Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Andre popped up and snatched the keys from their hook. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

“You think I’m just gonna wait around here? Hail no.” He scrambled to tug on his shoes. “This is my life. You want to help me? Then help me. But you ain’t taking over.”

“Andre. No way.”

“You said it yourself. I’m not safe anywhere I go. Might as well be with your white-knighting ass.” He finished lacing up, his knuckles brushing the empty bottle of rum. He picked it up. Sniffed it, eyes closed. Hearing the siren song. He seemed to realize what he was doing and dropped the bottle again. “I need to go to a meeting. Or I gotta call my sponsor.”

“You’re not calling anyone,” Evan said. “Zero contact. You’ll put us both at risk. Understand?”

Andre smiled. “So that means I’m going with you?”

31Chasing Good

Evan parked in the precise spot across from the impound lot where Declan and Queenie Gentner had positioned their Corvette as they’d lain in wait for Jake Hargreave, a good distance back from the surveillance-camera scope of the First Union Bank’s ATM. Though it wasn’t yet six o’clock, the sky was nearing full dark, December early twilight crowding ever earlier. This stretch of downtown, mostly factories and plants, was already largely deserted.

Through the facing chain-link, the wrecked vehicles slumbered in imperfect rows, strobing into view between streamers of low-lying fog. Evan kept the headlights and dome light off, the engine killed, his door cracked to prevent the windshield from fogging with his and Andre’s breath.

“Why don’t you just roll down a window?” Andre asked.

Because the laminate armor glass didn’t retract, and even if it did, there’d be nowhere for it to go given the Kevlar-plate reinforcements filling the door panels.

“Broken,” Evan said.

Andre shivered. “Fancy-ass truck like this, I’d figure you could afford to get that shit fixed.”

“I’ll look into it.”

The kiosk was lit from within, illuminating a man in a Carhartt jacket chewing a pen and watching a tiny portable television that looked decades old. Evan checked his watch fob again. Ten minutes to closing.

He retrieved a tube of superglue from the center console and spread a thin layer across his finger pads.

“Why’re you doing that?” Andre asked.

“Cover my prints.”

“Shouldn’t I do that, too?”

Evan looked at him. “You worked here. Your prints should be all over the place.”

Andre said, “Good point.”

A white Mazda drifted past and a few moments later a Tesla Model S with tinted windows. Evan noted the plates, watched them turn at the intersection ahead and vanish. He adjusted the side mirror to better capture the street behind them.

Andre was at it again, prying dirt from beneath his fingernails.

Evan grimaced. “Can you stop doing that?”

Andre peered over at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s gross. And you’re in my truck.”

Andre blew an annoyed puff of breath through his lips. “You’re so fastidious. All anal retentive and shit. Even your hair’s fastidious.”

“Big word.”

“Says the guy with fastidious hair.” Andre shifted in his seat, enjoying himself now. “Is a little bit of dirt bothering you?” He waggled his dirty finger in the air. “How ’bout this? Oh, no! Oops .” He wiped it on Evan’s thigh.

Evan resisted the urge to administer a kenpo ridge hand strike to the bottom of Andre’s chin, shattering his jaw. Instead he shoved Andre’s arm away. “And you could use a shower. You smell like hot-and-sour soup.”

Andre laughed. “Don’t I know it.” His eyes warmed. “Shit, Evan. There you are. For one second you’re almost like your old self. That little-ass kid always getting knocked around. But I’ll give you this. You always got back up.” He shook his head. “I used to be like that, too. I used to get up every time they knocked me down. Till I couldn’t no more.”

“’Cuz of the booze?” Again there was the loose articulation, the street slang, coming out of Evan’s own mouth, catching him off guard.

Andre shrugged. “When you’re young, you self-medicate and shit without knowing it. Just to feel better. Good times. Loosens you up. Why not? Then you get older, you do it with purpose . Try combinations. Rum and Xanax. Get pharmacological and shit. You start out chasing good but end up just trying to dull the bad. Till one day…”

“What?”

“You wake up with blood on you, don’t know from what or from who.” Andre rubbed at the scar over his eyebrow. “Had to get in the shower to find out it wasn’t mine. Didn’t know what I’d done till I’d done it. Looked in the mirror, saw a fuckup staring back. Husband in name. Father in name. But really? God’s truth? Just a fuckup.”

Evan didn’t know what to say. Over at the kiosk, the worker had moved on to picking his nose with vigor. The fog crept and bloomed, turning the lot swampy.

“We were all fuckups, weren’t we?” Andre said. “Kids no one wanted.”

Evan thought about Andre’s mother looking down at him as a newborn, seeing the features of her rapist looking back. “Yeah.”

“When you’re outside life, it’s hard to get in. Know what I mean?”

Evan pictured Mia’s condo, candles and throw blankets, laundry and a stocked fridge, TV blaring cartoons, Peter fussing or cracking up, Mia sipping red wine and listening to Miles Davis.

So much warmth. And color. Like looking through the aquarium glass at a wondrous new world.

Evan said, “Not really.”

“Like, ever watch some sports match you don’t understand? On one a’ them second-rate ESPNs—international or something? Like, I dunno, rugby. Or Australian football. It takes you out, right? All those people cheering, crying, chanting, like their lives depend on it, like they’ve been empty their entire lives and now they’re full, brimming with life, with triumph . And you’re outside, right? You don’t know this game. You don’t give a shit. But you envy them being so goddamned alive, for knowing what they care about and what they want and for trying to get at it. For being in it , man. And you’re just sitting there watching.” Andre’s voice grew hoarse. “When you’re like us, that’s how everything feels sometimes.”

Evan caught the words before they came out. I’m not like you .

Andre said, “You’re never jealous of folks like that? People who can just be … you know, happy.”

“You think happiness is the point?”

“Of what?”

“Of life.”

“Ain’t it?”

Evan shrugged. “I don’t know if you can build anything on it.”

“What do you build on, then?”

“Responsibility,” Evan said. “Duty.”

The air seeped through the cracked door, tightening Evan’s skin. He thought about the calm nights since he’d retired, sipping vodka at his kitchen counter in his climate-controlled penthouse. Then he thought about strolling through a mist-draped South American cemetery, tracking and being tracked, a police-force battalion waiting in the wings; the heat blast of a Hellfire missile putting him on the brink of disintegration, every cell screamingly alive; and the sensation filling him sitting here now on the razor’s edge of a mission, each step a high-wire act, lives hanging in the balance, danger coiling itself around him, fork-tongued whispering in his ear.

One trajectory offered what he wanted. The other what he needed.

He didn’t want to hold them up side by side in his mind, because then he’d have to admit which one spoke to his truest self.

Over in the passenger seat, Andre was still musing. Evan checked the mirrors, the intersection ahead, the weight of the dilemma tugging at him.