Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Evan took Duran’s measure. Found no chink in the armor. Again and again his experience had proved the old adage that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

From the stubborn set of Duran’s face, Evan realized that his little detour from retirement had drawn to a close.

“Okay,” he said, and started off up the walk.

He got two steps before a bolt of recognition pinned him where he stood.

He pictured Mrs. Hamilton’s wagging finger. Andrew Esau Duran .

And he thought back a lifetime ago to a boy with a crazy-ass biblical middle name that no one knew how to pronounce. And to the time Danny had shoved that kid into the kitchen counter, opening up his forehead. The wound had required seven stitches and left a scar like an accent mark over the right eyebrow.

Evan turned around. Duran was still there among the fronds, waiting for him to leave.

Evan said, “Andre?”

Duran didn’t move, but his face rippled with emotion, his scalp shifting. He looked confused, undone.

Andrew. Dr. Dre. Dre-Dre. Andre.

“It’s Evan.”

“Evan? Evan .” His pupils dilated, the dime dropping. “What the hell are you…?” His voice trailed off into a husky rasp, as if his throat had dried up. “Why are you here?”

Evan wasn’t sure which layer of the question to address first.

“I wound up in L.A. because of you,” Evan said. It was, he realized, more of a statement than an answer.

“What?” Andre’s forehead was shiny, sweat trickling toward his eyes. “Why?”

“The palm trees. The big-ass Cadillac.” Evan could hear his voice falling into an age-old cadence he thought he’d long outgrown. “Did you ever find them? The blondes on Rollerblades?”

Andre dipped his head, his lips twitching as if he might smile, and all of a sudden Evan saw him clear as day, the boy with the spiral sketchbook and the infectious grin.

“Not like in my head,” Andre said. “I went to Venice Beach, sure. And there they were. But they smelled like weed. And they had no interest in a fool like me.”

“What happened to you?” Evan asked.

Andre recoiled, amusement freezing on his face, turning hard, and Evan could see the shame beneath. Andre had mistaken the question as a judgment on how he looked, who he’d become, rather than as the inquiry Evan had intended.

Andre’s mouth twisted. “You don’t know me. Not anymore. You don’t know shit about me.” He flung the knife down at his side, where it stuck in the soil. “Like I said, leave me the fuck alone.”

He shoved through the plants and darted up the alley. Evan pursued him. A gate clanged open and shut loudly at the end, and as Evan neared, Andre twisted a padlock back into place and sank the U shackle home with a click.

Evan looked up, but the gate was topped with razor wire.

They stared at each other through the chain-link, close enough that Evan could smell the fear on him.

Andre was panting, more from emotion than exertion, it seemed, his face awash in fear and humiliation and confusion. He looked utterly lost. A guy whose bank account couldn’t break forty bucks. Banished from his own home. A half-assembled jungle gym in his backyard, built for a daughter who never visited. So much hope, so much grief. And despair running beneath it, dimming his eyes, the eyes of a man who’d fallen off the edge of the earth.

“Wait,” Evan said. “Slow down. Just talk to me.”

Andre stepped back, sweat gleaming at his hairline. Lozenge-shaped shadows from the fence broke his face into diamonds. “You can’t help me,” he said. “No one can.”

He stepped back again, darkness enveloping him, and then there was nothing but the tap-tap-tap of his footsteps sprinting away.

23A Statue Garden of Zombies

By the time Evan neared the side street where he’d stashed his vehicle, his heart rate had settled no more than his thoughts. The F-150 wasn’t just a truck, it was a war machine, every last security measure invisible to the untrained eye. Like the laminated armor windows. The custom push-bumper assembly up front. The run-flat self-sealing tires. The flat vaults in the bed stocked with a virtual arsenal.

The vehicle had been built to spec by his trusted friend Tommy Stojack, a nine-fingered armorer who worked out of Vegas. Tommy provided Evan ghost weaponry as well: guns with no serial numbers, taggant-free explosives, innovative tech a half breath out of DARPA.

The streetlights all up the block had been shot out, no doubt a tactical choice given the deals going down on various porches in the vicinity. A few guys called after Evan in Spanish, and a lady whistled an invitation through sloppy orange lipstick, but he kept his head down, hands in his pockets. His eyes picked over the surroundings, scanning for threats, but part of his brain floated in years past. The gritty taste of generic mac and cheese. Andre on his top bunk, sketch pad propped on his knees, gnawed pencil scratching on paper. Van Sciver leering down at Evan, his knuckles scraped. The taste of blood in Evan’s mouth, cracked asphalt skinning his palms, his knees, his chin.

He’d done his best to lock himself off from the past, and yet here it was again, rearing its head, threatening to buck him like a horse. Why Andre? And how the hell did Veronica know him?

He dialed her prepaid phone, but the number had been disconnected. If she were to be believed, she’d be in the air now heading to Los Angeles. He’d have to wait until their meet time tomorrow to get any further information from her.

As much as he was loath to admit it, the mission had sunk its fangs into him. He could see no acceptable response except to return the favor.

He knew what would have to come next. Figuring out who Inmate TG3328 was in Kern Valley State Prison, which would be relatively easy. And then getting in to visit him, which would be relatively not.

To do so he’d require the help of the best hacker he knew. Who also happened to be an incredibly obstinate sixteen-year-old girl.

Curiosity crept up on him, a tingle beneath the scalp. What had Brianna called inmate TG3328? A childhood friend . The tingle grew warmer, unpleasant, turned to an itch.

The more he scratched, the deeper into his childhood this venture seemed to dig. He had no answers, not yet, just a clot of questions.

He halted, shouldering against a brick wall, and called up the serviceable CDCR website on his RoamZone. As he thumbed in the inmate number, he noticed a burn in his chest, a held breath growing impatient.

The screen reloaded and spit out a result.

Daniel Gallo .

A complete shock and totally predictable all at once.

Danny who flew in and out of juvie like it was a revolving door. Danny who’d play-shoved Andre into the counter, giving him that beauty gash on the forehead. Danny who last Evan had heard was serving out a ten-year term in Chesapeake Detention Facility for armed robbery.

He and Evan hadn’t been particularly close. They’d moved at the periphery of the circle, Evan keeping his head low to dodge Van Sciver’s wrath, Danny occupied with untangling his own various strands of trouble. One time Danny had shared with Evan a Coke he’d bought at the gas station using pennies salvaged from a wishing fountain in a strip-mall pupusa joint. With crystalline clarity Evan remembered the coolness of the bottle, the intoxicating fizz, how it had offered a few moments’ respite from the baking Baltimore sun. It had been a small act of kindness, delivered with no pomp and circumstance, but small acts of kindness were all they had to give or receive in that summer heat. A few sips of Coke might as well have been a king’s ransom.

The past could be so fickle, a moment boomeranging home twenty-seven years later with a palpability greater than the concrete beneath his boots.