The last orphan, p.27
The Last Orphan, page 27
“Can I, like, save us some time?”
“Sure.”
“Cool-cool.” Joey snapped her gum and kept clacking at her MX Cherry Blues. It seemed impossible that she was typing with any accuracy, and yet the system continued to obey her every command. “Pretend I explain a bunch of tech stuff to you. Then you get all confuzzled and say ‘Huh’ and pretend you have any clue what I’m talking about. Then I make fun of you in, like, a super-funny way you don’t fully get because: limitations. Then you tell me I can’t break into this network, that it’s impossible. And I go, ‘Yeah. You’re right.’ But! Then I come up with something awesome. I show you how I’ll save the day. Then you’re chastened and humbled by my superior being.”
He was reluctant to acknowledge that that was in fact how most of their conversations went.
“So, X?” Another gum snap. “Just stay outta my way and I’ll tell you when it’s time to go get the bad guys.”
Vera III seemed to find this all exceedingly amusing.
“Look,” Evan said, “I have to get some idea what you’re doing.”
Joey’s hands stopped, the abrupt silence intimidating. “Why? You don’t trust me?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“So I, you know … keep up to date with it.”
Joey bounced forward, popping to her feet. “Awww, X. That’s totes adorbs. Are you having a tough time keepin’ up with the kray-kray kidz these days?”
“Josephine.”
He took her by her shoulders, spun her around, and deposited her back in the chair.
She resumed typing as though no interruption had occurred. “When rich-ass people like Devine hire fancypants digital-security folks, they sometimes forget random shit that’s internet connected. Like, say, bidets.”
“Bidets?”
“’Member what I said about you getting confuzzled? Try’n be a smidge less on-brand, X. Yes, bidets. Of the Japanese variety. The ID of the automation device that manages the spout, cleaner, lights, dryer—all that—it doesn’t have some long string. It’s only, like, five hex digits, easy to brute-force, and it just happens to be the default password for the API that they so helpfully documented in leaked internal docs I got from a friend on IRC. And it grabs firmware updates over the internet. So guess who built her own firmware with a backdoor and shipped it over the air to said device?” She jerked dueling thumbs toward her chest, the dangling diamond providing a sparkly bull’s-eye. “This guy. Then I used it as a beachhead into everything else, popped into Devine’s private network. Uh-maze-ballz, right? Oh, and also, as a kind gesture to bidet users the world over, I patched the firmware at the bidet company called—I shit you not—Pee-Pee Fresh, to make it more secure than it was before, ’cuz I’m Robina Hood.”
“I’m told Robin is also the feminine of Robin.”
“Whatevs. Either way it’s a hacker’s wet dream. Own something and leave it better than you found it. Except for the one belonging to the asshole hedge-funder with a God complex.”
“Impressive,” Evan said. “But you still can’t get past the Faraday cage. The system is air-gapped—”
“Unless AHFWAGC charged the wireless keyboard outside the cage on the side table beside the chaise longue he likes to sprawl on when he’s messing with the minds of impressionable aging Orphans. And unless that keyboard also required the occasional over-the-air software update. Which I may have just pushed before he took it back inside the Faraday cage. So while you were busy drooling into your pillow on your floating bed all morning, I’ve been perusing his files.”
“And you learned what?”
“The Labor Day files are full-wiped. Secure deletions, written over, not retrievable.”
“Shit.”
“But.”
“But?”
“Of course but. Weren’t you listening? This is the part where I come up with something awesome, show you how I’ll save the day, and you’re chastened and humbled by my superior being. So. Are you prepared for chastenment and humblement?”
“I am.”
“Nothing can leave there not on a flash or physical drive. But the zsh shell log happens to show when a physical copy last got made. And one was made. A year and change ago.”
“Just after Labor Day.”
“Someone saved footage of what went down that night. Someone made a copy.”
“Tenpenny,” Evan said.
Joey flung her arms wide, let her hands flop out to the sides. “Wa-la.” She took in his expression. “What?”
“I thought you’d be able to retrieve the footage here. So I could just watch it.”
Her lips set in a firm line of disappointment, mirroring Vera III’s expression. “You know what, X? You’re getting lazy in your dotage. Flyin’ on private jets, making me do all the legwork digitally, forgetting the analog world you came up in. You’re X! Go break into a motherfucker’s house already and see what’s up.”
She looked so goddamned put out that, despite his best efforts, he was charmed.
She scowled at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “I’ve created a monster.”
54
Uncharted Territories
When Evan ducked through the clamshell door into the Cirrus Vision Jet in the northside hangar of the Santa Monica Municipal Airport, a heavyset gentleman waited for him in the second row.
Aragón Urrea pulled himself to his feet. He was striking and homely at once, a grin lighting his broad, bold features. His wild shock of thick, wavy hair now tilted more salt than pepper and his bearlike build had grown a bit more stocky around the midsection since Evan had seen him last. Even so, he looked hearty, robust. A few days’ worth of stubble textured his face. It struck Evan that he’d never seen the man clean-shaven.
Aragón wrapped Evan in a hug, pinning his arms to his sides, picking him up, and planting a smooch on his cheek. He set Evan back on his feet, and they took up executive leather seats side by side.
“Thanks for coming,” Evan said.
“The hell else am I gonna do? You won’t let me be an international criminal mastermind anymore. And besides”—a gesture to the full-stocked bar—“I can’t let you drink alone.”
It was just past 7:00 A.M.
Evan found a cocktail napkin and wiped his cheek, which seemed to delight Aragón further. “How are you?” Evan asked.
Aragón gave a world-weary toggle of the head. “I’ve reached the age where what I see in the mirror is unrecognizable as a body that would ever belong to me.”
“You look fine.”
“I am clothed.”
“And I thank you for that.”
Aragón smiled. “If the Nowhere Man develops a sense of humor, it will no longer be fair to those of us who compete with him for our feelings of self-worth.”
“Withdrawn,” Evan said.
“I’ve been working at letting go of parts of myself bit by bit.” Aragón’s broad shoulders lifted and fell. “You have to move on before you’re ready. It’s a great pain and a great sadness. To kill pieces of yourself so the rest of you can grow. Like pruning a tree.”
Evan thought about that open shot he’d missed at twenty feet. The noose of Secret Service agents closing around him. The pinch of the needle through his shirt and Naomi Templeton’s hand on his cheek as she helped ease him to the floor. There were pieces of himself that would let go of him whether he pretended to reciprocate or not. The thought poked at him.
He diverted. “How’s Belicia?”
“My wife, she is still infuriatingly sharper than me.”
“And Anjelina?”
“She gave us a beautiful granddaughter. And that … It changed everything.” Aragón paused, musing. He was an unparalleled muser. “I never knew my father. So I spent my life searching for some image of what it meant to be a man. I wish I could’ve looked him in the face just once and seen what it was I was striving for. Or running from.”
Evan’s mind pulled to the file Joey had opened up on the man who he had reason to believe was his father. That grouping of gas-station and bar charges around the town of Blessing, Texas. Was there something to be learned if he looked Jacob Baridon in the eye? Something he had to embrace or let go of?
No.
Jack was the only father he’d ever known or cared to know. There was nothing he needed from a man he’d never met. This mission had already done plenty enough to strip him of his armor, piece by piece. He wasn’t eager to risk losing more.
“Having a granddaughter, it’s the opposite of that,” Aragón was saying. “The first time I held her, I knew exactly who I was supposed to be. I endured a lot of hard decades to get to an understanding like that.”
“What’s her name?”
Aragón glowered at him but there was humor in it. “Xochitl. Anjelina calls her X. Can you imagine? I finally have a granddaughter, and my child names her after some white asshole?”
Evan laughed. “Despite the insult I appreciate your help.”
Aragón scowled, unimpressed with himself. “I’m so rich it annoys me. You know the whole point of having money? Making sure that no one you love ever has to suffer from hardships that money can prevent. And then? Trying to do the same for others. That’s why I help. Like all … philanthropists”—he gave the word an amused spin—“I have to make up for all the awful shit I did to get to a place where I could be a pinche philanthropist.” His crooked smile was wide, infectious. “So. Why did you want to see me?”
“I’m trying to decide whether or not to kill a guy.”
“That happen often?”
“Only once before.”
“Who was that?”
“You.”
After a two-second tape delay, Aragón’s laugh came on, building up from his belly, a great joyful rumble. “Okay,” he said when he’d settled down. “Tell me about him.”
Evan did. Aragón listened with powerful focus.
“Is he a psychopath?” Aragón asked when Evan was done.
“That’d be much simpler.”
“He likes spouting all this heaven-and-hell meshugas.”
Evan half grinned. “Meshugas?”
Aragón coaxed one shoulder forward in a sheepish shrug. “My lawyer.” He ran his fingers through his dense silver-and-black hair. “He makes everything complicated, your guy. But it’s simple. Heaven is when you have a romance with your wife, your job, and your house—and your children make you laugh.”
“And hell?”
“Hell, well, hell is complicated. It looks different for everyone. This mission, it’s a mess. Many tentacles.”
Evan said, “I know where it starts and ends for me.”
“With one young man,” Aragón said. “And one young woman.”
“If they’d died at his hands or at his command, I’d know what to do.”
“Yes,” Aragón said. “That is an easy story. We know how that story ends.” He gave Evan a few moments of silence. “But you don’t think that’s the case?”
“I’m not sure what to think. There’s so much to be reckoned with. There’s … a lot to him.”
“This man, he sounds like a force to be reckoned with. And it seems … it seems he got his first taste of wisdom. It can be intoxicating. There’s so much to see that you were blind to before. The problem? He thinks he has it. Wisdom. But no one has it. We just wear it from time to time when we’re lucky.”
“He knows things I don’t,” Evan said. “He sees things I don’t.”
“And that rattles you?”
Evan considered. “I’m smart enough to be scared of him. And smart enough not to let that influence what I need to do.”
“What do you need to do?”
Evan bit his lip, noticed he was doing it and stopped. He shook his head and then shook it again.
Aragón said, “Maybe that’s okay.”
“What?”
“Not knowing how this story will end. Until you get there.”
A faint vibration in the cabin drew Evan’s attention. The pilot finished mounting the steps, stooping on his way through the door and saluting casually with a flare of his fingers. “Are we ready to go, Patrón?”
“I’ll be staying in Los Angeles, attending to some business. I’m having Arturo pick me up tonight in the Embraer Lineage 1000.” A wink to Evan. “My new toy.” Aragón gave Evan’s knee a solid pat with his hand and rose, pausing by the cockpit to face the pilot. “But please take good care of mi hermano.” His face was at once rugged and patrician, weathered beechnut skin and regal jowls. His rich brown eyes held great affection and perhaps even admiration. “He is heading into uncharted territories.”
55
A Cityscape of Unguency
The top nightstand drawer held a medley of sex toys.
The middle one was devoted to crops, paddles, floggers, and other S&M accoutrements.
Flavored condoms filled the bottom drawer to the brim.
Flavored condoms seemed to Evan about as subtle as flavored vodka, but he hadn’t broken into Derek Tenpenny’s condo to pass judgment on prophylactics.
Rising from his crouch, he nearly knocked his head on the sex swing attached to the ceiling with steel anchor bolts. Bottles of various lubricants covered the top of the nightstand, forming a cityscape of unguency.
He’d searched the two-bedroom place meticulously, finding nothing. Being here elicited an intense disgust reaction in him, not because of the paraphernalia per se but because it felt not like a home but a venue. The habitat was operationalized, bringing to mind human-trafficking operations he’d torn apart.
The single-mindedness, too, added to his aversion—there was precious little decor aside from the mirrored ceiling. White porcelain dinnerware set and a pack of stainless-steel flatware in the kitchen. Soap, shampoo, conditioner, bathroom spray. Big-and-tall suits hanging in the closet above a set of black Tumi luggage. He’d used a padded stool to hoist himself through the hatch into the crawl space, which was crowded with HVAC ducting and little else.
The second bedroom, a makeshift study, was sparse: desk, computer, no paperwork to speak of. Empty drawers, empty closet, and the ensuite bathroom looked to be unused. There was no password on the computer and no documents whatsoever. The search history on the browser had been set to autowipe every day; the log of the past twenty-four hours showed porn sites and nothing else.
Everything was bare-bones functional; all the extravagance had gone into the pursuit of erotic exploits. It was odd to inhabit the space of a man given over to one part of himself, a solitary primal drive.
No useful evidence, no damning documents, no flash drive with purloined Labor Day footage.
Frustrated, Evan scanned the master bedroom once more. It smelled of fabric softener and lemon-scented Lysol, but the stench of cigarette smoke lingered. Afternoon light filtered through the fabric Roman shades. The air conditioner blew air down his collar. He closed his eyes, imagined being in this space as Derek Tenpenny.
For starters he’d be nearly a foot taller, giving him a different view.
And different opportunities.
Evan opened his eyes. The honeycomb brass vent above, inset horizontally in the side of the ceiling soffit, dried his eyes. He studied the knurled screws, one on each side.
Then he moved into the kitchen, searching the bulkhead. Similar brass wall registers blew steady currents of air.
Keeping his eyes on the soffits, he drifted into the study. A matching honeycomb brass vent above the desk. One of its screws was loose.
Going on his tiptoes, Evan reached up his palm. The airflow was meager.
Interesting.
Back to the master closet to grab the padded stool. He required it; Tenpenny would not. The knurled screws were easy to twist free by hand. Balancing on the stool, Evan removed the vent. He peered inside.
Nothing. Just a black maw.
He was about to replace the vent when a glistening thread at the side caught his eye. Fishing line, tied in a loop at the end.
A handle.
He pulled at it. Whatever was on the other end was heavy. It came grudgingly.
A large item the size of a board game but heavier, wrapped in a gun cloth.
Evan pulled it down and unwrapped it.
An old-fashioned ledger with page edges that threw a golden glow up into his face when he cracked it open.
Sitting on the floor, he paged through.
Women’s names. Dates. Descriptions. It was like reading a catalog of wine or spirit reviews, everything rendered dispassionately, aesthetically, the subjects reduced to physical matter and little more. Scrawled marginalia documented encounters: held her down, both wrists with one hand; cried a bit but made no noise; quite loud, lots of dirty talk.
Evan flipped the substantial pages, running a finger along the date column.
There it was. Labor Day, one year ago.
Angela Buford.
Beyond the listing of her approximate height, weight, dimensions, and sensory characteristics, there was a list of several sexual positions, ending with: “coitus interruptus.”
Evan recalled Tenpenny looking down at him in the spitting rain outside Tartarus: Angela Buford? Never heard of her.
He leafed through the other pages. All those encounters, many of them violations of differing degrees. Something dropped from the back cover, literally falling into Evan’s lap.
A flash drive.
Brick red, capless aside from a swivel cover.
Score another point for Joey Morales.
Evan walked over to the desk, plugged the flash drive into the computer, and sat in the chair. Hundreds of entries organized by date.
Evan clicked through a few. A few was sufficient.
Tenpenny in full congress with various women, the camera angles suggesting surreptitious recording. Many were inside this condo, but a few were from clubs and private orgies. Evan scrolled down, found the date he was looking for.
Tenpenny had already curated the clip as he had the others.
There he was at Tartarus, outside by the pool dancing with Angela Buford. Her hair was natural, a medium Afro with side bantu knots. She wore a sundress the color of ocher with a deep neckline, and she was turned around, grinding her rear end into him to the beat. Tenpenny’s face was flushed; he looked in a near frenzy.
