He sensed a big form looming behind him.
“C’mon, dude. Move it. You’re taking all day.”
“Sorry,” Evan said, and stepped aside.
He pretended to tie his shoelaces while Muscley One pressed his finger to the sensor. The laser read his print through the transparent film, the green light clearing him to enter.
As Muscley One ambled away, Evan peeled the print from the reader, reversing it onto his own finger pad, where it clung and hardened. He circled the counter quickly so that he was standing before the computer monitor.
Over the tops of the exercise machines, Evan sensed movement — the sales associate emerging from the rear hall, returning to his post.
Swinging the reader around, Evan pressed his appareled fingertip to the glass window. The green light came on again, the member identity popping up on the screen.
Bo Clague.
Beneath the photo, an address in Panorama City.
Bo Clague entered his house, stripping off his weight-lifting belt and hanging it on the coat hook by the front door. Shaking out his arms, he stepped through the foyer into the kitchen.
Evan sat at the breakfast table.
Bo halted, surprise flaring his wide-set eyes and then giving way to anger.
Evan said, “Sit down.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do in my own house. You’d better have a gun. You’d better pray you have a gun.”
Bo’s upper body was swollen from the workout, protruding muscle tapering in a V. Like most muscleheads, he favored vanity over fitness. Contrasted with the bulk of his torso, his slender legs looked like they belonged on another body.
That would prove useful.
Evan nudged a two-pound jug of whey protein aside with his knuckles. “Do you know why people hit the floor when they’re in pain?”
Bo’s body stayed tense, but his head cocked. “Motherfucker, what?”
“The vasovagal response. Strong emotional or physical distress activates the vagus nerve, which in turn widens blood vessels. That reduces blood flow to the heart, which slows down the heart rate and impedes circulation to the head. Which in turn causes light-headedness and — that’s right — fainting. You’re probably wondering what evolutionary purpose is served by our bodies’ having such an odd response.”
Bo blinked at him.
It did not look like that was what he was wondering at all.
“When you hit the floor, you’re horizontal,” Evan said. “So that increases blood flow to the brain again. Which in turn restores consciousness. Permit me to demonstrate.”
He stood and lobbed the jug of protein powder at Bo’s face. When Bo reflexively caught it, Evan skip-stepped forward, chambering his right knee high to the side like a piston, and hammered his heel down and forward through Bo’s woefully overloaded knee. The dum tek oblique kick blew the joint straight back, Bo’s body crumbling.
The oversize torso slapped the linoleum, Bo momentarily unconscious.
Evan walked back to the table, pulled out the nearest chair, and took his seat again.
A few seconds later, Bo blinked back to life. He looked down at his ruined leg and gagged a little. Above the damage, his big hands encircled the thigh as if to choke it. His mouth was open, and he didn’t seem capable of closing it.
Evan nodded at the chair he’d pulled out. “Sit down.”
Bo dragged himself across the linoleum and pulled himself up onto the chair. He’d gone red, veins standing out in his forehead and throat. “Who are you?”
“I’m a representative.”
“Okay.” Bo spread his hands on the surface of the table, grabbing maximum surface area as if he were concerned about slipping off. “Okay, my employer and I can work with that. We know there have been some irregularities. It can be worked out. Which supplier do you represent?”
“Trevon Gaines.”
Evan watched the flush drain slowly from Bo’s face, leaving his lips with a bluish tinge.
“I want your employer’s name. And I want the name of the other man, too. The one who helped you kill Trevon Gaines’s family.”
“I can’t…” Bo clung to the life raft of the table.”You don’t understand. You don’t know what he’ll do to me.”
“Will it be worse than what I’ll do to you?”
“Yes.”
They sat a moment, two friends at a breakfast table.
“I understand you’re scared,” Evan said. “Let me fast-forward to one hour from now. Your other knee will be shattered. Both elbows. Your wrists. Every finger. Your jaw, broken so badly you’ll be gagging on your own blood. Which will make it that much harder for you to choke out the names that you’re going to give me anyway.” He leaned forward. “I will get my answers. And you will die. The only question is, how do you want to spend the next hour?”
Bo bent his head down, nostrils flaring as he drew breath. “Why do I have to die?”
“How many people did you kill at Trevon’s mother’s house?”
He closed his eyes. “That was different.”
“Not to me.”
“That was business.”
“And this is my business.”
“Please, God.” Reality was dawning now. Bo palmed his forehead, which had gone shiny with sweat. “There’s gotta be another way. Money. Something. I can set it right.”
“Seventeen dead. You ruined Trevon Gaines’s life. You terrorized that young man.”
“It was my orders.”
Evan thought about Trevon’s notepad with his goals for the day. The stuffed frog tucked in up to its chin. It’s all my fault.
He stood. “I’m done talking now.”
Bo bolted back in his chair, held up his hand. “Okay. Okay.”
He told Evan what he needed to know.
Afterward Evan walked over to the gas stove, flopped down the door, and turned it on high. He found a matchbook in one of the drawers, bent a matchstick around the front flap, and thumb-flicked it against the striker.
“Wait. Jesus Christ … you can’t just— Motherfucker, wait!”
On his way to the door, Evan left the matchbook on the end of the counter, the stick burning down toward the rest of the pack, a makeshift fuse. Already the smell of gas laced the air.
Bo fell out of the chair and struck the floor with a yelp. Gritting his teeth, he started pulling himself arm over arm across the kitchen toward the matchbook.
Evan adjusted the pistol in his hip holster and walked out.
He crossed the street, got into his Taurus, and pulled away from the curb.
He’d gone half a block when he heard the boom.
38
As Long a Long Shot As Ever There Was
Evan was in desperate need of vodka. Aside from the hour-and-fifteen-minute nap he’d grabbed in his car, he hadn’t stopped moving in four days. Driving the speed limit south on the 405, he headed for a long-term-parking lot near LAX, where he’d changed out his truck for the Taurus. He never returned to Castle Heights after a leg of a mission without at least one vehicle switch.
He pictured the slender bottle of Tigre Blanc in his freezer, the smooth French wheat vodka a world apart from the Spirytus he’d utilized in D.C. to scorch his esophagus and to liberate Doug Wetzel’s head from his body.
It was still early in the day, but given his travels Evan hadn’t yet caught up to Pacific Standard Time. Half of his internal clock was set to East Coast time, while the other half readied itself for bed in Europe.