He noted his own rising restlessness now and created distance from it, observing it from afar. Before him was a young man in desperate need of help. Evan was getting useful information. And some not-so-useful information. But then again he couldn’t yet know what would prove useful and what would not, so he cleared his mind and opened it wide. The First Commandment: Assume nothing.
As Trevon continued to describe what had been done to him, Evan forced himself to discard his anger. Anger was useless.
There were two tales unspooling, the one that Trevon was telling and the one that Evan was reconstructing in his head. When Trevon described the shipping container filled with $18 million of frozen fish from Suriname, Evan translated it to six hundred kilograms of cocaine smuggled inside large game fish that helped mask the scent from drug-sniffing dogs. The port of Paramaribo was a narcotics-transshipment point for cocaine of Peruvian origin, which meant Big Face was in deep to the cartel.
After another half hour, Trevon finally ran out of words. “I was just following the rules.” He shook his head. “I was just following the rules like you’re supposed to.”
He was trembling, skinny arms crossed at his stomach.
Evan felt a surge of admiration for the young man, but that reaction too was emotional. It wouldn’t get Evan from A to B, and right now that was all that mattered.
He leaned on the dustless bureau, his elbow touching the side of an old-fashioned TV with the bulk of an ice chest. “Here’s what’s going to happen next.”
Trevon looked over at him, his already big eyes magnified through the thick lenses. On the neatly made bed behind him, there was a stuffed-animal frog, tucked in up to its chin.
“The cops will come,” Evan said. “They’ll tell you that your family has been killed.”
“What do I tell them?”
“That you’re shocked and devastated. That you’re scared you’ll be targeted next. Act terrified. That shouldn’t be hard.”
Trevon’s teeth were chattering. “No, sir.”
“They’ll bring you to identify the bodies.”
Trevon covered his mouth and nodded.
“Your fingerprints are all over the house, but that’s fine. You said you visit your mom a lot, right?”
He nodded again and murmured, “Mama.”
“Don’t tell the cops you went to the house last night.”
“But you’re not supposed to lie to the cops. It’s against the rules.”
“If you follow the rules,” Evan said, “then Big Face will hurt you. And I don’t want you to be hurt. So I need you to listen to me, okay? I need you to follow my rules.”
“Okay.”
“Your cheek’s scuffed up a bit. If the cops ask where you got that, what are you gonna say?”
“I got it when Muscley One and Raw One threw me out of their truck.”
Evan gritted his teeth, searched again for patience, which was proving elusive. “You can’t mention them either, okay? Any of them. If you say anything about them, they’ll find out, remember?”
“Okay.”
Evan looked away to hide his exasperation. On the bureau beside him was a notepad with neat handwriting that read: Goals for the Day
1. Make more eye contact with folks.
2. Smile more when you see folks.
3. Ask a personal question when someone asks you one.
4. Don’t overshare about stuff that bugs you.
5. Be yourself, ’cuz who else can you be!
Evan found that he’d been staring at the pad too long, and he looked away, reminded himself of the Fourth Commandment: Never make it personal.
He cleared his throat, a rare nonverbal tell. “If the cops ask about the scrape on your cheek, tell them you got it moving a crate at the office.”
“Moving a crate at the office.”
“That’s right. And you’re gonna get up in the morning and go to work as if nothing’s happened.”
Trevon’s upper teeth pinched his lower lip, and Evan could see he was biting down very, very hard. Yet he nodded.
“Do not mention me,” Evan said. “That’s a rule. A very important rule. Understand? No matter what.”
“Mention who?”
“Me.”
“I was making a joke,” Trevon said.
“Oh.”
Evan did his best not to look at the list on the bureau, at the frog stuffed animal lovingly tucked in. He had to treat this mission like any other. Which meant treating Trevon like any other client.
“I have to figure out where to find the men who did this to you,” Evan said. “You didn’t overhear any names?”
“No, sir.”
“Can you tell me anything distinctive about the men?”
“Well, one had hair that was brown like chocolate brown and it was cut about two and a half inches—”
“I mean really distinctive. Piercings, tattoos, scars.”
“Muscley One had these tattoos on his inner forearms that were, like, each a half skull so when you put them together like this”—a quick demonstration—“they’d make a whole skull. But I didn’t get to see him do it.”
“That’s good,” Evan said. “That’s helpful.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t know the location of the compound where they brought you?”
“No, sir. My head was covered and I lost count after we turned left, left, right—”
“Did you see the license plate of the truck?”
“It was a new truck with plates like from the dealer but they were dark so I couldn’t read them. If it was new, I don’t know why he added new-car smell ’cuz wouldn’t it have that already and also he was worried I’d get puke on the new seats and so he made me wipe my mouth with a towel.”
“The towel you held on to,” Evan said. “Like Blankie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you still have the towel?”
Trevon stood up, but then his knees seemed to go weak, because he sat back down and leaned forward with his hands on his thighs, the mattress squeaking. Then he stood up again, and Evan followed him into the cramped front room of the apartment. Trevon went over to the yellow tile counter that passed for a kitchen, knelt, and pulled from the trash can what looked like a hand towel.
He handed it to Evan, the microfiber crusted with dried vomit, a ripe odor wafting off it.
Evan turned the white towel over, spotted the stitched decal on the other side: 24 HOUR FITNESS . He tore off the white tag, pocketed it, and handed the towel back to Trevon.
Trevon clutched it to his chest, his eyes starting to water. He squeezed them shut and muttered something to himself under his breath, repeating it in a loop, adjusting his eyeglasses again and again until the earpieces turned the skin above his ears raw.
“Trevon. Trevon. ”
Trevon opened his eyes, sniffed hard. Then he leaned on the table as if he were dizzy.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
Trevon thought for a moment. “Yesterday at 12:05.”
“You’re no good to us if you can’t focus.”
“I’m sorry.”
Evan opened the refrigerator. It was filled with pineapple, cantaloupe, lemon chicken, apricot jam, squash soup, sweet potato, carrots, and oranges. On the counter were Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch, Cheerios, bananas, and a dozen boxes of mac and cheese.
Evan looked at him.
Trevon gave a faint cough, a nervous tic, then did it again. “I only … I only eat food that’s yellow or orange.”
“I understand,” Evan said. “I only drink vodka.”
“Really?”
“And water.” Evan tossed him a banana. “You need calories.”
Trevon peeled it, took a bite, then set it on the table. They were both still standing. “I didn’t ask not to be normal,” he said, with sudden anger.
“No,” Evan said.
“Even if I don’t fit in, I’m still special. I still matter.”
Evan said, “That’s true.”
“I always mattered as much as anyone else to my family. Uncle Joe-Joe said blood’s thicker than water. Now I don’t have anyone to see me like that.”
Evan studied the angry twist of skin between Trevon’s brows. “It’ll be hard.”
“You don’t know!” Trevon shouted. “You don’t know how it feels to have someone try’n wipe you off the face of the whole entire planet like you were never even there!”
Evan thought of taping the surveillance photos to the wall of Apartment 705 in D.C., all those other Orphans, their faces crossed out by Magic Marker, their lives redacted by the sitting president of the United States.
He didn’t say anything, because there was nothing to say that would be useful.
Trevon raised a stiff hand and pressed his palm to the side of his head. This seemed to calm him. Finally he said, “I wish Kiara was here.”
“Your sister. Can we reach her?”
“No,” Trevon said. “Look.”
He went around the table to a tiny computer desk and came back with a glossy pamphlet. Evan scanned it. It detailed a three-month church mission designed to help provide potable water to Mayan Indians living in two hundred remote villages scattered through the jungles and mountains above the Rí o Dulce in Guatemala.
“There’s no phones,” Trevon said. “And she doesn’t barely ever check e-mail. She doesn’t even know what happened to Uncle Joe-Joe and Aisha and Mama.…” He paused, drew a few breaths. “Mama,” he repeated, and the grief in his voice was palpable enough to put a hitch in Evan’s next breath.
“Your sister,” Evan said, getting them both back on track.
“There’s no way to reach her.”
“That’s good news, too,” Evan said. “Because it means no one else can reach her either.”