Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Her red dot blinked on his screen, an uncertain warning signal— stop, stop, stop .

And then—at last—it was moving.

He watched the stone face of the luxury high-rise. A doorman waited outside, anachronistic in his brass-buttoned jacket, white gloves, and impassive visage. At a movement inside, he animated, his shiny heels clicking against the pavement. He swung the door open with a flourish and a Victorian quarter bow that was promptly ignored by the emerging foursome.

Three large men, richly tailored suits, in a triangle formation around a woman.

Bodyguards.

Curious.

Despite the hour the woman wore a sleeveless black dress and an oversize black summer hat with a white satin scarf tied around it, draped across her face alluringly or strategically. She flashed into view between the bodyguards’ bulky shoulders and then was lost behind a sea of navy wool gabardine as her men closed ranks. When they turned to head for Avenida Pueyrredón, he caught a glimpse of white cheek and smoky eye shadow.

She looked to be in her late fifties and exceptionally well preserved.

Evan dropped a few Eva Perón banknotes on the table and followed.

The tango music blared, accompanied by an overlay of speaker static, as the couple twisted and dipped. Evan cut through the sparse crowd at the plaza’s edge, maintaining a half-block distance behind the mysterious woman and her men.

Was she of such substantial wealth as to require constant security? In witness protection? Had she crossed a local crime lord? Or—most likely—the bodyguards were there to ensnare Evan if he answered the call.

The men gave the woman more stand-off room as they crossed the boulevard, but from Evan’s perspective he could make out little more than the back of her hat and the swaying of a single toned arm.

He spooled out more line, letting them stretch to a block and then a block and a half. Having scouted the area extensively, he knew the pedestrian ebbs and flows of the neighborhood.

The Third Commandment: Master your surroundings .

They rimmed the border of the park, nearing the Gomero de la Recoleta, a massive rubber tree that was a planet unto itself. The centuries-old tree spread its tentacles across a distance wider than half a football field, some of the meter-thick branches swooping low to the ground. To remain aloft many of them required metal posts; one even rested across a statue of Atlas, who bore his load stoically on a welded steel shoulder. Children flitted along the branches, swinging and climbing.

The woman paused to watch them, her back to Evan, a breeze riffling the white scarf. Evan turned to face a vending machine offering oranges and apples, the fruit arrayed in neat rows behind a shiny pane, the glass providing a useful reflection of the woman behind him. He watched her through the grainy cloak of dusk.

She turned partway, her gaze seeming to hitch on him. But then she continued, strolling through the grand entrance of the cemetery, the well-heeled muscle moving in orbit around her.

He waited a few minutes and then followed, passing through neoclassical gates bookended by Doric columns. A security guard warned him that they’d be closing soon.

The Recoleta Cemetery was one of the world’s great necropolises. Nearly five thousand mausoleums in various states of disrepair were crammed into fourteen acres, rising like miniature houses along miniature neighborhood blocks. Street signs denoted each tree-lined lane, lending a Disneyesque touch to the diminutive town. The tombs ranged from art nouveau to baroque, simple to opulent, single-story to three-tiered. Some rose like Greek temples, others were embellished with statues—a beatific robed elder, an eternal sentry brandishing a sword, a loyal dog long oxidized, its nose rubbed to a bronzen shine. Beyond the tall cemetery walls, sleek high-rises soared, striking a surreal contrast with the ancient stone.

As darkness overtook the tombs, the last sightseers drifted toward the entrance, stray cats flossing between their ankles. Evan’s boots crunched across shards, broken bits from shattered stained-glass windows that once adorned a set of grand decorative doors.

He kept the woman barely in view—the sway of her hips rounding a corner, a stiletto-heeled foot disappearing behind the edge of a tomb. Her men branched out wisely, minding the lanes around her.

For a time they all cat-and-moused through the venerable gridiron.

Evan found a deserted pocket and paused, pretending to admire a sitting room visible through a crumbled tomb wall. On marble shelves inside, coffins lay beneath long-rotted casket veils. A rusted chain had been strung haphazardly across the gap, but the front door remained intact, dried flowers protruding from the keyhole. A perfectly symmetrical spiderweb framed the doorknob, a backplate of glistening silk.

He closed his eyes, letting the warm air press into his skin, opening himself to vibration and movement and sound. One of the bodyguards creaked the stone just behind the mausoleum; another coughed, a single ragged note coming from two lanes over. Evan smelled the faintest hint of lilac riding an easterly breeze.

The woman.

The third man would no doubt be at her side, close-in protection.

Evan edged east, sourcing the tinge of perfume.

Night had come on hard, the jagged mausoleums framed in shadow and ambient light from the distant streetlights. The three monkeys of lore, rendered in gray marble, crouched at gargoyle readiness atop a slab of funereal stone, their shadows stretched grotesquely across the ground.

Listening for the two roving guards, Evan eased around a small-scale cathedral with caskets slotted into its rear wall. At the end of the lane, bent in the thickening darkness, the woman reached for a marble statue at the foot of a tomb.

As his eyes acclimated to the night, the age-old statue came into focus—a baby swathed in cloth, the newborn’s likeness preserved in marble. The woman’s head was angled mournfully, her face lost behind the wide brim of the hat, her hand resting on the baby’s stone chest as if feeling for a heartbeat.

Evan’s inhalation hitched ever so slightly in his throat. He became aware of a hike in his heart rate, the hot night air wrapping itself around his neck.

As he breathed himself back to steadiness, he admired the woman’s tradecraft. A grief-steeped mother paying respect to a lost child—a clever ruse designed to turn a key inside him, to access some long-buried vulnerability.

It almost worked.

More important, it meant they suspected he was watching.

As he drifted back out of sight, he sensed movement mirroring him on either side behind the mausoleums. Sure enough, as he came to the next intersection, the two roving bodyguards stepped into view to his left and right.

10A Dog’s Breakfast

Evan faced ahead, favoring neither side, keeping both bodyguards in his peripheral vision.

“Hello, friend.” The guy to his left spoke in a voice that was theatrically low, with an excess of patience that a large, dangerous man could afford. Lightly accented English—either he’d gauged Evan’s gringo skin or knew who he was. “Is there some reason you’re following the lady?”

Evan stared straight ahead at the darkness. Neither man reached for hip or lapel; they assumed this could be handled without firearms.

Too bad they didn’t have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the First Commandment.

Evan said, “She asked to speak with me.”

“Did she, now,” the man said. Not a question. “I find it unlikely that Ms. Veronica would ask anything of you. I think you shouldn’t be stalking women around cemeteries after hours.”

“I understand your opinion on the matter,” Evan said. “But it doesn’t interest me.”