Joey looked uncharacteristically small behind the wheel of the massive Ford pickup. Or maybe it was just the view from the passenger seat, which Evan was occupying for the first time. It felt dislocating. As they prowled downtown streets cloaked with dusk, he emptied his pockets into the center console. No money clip, no RoamZone, no keys. Last out were the eight charcoal pills. He started palming them into his mouth two at a time, swallowing them dry.
Joey said, “Once you leave this truck, you’ll have nothing.”
Evan felt an urge to comfort her with false assurances but knew better than to lie.
She shot a glance down at his hands, the transparent films invisible across the pads of his digits. “Not even your fingerprints. “No backup, no weapon, nothing.” She clenched the wheel. “I know, I know.” She reverted to head-waggy Nowhere Man voice. “‘I am the weapon.’” He had to smile at that, but she just glowered at him. “This is stupid dangerous, X. Think about it. I won’t be able to do anything to help you. No one can do anything to help you. You’ll be totally at their mercy. If one thing goes wrong, you’re done. Forever. And if you smack your stubborn concussed head in there? You could die. And it’s not like fights aren’t known to happen. Christ, X. This is dumb in more ways than I can count, and I’m really good at math.”
The RoamZone rang, rattling in the console. Evan tensed, anticipating that it was Max with a last-minute complication. But then he saw the Las Vegas area code and picked up.
The voice, pure gravel and exuberance, poured through the receiver. “I got yer sniper rifle.”
“I didn’t order a sniper rifle.”
“Sure you did,” Tommy said. “When I outfitted you with that low-rent Remington, I told you I was getting Ballistas in.”
Evan tossed the last two charcoal pills into his mouth. “I don’t need a sniper rifle anymore.”
“Any man worth his salt needs a precision pea-shooter. I’m in L.A. on Monday. I’ll drop her by for you.”
As Joey weaved through sparse traffic, they passed under the shadow of Men’s Central, a blocky construction of intersecting concrete slabs rising behind a perimeter of chain-link. Beyond it rose the dueling chunks of Twin Towers, one seven stories of misery, the other eight, each a study in beige efficiency. Evan forced the pills down his gullet. “I’m a little busy at the moment, Tommy.”
He’d barely thumbed off the phone when Joey was on him again. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “We have enough on Bedrosov to turn over to the cops now. Let them run with the football from here. They’ll put him away for good.”
“The case will take months to prosecute,” Evan said. He scooped a few coins and some beat-up singles from the ashtray, seeding his pockets. “And in the meantime? Bedrosov is a shot caller in jail. With access to a phone. And hit men on the outside.”
He remembered Benjamin Bedrosov’s voice over the line, his tone the epitome of reasonableness: You can keep killing them. But I can keep sending them. He might as well have been updating shareholders on an earnings call.
“X—”
“Even if he’s found guilty and goes to prison,” Evan said, “do you really think he won’t see it through and end Max?”
Headlights swept the windshield, highlighting her hair, her full cheeks. Her eyes were brimming, and he was confused yet again by the turmoil of her moods.
“If it goes bad…” Joey paused, struggling, seemingly forcing each word out. “What happens to me?”
“There’s enough in your account to—”
“I’m not talking about money,” she said. “Goddamn it. You’re such an idiot.” She screeched the truck over to the curb. “Just get out. Here’s as good as anywhere. Just go, okay?”
He sat in the passenger seat, watching her. She was turned partially away, but he could see her front teeth pinching her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Biting down hard. Nostrils flaring with each breath. She blinked several times, fighting her way back to control.
“Joey.”
She ignored him.
“Joey.”
Still nothing.
Gently he said, “Josephine.”
She pulled her face to profile. It was the most he was going to get.
“Take a breath,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you can’t take a breath from the past. And you can’t take a breath from the future.”
He watched the words land on her. She took in their meaning. Then she said, “This is lame.”
“Do it.”
She closed her eyes. Inhaled deep. Let it go.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“No,” she said. And then, “Maybe a little.”
He reached to brush her hair out of her eyes, an avuncular gesture, and she let him. He sensed a hint of softness in her face now.
She said, “Why do you care so much about Max Merriweather? I mean, aside from the fact that he lucked into your phone number?”
Evan didn’t reply right away. He owed her a considered answer. “He lost a baby, lost his wife, lost his bearings. He’s been knocked down for years, trying to get up, and these guys came along and put a foot on his back. You know what that feels like.”
Evan did, too.
He understood what it was to be born under a bad sign.
The few papers he’d been able to excavate after leaving the foster-home system indicated that his birth mother had traveled from out of state to relinquish him in Maryland for a domestic adoption. The post-placement visit to his new home revealed that the adoptive mother had suffered a series of strokes that she’d never disclosed, and her rapidly deteriorating condition left her and her husband unable to provide care to a newborn. The placement fell apart. A second placement became delayed when the agency tried to locate Evan’s birth mother, as she had retained the right to select the adoptive family. But she’d traveled out of state to hand over her baby for a reason; she didn’t want her identity known. And so Evan was frozen in a bureaucratic middle ground past one fate and shy of another.
The Nowhere Boy.
By the time the state had him officially declared “abandoned,” he was no longer a palatable commodity, but a four-year-old who’d bounced through multiple foster homes.
No mother, no father, no early-childhood memories.
When his remembrances started to fade in, they were not of being treated kindly.
After Jack had rescued him at the age of twelve from one dangerous life and put him into another, Evan had asked, Why’d you pick me?
You know what it’s like to be powerless, Jack had told him. I need someone who knows that. In his bones. Don’t ever forget that feeling.
All at once everything felt heightened, the air crisp, the nighttime sharp all around them.
“I made it out,” Evan said. “But I owed something still.”
“To who?” Joey asked.
“To anyone who got left behind.” Evan took a breath. “Jack never wanted…” His throat felt uncharacteristically thick. He cleared it. Joey was looking directly into him. He felt vulnerable, exposed, and had to look away for the moment. “It was never just about becoming a killer. It was about staying human. And it’s not easy. If I started picking and choosing … If I looked at someone like Max and decided he wasn’t worth it, then I’d be back to where I started. Where no one’s worth it. And then I’d just be what they made me to be.” His lips felt dry, cracked, and he wet them. “A murderer.”
Joey’s eyes were wide, brilliant emerald, glimmering with moisture or a trick of the light. They’d never talked about it, and the starkness of who he was, of who she was, too, lay there for an instant, as shimmering and vivid as koi in a stilled fountain. The words hung between them for a brief, searing moment, and then he cleared his throat and opened his door, disturbing the waters once more.
“You ever gonna really prove that to yourself?” she asked. “What you’re not?”
“I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his neck, looked away. “But it’s easier than figuring out what I am.”
Or maybe it’s the first step to getting there.
“How much more do you have to prove?” she asked. “When’s it end?”
The ultimate question laid bare, slicing him to the bone. He stared over at the rise of the jail, shadowed and foreboding.
“After this,” he said. “After this it ends.”
She stared at him. Her lips quivered ever so slightly, and she pressed them together, clamping down. She reached across his knees to pop the glove box, grabbed a pint of Cuervo Gold, and smacked it against his chest. “Don’t forget your tequila.”
He took the bottle, climbed out, and looked back at her across the high seats.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll do my job. Just make sure you do yours.”
She peeled out, spraying his shins with grit, leaving him with a mouthful of exhaust.
She’d left him behind the El Monte Busway by a Denny’s parking lot. He could see through Union Station’s Gateway Plaza to where the threads of the railroad tracks gathered. A cop car was parked past the bus entrance. An officer leaned against his unit, a nice visible presence for all the commuters streaming by, catching their trains home.
Evan uncapped the cheap tequila and flipped the top to the side, heard it ping off across the sidewalk. Then he settled himself with a deep breath, banishing thoughts of the vodkas slumbering untouched in his freezer drawer, each as pure as the driven snow.
This was far from the worse part. But it would still be awful.
He scrunched his eyes shut and drank a third of the pint in a series of long pulls, spilling a bit on his shirt for good measure. It burned down his throat, coated his stomach. He listed like a hobo there on the grimy sidewalk, praying his concussion symptoms wouldn’t come roaring back to life. Then he stumbled for the police officer.
As he crossed North Vignes Street, he took another healthy swig, let tequila dribble through his lips and down his chin. Headlights bored into him, an oncoming rush from a just-changed traffic signal. A Subaru veered to miss him, the driver laying on the horn, a sharp blare in the thickening night.
That drew the cop’s attention.
Evan passed right before him, swinging the open container at his side, letting the tequila slosh over and douse his fist.
“Christ on a stick,” the cop muttered. And then, “Sir? Sir.”
Evan wheeled around drunkenly, one shoulder lowered, the bottle dangling. The front edge of the booze was hitting, making the colors jump, cramping his vision at the sides. His throat felt raw, the air pleasingly cool on the inhale. The booze roiled in his gut, a molten slosh. The symptoms were just starting to return, light-headedness and nausea urged back to life by the booze. If they held here, he could manage them. The streetlamps started to bleed into streaks of yellow, the glare assailing his eyes.
“Come here please, sir.”
Evan staggered up to him. The cop was handsome, fresh-faced, spots of color dotting his smooth cheeks. Uniform pressed and starched, duty boots buffed to a reflective shine. He stayed tilted back against the driver’s door, one thumb hooked through his belt. It was affected and vaguely endearing, as if he’d studied what pose a cop should strike in this situation and was doing his best to measure up.
“You have an open container.”
Evan looked at the bottle of Cuervo, feigned surprise at seeing it there on the end of his arm. “Guess so.”
“Listen, it’s a Saturday night.” The cop barely bothered with eye contact, speaking at Evan while looking around, as if reserving his focus for more important matters. “You look like you’ve had a tough day. Maybe things aren’t going so well for you right now. What do you say you just toss the bottle there in the trash and we call it even?”
Just his luck. A kindhearted officer.
Evan pretended to register the offer on a tape delay. Then he rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. “Don’ tell me wha’ ta do.”
Finally the cop broke from the cool act, coming up off the car. “Look, man, I’m really trying to help you out here.”
Evan had to figure some way to break the guy out of his hearts-and-minds campaign. As the cop came forward, Evan set his feet clumsily and swung at his face. The officer leaned back, and Evan missed by two feet. He pretended to lose his balance on the follow-through, letting the bottle slip from his booze-greased palm and shatter on the sidewalk. He wound up doubled over, breathing hard, fists on his knees, doing his best to signal that he was too compromised for the cop to bother restraining. The last thing he needed was for Officer Friendly to choke-hold his concussion back into high gear.
“Hey,” Evan said. “You made me spill my drink.”
The officer’s voice washed down at him. “Whoa, pal. Settle. Let’s pretend you didn’t do that. That’s a whole other kind of trouble, and you look like you don’t need any more.”
Evan blinked hard at the pavement and grimaced. Wondered what the hell he had to do to get arrested.
The cop was still talking to the top of his head. “I’m gonna give you a final warning. You do one more thing, I’m gonna have to take you in.”
He’d arrived at the point of no return. This was it. The last hurdle and the highest. If he wanted to save Max. If he wanted to put down the RoamZone for once and for all and ride off into the sunset.
Bent low to keep his face out of view, Evan jammed his finger down his throat and vomited onto the cop’s shiny boots.