Page 6 of Lone Wolf

Westchester: empty.

Boyle Heights: empty.

Tarzana—holy shit.

There he was, sitting on the couch of the sparsely furnished bungalow, staring at … It looked like he was staring at nothing. And swaying ever so slightly. On the floor before him were several vodka bottles, which a quick zoom and image enhancement showed to be empty.

“Just spotted him.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded dry and strained. “I’ll call you back when I get to him.”

“Bated breath, crossed fingers, thoughts and prayers.” Tommy spit a jet of tobacco juice through his gap teeth out the window and hung up.

Joey studied Evan some more, her mouth ajar with disbelief.

He was drunk.

Not quaffing two fingers of some vodka distilled by Amazonian warrior queens in northern Anatolia and then poured over a geode-shaped ice cube. But fucking hammered.

You shoulda seen him.

It was a disgrace.

4

The Kentucky Fried Fuck

Evan heard a pick set scratching at the front lock of his Tarzana safe house. When the door swung open, a cold, hard light fell across the bungalow, and his pupils contracted. The glare made his brain ache.

He had his ARES 1911 raised and aimed but was not as surprised as he’d have thought to see Joey stride inside, her angry walk with her Doc Martens stomping out ahead of her. The diamond pendant glinted at her chest, a concession to the elegant, striking a contrast with her flannel and scowl, both oversize.

“What the Kentucky Fried Fuck?” she said.

He lowered the pistol. “Language.” His voice was cracked, desiccated.

She threw something at him. It struck his chest, not gently, and fell into his lap.

His RoamZone.

“You’re not allowed to just disappear and not have the Nowhere Man phone on you,” she said. “What if someone needed you and you didn’t answer?”

Though she’d violently heeled the door shut behind her, he could still feel the aftereffect of the blast of daylight, an ice pick through his corneas. He shifted on the couch, his boot knocking over an empty bottle of Cîroc. It rattled noisily on the hardwood, describing an excruciatingly lethargic arc across the floor to stop at Joey’s feet.

She looked down at it as if that just said it all.

Maybe it did.

Her hands were on her hips, rarely a good sign. “It’s not just you, you know. You have responsibilities to—to people, okay?”

The alcohol was wearing off, leaving a dull ache in Evan’s cranium. He’d vomited once cleanly last night, the kind of avian regurgitation when the booze hits bottom and your stomach says, Nope, and sends it right back out in the form it came in.

He lifted his chin slightly to indicate the refrigerator. “Saline.”

When she walked to the kitchen, her boots knocked the floor with slightly less vehemence, a promising development. She poked through the takeout by the sink. “You,” she said, “left shit on the counter. Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?” She was joking, but the tremor of concern in her voice betrayed her. “And besides, you shouldn’t use plastic straws.” She held up the offending utensil.

The throbbing in his head intensified. “It came in the bag.”

“As a proper La-La-Land-ian you should get your own, you know, made out of bamboo or steel so you don’t, like, strangle turtles.”

“It came in the takeout bag,” he repeated. “What was I supposed to do? Bring in a straw-sniffing canine?”