Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

She snapped her gum with gunshot vehemence. “Dunno. Honorable discharge for Hargreave a few months back. His partner got ODPMC, whatever that means.”

“Other Designated Physical and Mental Conditions Discharge.”

“Headcase, then?”

“Where is he? The sensor operator?”

“In Fresno. California Veterans Reintegration Center. It’s like a compound to help vets get their heads right or something like that. But get this, it’s got crazy security—cameras and guards and whatnot. What’s up with that?”

“The DoD prefers to keep drone-warfare intel in a dark box,” he said. “A lot of these operations aren’t even under air force command. They hook it under JSOC or the CIA.”

Joey said, “So I guess when you have people who know lots of classified shit but might be losing their minds, you gotta lock them up.”

“Or kill them.”

“Ha.” A pause. “You weren’t joking.”

“No.”

“So?” she said. “That’s it. Another job exceptionally handled by moi .” More loud gum chewing. “Pretend you got a personality transplant and say, ‘Thank you, Joey. You’re amazeballs.’”

“I would never say ‘amazeballs.’”

“You just did.”

Evan grimaced, pinched his eyes. “I need you to find something else for me.”

“No thanks,” she said. “I’m busy not studying.”

“Andre Duran is living in El Sereno renting a room above a Chinese restaurant.”

“Sounds glam.”

“He sent a MoneyGram payment to Daniel Gallo’s commissary account at the prison about two months ago. The database should have wire details on all financial transactions, including where the money originated from.”

“You want me to hack into the CDCR databases again, find the MoneyGram store that Duran sent the cash from, and cross-correlate with two-story Chinese restaurants in El Sereno?”

“I want you to do precisely that.”

“What was it like seeing Danny Gallo?” Her voice was hushed, respectful. She was such a pain-in-the-ass teenager that it was sometimes easy to forget she’d been a foster kid like him, floating through a system, devoid of past or future. “Was it weird?”

He lowered his head, bit his lip. Pictured Danny’s pockmarked face, the tic that jerked his head to one side, that burn that had robbed his left earlobe. The image took his voice away.

Joey came through the RoamZone, tinny over the receiver. “X?”

“Thanks, Joey,” Evan said, and hung up.

He walked over to where he’d left his rig at the pump station and filled the tank.

He pictured Andre as a kid, sitting up on his bunk, sketching away. You wait and see, fools. Mystery Man’s gonna choose me ’cuz he got some taste. Then I’ll drive a big-ass Cadillac and move to Cali. They got palm trees and shit and blonde girls with juicy booties who Rollerblade in bikinis all day long.

He thought about Danny trolling the wishing well for pennies, the wet change dumped on the counter in front of the displeased clerk. Sitting on the curb, sharing a Coke, just another two East Baltimore kids no one wanted.

He pictured Veronica crouched by the marble carving of a newborn in the cemetery. She’d driven through the night, she’d said. Across the border from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. To dump him off with a couple unable to care for him.

He pinched his eyes, blinked hard around his thumb and forefinger. That sensation of pressure he’d felt in the prison arose once more.

Not just grief, he realized, but guilt, too. For making it out? For surviving? For being intact?

The Pride House Group Home had been life or death. Jockey for food. Claw up the dominance hierarchy. Fight for any shred of hope and guard it with everything you had.

And yet Danny had shared his hard-earned Coke with him.

The gas pump clacked off, snapping Evan back to the present. He holstered the nozzle, his eye catching on a neon sign in the travel-plaza window across the lot. Squashed between signs for Bud Light and Skoal Bandits, it glowed yellow through the grimy pane.

MoneyGram .

Evan twisted on the gas cap, climbed into his truck, and fired up the engine. He sat a moment, knuckles ledging the steering wheel, just breathing.

Then he slotted the gear stick back into park.

The glass door chimed “Jingle Bells” when he walked through into a rush of air-conditioning. He found his way to the counter and wired a thousand dollars to Inmate TG3328 .

Rumbling along the interstate toward the towering hills of the Grapevine and Bel Air beyond, it struck him that the payment was an atonement of sorts.

A penance he owed for not turning out like Danny.

29Broken Heart

The half-acre setback in the Bel Air hills featured holly ferns and palm trees and a trickling river-moat hosting swans. A stone wall hemmed in the vast front yard, the iron gate giving way beneath Evan’s hand with a creak.

He crossed a fairy-tale footbridge over the moat, approaching the imposing granite façade. The air carried the sickly-sweet scent of gardenias. A bright red door with a speakeasy grille confronted him. He lifted a brass knocker shaped like a sprinting greyhound, gave it a few whacks, and waited in the perfumed breeze.

Nothing.

He shifted, feeling the reassuring pressure of his ARES 1911 snugged to his flesh. He wore an appendix holster, the fastest concealed-carry method. The Kydex was tightly molded for retention, which could cause a striker-fire pistol like a Glock to kaboom when seating the gun but worked beautifully for a 1911 with external grip and thumb safeties. The pistol itself, engineered from a solid aluminum forging, was designed to spec and impossible to trace.

Once again he checked the street, the sky, the surrounding rooftops.

He knocked again, a touch louder.

The yapping of a pair of little dogs, the scrabble of paws on hard surfaces, and Veronica’s voice from within. “Okay, okay. I’m coming!”

Another twenty seconds passed, and then the towering architectural door yawned inward, a slit in a castle wall. Veronica wore a light gray shift dress—not revealing but not modest either—a champagne flute in one hand. The dogs, who looked to be some sort of Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix, vibrated around her ankles, emitting earsplitting barks.

She took a moment to admire him. “Evan.” She downed the rest of her mimosa, set the glass aside, and spread her arms for an embrace.

He offered a hand.

A flicker of hurt crossed her face, quickly gone beneath a smile. Her hand was cool and dry. “Would you like a drink?”

A tang of champagne on her breath.

“No thank you,” he said.

“So polite. You were brought up right.” She seemed to realize her poor choice of words, her eyebrows pinching in with dismay, but she quickly dismissed any discomfort—his or hers—with a wave of her manicured hand as she headed into the interior.

The dogs scurried alongside her, glancing nervously back at Evan, pink triangle tongues hanging out from all the excitement.

At second glance Evan realized the foyer was a dark-tiled pool, wide concrete blocks serving as stepping-stones zigzagging across still water. The dogs bounced from one to the next with practiced agility. Shaved hindquarters, scrawny legs, a poofy mane rimming beady features and sharp snouts.

“Barry’s obsessed with animals,” Veronica called over her shoulder, “but I have to say, these dogs look like they were put together by committee.”

They threaded through a kitchen and then down several wide steps to a sunken living room, complete with a fully stocked bar and a flat-screen television the size of a billboard. A stainless-steel bucket held a tilted magnum of Perrier-Jouët, the belle epoque bottle wrapped with painted flowers. Beside it a glass pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice.