The Nowhere Man

9 Our Lady of Holy Death

Standing in the middle of the room, Evan squared to the sound of the knock and braced himself. There came a click as the door unlocked.

An honest-to-God room-service cart wheeled in. White linen, stainless-steel dome plate covers, basket of bread, French press. The only thing that didn’t match the Ritz-Carlton presentation was the guy pushing it.

Aside from the tattoo high on his neck, a missing incisor, and a general air of menace, he seemed pleasant enough. As the cart rattled into the room, two near-matching gentlemen entered at his heels and fanned out. Each carried an AK-47, a mistake in such tight quarters, though no one had asked Evan’s opinion. A pistol or an FN P90 would’ve been preferable, but both lacked the big-dick factor beloved by narcotraficantes, and these boys seemed to be cartel muscle through and through. Narcos generally called the Kalashnikovs cuernos de chivo—goat’s horns — due to the curved magazines. Choosing their spots, they brandished the AKs with a fetishistic air, posing as if Evan were about to snap their portrait.

Two dogs, five guards, and counting.

The tattoo on the side of each man’s neck featured Santa Muerte. A folk saint favored by narcos, Our Lady of Holy Death resembled Mother Mary, if you ignored the grinning skull. Additional ink classing up eyebrows, cheekbones, and forearms indicated that the men had worked for the Sinaloa Cartel, responsible for at least half the drugs migrating across the border into the U.S. every year.

They’d cleared space at the front door, making way for someone’s dramatic entrance. Evan anticipated a cartel leader, strong of jaw and mustache, but the man who appeared defied any expectations.

He was Caucasian, with coffee-colored eyes that sloped down at the outer corners and a face ratcheted taut and shiny from too much plastic surgery. The lids seemed tight across his eyes, as if he were wearing another man’s face. Though the surgeries made his age hard to peg, he seemed to be softening into his late fifties, swells bulging the sides of his suit. His tie, vest, and shirt were all patterned, paisleys and plaids orchestrated in a way that eluded Evan’s sensibilities and yet conveyed an undeniable elegance. Somehow they clashed and didn’t clash at the same time.

At his back hovered a refrigerator of a man, pale as the moon, with a shaved skull and soft, rounded features that made it look as though someone had Photoshopped the head of a newborn onto Lou Ferrigno’s body. Evan would have expected him to hum with steroidal rage, and yet he seemed calm, almost placid, as if fully aware that his heft gave him the advantage of not having to get worked up over anything. His enormous form tugged at a memory — was he the one who’d fired the wildlife-capture net? Unlike the narcos, he sported no obvious tattoos, though Evan caught flashes of color on the backs of his hands, as if he’d rolled them on a painter’s palette.

“Your accommodations are good?” the man with the suit said, flaring a hand. His fingernails were slightly too long, buffed to a high shine. “I’m a touch OCD, so I wanted everything to be perfect.”

Evan had long thought that people who announced themselves as OCD should be subjected to death by paper cuts, but this guy, with his elaborate yet understated suit, manicured nails, and done-to-a-turn jail cell-cum-bedroom guest suite, seemed the genuine article.

Evan wondered at the kind of money it took to hire muscle away from the cartel.

“Where are your manners, Chuy?” the man said. “Prepare the tray for our guest.”

The narco who’d delivered the cart lifted the stainless-steel domes off the plates to reveal eggs, bacon, and hotcakes, then stood at attention with a mix of aggression and embarrassment, like a pit bull made to wear a dog sweater.

The breakfast offerings provided an answer to one of Evan’s questions. Moments before, he’d been looking at the sunrise, not the sunset.

He moved his gaze past Chuy at the well-dressed man. “Who are you?” he asked.

“René,” the man said. “I know, a faggot name. I can’t help but feel that my parents might have gone with something with a bit more spine to it.”

“Last name?” Evan said.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Now, please…” As he gestured for Evan to sit, he smiled, though his face did not fully obey. “I’d imagine you’re starving. You haven’t eaten anything not from an IV bag in three days.”

Three days, then.

Evan had been taken on Friday, October 14. Which meant it was Monday, October 17.

Which in turn meant that he still had thirteen days before Alison Siegler was delivered to the Jacksonville Port Authority and whoever had purchased her.

Unless the man was lying about the date.

The First Commandment: Assume nothing.

Evan eyed the rifles, then sat on the bed. As René stepped forward into the room, his men floated around him in perfect Secret Service diamond formation. The big guy’s round face peered over René’s shoulder like a second head. Through a break in the bodies, Evan could see the wide tips of his fingers on the small of René’s back, cheated to the side, ready for the hook-and-grab if Evan made a move. The big man’s position and body language made clear that he was the right hand, elevated above the cartel stooges.

René shot a look back at him. “It’s fine, Dex.”

Dex removed his arm, and Evan strained to catch a glimpse of what was on the back of his hand, but it was gone too fast.

Chuy pushed the dining cart forward until it bumped lightly against the ledge of Evan’s knees. There was no knife or fork, just a flexible rubber spoon. Scents wafted up. A butter patty dissolved into the hotcake stack. Bacon beckoned. A cloth napkin was cinched in a segment of bamboo stem that acted as a ring, the fine linen bloused out on either side like butterfly wings. There was a fucking sprig of parsley.

Evan thought, You’ve got to be kidding me.

“I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here,” René said.

“You need me.”

René’s moist lips pursed with amusement that wasn’t really amusement at all. He didn’t like being correctly anticipated. “I’m sorry?”

“A bullet goes for around twenty-five cents. These arrangements cost a touch north of that. So you require me for something. Or you wouldn’t go to the trouble.”

René’s stare, lasering out from behind that Saran Wrap skin, was as unnerving as it was direct.

“Where am I?” Evan asked.

“Think of this as a private-sector rendition.”

“Where am I?” Evan asked again.

“That’s not relevant.”

“What’s relevant is relative,” Evan said.

“Good point. It’s not relevant to me for the purposes of this conversation. And what’s relevant to me is the only thing that matters anymore.”

René’s hand dipped behind a lapel and came out with Evan’s RoamZone phone. He held it aloft theatrically, then dropped it on the floor and smashed it with the heel of his dress shoe. He stomped on it again until the Gorilla Glass cracked and the innards showed. Then he picked it up and tossed it into the fireplace.

Evan didn’t move his head but watched with his eyes.

René turned, a bead of perspiration carving its way down his flushed cheek. “You are in my hands. On my time. There is no help coming for you.”

“I don’t wait for help. I am the help.”

“Well, you’re doing a fine job thus far.”

“I haven’t started yet.”

“Let’s hope you’re smart enough to cooperate. If you do, everything will stay precisely this pleasant.”

“Pleasant,” Evan said.

“Pleasant is relative as well,” René said. “Do you have a name?”

Did he really not know who Evan was, or was this an act? Evan watched him closely for any tells. “I do.”

“What is it?”

“Evan.”

“Your last name?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

René remained several steps back, safely tucked behind Chuy, who was still dumbly holding the stainless-steel domes. The cart, pushed up against Evan’s legs, had the added advantage of pinning him to the bed. Evan took a croissant from the tray and set it on the bedspread beside him. He removed the napkin from the slender bamboo ring. Dex watched him carefully, flat eyes peering out from their doughy recesses.

René said, “I don’t know who you are, but we saw the wreckage you left behind at that house in Fullerton. Were you a client of Hector Contrell’s?”

His tone, Evan noted, held no judgment.

“No.”

“You had a business conflict with him?” René asked.

“No.”

The steel gaze appraised Evan. “You’re too skilled to be an angry relative or the like,” he said. “So what were you there for?”

Evan stared at him.

Realization dawned, excitement asserting itself across René’s features. “You just didn’t like him. I respect that.” He wet his lips. “Who are you?”

Evan stared at him some more.

René said, “Your driver’s license appears to be real, but it’s not. No other identification on you. Your fingerprints turned up nothing.”

Evan rubbed his thumb across his finger pads, only now noticing the faintest trace of blue ink among the whorls. Another violation.

“We looked at the registration of your 4Runner,” René continued. “The vehicle is owned by a shell corp in Barbados. We kicked over that rock and found that shell corp held by another in Luxembourg. I have a feeling that the more rocks we kick over, the more rocks we’re going to find.”

Evan picked up the bamboo napkin ring, peered through it like it was a telescope. It was about two inches long, which was long enough.

“I think I understand,” René was saying, “this thing you’re playing at.” He circled a hand at Evan.

Evan slipped the bamboo ring over his forefinger and middle finger. The hollow stem fit snugly, locking the knuckles.

Turning the fingers into a weapon.

“I’m not playing,” Evan said.

He leapt to his feet and drove his sheathed fingers through Chuy’s eye, straight into his brain. Blood spurted over the white linen. As Chuy tumbled back, quivering in his death throes, René recoiled in horror.

Two dogs, four guards, and counting.

The remaining pair of narcos had their AKs raised, but Evan knew damn well they hadn’t gone to all this hassle to gun him down on an overpriced bedspread. Hurling the cart aside, he lunged forward. Dex looped an arm around René’s midsection, spinning him out into the hall.

Before Evan could close the distance, he heard a hissing behind him. He wheeled around, sourcing the noise to the heating vent, only now grasping that it was—