Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

“What’s it to you?”

The explanation came haltingly, the words jumbling up at Evan’s mouth. “I … used to help people—”

“Help people how?”

“—but I’m retired.”

“Then why are you—”

“Because Andre…” Evan couldn’t grab hold of the thought to finish it.

“That’s what they took you to go do?” Danny asked. “Help people?”

An Estonian arms dealer sprawled on the floor, chest sucking blood, a mist of blood speckling his lips. An NGO worker garroted in a public bathroom in Cairo, slumped beneath a shattered urinal. A drug lord sitting lifelike in a São Paulo steam room, terry towel twisted around his neck, marbled white skin glistening with condensation.

Evan said, “Yes.”

“And what’s up with Andre?”

“Some highly connected people are trying to kill him. I want to find him first.”

“You try Bri? The ex?”

“I did. She doesn’t know. She said he visits you.”

“Yeah. You add it all up, I been inside twenty-three years.” Danny’s stare was unrelenting, accusatory. “He’s the only visitor I ever had.”

“When’s the last time he came?”

“Fifty-three days ago.”

The thought of Danny’s tracking each day since was too distressing to linger on, so Evan pushed past it. “Did he say where he was living?”

“No. Well, wait. Yeah, El Sereno somewhere. Not that that helps narrow shit down much.”

“Did he mention anything about it? Anything at all?”

“Rented some shitty room he complained about. You know Dr. Dre, always bitchin’.” Danny smiled affectionately. “Upstairs from a Chinese restaurant, said he always reeked of kung pao chicken or some shit. I told him I’d sell my left nut for Chink food.”

“He ever write to you?”

“He sent me some sketches—you ’member how that boy could draw? But that was years back.”

“Has he been in touch any other ways?”

“Wires money to my commissary account now and again. Even when he’s broke. Twenty bucks here. Twenty bucks there.” Danny wet his chapped lips. He had a sore at the edge of his mouth, cracked and runny. “Takes me a hundred eighteen hours of work to make that much. Twenty bucks.”

“When’s the last time he sent you something?”

“Right before his last visit.”

“How’d he send it?”

“MoneyGram. It’s all the assholes allow here. Costs four-fifty at Walmart for up to fifty bucks. Fuckin’ waste. Twenty-six and a half hours’ work just for the fee—I done the math.” Danny tried to clear his throat, but it turned into another coughfest. It seemed to go on forever. When he finally settled down, he said, “You still never told me what exactly you do. Or why you snuck in here under some fake name.”

The double doors behind him clanged loudly once more and swung open, letting in a spill of morning light.

“Time’s up,” the CO called out.

Evan stood as Danny managed to extract himself from the picnic bench without the benefit of his hands. They faced each other.

Evan could smell him even at three feet away. It was hard to look him in his ruinous face. This living, breathing part of his past. Like a piece of himself he didn’t want to acknowledge.

Danny leaned forward on his soft orange canvas deck step-ins and for an awful moment Evan thought he was going to hug him. But instead he looked at Evan through strands of sweat-darkened hair and said, “You’re the lucky one. That’s all that separates you and Ramón. Or you and Andre. Or you ’n’ me. Luck .”

Evan said, “Okay.”

“So look in the mirror, boy. And smile that you’re on the right side of the glass.”

“Gallo!” the CO yelled. “Move it.”

But Danny stayed put. The skin of his forehead, taut with emotion, went lax, giving way to furrows. “They lock that cell door at eight forty-five P.M., that’s when you feel it. The hours and minutes and years waiting on you ahead. It’s like the sun. Can’t look straight at it. Probably the same for you. Where you came from. What you left behind. Look too hard and you’ll go blind.”

Evan said, “Thanks for the info on Andre.”

Danny’s hostile expression loosened, the buried-deep hurt showing through. For a moment he just looked like what he was, an accumulation of vulnerabilities armored over with resentment. His eyes darted away. “You take care of yourself, Evan.”

He trudged toward the door, disappearing into a shaft of late-morning glare.

28Penance

Driving away from the prison on the flat line of Interstate 5, Evan maxed the air conditioner to keep his body temp steady. He wasn’t sweating, but discomfort hummed beneath his skin, a kind of friction heat.

He could still feel Danny’s presence, a soul-deep filth that had rubbed off on him. A vision of the road not taken. Locked behind bars. Dead with a needle in his arm. Blasted to pieces on the hot sand of a desert halfway around the world.

You ain’t no better’n me.

You’re the lucky one .

So look in the mirror, boy. And smile that you’re on the right side of the glass .

In two hours and change, he was supposed to meet Veronica, another reflection of a past he preferred not to see. If he drove at the speed limit, he’d reach the designated Bel Air address with time to spare. And finally he’d get some answers about how the hell she knew Andre. And figure out what other pieces of his best-forgotten childhood she held.

Tension built in his chest until his inhalations burned. At the next exit, he screeched off, parked at the Flying J truck stop, and hustled inside. A hefty man lumbered out of the bathroom. On his way in, Evan elbowed the swinging door so as not to touch the handle.

He slathered his hands with powder soap and washed them under hot water and then washed them again until his palms chafed lobster red. He cuffed his sleeves and scrubbed up his forearms next and then ducked his head to the tap and shoveled hot water across his face, scouring away Danny’s scent, his words, the bleach and BO of the prison air.

He knew it was in his head, a user error that flared up when he was under emotional duress—a need to control, to purify, to set his world in order. He wouldn’t feel properly disinfected until he had a proper shower, but this would be enough to get him home.

He hit the lever for a paper towel but then sensed the germs on his fingertips from touching the plastic so he rinsed his hands again and then turned off the faucet using the wadded paper towel. He didn’t want to touch the plastic lever again, so he mashed the soggy wad to release another scroll of paper towel, which he ripped free and used to open the bathroom door. He exited and stood for a moment, breath still coming hard.

Then he walked outside.

Fresh midday air, the sun like a klieg light to the east, boring through a fuzzy blue sky.

He dug his RoamZone out from the center console, fired it up, and dialed.

Joey picked up through her computer; he could hear the last chimes of the ringtone on a delay. “I tried you twice, but it went straight to voice mail,” she said.

“I was in prison.”

“Excuses, excuses. I have the background on Jake Hargreave you wanted.”

“Go.”

“Air force, like you said. Senior airman, active warfighter, all that. Then—get this—he got moved to Creech Air Force Base to work on … guess what?”

Evan said, “Unmanned aircraft testing.”

A rare moment of speechlessness from Joey. “How’d you know that?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Yeah, he was with the 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron. Till he and his sensor operator ran into some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”