Page 63 of Into the Fire

He released the arm, and it slapped to the floor.

Evan adjusted his hair in the mirror and exited.

He hooked left through the lobby and was out on the street in seconds. Too late he realized that in his slightly dazed state he’d inadvertently dined and ditched, which would make him memorable, especially to the snotty maître d’. Now he’d be unable to return to surveil the area if the mission called for it, the first concrete cost of the concussion he’d sustained. He vowed it would also be the last.

Next door a concrete office building the color of sandstone rose five stories to a steep slope roof. The building probably didn’t offer a useful view of the courtyard, but it was the best and only option.

Evan gauged it from outside and then rode to the top level. The lights of the elevator seemed unnaturally bright, aggravating the aching in his brain, making him squint.

A dermatologist and an internist shared the floor. A bathroom conveniently took up the center of the southwest side.

Evan entered the bathroom, slid open the window, and stuck his head out.

He could see down onto the top of the courtyard but not quite to the table.

Another five feet or so would get him there.

But he didn’t have five feet. There was only open air. The ground gave a vertiginous swirl, and he took in a lungful of fresh air and moved his gaze upward.

A faint commotion stirred on the sidewalk outside the Three Monkeys Café, the valets rushing to assist one of the bodyguards as he helped his fallen comrade out the door and into the front Town Car. He was squeezing his forehead and staggering. Evan could relate.

The bathroom door squeaked open behind him, a few workers entering. He pulled back from the window, offering a bland smile to their inquisitive stares. It was a busy bathroom on a busy floor.

Evan went back downstairs, walked two blocks, and got into his truck.

Driving home, he was careful to keep his right hand fanned off the steering wheel so as not to brush the fingerprint invisibly preserved on his thumbnail.

26

Small Talk

Back home in the Vault, Evan harvested the fingerprint from his thumbnail using lycopodium powder and lifting tape, converted it to digital, and ran it through the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Unsurprisingly, the bodyguard he’d knocked unconscious in the bathroom had a criminal record, which provided a convenient ID. Evan leapfrogged from there, running through known associates in the databases until he arrived at a photograph of the silver-haired Unidentified Caller he’d watched sip espresso at the Three Monkeys Café.

Alexan Petro. Evan figured the surname for an Ellis Island special or a crime-lord affectation.

Either way Petro was a busy man, with a history that ranged from money laundering to racketeering. Armed with a strike team of attorneys and advantaged by a pattern of convenient key-witness disappearances, he’d proved slippery. As he’d telegraphed through his texts to Evan, he was the head of the snake to Terzian’s operation, the upper echelon of corruption.

The six bodyguards who formed Petro’s inner cadre were a gruesome lot, rapists and child abusers who’d been implicated in multiple murders but—thanks to the selfsame superb legal representation—had skipped free each time. Reviewing some of the evidence later deemed inadmissible, Evan found himself wishing he’d slammed the bodyguard’s forehead into the sink with a bit more emphasis.

A quick glance at Google Maps showed that Petro’s mansion, perched atop a hill in a gated Oak Park community, had been turned into a guarded compound. Security stations, spiked fences, armed patrols—the setup was worthy of a cartel leader or a high-value terrorist. Getting in wasn’t merely a serious-risk venture; it would require weeks of planning. Evan pondered detonating Petro in his armored Town Car, but the possibility of collateral damage was unacceptable.

Especially when there was a better option.

To get it done, he’d need the help of a friend who could bring—quite literally—a unique perspective to the challenge.

The South Central apartment building was run-down, the carpet worn, the paint peeling around the doorframes, the numbers rusting.

But one door had recently been sanded and painted. The buffed brass numeral was precisely centered beneath the peephole. A literal welcome mat—a mat reading WELCOME—covered the frayed carpet edges.

All this precision made Evan feel at home.

He was holding a pizza. More precisely, a pizza with pineapple and yellow bell peppers and pepperoni.

He rang, and a voice called out, “Who is it?”

“Pizza delivery.”

The peephole darkened. “No, it’s not. It’s you with a pizza.”