Out of the Dark

42 Cut Both Ways

The wholesale district, known on official zoning maps as Central City North, was an unlovely throw of warehouses, refrigerated-storage facilities, and factories slapped down between the L.A. River, Alameda Street, and the Union Pacific Railroad Line. It was even more depressing at night. To the north sparkled the not-quite-famous downtown skyline, a jagged rise of domino tiles. The glow of the city backdropped rows of palm trees that shot skyward like frozen fireworks, all tails and bursts.

Evan had set up on the roof of a commercial bakery, posting up next to a vent that smelled of yeast. Various pipes exhaled cumulus clouds of condensation, shrouding him from view.

The elevation gave him a good vantage over the high fence next door lined with privacy filler strips and topped with concertina wire.

Terrance DeGraw was right. A fucking fortress. The cinder-block building was virtually windowless. A control pad and a security-controlled metal door defended what seemed to be the sole point of entry; the other doors had been boarded up with metal plates. Anyone who entered was trapped inside.

Of course, that could cut both ways.

The front entrance opened now, a fat man emerging, and as the door swung shut, Evan glimpsed the front room. It had been reinforced as Trevon had described, a DIY sally port with blastproof walls. A cadre of armed men came visible for a moment. Evan doubted they were the only guards posted up inside.

The fat man boasted a handgun on either hip like a Turner Classics cowboy. He joined four others already patrolling the area like junkyard dogs. News of their colleagues’ untimely demises must have reached them by now, as they were clearly on highest alert, covering all sides of the building. Carrying AK-47s, they circled the various shipping containers littering the yard, moving in and out of cover.

If Evan picked off one or two with a sniper rifle, the others would fall back to reinforced positions.

If he made a full-frontal assault through the gate, he could take out several, but there’d be no getting through that reinforced-steel security door to the others waiting inside.

He wanted them all.

He wanted to eradicate Russell Gadds’s operation like Gadds had eradicated Trevon’s family.

Gadds didn’t return until June 25. That afforded Evan some much-needed time to devote his attention to Bennett.

Given Bennett’s Friday appointment on the Hill, Evan had to get home and start assessing the variables and charting the plan of attack. When he thought of the airtight security measures in place, he felt a creeping concern that Candy McClure might be right, that the job was impossible.

And after the promise he’d made to Trevon, he couldn’t get killed in D.C. That wouldn’t just be inconvenient. It would be inconsiderate.

He stared down once more at the heavily armed guards and the daunting barriers of razor wire, cinder block, and steel. Between Russell Gadds and Jonathan Bennett, Evan faced two herculean challenges.

In his next life, he vowed, he’d be a Starbucks barista.

He drew back from the edge of the roof and vanished into the billows of rising exhaust.