“Uh-huh.”
“I had another container, a replacement container, right there, ready to be scrutinized. You just had to smile and look the other way.” Big Face picked up a letter opener and put the pointy tip into his finger and twisted it. “But you didn’t, did you?”
Trevon’s throat was dry. He couldn’t find his voice, so he shook his head.
“Instead you called customs and went home for the night. And now here we are. Me with my problems. And you with yours.” Big Face’s teeth clenched. “Do you think my … trading partners will cover my losses? Do you think they’ll say, ‘Oh, there was a mix-up? That’s okay. We’ll cover your losses. We’ll send you another shipment.’”
“Oh!” Trevon said. “One time I bought berries at Trader Joe’s, and when I got home the ones on the bottom were all moldy like, and so I took ’em back.…”
Big Face’s eyes got wide, and Trevon figured he didn’t like his story so he stopped telling it ’cuz that was something Mama had taught him about reading social cues.
Mama.
Big Face said, “You didn’t listen to Chava.”
Trevon wiped at his forehead again. “Where’s Chava now?”
“Chava? Chava is dead.”
Trevon felt his throat closing up, trying to make him cry, but he wouldn’t. “He is? Oh, no. Musta been really bad food poisoning.”
Muscley One and Raw One laughed behind him, but then Big Face looked up at them and they went silent.
“In direct violation of Chava’s orders—of my orders—you called customs,” Big Face said. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“’Cuz that’s what the rules say. And it’s the right thing to do.”
“Are you happy with where that got you?”
“I don’t … I don’t know. What are you gonna do to me?”
“To you ? Oh, I’m not gonna touch a hair on your head.” Big Face leaned forward, and his chair made a creaking noise. “Instead I’m gonna tell you a story. When some piece of shit commits an act of terror in Israel, do you know what the Israeli army does?”
“No, sir.”
“They demolish the houses of the raghead’s family. Every last family member. Every last house. Because, you see, merely punishing the offender doesn’t work as a deterrent. It doesn’t help ensure that this will never happen again .” Big Face took a few more breaths. “What the Israeli army does is a fine policy. But my trading partners? They make what’s going on in the Middle East look like a playground. They could well imagine that with my coffers low and my merchandise flow interrupted I am weak. They are uniquely attuned to smelling weakness. So I require a show of strength. One that reminds them that I am not weak but that I am to be feared . Which requires measures much more severe than those used by the Israelis.”
Trevon felt pins and needles all over his body.
“Jesus Christ.” Big Face looked up at his friends. “I’m dealing with someone who is literally too stupid to appreciate how fucked he is.” He stood. “I’ll try’n break it down for you clearly, Trevon. Everything that happened to your family? Everything that is going to happen? It’s all your fault.”
Trevon tried to talk, but his throat was all dried up. He swallowed and tried again. “What else is gonna happen?”
“I’m going to eliminate your people from the face of the earth. I will kill every relative and loved one you have. Wipe away any trace that you exist outside of the terrible thoughts bouncing around inside your damaged, useless skull.”
Trevon thought of his cousin Aisha on the lawn chair and Auntie Tisha on the lawn and Mama in her chair.
Mama.
Big Face interrupted his thoughts. “Your grandmother? In the nursing home?”
Trevon’s voice sounded like a croak. “Gran’mama?”
“My associates mixed weed killer into her morning yogurt. She’ll die, certainly. But it will take hours .”
Trevon shook his head back and forth hard, trying to make the pictures in it go away.
“Your brother Leo? Home right now with his jaw wired shut? My friends here replaced his meds with emetics. Can you imagine what it’s like to vomit again and again when it has nowhere to go?” Big Face twisted that letter opener into the pad of his finger, bringing up a tiny bead of blood. “It took him nearly twenty minutes to suffocate.”
Trevon waited, forgetting to breathe, his chest burning and burning.
Somewhere inside his brain, he realized that Big Face hadn’t mentioned Kiara which was good, ’cuz Kiara was his favorite and she was in Guatemala helping folks and she barely never even checked e-mails no more.
She was safe. Kiara was safe.
But Gran’mama. And Leo. And Mama.
Mama.
Big Face was talking some more. “Your lineage has been exterminated. And not just backward but into the future. Forever. If you ever date, if you ever marry, if you ever have kids, we will be there. We will take everything and everyone from you as you took forty-four years of hard work from me.”
Big Face nodded, and Muscley One and Raw One came forward and grabbed Trevon’s wrists to control his hands. He screamed and tried to fight, but they were way, way too strong.
They shoved Raw One’s folding knife into Trevon’s hand and made him grab the sticky handle before taking it away. Then they did the same thing with a machete and a gun and a pill bottle. They put all the stuff into a plastic bag.
Big Face nodded at the bag. “Do you understand what this means?”
Trevon shook his head.
“These murder weapons have your fingerprints on them. If you go to the cops, if you talk to anyone , we will make sure these weapons are found. You will be known as the psycho retard who murdered his entire family. And I can promise you, you will not fare well in prison among real murderers. And rapists.” He licked the dot of blood from his fingertip. “Do you understand now?”
It took some effort for Trevon to make his head move up and down.
“Maybe one day you’ll decide that you can tell a police officer. Share your burden with a co-worker. Maybe you’ll think you can run away, leave the city, go to Mexico. If you think I won’t find out, think again. You don’t do what I do over four decades without building connections everywhere. I will know. ”
Big Face walked around his desk now in front of Trevon and crossed his arms and looked down at him. He smelled of fancy cologne.
“You exist now for one purpose and one purpose only. To be an advertisement to my trading partners, to my workers, to the world in which I move that no one is ever to take steps to harm my interests. You will wake each morning and breathe and suffer as a living testimony to my power.”
Trevon leaned over and vomited on his shoes.
Big Face said, “Get this imbecile the fuck out of my office.”
Muscley One and Raw One lifted Trevon by the arms. His legs didn’t work, so they carry-dragged him back out through the front room, into the gravel lot, and over to the truck.
Muscley One reached into the backseat and threw a little towel at Trevon’s face. “You’re cleaning your ass up before you get in my new truck.”
Trevon wiped at his mouth and his shirt. Then he held the little towel tight in his hands as they put the trash liner back over his head and pushed him in. The air smelled like the blue tree he’d seen dangling from the rearview mirror.
As they drove off, the Scaredy Bugs went crazy inside Trevon, running around so fast he wished he could unzip his skin and crawl out. He tried to hum to himself, but it didn’t help any. His hands were shaking and his arms were shaking and his legs were shaking. He twisted the little towel between his fists and rocked himself, but that didn’t help any.
The Scaredy Bugs had won.
15
Outside the Purview
After a roundabout trip home—an early-morning flight from D.C. into San Francisco, a commuter plane to Long Beach Airport, a vehicle switch at a long-term-parking lot and another at one of his many safe houses—Evan drove his Ford pickup through the Wilshire Corridor. The harsh midday sun glinted off the glass of the condo high-rises thrusting up on either side of the boulevard.
Evan turned in to the porte cochere of his own building, the pompously named Castle Heights Residential Tower.
Mia Hall sat on the bench by the front doors with her nine-year-old son, Peter. They were eating ice cream, though more of Peter’s seemed to be dripping over his fist than remained on the cone. He smiled a chocolaty clown smile and gave a wave that would have been visible several blocks away.
Evan slowed as he passed, the valet jumping at the chance to—for once—park Evan’s truck. Evan put a traffic-cop “stop” hand up at the valet, who sank dejectedly back into his chair, and then looked through the passenger window. It couldn’t roll down. The Kevlar armor that Evan had hung inside the door panels prevented the glass from retracting. That was one of a variety of hidden security measures with which he’d outfitted the F-150. At a glance it looked like a regular pickup.
Just as Evan looked like a regular guy.