Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

A flush crept hotly across Nate’s face. His mouth opened, but his brain was still waiting to feed it an excuse. One second passed. Another. Then: “Just a word I overheard the other day. Tyazhiki.” Nate grimaced. “I think it means-”

“Shadow people,” Ken said. “They’re enforcers brought in by the Russkies. No papers, no visas. Utterly lawless. They’ll literally ship ’em in on container ships, route ’em through the Long Beach Port. They do a job and head back. Not a footprint.”

Charles was standing behind the detective, imitating him, wagging his head importantly. Nate did his best to focus.

“The Russian mob’s ruthless,” Ken continued. “They’ll shoot you just to check the sight alignment on their guns. If it’s cheaper to bring in a hit man than pay off a loan, they put out a contract. Life means nothing.”

“How about Ukrainians?” Nate asked.

“The Ukrainians?” Ken whistled, and Charles at last stood still at the ominous note. “Even the Russians are afraid of the Ukrainians.”

Flores Esposita’s funeral at Forest Lawn Cemetery was a crowded, animated affair. Countless uncles and weeping second cousins and families from church. Among others, Nate was singled out by the stoic widower in the eulogy and had his hand shaken by numerous relatives after the casket was lowered from view. The outpouring of warmth only added to his silent regret at the fraudulent role he was playing here. He’d gone into that bank to take a coward’s leap and had walked out a hero.

Head down, he moved between the plots back to his Jeep.

“You seem uncomfortable.”

He turned to find Agent Abara, impeccably neat in a black suit.

“It’s a funeral,” Nate said.

“Right. I just thought that given your job, you know, you’d be used to…” A wave of his hand. “Events like this.”

Nate thought about finding Flores Esposita’s clip-on earring on the bank floor. How he’d squeezed and the clasp had pushed into the tender skin of his palm. “If I’d gone through the window earlier, maybe I could’ve kept her from being shot.” It was a regret he hadn’t made conscious until he heard himself saying it.

“But you said you climbed out the bathroom window right after you heard the shots.”

“… Yes.”

“So how could you have gotten there earlier?”

Nate wet his lips. Shook his head.

Abara had fallen into step beside him. The lush grass, soft underfoot. “You know what happens when I see my kids?” Abara asked.

“You’re reminded of the simple power of human love?”

Abara squinted over at him but didn’t smile. “I wonder what they’re not telling me. Maybe that’s from being an agent, sure. But you know how teenagers are. Girls. I have two. And everything’s a lie right now. Not ’cuz they’re malicious. It’s because their white matter’s not grown in yet, you know?” He shook his head. “They’re hard to get through to. It’s like they’re talking one language and I’m-”

“We’re preverbal.”

Abara laughed, a dimple indenting either cheek. “Right? So last night my oldest came in past curfew. And I asked where she was, and of course-she was at her friend’s. And I know she’s lying, and she knows I know she’s lying, but we’re doing this dance still, right?” He stopped walking, his perfect teeth shining in the morning brightness. “Ever have that? Where you’re talking to someone and you know they’re lying and they know you know? But there you are? Still talking?” The easy smile remained, but his gaze was suddenly intense.

The suit felt hot and tight across Nate’s shoulders. He chose his words carefully. “With my daughter, sure.”

“Yeah, kids. Sometimes they don’t know what’s good for them.” Abara touched Nate’s arm. “See you around.”

Nate watched him pick his way through the headstones. When he turned around, he noticed someone among the graves just a few yards off. A worker with a bag lunch and neatly combed hair showing gray at the part, his mouth a line of forbearance. He’d paused for his break sitting respectfully at the edge of a little fountain beside a newly turned plot. A wet shovel rested against one thigh. When Nate approached, the man set down a remaining crescent of sandwich.

Nate stared at the fresh dirt, and the man looked at him with his sun-beaten face. “You family?”

“No,” Nate said.

“Oh.” The man set his cap on his knee. “Sometimes there’s a big turnout”-a gesture to Flores Esposita’s grave, around which a dozen folks and grandkids remained, consoling one another-“and sometimes…” He flared his half-chewed sandwich at the rectangle of soil.

Nate read the grave marker again, the name registering this time as belonging to the security guard from the bank robbery-the older black man with the striped socks who’d wound up twisted on his back in the lobby. “Wait. This is…?”

The worker nodded. “The bank paid for his resting place.”

“Jesus,” Nate said. “Someone should be here. Someone should…” He felt suddenly weak, and he eased himself down to the fountain ledge beside the man.

“Bad way to die,” the worker said. “When you won’t be missed.”

Nate tried to picture what his own funeral would look like. A few colleagues recycling the same stories. A hired shovel. A designated funeral coordinator, bowing his head mournfully and checking his watch.

Shirt untucked, tie loose, he sat, the sun heating his face. The man chewed quietly beside him for a while, then rose to get back to work, one callused hand rasping up the shaft of the shovel.

When Nate approached the Santa Monica house, blaring music greeted him from the garage-less a song than a wall of noise aimed at his face. A masculine voice screamed the wrong lyrics to a Guns N’ Roses song: “Welcome to tha Jun-gul, we got funny games!”

Nate passed between the cars, which had been pulled out onto the driveway to free up the garage, and a big doofy teenage kid drew into view inside, hopping around and flailing at an electric guitar. Cielle sat atop a low cabinet, flipping listlessly through a magazine, her fingers punctuated with black nail polish. Her private-school uniform-plaid skirt and white blouse-matched neither the fingernails nor her scowl, but it gave Nate a brief, inexplicable stab of pride nonetheless.

“Na na na na na na na na knees, knees! Come on, I’m gonna make you SPEED!” The kid noticed Nate and dropped the guitar, letting it dangle around his neck from the sling. He was at least six-four and thick, but he looked less strong than soft and uncoordinated, all elbows and knees. The curse of the teenage male. A few spread-out dots marked his pale chin and cheeks where a five-o’clock shadow was trying to will itself into existence. An oversize hoodie with plush, checkered lining half covered a pair of Bermuda shorts so long and baggy that they hung in one piece like a kilt. He wore a slightly bemused smile and shaggy black hair capped by-of all things-a hipster fedora. Ear gauges had enlarged the holes in his lobes to the size of nickels.

Jason. The shithead boyfriend.

Cielle’s dark pupils lifted, though her face stayed pointed at the magazine. “Gasp,” she said flatly. “It’s my screwup of a father.”

Despite the reception, Nate took a moment to soak in the sight of her. Beautiful, safe, intact. She looked up at him, wrinkled her brow at the spectacle of him standing there gawking.

“Don’t be disrespectful,” he said, covering. “It’s Mr . Screwup.”

“Nice suit, Nate,” she said. Jason ducked out of the guitar and extended it to Cielle, who gave him a withering glare. “I’m not a coatrack. ”