Trevon chewed his lip and thought about that, and then his eyes changed. “Right,” he said. “Right.”
He took another bite of the banana and then set it down again. “I have to feed Cat-Cat,” he said, rushing to fill a plastic bowl with kibble. At the noise a slender tabby materialized from is hiding place behind the curtain. “Mama bought me Cat-Cat. I’m responsible to him and he’s responsible to me.”
“She sounds like she was a good mom.”
Trevon closed his eyes again, fiddled with his eyeglasses, and made the noises he’d made before below his breath. Some kind of mantra? At his feet Cat-Cat dined obliviously, crunching away.
“Trevon. What are you saying?”
He opened his eyes. “We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.”
Evan took a moment to find words again. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can cry.”
“No,” Trevon said. And then, more forcefully, “No.”
“All right.”
Trevon sank into the chair. That’s all there was at the little breakfast table. One chair.
He looked up at Evan. “Do you cry?”
“I didn’t go through what you went through.”
“I’m not gonna cry.”
“Okay.” Evan took a step closer. “I need to leave now, Trevon. I’m going to find the men who killed your family. And then I’m going to report back.”
“What if they come after me?”
“They’re not going to hurt you. They need you alive and well to maximize your suffering.”
“Oh,” Trevon said. “Oh, no.”
“The good news?” Evan said. “From an operational perspective—” He caught himself. “Right now there’s no rush. For them nothing is pressing. Or urgent.”
“Pressing,” Trevon said. “Or urgent.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay.” His lips were wobbling. The half-eaten banana sat by his knuckles.
It seemed impossible that a banana could code for abject loneliness, but there it was.
Evan had to get out of here before he started anthropomorphizing the furniture. He started for the door.
“It’s all my fault,” Trevon said to his back.
Evan stopped. Didn’t turn around. “No,” he said.
“But they told me—”
Evan swung around. “Everything that happened, every last thing, is on them. You did nothing wrong.”
Trevon’s hands rested on the table, palms down. “How do you know?”
“Because I wouldn’t be here working for you if you had.”
“You work for me ?”
“I do.”
Trevon swallowed, which seemed to take considerable effort. “Can you stay for a little while?”
“No,” Evan said.
“Just till I fall asleep?”
“I don’t do that. That’s not what I’m for.”
“Okay.” Trevon shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I can … I can do it. I can put the TV on. It keeps me company.” He lowered his hands, and by dint of will his eyes were dry and his head held high. “Mama said it’s good to have a house full of voices and that’s what she wishes for me someday.”
The chair legs screeched as Trevon pushed back from the table, and then he headed to the bedroom. A moment later Evan heard the TV click on, an exuberant weatherman discussing cold fronts fetishistically.
Evan bowed his head.
Cat-Cat sat at his feet and looked up at him.
Evan said, “Be quiet.”
Cat-Cat looked at him some more.
“What do you know?” Evan said.
Cat-Cat flicked his tail and flounced back to his spot beneath the curtain, where he stared at Evan with recriminating eyes.
“Goddamn it,” Evan said.
He walked down the brief hall to the bedroom and found Trevon in bed wearing blue pajamas, having tucked himself in next to the stuffed frog. The lights were out, but his eyes were open, catching an ambient streetlamp glow through the window.
Evan sat across the room with his back to the wall, elbows resting on his knees. He thought about the painstakingly neat handwriting on the notepad: “Be yourself ’cuz who else can you be!” About the man across from him waking up every morning trying to do the best he could. And about the people who had obliterated everything he’d known.
The Fourth Commandment was out the window.
The Seventh Commandment was out the window.
Evan’s hands had curled into fists. They were still loose, yes, but they were ready not to be.
Over on the bed, Trevon’s blinks grew longer and longer. “I followed the rules,” he mumbled, his voice slurred with exhaustion. “You’re supposed to be okay if you follow the rules.”
His head nodded to the side, and his breathing took on a rasping sound.
“Yeah, well,” Evan said to the dark room. “Sometimes you have to break them.”
23
Backtracing an Outbreak
There were seventeen 24 Hour Fitnesses in the Greater Los Angeles Area. But here Evan was at the Magic Johnson Signature Club on the second floor of the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The gym was sandwiched between an upscale day spa and a wide staircase leading to a high-end movie theater.
Evan had arrived here by calling the gym towel manufacturer, which prided itself on producing hygienically clean textiles, a catchphrase with which he was previously unfamiliar. Posing as an occupational-health safety inspector, Evan claimed he was backtracing an outbreak of Staphylococcus aureus , which seemed to be tied to laundry infection at a gym. If he provided a serial number from a specific towel, might the company be able to tell him to which location that particular batch of towels had shipped?
They might.
So now here he was in the open-air second level outside the gym entrance, wearing generic worker coveralls, replacing a wall outlet beside a shaggy ficus by the elevator. The impostor outlet he was installing, which was conveniently wired into the existing power source, contained a covert stationary video recorder. The tiny lens sat between the two plug receivers, flush with the plastic plate. Motion-activated, it recorded time-stamped footage to a microSD card hidden inside the unit.
Evan tweaked the button-size lens, angling it on the glass-doored entrance to the gym so it captured the people streaming in, seeking to break a pre-workday sweat.
The clientele, from what Evan could glean, consisted mostly of aspiring actors, dedicated muscleheads, and disciplined young moms in Lululemon eager to park their offspring at the on-site kids’ club. The front desk featured an efficient check-in procedure—no card or key fob required. You just pressed your finger to a scanner on the counter and in you went.
Evan tightened the screws on the impostor outlet, pocketed his screwdriver, and moved the ficus another few inches to the right, its broad, glossy leaves whispering conspiratorially.
When he returned in a few days’ time, he’d review the DVR footage until he spotted who he was looking for.
Muscley One.
A man with half-skull tattoos wrapping his forearms would be hard to miss.
Evan thumbed the elevator call button and rode the car down to the parking garage. He was running late for his flight, which he’d booked out of Las Vegas to obscure his trail. He’d stopped at a safe house earlier to switch out his Ford pickup with a backup vehicle. A fresh passport and supporting documents waited in the glove box.
As he pulled out of the shopping mall, he shot up Sepulveda and arced around onto the freeway, seating the pedal as low to the floor as he dared.
He had a plane to catch.
24
Worthy of Trust and Confidence
Naomi Templeton reached the building at H Street and 9th at 5:57 A.M . There was no signage anywhere, no logos or plaques, nothing to indicate what the building in fact was. But if you looked closely, you might notice the sleek security cameras peeking out from the tan brick overhang near the front door. You might notice that there were no trash cans on the sidewalk outside, no USPS mailboxes or newspaper vending racks that might hide an IED.
She paused to consider the awesome task that had been lowered onto her shoulders at the start of the week. It was worth approaching this building and this day with an added measure of respect.
Entering the nine-story rise, she passed through the metal detector, taking a moment before the words written across the wall in silver letters: WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE.
She drifted through the central atrium in a kind of focused haze, ordering her mind for the briefing to come, the orders she’d give, the arms she’d have to twist. She moved beneath the catwalks, the beehive of glass-walled offices, so many agents bent to a common cause.
A succession of somber photographs in the hall commemorated those killed in the line of duty. This morning she didn’t look at the clean-cut men and women with their stalwart eyes and proudly squared shoulders.
Instead she’d looked at the blank stretch of wall beyond the last slain agent’s portrait, the space allotted for future memorials.
If she didn’t do her job, there would be more faces on this wall.