The Survivor

Chapter 27

“Should we open it?” Janie asked.

“No,” Nate said at the precise moment Cielle said, “Dunno.”

The three of them were pulled into the kitchen table, the envelope sitting untouched on the otherwise blank surface like some unsavory dish. Outside, the hunched clouds seemed to be giving way to dusk, a transition from gray to grayer.

Janie’s laptop glowed on the counter opposite, open to the home page for New Odessa restaurant, complete with the number for reservations. Beside the computer stood the cordless phone. Nate’s impatience burned beneath his skin. He wanted to call the restaurant to see if Pavlo was there and willing to take early delivery.

“Did Shevchenko ever say anything about opening it?” Janie asked.

“He didn’t even mention what it was.”

Cielle took the envelope and held it up against the overhead light. They’d each given this a try, hoping for a better result. A single sheet, folded, no writing or typing visible.

“What could be so important that it could fit on a single piece of paper?” Janie asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nate said, rising. “Let’s just get it to the man and call it a day.” He’d reached the counter and was thumbing the area code into the phone when he heard a ripping behind him.

Cielle, sliding her finger beneath the flap.

Nate hung up.

She tilted the envelope, and the folded paper fell out. She reached for it delicately, laying it open. Janie rose, leaning over the table. She gave a faint, dismayed groan.

“What?” Cielle said. “I don’t get it.”

Nate’s legs carried him across, and he stared over Cielle’s shoulder, seeing what the paper held as Janie answered in a voice flat with regret, “A list of names.”

There they were. Eight of them. Handwritten. And beneath each one an address in the L.A. area. The top name was crossed out.

Nate felt his stomach lift, as if he’d fallen off the edge of something. “No.” His voice was loud, almost a shout. “You were safe. You were in the clear.”

“What is it?” Cielle asked.

Nate took a mental snapshot of the first few names, turned back to the laptop, and typed furiously. The sole crossed-out name at the top, Patrice McKenna, and then her neighborhood, Brentwood.

“What, Mom? Why are you guys being so weird?”

Google spit out results, and he clicked the first link.

Brentwood, CA-The body of thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher Patrice McKenna was found in her apartment today, with multiple stab wounds inflicted by a lock-blade hunting knife discovered at the scene.

He pictured himself in the dark entry of Danny Urban’s shot-up town house, crouched over that FedEx box. The clank of dozens of murder weapons inside.

At the table Janie was murmuring, her voice slurred by her hands pressed to her mouth-“my God, why does it have to be-”

His fingers had moved to the next entry, Luis Millan, Marina del Rey. A dozen Google links, none indicating a murder.

Because the name hadn’t been crossed out yet.

The third-Wendy Moreno, Westchester-yielded a similar nonresult.

Nate spun around, put his back to the counter.

Cielle said, “Someone tell me what this is. You’re freaking me out.”

“Honey.” Nate exhaled, hard. “Why would a hit man keep a list of names?”

The answer struck, Cielle recoiling in her chair. “Wait. No. What? These are … these are people he was planning on killing? And this guy, the Ukrainian, he wants the names to…”

Janie said, “To finish the job.”

In his head Nate replayed Shevchenko’s raspy voice: We had disagreement over fee and ownership of object. Given how badly the Ukrainian wanted this list, he clearly didn’t have the names on it, so he must have hired Urban to identify these people as well as kill them. But the whole venture had gone south when Urban demanded more money to keep going. Which raised a bizarre question: If these were people Shevchenko wanted dead, why didn’t he know who they were?

“Eight people,” Cielle said. “Eight lives.”

“Seven.” Nate pointed at the list. “One’s already crossed out.”

Cielle folded the sheet back up, stuffed it into the torn envelope, as if trying to rewind the past five minutes. “What do we do?”

The complications and ramifications raised by that single folded sheet seemed too vast to reason through. Hand over the sheet, kill seven strangers.

“We give it to Shevchenko,” Janie said, “just as we planned.”

“Mom! How can you say that?”

“For all we know, they’re rival thugs.”

“Or they could be innocent.” Cielle whirled to Nate. “That first name. The woman who was killed. Did it say what her job was?”

He couldn’t speak.

Janie said, “We don’t need to know that. We don’t.…”

Cielle glared at Nate. “Answer me.”

“Schoolteacher,” Nate said.

Janie dragged her elbows back off the table and fell into her chair.

“So what do you think?” Cielle asked him. “Turn over the list? Kill all those people like Mom says?”

Nate reached behind him, eased the laptop closed. He could feel his heartbeat, pushing blood through his veins, one tiny surge at a time. He thought about a pink bundle in Janie’s lap as he’d steered her wheelchair out of the maternity ward. Those faded lines in the doorway upstairs, marking off his daughter’s height at each young age.

At his hesitation Cielle’s face turned incredulous. “But what about those people?”

“I don’t love them.” The intensity in his voice, even to his own ears, sounded like fury.

“We can get the cops to help,” Cielle said.

“Anything we do besides give that list to Shevchenko puts your life at risk,” Nate said.

“I get a say in this,” Cielle said. “It’s my life. And I’m the one who’d have to grow up knowing … knowing…” She was starting to come undone, tears leaking. “You can’t do this. You can’t decide this for me.”

A pressure built in Nate’s chest, threatening to split him open. But at the sight of his daughter’s face, he crouched and took her hands. “Okay,” he said.

Janie’s face was blank, shell-shocked. Cielle’s warm hands squeezed his. Her tears fell, dotting his knuckles. Their fingers, locked. His knee ached against the floor, but he didn’t dare to move, didn’t want to move.

Until, shattering this moment of serenity, came the rising wail of police sirens.

Janie’s head rose from where it rested against the union of her hands. “Are they coming-”

He saw her mouth shape the final word-“here?”-but the sound was lost behind the screech of tires in the front yard. He pulled free of Cielle’s grasp and ran for the door, Janie close behind. His last glimpse back captured Cielle still in her chair, framed against the sliding glass door, head bent, envelope in hand.

Red and blue lights washed the ceiling of the foyer. He threw open the front door and spilled onto the porch, slipping on the wet brick.

Wearing a black guayabera shirt, Yuri stood beneath the magnolia, hands raised passively as four cops closed in on him.

He smiled broadly. “There he is. My friend. Tell them.”

Nate stopped a few steps onto the grass, Janie back on the porch. Confronting Yuri again reminded Nate how vast the man was. Not beefy, but constructed like a cliff face, all ledges and hard outcroppings.

A female officer said, “We got a disturbance call to this address. A trespasser?”

Across the street Mrs. Alizadeh stood plaintively in her kitchen window, arms crossed as if to shiver, one arthritic hand clutching the telephone.

“I am not trespasser,” Yuri said. “Tell them, Nate. Tell them I am your buddy pal.” His smile was genuine. He was enjoying himself.

Nate glowered at him.

The officer nodded to the others, and they moved in another few steps on Yuri, a tightening noose. Their black gloves rested on holstered guns. Yuri’s lips gathered above that lantern jaw, an expression of sheer menace pointed at Nate.

From the porch Janie called out sharply, “He’s a friend.”

The cops halted. Janie stepped down and walked over to Nate, threading an arm around his side. “I forgot to tell you, honey. I invited Yuri over.”

Yuri said, “I was just haffing a smoke outside. They don’t like me to smoke in house. They haff child.”

The female officer peered across at Nate from beneath perfect curled bangs. “So he’s a friend.”

“Old friend.” Yuri grinned.

Nate’s smile felt like a baring of his teeth. “Neighbors around here get a bit jumpy.”

The cops withdrew quickly and with annoyance, doors slamming, engines coughing. The patrol cars splashed off through puddles, on to the next complaint. The quiet reasserted itself. A slight movement across the street as Mrs. Alizadeh drifted from view.

Yuri tilted his large head to Janie, breaking the calm standoff. “Smart lady.”

“Why are you here?” Nate said. “Just to fuck things up?”

A key fob hung over the edge of Yuri’s breast pocket. “You went to bank today.”

Between Abara and Pavlo’s thugs, Nate wondered how many people were following him at any given time.

“You retrieve item?” Yuri asked.

Nate pictured Cielle inside at the table, clutching the envelope. Her fierce words earlier: You can’t decide this for me.

“No.” He had to force out the word. “Not yet. I’m maneuvering into position.”

Yuri mulled this over. “Today is Friday. Bank closed tomorrow. You must deliver Sunday night.”

“As you boys pointed out, I’m a VIP at that bank now. Special rules for the hero.”

“How do you plan to get?”

“This isn’t a joint effort. You’ll have it by the deadline. If you can manage not to get arrested between now and then.”

Yuri nodded once, severely, and lumbered away, vanishing past the Kerners’ hedge.

Janie’s arm fell from around Nate’s side. “We could have just handed him that list.” Her voice, heavy with dread.

They walked back inside in silence.

The door had no sooner swung shut behind them than Nate caught the scent. “You smell something burning?”

“Cielle?” Janie jogged into the house. “Cielle?”

Nate ran after her, a wisp of smoke coming clear in the kitchen. Cielle was leaning over the sink, her face flushed with emotion. A steady stream ran from the faucet.

“What’d you do?” Janie yelled. “What did you-”

Cielle opened one plump fist, and her boyfriend’s skull-and-crossbones Zippo fell to the tile. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them get killed.”

With horror Nate noted the empty envelope on the counter. A fleck of paper flew up from the sink, alight, orange turning to black. On weightless legs he moved forward.

The sheet of paper was no more than a delta of wet ash around the drain.