The Survivor

Chapter 23

A surreal elevator ride up to the eleventh floor, a numb walk through the lobby, and out onto the bank floor, the site of five homicides that he himself had perpetrated. Nate had timed his arrival to coincide with the lunchtime swell. Lots of customers, lots of distraction for the busy staff. The trolley housing the complimentary coffee had been restored to its upright position, though he noticed a ding in the metal side, no doubt where one of the gunmen had kicked it over. After pouring himself a cup of decaf French roast, he took his place at the back of the substantial line.

Which gave him plenty of time to relive where the bodies had fallen, how the blood spatter had misted, and countless other subtleties that left his stomach roiling. As he trudged forward in the teller line, his fingers worked Urban’s key nervously in his pocket, digging his nail into the indentations of the stamped number-227. The damn box was less than twenty yards away, but the distance between here and there felt like a marathon.

When he’d finally made his restless way through the velvet-rope switchbacks, a tense young teller greeted him, bringing him up to speed on the policies for renting a safe-deposit box. Was he aware that a checking account was required? Already have one. Each time, he would need to show his driver’s license and sign in to gain access to his box. No problem. His signature would be double-checked against the signature card. Swell. Safe-deposit boxes were either three by five, five by ten, or ten by ten. Which would he prefer?

“You know?” he said, tapping his hands on the lip of the teller window. “I’m a little bit superstitious. I have a lucky number, and I was hoping I could-”

“Happy to look for you, Mr. Overbay.” She went back to nibbling at her thumbnail, a thin pendant cross jiggling against the front of her sweater.

“Two twenty-eight,” he said. “My first street address.”

She clicked around on the keyboard, her eyes darting at intervals from the screen to his face. Her jumpiness was making him uneasy, and yet how could she suspect he had an ulterior motive? “I’m sorry. That number’s taken.”

He feigned disappointment.

“I could get you three twenty-eight?” she offered.

He took a casual sip of coffee. “How about two twenty-nine? Two twenty-six or — seven?”

“Two twenty-six it is.” She guided him through a few forms, then handed him a familiar-looking key-226.

He rubbed the number as if it were a lucky rabbit’s foot. Then dropped the key into his left pocket. “Thank you.”

“I’ll buzz you through, and the guard will take you back to your box,” she said. As he stepped away, she reached beneath the glass and rested her hand on his sleeve. “I didn’t want to embarrass you, Mr. Overbay, but thank you for what you did for us Tuesday. I was here.”

Her fingernails, on second look, were chewed to the quick. Her face raw from sleeplessness. He pictured that face pressed to the tile, gunfire erupting overhead as she’d prayed for her life. And here she was a few days later, doing her job as best she could and trying to put it behind her.

He touched her hand, and she nodded a few times rapidly and turned her focus to the next customer.

After leaving the counter, he noticed a stout manager at the end of the teller line staring at him, phone to his ear. Did he recognize Nate as well? The man offered a cordial little smile, and Nate returned his attention to the job before him.

Pausing before the teller gate, he made a fist around Urban’s key in his right pocket. Squeezed. Cielle’s life rested on the next two minutes.

A harsh buzz announced the gate’s unlocking. He took a deep breath and stepped through. The security guard, an older gentleman with a fringe of blond mustache, nodded in greeting. As Nate headed toward the massive laid-open door of the vault, his steps slowed, the stutter of gunfire replaying in his head. There’s where the bank manager had toppled over, roses of blood blooming on her stiff pink suit. The glass day gate creaked open, and Nate stepped into the vault, eyeing the corner where he’d unloaded two bullets into the robber’s stomach. He looked down. His feet, precisely in the spot they’d been when he’d felt that letter opener sink into the flesh of his shoulder. He will make you pay in ways you can’t imagine.

The security guard had said something.

“Sorry?” Nate said.

“You okay, sir?”

He took a nervous sip of coffee. “Yeah, fine.”

He had to pull it together. Stepping forward, he eyed the nests of boxes. Everything repaired, just as Pavlo had promised. Nate ran his fingers across the small metal doors until he reached what he was looking for.

Danny Urban’s safe-deposit box.

Directly below the one Nate had just signed up for.

The guard fussed among the keys fanning from an overburdened ring. “Let’s see, two twenty-six, right?”

Again Nate slid his hand into his pocket. His right pocket. “That’s the one.”

The guard raised the master key, and Nate, pretending to juggle the key and the Styrofoam cup, dropped his coffee. It hit the floor, splattering on the guard’s cuffs.

“Oh, man,” Nate said. “I am so sorry.”

“No problem.” The guy swiped at his ankles with a handkerchief as Nate crouched over him. “It’s fine,” the guard said. “Come right out.”

Nate rose and plugged Danny Urban’s key into number 227. He waited patiently, holding the key so his hand blocked the number on the tiny door, his pounding heart seeming to reverberate in the hard walls of the vault. The muscle in his hand started to cramp, the faintest complaint of the disease. Jesus, he thought. Not now. He fought off the sensation, forcing his fingers to hold in place.

Distracted, the guard rose, folding the handkerchief back into a pocket and sliding the master key home. He nodded at Nate, they twisted at the same time, and the door to 227 popped open. And then Urban’s safe-deposit box was sliding out and-at last-in his hands. The spring-mounted door swung back and autolocked. They turned together, Nate gripping the box tightly, and headed for the private viewing rooms just beyond.

Five steps and they’d be clear of the vault. He counted them off, tried not to rush. Stepping through the day gate, he swept a gaze across the teller stations and the crowded lobby, and his muscles froze.

Agent Abara had just come through the bank doors.

Nate turned away reflexively, bumping into the guard. The long metal box in his hands gave off not so much as a rattle.

“Whoa, sir. This way.”

Nate couldn’t just reverse course and return the box without looking in it-too suspect. Plus, when would he have another chance to get to its contents? And yet he couldn’t risk being caught with a stolen safe-deposit box belonging to a dead hit man.

The guard took the choice out of his hands, nudging him forward and indicating a door to the right of the vault. Keeping his face turned from the bank floor, Nate ducked through and closed the door swiftly behind him. The plain room crowded in on him-white walls, elevated desk, framed watercolor of a girl playing at the beach.

Nate pictured that stout bank manager watching him, phone to his face. Clearly, by the time Nate had reached the front of the line, the manager had alerted Abara, who’d been standing by somewhere close. Because he suspected Nate of what? More important, how long did Nate have before the agent tracked him to this room?

He set the box down hard on the elevated table. The long lid yawned open on its hinges. Inside, a plain, sealed business-size envelope. Nothing more.

He grabbed it, lifted it to the light. All this, for something that could fit inside an envelope. Based on its heft, it was no more than a single folded sheet. Its slightness only added to its menace. Did it contain something incriminating? As horrible as the glossy photographs Pavlo had held up to Nate’s face in the warehouse?

He sharpened his thoughts to a single point: Get this envelope into Pavlo’s hands and Cielle was safe.

But if Abara found it on Nate, he would certainly seize it. Which, however indirectly, would lead to the saw and the block of ice.

Frantically, Nate looked around the unadorned room. Where to stash the envelope?

He thought about Urban himself, desperate to hide key 227 as he stumbled bleeding into his bedroom.

Tape.

A plastic desk caddy contained a stapler, some paper clips, and a roll of Scotch tape. Spilling the paper clips in his haste, he yanked two strips of tape from the roll and slapped them on the envelope, leaving sticky ends protruding from either edge. Couldn’t stick it beneath the desk-too obvious.

His gaze caught on the watercolor. Little girl at beach. He pulled the bottom of the painting from the wall, tilting it out. Reaching as far as he could toward the hanging wire, he pressed the envelope to the mounting board. He stepped back, straightened the frame with a tap of his finger, grabbed Urban’s box, and bolted out the door.

Abara was ten yards away, at a window, talking to the manager. Through some miracle he did not glance over. Nate pivoted sharply, head lowered, rushing the vault door. The guard was waiting, hands clasped at his stomach. He cocked an eyebrow as Nate raced for the vault, somehow doing his best to look as though he wasn’t hurrying.

The guard followed Nate into the vault. Nate got there first, stuck Urban’s key in.

But the guard was just watching him, mouth shifting, making the mustache bristle. “I thought you were two twenty-six.”

The cool air froze the sweat on Nate’s back. “Nope,” he said. “Two twenty-seven.”

The guard’s mouth pursed. He made a puzzled noise low in his throat.

A snatch of conversation drifted in from the main floor. “-believe he’s in the vault, Agent-”

Nate tried to smile casually at the guard, though it felt like a death grimace. Footsteps approaching, the sound pronounced off all the metal. Growing louder.

The man’s watery blue eyes took Nate’s measure. Finally he lifted the master to the second keyhole.

Nate went to great pains to disguise his relieved exhale. They turned their keys in unison, and the tiny door swung open. Nate got the end of Urban’s box slotted in the hole and was about to shove when a new realization struck him. If he was searched by Abara, he could not be caught with Urban’s safe-deposit key. But where, inside a bank vault, was he supposed to hide it?

The spring-loaded door pressed against the back of his hand. He stared at where it dimpled his skin.

An autolocking door.

He lifted the long lid a crack and slipped Urban’s key into the empty box. Slid the box home. The tiny door to 227 swung back and locked with a click.

And Abara entered.

Nate’s breaths were coming fast and ragged. He did his best to muster a smile. “Agent.”

“Nate.” He wore a dress shirt, unbuttoned slightly to show off tan brown skin. “Happened to open a safe-deposit box today, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Just … got a hankering?”

“After my brush here Tuesday, I realized I could stand to sort out my affairs a bit. Why not store some important docs away for safekeeping?”

“Why not indeed.” Abara moistened his lips. “So you thought you’d handle this sudden bit of logistics at the same bank where you killed five men?”

“It’s already been robbed. I figure it’s the safest bank in town.”

Abara did not smile. He flicked his head at the nest of boxes. “Which one’s yours?”

Nate sensed the guard’s head swivel over to him. Felt the heat of his stare as he waited on an answer. Nate took a breath, tasted the metal of the vault. He had to say something immediately, and yet immediately had already passed.

“You know what?” His best approximation of moral indignation. “Is there some reason you’re following me, harassing me? I mean, I’m the one who took down the robbers.” He was almost yelling, the words ringing off the walls. “Shouldn’t you be thanking me instead of stalking me at every goddamned turn?”

The security guard kept a steady gaze on Nate. Was he buying the act?

The guard had just opened his mouth to say something when the stout manager leaned nervously through the day gate. “Uh, Agent? Maybe you could take this line of questioning elsewhere? We have a bank full of customers.”

“Sure thing.” Abara’s smile never faltered. His glibness seemed to take an uptick with every remark. “You have a private room?”

Of course they did.

They were led a few steps past the vault. Eyeing Nate, the security guard unlocked the door and returned to his post, letting the matter of the box number lie.

Nate stepped back inside the plain little room, confronting the watercolor of the little girl at the beach. With alarm he realized that despite his effort earlier, it hung crooked.

The door had barely closed when Abara stepped up on him. “Listen, I’ve done the nice-guy routine up until now. A little banter, a little innuendo. But let me tell you what I’ve learned from thirteen years on this job. I’ve learned to read liars. And you are lying. Now, I don’t know why and I don’t know what about. You’re all wrong. How you handled yourself during the shootings. Your energy-when you’re nervous, when you’re calm.”

Just over Abara’s shoulder, the crooked watercolor hung there, screaming for attention. And taped behind it, the envelope that would decide Cielle’s fate. Nate struggled to keep his eyes fixed on Abara.

“And yet,” the agent continued, “I can tell you weren’t part of the heist. You’re not a piece-of-shit crook who decided to double-cross his team.” He studied Nate’s face. “I think you came here for something, and it wasn’t to stow away Aunt Mabel’s family photos in a safe-deposit box. I will search you. Either you can give your consent here and now or I will take you in to the Federal Building for questioning, where your person can be searched as you enter. Which is it?”

A long beat. Nate emptied out his pockets, slapping his wallet and cell phone on the desk beneath the watercolor, resisting the compulsion to reach over and straighten it. The key came next, number 226.

Abara lifted it to the light, made sure the number passed muster. “That it?”

“That’s it.”

“Mind if I search you?”

“I would love if you would search me.”

Abara spun him, not gently, and nudged him between the shoulders so his hands thudded forward on the desk. The coerced lean brought his nose to within a foot of the painting. Girl at Beach, Askew. Abara’s hands checked his crotch, his armpits, pressed his pockets flat to his thighs, the cold proficiency calling to mind not only the firm pat-down administered by the Ukrainian bouncer outside New Odessa but also the poking and prodding Nate had grown accustomed to in sterile exam rooms.

His body, less and less his own.

Abara’s knees cracked as he rose.

Nate stared at the watercolor. “You done or are you gonna try to get to third base?”

“Now that you moved home,” Abara said, “I’ll leave that to your almost-ex-wife.”

Nate turned around, the two men close in the small room, squaring off. “You watching me?”

“Nah.” Abara backed off. “Drove by, saw the Jeep in the driveway.” He opened the door, gestured graciously for Nate to step out. “Just keeping an eye, like you asked.”

The walk across the bank floor seemed endless. Nate’s clothes, damp with panic sweat, chafed him. His hand was on fire, wrist aching, a preview of what the disease would bring. He curled it to his sternum, cradling it like something precious as he stepped into the air-conditioned elevator for the ride down.

Outside, the benches were taken, so he lowered himself to the curb. Grit and hot air found his face, the texture of passing traffic. He sat for a time, trying to catch his breath.

Chapter 24

Doubt and fear swarmed Nate’s brain, vying for attention. Had he pressed the tape hard enough onto the back of the watercolor? What if it didn’t hold and the envelope fell out onto the desk? What if a janitor took the painting off the wall to dust and discovered what it hid?

It was almost six o’clock as he parked in front of the Santa Monica house and climbed out of the Jeep. Three days and six hours until he had to deliver that envelope into Pavlo Shevchenko’s hands. At least it was out of the bank vault. Baby steps.

The sun had fallen behind the rooftops, clouds smudging the hot orange sky like a child’s handprints. It would have been a beautiful evening had he been in a frame of mind to notice. Folded into his back pocket were the divorce papers he’d retrieved from his place before coming here. While in his apartment, he’d packed a few changes of clothes and swept the tiny forest of orange pill bottles from the bathroom counter into a grocery bag. On his way out, he’d plucked the thumbtacked photos of Cielle and Janie from the wall. Everything else he would happily leave behind.

As he entered, Casper barreled toward him, claws scrabbling against the hard floor. Janie swung through the doorway-“How’d it go?”-her face almost collapsing with relief when she read his expression.

He’d just set down the grocery bag and suitcase when Cielle descended the stairs, Shithead Jason at her heels. Nate did a literal double take at the husky kid before turning to Janie.

“She told him everything,” Janie said. “And they think he’s staying here.”

“You what?” Nate spun to his daughter. “You told your boyfriend? This is life and death, Cielle.”

Shithead Jason held up his hands calmingly, the picture of maturity. “And I am here for whatever you need, bro.”

The muscles of Nate’s left hand were contracting, and he did his best to shake out the knot forming in the meat of his palm. “Cielle, you need to-”

“What? Keep it a secret? You guys haven’t. You told Pete, and look how that turned out. So why can’t I tell someone important to me?”

“No one should know about this,” he said.

“No, Nate. It’s just that you want to make all the choices. Who to tell, who not to.” She drifted down the final steps, on tilt. “You said I could make my own choices. Well, this is my first. And his.”

She reached back for Jason, who took her hand and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He’d removed his small gauge earrings, leaving hole punches in his lobes through which Nate could see the sides of his neck.

Janie turned to Nate. “You told a fifteen-year-old she could make her own choices?”

“Not exactly,” he said.

They were arrayed around the entryway like enemy tanks in a clearing, everyone ready to pivot and fire.

“I’m staying with her,” Jason said. “That big guy comes back, I’ll kick him in his Justin Bieber.”

“You don’t understand,” Nate said. “These men, they don’t care about anything. They are perfect terrorists. You need to stay away from this for your own safety.”

“Far as I’m concerned,” Jason announced grandly, “they can all go suck a bag o’ dicks.”

“Okay,” Janie said. “Great. Thanks.”

A rush of fury, burning Nate’s throat with the words: “You think this is a fucking joke? Some kind of video game? Do you guys have any concept of-”

Cielle reddened. “I know what’s best for me.”

“Your inviting him here proves exactly how little you know what’s best for you.”

Cielle stormed upstairs, towing her boyfriend. Jason paused, pointing across at Casper. “By the way, the dog’s showing his lipstick. I’m just sayin’. It’s a little gross.”

Cielle took up the slack, yanking him around, and then they were up and the bedroom door slammed, leaving Nate and Janie and an aroused Rhodesian ridgeback.

“Put that thing away,” Janie said to Casper, who rose and padded off. She rubbed her eyebrows with thumb and forehead, muttering something unintelligible.

Nate’s skin was tingling-the aftermath of the outburst. He looked at Janie. “What?”

“She’s not seven, Nate. She is fifteen. You can’t just pick her up and throw her over your shoulder. She has to be part of this. We need her to cooperate.”

He tamped down a flurry of objections. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. What do we do about it?”

“Absolutely nothing for fifteen minutes.”

He followed her into the kitchen. Unfolded the divorce papers and dropped them on the island. “I brought these. You just need to countersign and mail them in.”

The leak beneath the sink drip-drip-dripped.

Janie cast a weary gaze at the papers. “Thanks.” She slid them off the marble, letting them clap to the side of her leg, and trudged over to her study, which was more of an alcove off the kitchen.

Nate found his tools and the little box in the back of the pantry and dropped a new washer in the flanged tailpiece of the kitchen drain to stop the leak. After tightening everything up, he brought the mortar bag down from the garage cabinet and reseated the loose brick on the porch. Janie worked quietly at her desk the whole time, and Nate found a familiar calm in their separate but harmonized routines. As he came back in from the front yard, he noticed a few spots of Pete’s dried blood on the kitchen floor, which he cleaned up with a wet paper towel silently so Janie wouldn’t turn around and notice. Finally he walked over and knocked gently on the wall behind her. When she pushed back on the rolling chair, he saw that she had out a calculator and a stack of bills.

She traced his gaze and said firmly, “Late bills are not a problem. They’re a welcome distraction.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Has it been fifteen minutes?”

“It has.”

She rose, and they headed side by side up the stairs. Jason’s deep voice was audible from the hall. “I wish I had like ninety-seven senses so I could love you with more of them.”

And Cielle: “You are so lame. That’s like a double trampoline bounce of lameness.”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

Nate opened the door sharply without knocking. The kids were sitting on the floor, their backs to Cielle’s bed. Jason played with a Zippo lighter decorated with a skull and crossbones, flicking open the lid, snapping it shut.

“I don’t like the way you’re talking to her,” Nate said.

“Dude-you seen the way she talks to me?”

Janie’s voice, strained thin enough to break: “Just … go home, Jason. Cielle will call you later.”

He shrugged and lumbered out.

Cielle examined her cuticles.

Janie sat next to her and Nate against the adjoining wall. They looked at each other, united by parental helplessness. Janie made a gesture: You first.

“Look,” Nate said. “About Jason-”

Cielle said, “I love him.”

“I know, honey,” he said. “And colors are bright, and music is subversive, and when you see him, he puts a hum in your chest. I know. And that’s how it should be. But it isn’t safe right now. I am one move away from extracting us from this mess, and we can’t have any complications in the mix.”

“He’s not a complication,” Cielle said.

Janie reached for her but thought better of it. “I know you think you know everything right now. What decisions you want to make.”

Cielle’s fists were at her temples, and she flung her hands, sending out flares of maroon-streaked hair. She glared at Nate. “You don’t like Jay because he’s more creative than you.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t like Jason because he’s not human. I wasn’t either at his age. ”

Cielle went back to her cuticles. Silence. Just beyond her line of sight, Janie regarded Nate imploringly.

He gritted his teeth. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry-”

Cielle’s head snapped up. “So he can stay?”

“No.”

Cielle sank her chin beneath the frayed collar of her oversize sweater. “He could help if those guys come back.”

“What’s he gonna do? Scare them off with his music?”

With a sleeve bunched over her fist, she wiped her nose forcefully, as if to tear it off. “You don’t get it.”

“No.” His voice was low, but hard as stone. “You don’t get it. We could all get killed, Cielle. Him included. How you gonna feel if he winds up with a bullet in his chest?”

Her expression shifted abruptly, the wrinkles smoothing from her forehead. Reality slapping her. For a moment he thought she might start crying, but whatever twinge of guilt he felt was drowned out by the roaring necessities at hand.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, breaking the silence. He stood with some difficulty, stiff from myriad bruises, and checked the ID.

Janie read his face and said, with all-too-familiar disappointment, “Work.”

He pulled the phone open. “I can’t,” he said into it.

Sergeant Jen Brown sounded unimpressed with his opening salvo. “Pregnant woman raped and stabbed to death in Griffith Park a few hours ago. Picnickers just found the body.”

“I can’t.”

“Husband’ll be home from work any minute. Doesn’t know a thing yet.”

“I can’t.”

“He’s on the Westside, ten minutes from your door. If you don’t go, I’ll have to send Ken.”

Nate’s head was bent, his neck tightening up, the heat of Janie’s and Cielle’s gazes boring through his back. Ken Nowak serving a death notification to a man who’d just lost his wife and unborn child-Nate’s chest cramped at the thought of it. He did his best to stand still, to avoid squirming, to try to hold the course.

Instead he heard himself say, “Last time.”

Janie blew out a soft breath of disappointment, and Cielle’s head snapped away to face the wall.

He hung up, defeated, and turned to face them. “Look, I won’t be an hour. It’s an impossible one. This guy-”

Janie waved a hand. “I understand. Go ahead.” She slumped back down next to Cielle.

Nate lingered a beat, but neither seemed interested in kick-starting this particular argument. He didn’t blame them. Trudging downstairs, he breathed in the fragrances of the house-carpet cleaner, the lingering afterscent of a honey candle, a trace of ash from the fireplace. A faint rain tapped the roof, and the refrigerator hummed. He patted the dog on the head and stepped out onto the porch.

Halfway down the walk, he paused.

He turned around, gazed back at his house, at the square of his daughter’s window. There was a movement at the curtain, and then Janie and Cielle appeared, looking down at him. Something inside him swelled and broke, and he felt weak and emancipated all at once. Squinting against the flecks of rain, he stood for a time, night air crisp at the back of his throat, staring up at them, them staring down, the three of them motionless and silent as if the slightest movement would shatter this unspoken dialogue.

Then he pulled out his phone and dialed.

Jen answered gruffly.

“I’m not going,” he said. “I’m taking some time off.”

“Ken left for home already. What if I gave you an order to handle this?”

“Then I’d tell you what you can do with your order.”

A long silence, punctuated only by Jen’s breathing. He could have sworn he sensed her mouth shape into a smile on the other end.

“Hear that crackling?” she said. “Must be hell freezing over.”

He hung up and started back inside. His head was bent against the drizzle, but with each step home he felt the warm gaze of his wife and daughter overhead.