Into the Fire(119)
None of them noticed him.
* * *
Once home he headed straight for the kitchen and liberated the bottle of CLIX from its horizontal recline in the freezer drawer. He shook it over ice until his palms stuck to the stainless steel. Then he wrapped a towel around the cocktail shaker and gave it another trouncing.
He poured the vodka into a martini glass frosted opaque from the freezer and plucked a single basil leaf from the living wall for garnish.
He sipped.
White pepper, a hint of cinnamon, and something else bordering on sweet. Vanilla? It was as clean a finish as he could remember, competitive with Kauffman, which was high praise indeed.
He’d kept the lights off, the workout pods looming in the darkness of the great room like slumbering beasts. He wondered what exactly he would do with all his newfound time.
He drifted over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. For once the Los Angeles night seemed not expansive and filled with opportunity but vertiginous, a forever fall into a chasm.
If he wasn’t the Nowhere Man, who was he?
He supposed he was going to have to start finding out.
He stood there at the wall of glass, staring through the heart of Beverly Hills to the jagged teeth of the downtown skyline as he finished his drink.
It was almost sufficient, twenty hours later, to clear the aftertaste of Smirnoff from his palate.
When he was done, he washed the glass and cocktail shaker, dried them, and put them away. He looked around.
It was as though no one lived here.
He wandered through the darkness back to his bedroom, once more giving the heavy bag a spin kick that jounced it on its chain.
In the bedroom he pulled his shirt off with a groan. As he looked at his floating mattress, exhaustion hit him in the face like a shovelful of wet cement.
The pocket of his cargo pants vibrated.
The RoamZone.
Odd.
Before driving home, he’d already shattered the SIM card he’d used to contact the president and replaced it. He hadn’t tasked Max with finding the next client. Which meant that no one should be making use of this phone number.
Now or ever again.
Orphan X had received a pardon. The Nowhere Man was retired.
Caller ID showed a familiar international number with Argentina’s country code. The missed call from earlier.
Puzzled, Evan thumbed to pick up. The line was thick with static.
He was accustomed to answering as he always did: Do you need my help? He paused, momentarily speechless. How did ordinary people answer the phone?
He said, “Hello?”
“Evan?”
It was the same voice he’d heard on the voice-mail recording, feminine and slightly throaty. As the shock of hearing his name reverberated, he didn’t say anything, and for a moment she didn’t either.
“Evan,” she said again. “It’s your mother.”
Acknowledgments
This year I lost a dear friend, my attorney, Marc H. Glick, who was the first person to sign me as a writer when I was a mere twenty-one years of age. Fran?ois Mauriac observed, “Each of us is like a desert, and a literary work is like a cry from the desert, or like a pigeon let loose with a message in its claws, or like a bottle thrown into the sea. The point is: to be heard—even if by one single person.” For me, Marc was that single person, that first single person. The meaning of that to me is inexpressible. May we all live up to his example; may we all try to be the one who hears a new voice and, in joining our voice to it, gives it the strength and courage to speak alone.
I also wish to express my thanks to the squad of operators who backed X in his latest mission: —Keith Kahla, Andrew Martin, Sally Richardson, Don Weisberg, Jennifer Enderlin, Alice Pfeifer, Hector DeJean, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, and Martin Quinn at Minotaur Books —Rowland White, my superb editor, as well as Louise Moore, Laura Nicol, Ariel Pakier, Jon Kennedy, Christina Ellicott, Bethan Moore (spirits consultant), and the rest of my fine team at Michael Joseph/Penguin Group UK
—Maureen Sugden, my world-class copyeditor in the west —Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest of the Aaron Priest Agency —Caspian Dennis at the Abner Stein Agency
—Trevor Astbury, Rob Kenneally, Steve Lafferty, Joel Begleiter, and Michelle Weiner of Creative Artists Agency —Stephen F. Breimer of Bloom, Hergott, Diemer et al.
—James Bennett, my federal-deputy friend, who was instrumental in helping me get X behind bars —Lauren Crais, who weighed in with legal counsel and aided me in getting everyone into an exceeding amount of trouble —Billy Stojack, who lives on in Tommy
—Kurata Tadashi, for always covering X’s six o’clock —Geoff Baehr, Philip Eisner, Dr. Melissa Hurwitz, Dana Kaye, and Dr. Bret Nelson —Simba and Cairo, 225 pounds of menace and delight —RLSBH, know that you are loved
—NCH, the Best in the West
—Delinah Raya, endless grit, endless heart
And to my readers:_____ _ _ ____. (To receive the cipher to read this message, sign up for the Orphan X comms newsletter at www.gregghurwitz.net.)