Orphan X

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.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “Homework is boring.”

“I can imagine.” Evan picked up the sword, slid it back into its sheath.

Peter asked, “What is it anyways?”

An eighteenth-century katana, splendidly forged, with Bizen-styled choji-midare in the hamon, or blade pattern. Hand-carved bohi and sohi for balance, sashikomi polish, flawless gold-foil collar at the base of the gleaming blade.

“A sword,” Evan said.

He steered Peter back to the counter, then took the damaged sword down to his Ford F-150 in the parking garage and locked it in one of the truck vaults overlaying the bed. Getting it repaired would be his reward once he completed the mission.

When he came back up, Peter was sprawled on the couch, textbook on his chest, asleep. Worn out, no doubt, from the samurai-sword incident. Evan stood for a moment, unsure what to do. Thankfully, the doorbell rang.

When he answered, Mia looked exhausted. “God, Evan. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“As okay as it’s gonna get,” she said. “How ’bout here?”

“Everything’s fine. He got a little cut on his thumb.”

“Oh? From what?”

Evan cringed a little.

Fortunately, Mia drifted past him into the penthouse without awaiting an answer. Her gaze moved to her son on the couch. “They’re so quiet when they’re sleeping,” she said.

She packed up his things, slung the backpack over an arm, then stooped to pick him up. “He’s impossible to wake when he’s like this. Just gotta get him downstairs.” She struggled, his limbs flopping around, the backpack slipping off her shoulder.

Evan stepped in. “I got him,” he said.