The Survivor: A Novel Part 18

Her gaze snared on something on the counter. His left hand, trembling slightly against the marble. Involuntary. He pulled his hand into his lap but in doing so knocked over one of his pill bottles, which rattled more loudly than seemed probable. The silence made an awkward return.

"You were really gonna do it?" Janie said. "Kill yourself?"

"Yes."

"Idiot." She took a sip. "Why? Because of the disease?"

He thought about it. Given the monumentality of the decision, it struck him as odd that he had no ready answer. "I wasn't killing myself because of the disease," he finally allowed. "I was killing myself because there was nothing left but the disease."

She leaned against the doorway to the study. "You couldn't find something? Anything? To make it worth it for another day, another week?"

"Like what?" he said. "I'm not researching the cure for cancer. I'm not Lou Gehrig-don't get to make a speech in front of a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium. All I had left was to inflict this on myself and others."

Her face stayed firm, whether from grief or anger, he didn't know.

He got up and started digging through the kitchen drawers, leafing through take-out menus, old receipts.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I need a pretense to get back into that private viewing room at the bank. Best bet is bringing something official-looking to put in my safe-deposit box, something I can just leave in there."

He was pulling together a few old pieces of mail when Janie said, "Take this."

Something in her voice sounded different, and he stopped what he was doing and looked up. She was offering up a stapled doc.u.ment. Even from across the room, he could see what it was.

He took a beat, because he didn't trust his voice. "You sure?"

"Of course not."

He stayed put by the kitchen drawer, unsure what to do next.

At length she nodded. "Yes. I'm sure." She shook the divorce papers impatiently.

He crossed and took them on his way out.

The line at the bank offered a good vantage to the private viewing rooms. There were two of them, an added complication that Nate was none too keen to account for. A wizened man stepped into the desired room as Nate neared the front of the line, forcing him to stall by pretending to fill out deposit slips. When the man at last shuffled back into sight, Nate hurried forward to the next available teller and was buzzed through. The security guard waited, the same older gentleman from round one. As they stepped into the vault, he studied Nate with eyes as small and hard as marbles.

"Two twenty-seven, right?" he asked.

Nate offered his best grin even as his hand left a sweat stain on the divorce papers. "Two twenty-six."

The guard said flatly, "Senility must be comin' on stronger than I imagined."

Nate got his safe-deposit box and strolled as casually as possible into the open private viewing room. The watercolored girl at the beach-still there. He hastened the pneumatic door closed with an elbow, then tossed down the box and rushed to pluck the painting off the wall, flipping it over.

At first he could scarcely believe it was still there. The business-size envelope taped firmly to the backing. So many worst-case scenarios had flashed through his mind in the past twenty-four hours that he'd half convinced himself he'd willed one into existence. But no, the envelope easily peeled free. Stepping out of a sneaker, he folded the envelope three times and hid the dense rectangle beneath the insole. He pulled the shoe back on, laced it tighter than necessary.

As he placed the divorce papers inside the safe-deposit box, bade them good-bye, and lowered the lid, he couldn't help but note how the contraption resembled a coffin. This was one burial he didn't mind a bit.

The security guard helped him deliver the box to its resting place within the vault, refusing to return his smile. As Nate headed out, the thrice-folded envelope dug into his arch, but he felt like he was walking on air.

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 G.o.d, 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, sh.e.l.l-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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sively as four cops closed in on him.

He smiled broadly. "There he is. My friend. Tell them."

Nate stopped a few steps onto the gra.s.s, 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 trespa.s.ser?"

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 trespa.s.ser," 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."