Orphan X

36 Special Girl

Between rickety hillside houses and a run-down school, an ice-cream truck jingled up the tight lane, hailed by a cluster of sprinting kids out for morning recess with their teacher. Evan had checked out the van earlier, buying a water from the elderly driver as a pretext to eyeball the interior. In fact, he’d spent hours surveying the surrounding area, scanning for any sign that a trap was in place. Everything looked normal, or at least Elysium Park’s version of normal. Evan waited for the ice-cream truck to pass, then got out of the Taurus and finally started for Memo Vasquez’s house.

Evan approached the meet with extreme suspicion, even by his own standards. He’d observed Katrin for more than sixty hours. She’d exhibited not a single sign of deceit. There was the possibility that she was aware that she was being watched, but Evan had installed the loft surveillance himself, ensuring that it was impeccably concealed. For two and a half days, she’d shown no consciousness of the hidden lenses — not the slightest sideways glance or body-language tell — which Evan knew from experience was hard to fake. So now his distrust was sharpened for Memo.

Evan stepped up onto the creaking porch, knocked twice, and pivoted to the hinge side of the door, putting his shoulder blades to the clapboard. He was a half hour early by design, intending to catch Vasquez off guard.

The door opened, and Evan swung into the gap, propelling Vasquez backward into the tiny front room.

Vasquez, a rounded man with a broad graying mustache, held his hands up. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t.”

Evan heeled the door shut, swept Vasquez’s legs, catching his weight to soften his landing on the floor. He flipped him, frisking him even as his eyes scoured the space. Evan produced soft flex-ties from a front cargo pocket; they wadded up much easier than their stiff plastic counterparts, making them easier to carry. He looped a set around Vasquez’s hands, cinching the braided nylon fabric tight. Vasquez grunted.

“Stay,” Evan said.

He moved swiftly through the tiny house. The bare-bones interior contained scarcely the basics. One couch. A card table with two plates, two cups, two forks. Empty cupboards save for a pot and a pan, both scalded. Two mattresses on the floor in the sole bedroom, one with a tangled sleeping bag, the other with a pink teddy bear, its ear chewed to a stiff nub. A stack of cardboard boxes in the corner held T-shirts displaying different baseball players’ names and numbers. Evan moved on to the bathroom. A four-pack of toilet paper on the chipped tile. Sliver of dried soap in the shower stall. Two toothbrushes on the sink, one pink, one blue.

The house hardly looked lived in, which meant one of two things: Either Vasquez had only the bare essentials, which made sense, since people living below the poverty line didn’t accessorize. Or Slatcher’s team had hastily staged the place to sell the fact that Vasquez resided here.

From the warped floorboards, Vasquez’s breaths grew labored. Evan hoisted him up and deposited him on the couch. Rolling the rotund man to one side, he removed the wallet from the back pocket of his Carhartt work pants. The wallet’s plastic window held no ID, a corroboration of Vasquez’s illegal status. Instead it displayed a ragged-edged photo of Vasquez with a squat, bowlegged teenage girl hugging him from the side. She had heavily lidded eyes, a flat nasal bridge, her thick lips shaped into a joyful smile, one hand clutching the pink teddy bear. Vasquez embraced her with one arm, his other hand holding a kite string. Their faces, upturned to the wind.

Vasquez looked at Evan through sagging, wounded eyes. “I thought you were going to help me.”

Evan said, “And if I trust you, I will.”

“Trust me?”

Evan took up a post by a gap in the plywood boarding the front window, keeping his eyes on the street. The earth sloped precipitously here, the houses clinging to the hillside, giving Evan a clean view of the road leading up. Dodger Stadium rose in the distance, a great concrete chalice. The smell of weed laced the faint breeze through the gap.

“Tell me your story,” Evan said. “Make me believe you.”

Vasquez strained on the couch, sweat dappling the front of his T-shirt. “Can you please cut my hands free?”

Evan cut the flex-ties and returned to his watch at the window. “Where did Morena find you?”

“I was at a meeting. For the alcoholics.”

“AA?”

“Yes. I drove to Las Vegas to bring mi hermana a washing machine. I cannot miss a meeting for one night. Morena — she was there.”

“Why was she there?”

“She said she went to the meeting to find someone like me. Someone who needed help. Who was on the verge of the slipping.”

Evan had to admit, it was an ingenious place for Morena to seek out people on the edge. Even so, he couldn’t keep skepticism from coloring his tone. “You announced your problems? In front of the group?”

“No. But I wanted to drink. And she perhaps sensed how badly I was.” Perspiration sparkled on his forehead. “I am driven to drink when I feel how useless … how powerless I am.”

“Why do you feel powerless?”

“You see I am not a rich man.” He jerked his chin to indicate the humble surroundings. “But I am an honest man. It is just me and my Isa. From the picture. Her mother passed away during the birth. I brought Isa here for a better life. It is hard for her in Mexico because of her … condition. I make los Dodgers T-shirts and sell them in the parking lot before the games. I rent a small space in el distrito de textiles to make the T-shirts. One night the bad men come to my shop. They had wrapped the — what’s the word? — yes, the packages. Of la cocaína. They say la policía are on them. They need to hide the packages in my shop. They have the guns and the blade, like this.” His thick fingers measured off a bowie knife. “El jefe put the blade in the face of my Isa. If I tell anyone, he say they will take her. He do not say for what. Just — they will take her.”

His eyes glimmered, and his breathing grew wet. “I did not know what to do. If I refuse, they will take my Isa. If I run, they promise they will hunt me. If I go to la policía, I will be deported. So I say … I say okay. I will do this.”

Evan focused as much on Vasquez’s delivery as on his words. Cover stories tended to sound rehearsed — too smooth, with no hesitations. Vasquez seemed genuine, full of pauses and broken sentences. And he didn’t appear to be stalling either, drawing out the story to give his handlers time to plot an approach.

“How many men were there?” Evan asked.

“Three.”

“And el jefe—the boss. Where was he standing? To your right or to your left?”

“To my left.”

“And Isa? She was to your left also?”

“Yes. He was near her.”

“What did the man look like next to the boss?”

“He was large. With the big muscles. Like a boxer.”

“And the fourth man? What did he look like?”

“There was no fourth man. Only three men.”

“The third man?”

“He was big, too. Tall. But skinny.”

“Skinny like the boss?”

“El jefe was not skinny. He had muscles like rope knots.”

“And he was standing to your right—”

“My left. He was over here. Here. With my Isa.” Memo lifted his shirt collar and used it to wipe his forehead. “You try to trick me. You do not believe. You do not believe.”

“I didn’t say that,” Evan said.

Memo stared at him from the couch but made no move to rise. It occurred to Evan that he did not feel he was free to move, and right now that was fine by Evan.

“What happened next?” Evan asked.

“When they leave that night, I am closing up and I see that la policía, they are coming door-to-door through el distrito. They are close. I take the packages and I throw them in the trash can outside the back door and I run. I run with my Isa. I hide and wait for la policía to go away. And then I go back. But when I go back”—his breath caught at the memory—“the packages, they are no there. They are no there.”

Somewhere up the street, the singsong music of the ice-cream truck played, and Evan heard a chorus of children’s voices, clamoring in two languages for their orders.

Vasquez was breathing hard, trying to hold back tears. “The next night these men come again. I explain to el jefe what happen. He say this is my fault. That I owe him this money. Five thousand dollars.” Vasquez lowered his head and shook it slowly. Drops of sweat clung to the tips of his hair but did not fall. “This is more money than I have ever seen. They say if I do not bring it to them soon, they will come. They will come for my Isa.”

“Why do they want her?”

At last Memo looked up, and his dark eyes burned. “They will sell her organs.”

He sobbed a few times, hoarsely. Standing by the window, Evan felt the familiar fury rise in him. The ice-cream truck was on the move again, coasting slowly down the hill toward the house.

Memo said, “They say this, too, is their business. They say that her heart is no good because she is a special girl. And her eyes — she have the cataracts.” His lips parted in something like a snarl. “But for the black market, they will take her liver. Her kidneys. Her lungs.” Memo’s voice continued to rise. “Her bone. Skin. Veins. Tendons.” Tears ran down his cheeks. “They will take their profit from her body.”

“Where is Isa now?”

He choked out the words. “She is at her school. They have the learning program for her.”

Through the gap in the plywood, Evan shot a final look down the long road. Then he walked over to Guillermo. He looked into his face. Believed him.

Memo said, “I am running out of time. I cannot get this money, and when they see that, they will take my special girl.”

Evan crouched and set his hands on Memo’s knees. “I will help you,” he said.

Outside, the ice-cream truck’s music rose louder, and then came a whoosh of tires as the truck passed. Its headlights swept the living-room wall, bringing up a glint in the cracked plasterboard.

Evan’s eyes snapped over, locking on the spot. He rose and looked down at Vasquez. “Do not move. Not a finger. Comprende?”

Vasquez nodded, the furrows returning to his forehead.

Walking over to the wall, Evan dug his finger into the crack, plaster crumbling around it. His finger struck something smooth and hard. He hooked it, yanked it out.

A pinhole lens, identical to the one he used outside his condo.

After laying all this exceptional groundwork, they’d sunk a camera blatantly into the middle of a wall? Why?

Slatcher, he knew, was staring at him right now.

In a rage, Evan tore the lens free, the wire ripping through the drywall, powdering the air. Memo watched from the couch, mouth gaping in fear.

Evan shook the surveillance wire tangled around his clenched hand in Vasquez’s face. “What is this?”

“I never see that before in my life. I swear, I—”

The RoamZone phone vibrated in Evan’s pocket. His other hand shot down to the phone, pressed it to his cheek. Before he could speak, he heard the shouting.

“Evan? Evan, it’s me!”

Katrin. Her voice wrenched high with panic.

“People are here — the ones from the motel. They pulled up in front in that Scion we saw. I just watched them run inside. Oh, my God! Where are you, Evan? Where are you?”

He felt a heat at the back of his neck, the warm breath of dread. “Look through the peephole. Can you get to the stairs?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Check. Now.”

Memo rose partway on the couch, hands raised placatingly, fingers spread. “Listen to me, amigo. I swear on my Isa’s eyes, I never—”

Evan’s blow knocked him straight onto his belly on the floor. Pinching the phone with his shoulder, Evan put a knee between Vasquez’s shoulder blades, wrenched back his arms, and flex-tied his wrists. Then he secured his ankles.

A sharp intake of breath came through the phone. “They’re in the hall already, Evan. What am I supposed to do?”

“Dead-bolt the door,” Evan said. “Get to the bathroom. There’s a—”

A thunderous boom came through the receiver, the sound of a battering ram meeting a lock assembly. Katrin’s scream was so loud that Evan jerked the phone a few inches from his head.

“Stay on the phone, Katrin. No matter what happens, stay on the—”

He heard the sound of a slap, then Katrin’s phone skittering across the floor. An instant later there was a rustling and the line cut out.

Leaving Memo bound on the floor, Evan sprinted for the door. He understood now why Slatcher didn’t care if the pinhole lens was obvious. The aim of the subterfuge wasn’t to lure Evan here to kill him.

The aim was to draw him away from Katrin.