Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Johnny’s face came apart a little then, wild around the eyes, the lips downpulled and wavering, the mouth of a tragedy theater mask.

There was always this moment when they realize you’re going to submerge them in the world of pain and that there’s not a thing they can do. When you have them trussed so well you could put a nail through any part of them, not hard, just tap-tap-tap until their nerves start speaking in tongues. When the skin of their face tightens to show the structure of the skull beneath, a death mask presaging what is to come.

Declan walked over to the rolling door, shouldered into it, and put his mouth near the edge. “Queenie,” he said, “you might want to turn on your radio.”

Her voice wafted through. “Okay, baby brother,” and a moment later there was Prince, wondering if he had enough class.

When Declan came off the door, the steel slats undulated like water.

He stood over Johnny, but Johnny wouldn’t lift his eyes to meet his. Johnny tried to breathe, but it just came out a series of hiccups.

“Wait,” he said.

“Please,” he said.

Declan closed his eyes, the insides of his lids glowing bloodred. “I’m sorry. There’s really nothing I can do. It’s not fair to you. But it’s not fair to me either.”

Johnny gagged a little.

The bloodred spread from Declan’s eyelids through his entire body, firing him with a bone-deep heat. He no longer had to pay attention to his voice. It came as he knew it would, deep and resonant and rich. “There’s a man who lives inside me. And he takes charge and does this until I get the answers I need.”

“But what can I do?” Johnny’s voice now hushed with horror. “What can I do? What can I do if I really don’t know where Andrew Duran is?”

“You know what, pal?” Declan said, leaning in. “Together we’re gonna find out.”

17The Social Room

Despite a steaming shower at the Mar Vista safe house, Evan couldn’t get the last bits of ash out from beneath his nails. Temples aching, eardrums pulsing, cheeks glowing with sunburn intensity, he trudged through the lobby of Castle Heights, heading for the elevator.

He made it inside without being assailed by anyone.

For once the doors closed without any chatty residents insinuating their way through the bumpers.

He tilted his head to the ceiling, let out a breath through clenched teeth.

A ding interrupted his momentary relief.

The doors parted on the tenth floor, revealing strung-up streamers in the social room across the hall, paper-cone hats, and a banner exclaiming HAPPY TRAILS, LORILEE! embellished with a cartoon cowgirl riding off into a sunset. The banner had been lovingly assembled, formed by a row of printed computer papers pieced together. The last page sported a black crayon signature at the bottom: “Peter Hall, Age 9.”

“Ev!” Lorilee Smithson, Condo 3F, squealed with delight, extracting him from the safety of the elevator by cinching two hands around his arm. She was wearing a sparkly silver tiara. “You made it! I didn’t have your Snapchat handle, so I wasn’t sure where to send your invite!”

Her skin, taut from plastic surgery, took on a copper hue beneath the fluorescents. She’d had a rib resected on either side and looked as though she were perennially wedged into a Victorian corset. Evan tried to retreat into the elevator, but her French-manicured nails were unrelenting on his biceps. She dragged him into the mix.

Plastic wine cups abounded. A party blower in every mouth. “Oh, What a Night” crackle-hissing from dated speakers.

There was Johnny Middleton, 8E, ensconced in his ubiquitous Krav Maga sweat suit, teaching one of the divorcées incorrectly how to do a hand strike. And there was the Honorable Pat Johnson, 12F, wearing a lumbar-support brace because he’d thrown out his back sneezing last week. Resident elder Ida Rosenbaum, 6G, dolled up with bleeding maroon lipstick and her beloved marcasite amethyst necklace, tapped an orthotic sneaker, her trademark scowl diminished only microscopically by the celebration. Hugh Walters, 20C, had cornered a few new Castle Heights denizens by the fruit platter, regaling them with cautionary tales of HOA regulations gone ignored.

There was a fucking cake.

Lorilee sashayed off onto the makeshift dance floor, twirling like a Woodstock exile—both arms overhead, bracelets jangling, hips circling like she was working a hula hoop. Her age was undeterminable—late fifties? seventy?—but she comported herself like a twenty-something. The effect was mildly unsettling, like watching a lizard try to crawl back into its shed skin.

Evan looked around, discomfort rising through his chest, cold and claustrophobic.

“Evan Smoak!”

A blur through the crowd clarified into Peter, leaping up at Evan, clamping him in a hug. The nine-year-old was fifty pounds soaking wet, but his momentum, combined with Evan’s assemblage of drone-inflicted bruises, made the embrace eye-wateringly painful.

Even so, Evan was surprised at the relief he felt in being with Peter, one of only two people in the building he actually looked forward to seeing. Wincing against the discomfort, Evan set the boy down and searched the party for the other.

“Looking for my mom?” Peter asked.

Evan said, “No.”

Peter grabbed an apple from a nearby table and mashed it into his upper teeth where it remained, impaled on his braces. His voice came out muffled. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

Evan said, “A bit of spinach.”

Peter’s laugh, like his voice, was raspy. Though most of his mouth wasn’t visible behind the apple, his big charcoal eyes pinched up at the corners in a smile.

Evan plucked the apple from Peter’s braces and handed it back to him. Without missing a beat, Peter returned it to the bowl. Evan grimaced.

“How’s school?” he asked, having a hard time taking his eyes from the spit-glistening fruit.

Peter wore a man’s button-up shirt that drooped to the tops of his knees. “Today was crazy,” he said animatedly, the cuffed sleeves swaying like the ones on a magician’s robe. “Sebastian? The tall kid with BO that smells like onion rings? He dropped the F-bomb in music, and Ms. Lipshutz got super mad and tripped over the brass section…”

Conga-lining by, Lorilee plucked Peter’s apple from the bowl and took a hearty bite, winking at Evan. He manufactured a smile, though he had little doubt it looked pained.

As she twirled beneath the HAPPY TRAILS banner, he had to admit a pang of envy at the seeming ease with which she was launching into a new life. What would it be like to feel so free to leave the past behind?

Peter was still going, talking loud over the music. “… it was Sebby’s second strike after he got in trouble in Spanish, ’cuz he says ‘grassy ass’—get it? Like ‘thank you’? And so one more and he’s out, which would suck, ’cuz he’s the only one who knows how to pitch in kickball, so—”

Evan sensed someone approaching, the scent of lemongrass. A warm hand pressed into the small of his back, and he felt a jolt of something like adrenaline. He turned a bit too quickly, his face nearly knocking into Mia’s.

As always, her curly chestnut hair was a bit wild. She was still dressed from work—not her court suit but a suit nonetheless. The top button of her blouse was undone, a delicate silver necklace resting across her sternum, a few freckles faintly visible against her olive skin.

Her smile came, as always, unannounced, as if it were catching her by surprise. “I have to say, you’re the last person I’d expected to see at Lorilee Smithson’s farewell party.”

“I didn’t know there was a party,” Evan said. “I didn’t even know she was moving.”