For a moment she thought she might die.
She tried to breathe, but the black hole in her stomach snatched the oxygen away like a cry in the wind. It took a few seconds for her to force her gaze up to her dad again.
“I’m sorry you feel so alone,” she said, and now she was crying, really crying. “I tried. I tried my hardest. And it still didn’t matter.”
Standing there dumbly by the foot of the bed, she cried for a while. When she was done, her father was staring at her, the same expression frozen on his face.
“You know the best part of being an adult?” he said. “It teaches you to forgive yourself.”
She snatched a tissue from a box angrily. “Well, that’s great, Dad. I’m glad you can forgive yourself.”
But she was shocked to see his grizzled cheeks glittering.
“No,” he said. “Not like that. Because I had to. Because I couldn’t get it right. Not with my boys. And not … not with my daughter.”
She stared at him, spellbound. This language, the language of emotion, of regret, was not how her father talked.
“I was in the Secret Service,” he told her. “I always had to control everything. Every variable. Every outcome. That was my job. But a baby girl?” He shook his head, overcome. “When they were little, their mother carpeted every surface. No sharp edges. She carpeted over the hearth, wrapped the pillars in the living room, everything. I remember that. I remember…”
He trailed off, losing the thread. Balanced on the razor’s edge, Naomi waited to see if he’d find it again or if fate and illness would deny her this one last story as well.
“The problem is…” He cleared his throat. “The problem is, the world’s full of sharp edges. It was fine for the boys, but when my baby girl came along, I tore all that padding out. Her mom and I, we had a good row about that. And I told her, I told her the world would let the boys figure it out later. But a girl? My girl?” His face hardened, wiry brows lowering over a suddenly adamant stare. “I wanted her to learn. I needed her to learn. So she’d never get caught off guard. So she’d never get surprised.” His mouth trembled. He bit down on his grief, firmed his jaw. “So she’d never get hurt.”
She blinked, freeing fresh tears. “That’s not possible, Dad. Everyone gets hurt.”
“I know.” His Adam’s apple jerked in the wattle of his neck. “But when you have a daughter, you don’t care about what’s possible.”
His head lifted weakly from the pillow. For an instant he seemed to recognize her, but then his eyes lost focus. He sank back onto the pillow, his voice growing weaker as the benzo worked its way through his bloodstream, blurring the words together. “I had to be hard on her … harder than on the boys, harder than on anyone. And if I didn’t figure out how to try to forgive myself for that, I woulda … woulda been taken to pieces long ago. Even worse than this.”
The monitors bleeped and hummed. His blinks grew longer.
She sat on the bed next to him and then leaned to put her head on his chest. She listened to the breath rattling through him, so fragile, so resolute.
With great effort he lifted a hand trailing tubes and stroked her hair.
60
Death Itself
The two-story Colonial home was disappointingly banal, faded brick and shingled roof, a wide grassy lot with mower stripes, the periphery dotted with what Realtors like to call mature trees.
Evan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.
He headed for the front walk, noting the signs of life. Mailbox flag raised. Bulging trash bag at the side of the house. Beat-up Honda Accord in the driveway—probably a cleaning lady or the pool guy.
The doors were ornate, dated wood and glass, brass hardware. Evan knew he should approach more cautiously than he was, but a weariness at the center of him made him uncharacteristically rash. He was tired of the foreign minister and the trim Estonian and the strung-out girl and the round man with the loose-fitting clothes. He was tired of the Russell Gaddses and the Jonathan Bennetts, men of immense means and power who took their pounds of flesh from those who could not defend themselves. He was tired of his own past, of his training and missions, of the lives he’d ended by lead or blade or garrote, and the silent, baleful chorus of the dead who rode his shoulders, good angels and bad.
He rang the doorbell, blading his body, ready to fight or flee depending on what answered his call.
The door creaked open.
A stout Hispanic woman wearing teal scrubs. “Jes?”
“Is he home?”
“Jes, of course.”
She gestured down an unlit hall to her right. Near the end a door lay open, freeing a triangle of light from a room. Just outside, a wheelchair waited. In its seat rested a medical-waste bucket, the kind used to dispose of needles. Evan focused on two shapes in the shadows beyond that looked like antitank missiles stood on end.
Oxygen tanks.
And then he understood.
“I’m his nephew,” Evan said. “Haven’t seen him in years. I heard from my mom, and … well, I flew in from Tallahassee to surprise him and, you know, pay my last respects.”
She nodded solemnly. “I have some errands to run. You can be with him for one hour until I get back?”
“That will be fine.”
“Any problems, my phone number is on the clipboard.”
She walked past him, leaving the door ajar.
Evan entered, eased the door shut behind him, and stood breathing the scented air. The interior was 1990’s idea of modern, marble floors and prints in gleaming black frames. A spray of calla lilies rose from a vase in the foyer, no doubt sent by some well-wisher and arranged by the home-care nurse he’d just met.
How odd to find flowers here. Or vases. Or well-wishers.
A textured bamboo wallpaper darkened the hall, the house growing cooler as Evan moved back toward the lit room.
From the doorway he saw only a pair of feet bumped up beneath a woven blanket.
He eased inside.
The Mystery Man lay in a double-railed hospital bed that took up a good measure of the room. His hair had grown thin and wispy, receded to a severe widow’s peak. An oxygen tube ran beneath his nose, and a wide-bore needle was sunk to the hilt into the back of one thick-veined hand. His clavicles were pronounced, as was the bump of the ulna at his wrist, the gold watch dangling loosely around the bone.
An imposing wooden desk remained at one end of the converted study, flanked by file cabinets, but the rest of the space had been transformed into a makeshift hospice suite. Glass-fronted mini-refrigerators stored bags of saline and various vials. There were IV poles and washcloths, cups holding ice chips, backup sheets crisply folded and stuffed onto bookshelves.
It had been twenty-seven years since Evan had laid eyes on the man.
He had a name, of course, which Joey had unearthed, but the name didn’t match the memory Evan had been living with for all this time.
When Evan was twelve, the Mystery Man had appeared like the boogeyman, running his fingers along the chain-link across the street from the Pride House Group Home, his ever-present cigarette exhaling a thin banner of smoke. From a scared distance, the boys had jockeyed for the right to be taken, to be exploited, to get the fuck out of East Baltimore. None of them could have known that he was a recruiter for the Program. Evan had gotten over the grueling hurdles, one after another, and his prize had been Jack Johns and a two-story farmhouse in the woods outside Arlington. It had been a dormer bedroom, three meals a day, and a sniper rifle. It had been a mission following his nineteenth birthday, the first of countless.
After Evan had gone rogue, the Mystery Man had served the Program’s purposes for many more years, even as it grew increasingly twisted and brutal. He had played a role in corrupting countless foster kids. And in hurting Joey.
Evan had been waiting a long time to kill him.
The Mystery Man’s breathing was irregular, rapid deep inhalations interspersed with shallow panting.
Evan walked over and stood at the foot of the bed.
The Ray-Bans rested on the nightstand. The Mystery Man stared up at Evan. His lazy left eye wandered to the opposite wall, but the other was alert, its intensity undulled.
“I’ve been hoping you’d come,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. He seemed short of breath, as if he couldn’t quite get enough oxygen to relax the muscles of his face. “I never wanted you, you know,” he said.
Evan said, “I know.”
“But you proved me wrong. You were the best. You were always the best.”
Evan said, “There is an advantage to being underestimated.”
“I suppose so.”