Orphan X: A Novel (25 page)

Evan made a cautious approach and walked the surrounding blocks but found no signs of surveillance. He’d repeat it on Wednesday even more thoroughly before the arranged meeting.

He thought about Morena in the wind, more scared than ever. He’d have to wait for her to contact him, if she decided to. But he imagined that after the near kidnapping in Jasmine she would vanish again, far from her sister and Danny Slatcher and Evan himself. The thought of her out there somewhere, vulnerable to Slatcher’s next move, grated on him, a metal file working his nerves.

As he headed back to his car, his phone rang. The caller ID showed the burner phone he’d given Katrin. A sense of betrayal surged in his chest, lava-hot.

He answered, holding the phone to his face.

“Where are you?” she asked.

Paranoia has a taste, an acidity on the tongue as sharp as the side effect of a potent medication. Evan’s breath fogged in the midnight chill. The air smelled of mowed grass and car exhaust. Up the street a woman wearing hot pink heels with fabric straps that laced all the way up to her thighs strutted through a chorus of catcalls.

Evan asked, “Why do you want to know where I am?”

Her laugh was musical. “I don’t, really. I suppose what I really want to know is why you’re not here.”

He said nothing.

“So,” she said. “Why aren’t you here?”

“I’m figuring out how to fix it.”

“What?”

“Everything,” he said. “Don’t call unless it’s an emergency. I’ll be back to you Wednesday night.”

“Okay.” Her tone had cooled. “Emergency only. That’s fine. I hope I didn’t…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just—thank you.”

He hung up.

He switched vehicles in Burbank, parking the Taurus two lots over from where he’d left his truck. After driving home he made it upstairs and went straight to the Vault. He checked the surveillance feeds from the loft, picking up the minute he’d left and fast-forwarding to observe Katrin’s every move. She’d slept, showered, stretched, ordered groceries in, napped. Everything as she’d been instructed.

He caught up to the present, finding her standing at the big tinted windows, looking out at the freeway beyond. Her shoulders shook slightly. She was crying.

Perhaps she knew she was being observed.

He trudged from the Vault, climbed onto his levitating bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

In his dream Jack came to him, his lips rouged black. Slowly the black liquid rose in his mouth, glimmering, then spilled over onto his chin. Jack tried to catch it in his hands, cupping the blood as if he could scoop it back into his body. His wild eyes looked up into Evan’s.

“‘The past isn’t dead,’” Jack quoted through slick black lips. “‘It’s not even past.’”

“What does that mean?” Evan said.

“Hell if I know.” Jack shrugged, the terrible fluid streaming through his fingers. “Dream interpretations,” he added with disdain. “I hate that shit.”

Evan woke breathing hard, his flesh clammy, the sheets churned up around him. It was 5:00
A.M.
His thoughts were disheveled, scenarios cascading one after another.

The air conditioner blew cool and steady across his drying sweat. He sat up in bed and crossed his legs to meditate. As Jack had taught him, he freed up a space inside his mind and populated it with the oak trees of his childhood. He put a Virginia summer sun in the sky and a carpet of wild grass underfoot. Walking between tree trunks, he breathed the dusty scent of the bark and listened for birdcalls. He came into a clearing, and there Jack waited, his smile still rouged, his chin dripping black, his teeth stained vampirically.

Evan opened his eyes, more annoyed than distressed.

From his nightstand drawer, he removed a Tibetan gong the size and shape of a soup bowl. He ran the wooden baton around the rim, making the bowl sing. And then he struck the bronze side once and closed his eyes.

Feeling the tone against his skin, he attended to every micromoment of sensation within him, cultivating the same hyperawareness he used when fighting or setting up a sniper shot. He let the vibrations travel through him, sounding the inside of his body, defining his shape anew. He waited as the noise faded, until there was not a trace of sound lingering, until even the last shiver in the air had stilled.

He opened his eyes refreshed.

His mission priorities clarified.

He could not trust Katrin. He could not trust Memo Vasquez, the second caller. He was meeting Vasquez tomorrow, which gave him a little more than twenty-four hours to surveil Katrin and see if she tried to make contact with a handler.

If she did not, he’d see Vasquez in the morning and press him hard.

It was all about applying pressure until one of them crumbled.

His empty stomach got him off the bed and moving toward the kitchen. The living wall had seen better days. The drip system appeared to be balky, herbs browning at the edges. Nonetheless he found two robust red tomatoes, harvested some basil and sage, and made an omelet.

Back in the Vault, he sipped fresh mint tea, forked breakfast from a plate, and watched Katrin sleep. Her straight, shiny hair, laid like a wedge against her flawless cheek, made her look as though she were being rendered in black and white.

At last she awakened, stretching herself into an expansive yawn and heading into the bathroom. She freshened up, changed clothes, and moved to the kitchen, searching the cupboards until she found a frying pan. She made eggs and sat at the counter, pushing them around her plate with a fork.

It was as though they were eating breakfast together.

He remembered how she’d called him over to the window, then reached behind her to pull him to her. Her skin like silk. The lipstick smearing on her plush lips.

If she was playing him, she’d done a spectacular job.

His RoamZone gave off a sonar ping, the GPS signal coming up in response to the food hitting her stomach. The microchips in her system would have to be replenished soon if he wanted to keep tabs on her, and right now there was nothing he wanted to do more.

The GPS dot blipped on his phone, pinning her location even as he watched her in real time on the monitor. Sipping his tea, Evan settled in for the long haul.

34

The Samurai-Sword Incident

Angles of Katrin White filled the monitors, bird’s-eye, head-on, profiles—even aesthetic shots from severe angles. It was like some pop-art collage, cubism parted out into Warholian repetition:
Katrin Reading a Magazine on Her Belly, One Foot Dangling in the Air.

Evan watched her at intervals, exiting the Vault to work out at the stations in his great room, to eat lunch, to run on the treadmill near the south balcony. The treadmill gave him a clean shot down to 19H in the neighboring building, the apartment where the digitized, encrypted conversations for 1-855-2-NOWHERE, after zigzagging through telephone-switch destinations around the globe, emerged from Joey Delarosa’s Wi-Fi access point and then vanished again into Verizon’s LTE network.

Every time Evan returned to the Vault, he reviewed the footage from the loft. And every one of those times, Katrin showed herself to be doing almost precisely what Evan was himself doing—waiting. She made the futon, paced around the kitchen island, did some half-assed yoga while looking at the view. For one thirty-minute period, she curled up on the couch and sobbed. Evan reviewed every last minute, waiting for the slightest misstep. But not once did she exhibit any behavior he deemed suspicious.

At six-thirty Evan’s doorbell rang, the sound muted by the thick walls of the Vault. With a few clicks of the mouse, he switched the feed to bring up the pinhole camera hidden in the air-conditioning vent outside his condo.

Mia waited at his door, holding Peter’s hand. Though she stood in place, her legs moved in a faint simulation of running, alternate knees dipping forward, a show of nervous impatience.

Evan felt a stab of annoyance. It took him a minute to extricate himself from the Vault and walk to the front door. As he opened it, he braced himself for some parental complaint, but Mia looked anything but peeved.

Her eyes, puffy from emotion, her nose tinged red, the set of her face severe. What he’d mistaken for impatience was fear.

“Hi, Evan. I’m so sorry to bother you. But I have a work emergency. I have to get into the office now, and since it’s last-minute, all my sitters are tied up.”

Peter stared at him, the bruising around his eye now faded to a jaundiced yellow. He wore a backpack, stuffed to the point of bursting. How many things did an eight-year-old require on his person at any given moment?

“Wait,” Evan said. “What?”

“Please.”

“I can’t,” Evan said. “I’m sorry. I’m dealing with a work situation of my own today. Something I really can’t step away from.”

“You wouldn’t have to watch him,” she said. “He could just do homework in another room? Check on him every half hour or so?” She stepped forward, lowered her voice. “This is a real crisis. As in life or death.”

He matched her lowered voice. “Is that a metaphor?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve got no one else right now. I really need your help.”

If by some long shot they attacked him here in his stronghold, could he protect the boy? Evan bit down on the inside of his lip. Looked over at Peter. Back to her. “How long will you be?”

“Oh, thank God,” Mia said, propelling Peter forward. “Just a couple of hours.”

Evan held the door open, and Peter scooted past him. Mia started for the elevator, then halted and looked back. “I cannot tell you what this means to me.”

Evan gave a little nod and closed the door.

From behind him: “This place is
so cool
!”

Evan spun around. “Hang on. Where are you?”

Peter was walking around the kitchen, checking it out. He left fingerprints on the Sub-Zero. Turned on the power blender. Tugged out the spray head of the kitchen faucet and let it snap back into place.

Evan ran over, switched off the machine, wiped down the refrigerator. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Okay. Sorry. It’s just … this place is all hard and concrete, like the Batcave.”

Evan looked over at the winged patch sewn onto his backpack. “You’re a big Batman fan, huh?”

“Know why?” Peter waited for Evan to shake his head. “’Cuz he’s not magic. He’s not a alien like Superman with superpowers. He can’t fly. He’s like you and me. His parents got killed, and so he wants to help people now. That’s all.” Peter thunked his backpack onto the counter and hopped up on a stool. “I’m hungry.”

His mind still back on the dead parents, Evan took a moment to process the transition.

“Do you have mac and cheese?” Peter asked.

Evan opened the refrigerator, scanning the sparse shelves. A jar of gherkins, cocktail onions, two saline bags in the fruit drawer. “I have caviar and water crackers.”

“What’s a water cracker?”

Evan extracted one from the box, set it on a dinner plate before Peter. The boy took a bite, the crumbs landing everywhere but on the plate beneath him. He made a face.

“What?”

“There’s no
flavor.
”

Evan found a hunk of Manchego in the back of a drawer, cut off a few wedges, and placed them on the crackers. “This’ll help.” He knocked the counter with a fist. “Start your homework.”

Peter opened his notebook and set about writing.

Evan hurried back to the bedroom suite, locked the door behind him, then stepped through the shower into the Vault. Settling into his chair behind the sheet-metal desk, he unpaused the surveillance feeds and observed Katrin White being Katrin White. She sprawled on the futon. Drank orange juice from the carton. Dug dark nail polish from her purse and painted her toes. He clicked to speed up the feed, watching closely to see if she made any gesture that could be interpreted as a signal—opening the bathroom window, reaching for the phone, sliding something beneath the front door—but she just whiled away the boring hours on Charlie Chaplin fast-forward. It was looking increasingly likely that nothing was going to break before his meet with Memo Vasquez tomorrow morning.

Evan had caught up and was observing Katrin in real time when he heard a cry from somewhere in his condo, then a clattering as something crashed to the floor.

He leapt up and rushed out, swinging shut the hidden shower door behind him. When he barreled out of the bedroom and into the hall, Peter was standing there, blood snaking down his hand.

Half slid out of its sheath, the katana lay on the floor at his feet, fallen from its acrylic wall pegs.

“I’m sorry.” Peter squeezed his thumb, fighting tears. “I just wanted to see it for a sec.”

Evan went down on a knee. “Give me your hand.”

A nick through the pad of Peter’s thumb—the blade must have barely touched him. Given the sharpness of the sword, the kid was lucky he hadn’t lost a finger.

Evan brought him into the bathroom, washed it under cold water, then applied pressure with a Kleenex. He set the bloody tissue by the sink, then took out a tube of superglue from the medicine cabinet.

“You’re gonna
glue
my thumb shut?”

“Yes.”

“What if I scratch my cheek and the superglue glues my thumb to my face?”

“Then you’ll look like this for the rest of your life.”

Peter regarded Evan’s pose with alarm, and then his face softened. “Ha, ha. You’re sure this is okay?”

“Trust me,” Evan said.

Peter did.

Afterward he regarded the wound. “Do you have any Muppet Band-Aids?”

“No,” Evan said.

They walked back out into the hall, regarding the fallen blade. The sheath, a wooden
shirasaya
, featured an etched and inked
sayagaki
—the hallmark of a long-dead sensei. The hairline crack ran straight through the sensei’s signature. There were three people in the country who could properly make the repair; fortunately, one of them lived in Marin. Evan crouched over the scabbard, fingering the damage. As soon as he completed this mission, he’d take the drive up the coast and have the
shirasaya
fixed.