Page 19 of The Damage Man

Evan steps through the detector archway and the guard hands him the dish around the side rail. A second guard watches the X-ray monitor.

From the far side, Evan can see the imagery on the screen, the tinfoil creating a solid bright white silhouette.

The swan emerges through the flaps a bit worse for wear, its lovely neck bent downward.

“Gotta open her up,” the second guard says.

“And ruin the presentation?”

The guard does not smile. He seems even more weary than the first, as if minute after minute, shift after shift, he can see before him the entire shape of his future.

Evan peels the tinfoil package open, showing the glazed Peking duck inside, steaming like a diminutive Thanksgiving turkey.

The guard waves him through and taps an access card on the security turnstile’s reader. Evan moves through to the elevators.

He rides up to the top floor, accompanied by a Muzak rendition of “Yesterday,” a syrupy synthesized flute standing in for Paul McCartney.

A men’s room is conveniently located off the floor lobby. Evan swings inside, enters a stall. Removing latex gloves from a cargo pocket, he peels open the tinfoil swan and extracts his ziplocked ARES 1911 from the duck’s abdominal cavity.

He frees the ARES and its suppressor, then snaps off his gloves and crumples the tinfoil around them and the duck, trashing the metallic ball on his way out.

Blackfish is on the east side of the top floor. Screwing the suppressor into the barrel, he enters. There are no pictures on the walls, no decor, limited furniture. Old-fashioned postal chutes are embedded in the walls, no doubt a throwback enhancement the architect tossed in when the building went up in the seventies. The front desk is empty.

He steps past it into the hall leading to the offices. A conference room floats into view, big windows overlooking an expensive view. The Hollywood sign peers bleakly from Mount Lee, faded from six miles of haze.

Several of the Ivans are present, as Ivan the Original specified. Three of them, to be precise, sitting around a conference table playing poker, smoking joints and wearing cheap shiny suits.

As Evan enters, they rise in unison, cards scattering, to face him, eyeing the 1911 in his hand.

Like Ivan, they wear their profession on their faces. Damage men with baleful features hardened from a lifetime of scowling. Evan notes position, angles, bulges beneath jackets. The nearest guy, lupine with ropy muscles, sports a brass belt buckle labeling him BUCK. Or maybe it’s a brand name.

“We don’t take walk-ins,” Buck says.

Holding the pistol steady, Evan reaches into his cargo pocket and tosses a half dozen zip ties onto the conference table. “Guns on the table,” he says. “You can zip-tie one another. Or I can do it for you.”

Buck’s hand dives for his hip.

Pfft pfft pfft.

His hand explodes, an ace of diamonds fluttering free from the cuff; his holster flies off his hip, his kneecap a mosaic.

He tumbles, keeling in one direction as his still-holstered gun skitters in the other.

No one else has moved. They haven’t even had time to blink.

Buck groans, panting into the floor, his creased forehead dripping with sweat.

Evan flicks his muzzle at the table.

The other men carefully remove their pistols and place them there. Then they set about securing one another.

“Sorry, bud, sorry,” the biggest guy tells Buck as he zippers up his wrists. “But fuck you for cheating.”

They finish the job, tightening their own cuffs with their teeth.

Evan gathers the pistols and drops them down the mail chute. Then he zip-ties the men together. Lying there in a puddle, they looked like an S&M orgy or a Twister fail.

Evan kneels on Buck, whose face he most despises, and places the muzzle at his crotch. “How many more of you?”