Orphan X: A Novel (6 page)

A long silence ensues. Then Jack says, “My wife’s maiden name was Smoak. With an
a
in the middle and no
e
on the end. Want that one?”

Evan notes the past tense and recognizes that this is a gift. As he weighs the cost of accepting it, he does his best to keep his eyes from the framed picture on the side table. Then he says, “Sure.”

“You will use that name in your personal life only,” Jack says. “The people you work with will never know that name.”

“What will they know me as?”

“Many things.” Jack rises, keys in hand, his face severe. “It’s time,” he says.

Leaving Strider with a full bowl, they take a truck instead of the sedan, which makes sense since most of their journey proves to be off-road. After a half hour, they turn sharply uphill and bounce violently along a trail, branches screeching against the windows. They emerge at the back of a barn.

Evan follows Jack into the barn. It smells of hay and manure. Jack shoves the heavy door closed behind them. There is only a dangling lamp swaying slightly over the stables, throwing insufficient light.

Evan feels his heart rate tick up, and he looks at Jack, but Jack does not look back.

There comes a crunching of boots across hay. A big man steps from the shadows, a dense beard crowding his ruddy face. He holds a hooked knife. He doesn’t smile so much as bare his teeth.

“Hello, son,” he says. “I’m here to teach you about pain.”

A full-body buzz of fear rolls through Evan. That wicked blade sways in the man’s bulky fist, catching the light seeping around the cracks of the door.

Jack’s square face points down at Evan, and he says, gruffly, “The First Commandment:
Assume nothing.
”

The bearded man spins the blade expertly and offers it, handle out, to Evan. He says something, but Evan cannot make out the words over the thudding of his heartbeat.

The voice comes again. “Take the knife, son.”

Evan does, his fingers trembling. Then he looks at Jack
. What now?

The bearded man says, “Stab yourself in the palm.”

Evan looks from the man to the hooked blade and back to the man.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the man says, seizing the blade from Evan. His thick fist encircles Evan’s wrist, and then the steel tip pokes down, popping the tender skin of Evan’s palm.

Evan gives a little cry.

“That hurt?” the man asks.

“Yeah, it—”

The man slaps Evan across the face, hard. Evan reels back, the nerves of his cheek on fire.

“Doesn’t hurt now, does it? Your hand.”

Evan stares at him dumbly, his ears ringing.

“Does your hand hurt?” Each word drops deliberately, one stone after another.

“No. My
face
hurts.”

The man shows his teeth again, that slash of a grin. “Pain is relative. Subjective. A hangnail hurts until someone kicks ya in the nuts. I’m gonna teach you the difference between physiological pain and
felt
pain.”

He grabs Evan’s other wrist and raises the knife, and Evan flinches, ducks his head, the sting in his lowered palm flaring to life again. The knife does not descend. The bearded man’s eyes stay locked on Evan’s.

“Anticipation of pain leads to fear, and fear amplifies pain,” he says. “Expectation of relief from pain increases the opioids in the brain, makes the hurting stop. How your mind
reacts
to pain determines how much pain you actually feel.”

Jack’s voice floats over from somewhere beside Evan. “‘Pain is inevitable,’” he says. “‘Suffering is optional.’”

Evan yanks his hand free. Blood drips from his other fist. He senses Jack at his side, doing nothing, and a feeling of betrayal spreads fire-hot beneath his skin.

But Jack is not doing nothing. Jack is watching. And Evan realizes that this is a test like the ones that have come before. He understands that how he reacts now will determine everything, that this is in fact the biggest test so far.

Before Evan can say anything, the bearded man says, “You need to learn to rein in the brain centers that fire when your body detects pain. Control your insular cortex, get distance from the sensation by focusing on your breathing. I’m gonna teach you to attend to pain, put it in a box, put the box on a shelf, and go about your fucking day.”

Evan’s throat clicks as he swallows. “How are you gonna do that?”

The man’s beard bristles again around his grin. “Practice makes perfect.”

Evan looks up at Jack directly now for the first time and thinks he sees Jack give him a flicker of a wink, a tiny vote of confidence. Or maybe Evan has imagined it altogether.

The stink of damp hay thickens the air. Evan holds a breath in his lungs until it burns. Then he exhales. Turning back to the bearded man, he extends his arm, opens his other hand, exposing the pristine palm.

“Then what are you waiting for?” he says.

*   *   *

Morena’s on-call cell phone chimed in the darkness, interrupting Evan from his thoughts, and he lifted it from his thigh.

A text message:
IM OUT FRONT. U HAVE HER WAITING?

Breathing the reek of the birdcage, Evan thumbed an answer:
BEDROOM.

A moment later Detective Chambers’s reply came in:
GOOD. U CLEAR OUT NOW. I WANT HER ALONE.

Beyond the lavender curtains, a car approached, a heavy American model by the sound of it. It idled a moment, the engine deep-throated and growly, then went silent. The neighborhood sounds drifted back in—someone laughing in a backyard, a rapid-fire Spanish commercial on a blaring radio, a jet arcing overhead. And then the crunch of footsteps approaching the house.

Evan wondered how often Morena heard those footsteps as she waited here in this room.

The parrot grew restless. “Please don’t! Please, please don’t!”

The footsteps led to the metal-on-metal purr of a key entering the front door, and then the hinges squealed. The floorboards creaked. Closer, closer.

The bedroom door handle jiggled up and down. Locked.

A gruff voice came through the thin door. “I’m sure you’re scared, Carmen, but I’ll be gentle.” The rasp of a palm against wood. “Your first time doesn’t have to hurt. I know how to do this right.” The handle rattled again. “I know how to take care of you.”

Evan set Morena’s on-call phone down and lifted the pistol from his other thigh.

Out of the memory mist sailed another Jack-ism:
Big problem, big bullet, big hole.

“Come on, now. I brought you flowers. Open up and let me show you.”

The door handle rattled a bit more roughly this time. The parrot squawked and squawked some more. Evan’s hand tightened around the string.

“I’m getting tired of playing games, little girl. Open the door. You open this fucking door right—”

Gently, Evan tugged the string. It tightened, causing the door handle to dip, the lock releasing with a pop.

Chambers’s voice, once again calm: “There you go. Good girl.”

The door creaked inward, propelled by a strong slab of a hand. A muscular forearm came into view, bulging beneath a cuffed-back sleeve. Chambers’s face resolved in the darkness as he squinted into the dark room. Blotchy clean-shaven skin, cropped hair, hard eyes.

Chambers stepped forward, his shoes rustling over plastic sheeting. His face changed. “Who the hell are
you
?”

He looked down, only now noticing the drop tarp unfurled beneath his feet. When he looked back up, his eyes were different.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, no.”

7

Who’s Who in the Zoo

“Wanna hear the testicle smasher of the year?” Tommy Stojack asked, ambling around his workbench and sucking the last bit of burn from a Camel Wide. “Pretty soon I’ll be able to just
print
your ass a gun. Type some shit into a program and it spits out a mold. Love to see the baby-kissers in D.C. regulate
that.
” He plucked the cigarette from beneath his biker mustache and ran the butt under a sink tap before depositing it among a dozen others floating in a red keg cup filled with water. One stray ember could turn the workshop into a meteor crater. “But hey, let’s not panic the sheeple, right?”

Evan followed him across the dim space, which, given the slumbering machines, sharp-edged blades, and weapon crates, felt more like a medieval lair. The Las Vegas sun had baked straight through the walls, and the air smelled of spent powder and gun grease. The heat made the knife cut on Evan’s forearm itch, the skin tingling as it healed, shedding dried bits of superglue.

Tommy customized weapons. He specialized in procurement and R&D for various government-sanctioned black-ops groups, though he’d never stated as much directly. From his slang and demeanor, Evan guessed he’d learned the trade in Naval Special Warfare. About seven years ago, they’d met through a labyrinthine tangle of connections, and he and the nine-fingered armorer had slowly built rapport. It was difficult to develop trust without any personal information being exchanged, and yet, after circling each other like wary sharks over the course of several covert meets, they had landed on a version of it. Somehow, through coded talk and pointed references, they’d gotten the bearings of each other’s moral compasses and found them aligned.

“There are drawbacks, of course,” Tommy continued. “To printed guns. Quality-control issues. But hey, what do you care? You’re a trigger-puller. As long as it goes
boom,
you’re happy, right?” He winked, gestured at the sticky coffeepot on the counter behind Evan. “What say you pour me a hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up and we get to what we’re getting to.”

Tommy built many of Evan’s weapons. Because he had access to virgin-stock pistol frames without serial numbers, he could provide him with sterilized guns, guns that did not technically exist.

But today, the morning after he’d killed a dirty cop, Evan required a different service.

He reached for his Kydex high-guard hip holster, molded in the shape of the gun. The Wilson 1911 came free with a click, and he rotated the pistol sideways and offered it to Tommy.

“I need you to puddle the barrel and firing pin,” Evan said.

“You been throwing lead.”

“I have.”

“It catch any bad guys?”

“One.”

“And the Lord said, ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness.’”

Tommy’s nine fingers moved at blackjack-dealer speed, disassembling the Wilson across his bench. He put on a set of welder’s goggles, fired up the cutting torch, and reduced the barrel, slide, firing pin, and extractor to slag. Then he popped a new slide assembly onto Evan’s pistol frame and handed the weapon back.

“Wa-la,” he said. “It’s a ghost again. Just like you.”

Evan clicked in a fresh mag, let the slide run forward, and started to holster the pistol, but Tommy said, “Whoa, cowboy.” He pointed to a test-firing tube in the shadows. The four-foot-long steel pipe, filled with sand, was slanted downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Donning protective eyes-and-ears gear, Evan aimed at the mouth of the tube. He ran through a full mag test-firing the gun, the deadened smacks of metal into sand reverberating around the lair.

He gave a nod and turned back to Tommy, who downed the last of his coffee and popped open a tin of Skoal, tucking a meaty wedge into his bottom lip. Evan had come across a lot of men with a lot of habits but had yet to see someone hop from stimulant to stimulant with Tommy’s ease and enthusiasm.

“I know you prefer burning powder, but in case you get stuck fighting at bad-breath distance…” Tommy grabbed a stout folding knife off his bench and flipped it at Evan. “Just got these in. Figure you could use an update.”

Evan thumbed up the black-oxide blade. Heat-treated, S30V steel, titanium and G10 handle, tanto tip to punch through body armor. A Naval Special Warfare model, Strider make. Evan was a passable eskrima knife fighter, though not superb; an adversary who had truly mastered the Filipino form would carve him to pieces. Because of this he always made a point of bringing a gun to a knife fight. “Thanks,” he said.

“I know you like you a Strider,” Tommy said.

“I had a dog once with that name,” Evan said.

“I don’t picture you having had a childhood.”

“White picket fence, apple pie, Wiffle ball.”

Smirking, Tommy fell back into a chair, letting it roll across the slick concrete and come to rest near what looked like an old infantry mortar. He hoisted up a round from a wooden crate, the drab green thin projectile thicker than his forearm. “What say we take a drive to the desert, play big-boy lawn darts?”

“Tempting,” Evan said. “But I gotta get back.”

“All right. Let’s get some bucks in my jeans, you can be on your way.”

Evan handed off a folded wad of hundred-dollar bills, and Tommy tossed it on the bench without counting it. Evan started for the sturdy metal door. As he neared, compulsion overtook him and he crouched to make sure the mounted security camera by the frame was in fact unplugged, as per their arrangement.

It was.

He shot an apologetic look back at Tommy.

Tommy glanced up, caught in the act of counting the bills.

Both men grinned sheepishly.

“It doesn’t hurt to be safe, now, does it, brother?” Tommy spit a stream of tobacco through the gap in his front teeth, tapping the wad of cash into his shirt pocket. “Never know who’s who in the zoo.”

8

Unmarred

The scent of the grill intermingled with car exhaust, thickening the air around the splintering picnic tables artlessly arrayed outside Benny’s Burgers. Inside, customers sat scattered among the booths and two-tops, but the dead L.A. heat had dissuaded anyone from eating out here on the square of crumbling concrete that passed for a patio.