a picture, Evan went deep-diving through NCIC, CLETS, and a half dozen other state and federal databases. Gadds had served a few short stints in federal penitentiaries, mostly for pled-down drug charges. He’d been brought up on assault charges numerous times, often against women, and ordered to attend court-mandated anger-management courses. Hearsay linked him to several murders, and he’d been twice investigated for trafficking. The DEA had an active but stalled-out continuing criminal-enterprise case; the lead agent had assembled a list of eighteen known associates, whom he characterized as impressive in their depravity and blind devotion.
Gadds had seemingly learned his lesson from the CCE case, his personal and business addresses vanishing off the radar a few years back. Everything now was off-the-books or buried in shell corps, his bills sent to mail-forwarding services or P.O. boxes.
Evan knew that drill well enough.
He dug around in old criminal records until he produced a cell number.
He dialed.
It rang once, twice, three times. Just as Evan was about to cut the line, a man answered. “Who’s this?”
The voice was deep, sonorous, but also nasal, the septum blown out from cocaine.
Evan said, “Russell Gadds?”
“Who’s calling my private line?”
Evan had the man’s attention. That was good. The more distracted Gadds was, the less likely he’d bat Trevon around like a toy mouse.
Evan stared at the photograph of the big face still floating before him. “I hear you’re weakened. I hear you’ve lost your supplier. I want you to know: I’m coming for your business. I’m coming for you.”
The line crackled for a moment, and then Gadds laughed, a few booming notes that sounded wet and angry. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy who’s gonna kill you.”
Another laugh, this one wheezing and a touch strained. “Who are you?”
Evan hung up.
He rose, clipped his holstered ARES to his hip, and exited the Vault.