Big Face walked around his desk now in front of Trevon and crossed his arms and looked down at him. He smelled of fancy cologne.
“You exist now for one purpose and one purpose only. To be an advertisement to my trading partners, to my workers, to the world in which I move that no one is ever to take steps to harm my interests. You will wake each morning and breathe and suffer as a living testimony to my power.”
Trevon leaned over and vomited on his shoes.
Big Face said, “Get this imbecile the fuck out of my office.”
Muscley One and Raw One lifted Trevon by the arms. His legs didn’t work, so they carry-dragged him back out through the front room, into the gravel lot, and over to the truck.
Muscley One reached into the backseat and threw a little towel at Trevon’s face. “You’re cleaning your ass up before you get in my new truck.”
Trevon wiped at his mouth and his shirt. Then he held the little towel tight in his hands as they put the trash liner back over his head and pushed him in. The air smelled like the blue tree he’d seen dangling from the rearview mirror.
As they drove off, the Scaredy Bugs went crazy inside Trevon, running around so fast he wished he could unzip his skin and crawl out. He tried to hum to himself, but it didn’t help any. His hands were shaking and his arms were shaking and his legs were shaking. He twisted the little towel between his fists and rocked himself, but that didn’t help any.
The Scaredy Bugs had won.
15
Outside the Purview
After a roundabout trip home — an early-morning flight from D.C. into San Francisco, a commuter plane to Long Beach Airport, a vehicle switch at a long-term-parking lot, and another at one of his many safe houses — Evan drove his Ford pickup through the Wilshire Corridor. The harsh midday sun glinted off the glass of the condo high-rises thrusting up on either side of the boulevard.
Evan turned in to the porte cochere of his own building, the pompously named Castle Heights Residential Tower.
Mia Hall sat on the bench by the front doors with her nine-year-old son, Peter. They were eating ice cream, though more of Peter’s seemed to be dripping over his fist than remained on the cone. He smiled a chocolaty clown smile and gave a wave that would have been visible several blocks away.
Evan slowed as he passed, the valet jumping at the chance to — for once — park Evan’s truck. Evan put a traffic-cop “stop” hand up at the valet, who sank dejectedly back into his chair, and then looked through the passenger window. It couldn’t roll down. The Kevlar armor that Evan had hung inside the door panels prevented the glass from retracting. That was one of a variety of hidden security measures with which he’d outfitted the F-150. At a glance it looked like a regular pickup.
Just as Evan looked like a regular guy.
Peter leapt up from the bench at the sight of him. “Evan Smoak!”
Evan opened his door and stepped up onto the runner so he was looking at Mia and Peter over the roof of the truck.
Mia was eating mint chip and doing an elegant job of it. Her wavy chestnut hair had been cut shorter, which accented her cheekbones and her wide-set eyes.
Not that he paid attention to things like that.
“I’ll park and come back around?” he said, realizing too late that he’d pulled the sentence up at the end like a question.
“Sure,” Mia said. “But don’t expect me to share my ice cream.”
Evan slid back into his seat. He tipped the valet a twenty, because it wasn’t the kid’s fault that Evan wouldn’t let him touch the war machine, and then he zipped down into the subterranean parking lot.
He came up the stairs, through the lobby, and out to the front of the building. Peter ran at him. “Catch me!”
The kid, sticky fingers and all, was airborne.
Evan barely had time to get his arms up before Peter koala-clamped onto him. Evan patted his back twice awkwardly and set him down. It took Evan a great effort not to scrutinize the chocolate finger marks left on his shirt.
“Where were you?” Peter asked in his raspy voice.
At the White House, plotting to execute the president.
“A boring work thing,” Evan said.
Mia paused from attending to her cone, her lips slightly pursed. Her gaze, which she’d cultivated as a Grade III district attorney, conveyed equal measures of incisiveness and skepticism. “No luggage, huh?”
He couldn’t tell if there was a suspicious edge in her voice or if he was reading into it.
Mia did not know what precisely Evan did professionally, but she knew that he was not an importer of industrial cleaning supplies as he claimed to be. Over the years she’d gleaned that his actual work fell outside the purview of what she or her office would find acceptable.
Or legal.
Evan mustered a smile, though he felt it sitting flatly on his face. “I travel light.”
“As one does. For boring work things.”
Peter was tugging at Evan’s chocolate-stained shirt. “Guess what happened to Ryan?”
“What happened to him?” Evan asked.
“No, not Boy Ryan. Girl Ryan.”
“What happened to Girl Ryan?”
“In Ms. Bracegirdle’s class—”
“Wait,” Evan said. “Stop right there. You do not have a teacher named Ms. Bracegirdle.”
“I swear to God I’m not lying,” Peter said.
“It’s true,” Mia said, rising from the bench at last, leaving her satchel briefcase behind. “It seems Roscomare Elementary went with a Dickensian motif this hiring season. I’m thinking if Peter fails out, he can become a chimney sweep.”
“So Girl Ryan?” Peter continued, undeterred by the sidebar. “Girl Ryan’s dad went on a trip, and, like, he always brings home presents, because, you know, that’s what dads do.”
Peter’s own father had died six years ago, and though the boy’s delivery was just-the-facts-ma’am impassive, Evan thought he might have detected a note of longing in his voice. Out of the corner of his eye, Evan saw a shift in Mia’s face, emotion flickering to the surface.
Peter steamrolled ahead. “And her dad got her…” He paused for dramatic effect, hands fanned like a magician before the prestige, charcoal eyes wide, his blond hair lank save for the perennial cowlick in the back that hinted at improper combing. “A Eiffel Tower kit. You build it with wood microbeams—”
“Microbeams,” Evan said.
“I know, right? And you cut ’em yourself and glue ’em, and then when you’re done, the whole thing lights up, and she brought it into class. But during nutrition break, Jesse M. played with it and it caught fire.”
“So what’d Ms. Peerybingle do?”
“Bracegirdle,” Peter said. “She got really mad and turned all red. Which looks even funnier since she has orange hair that sticks out and sorta a mustache. She looks like the Lorax.”
“Who’s the Lorax?”
“You know, the guy who saved the trees and flew away. And so Ms. Bracegirdle stomped out the Eiffel Tower, but she wears these hippie skirts, and, you know.”
“First-degree burns,” Mia said. “Class canceled.”
“So that’s why you’re eating ice cream?” Evan asked. “Celebrating the injury of Ms. Flintwitch?”
“We are celebrating a half day off school,” Mia said as Peter ran into the lobby to throw out his ice-cream wrapper. “And. The successful conclusion of a particularly important case of mine.”