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“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 7:00A.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“Withdrawn,” Evan said.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 washisfather. That grouping ofgas-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 knewexactlywho 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 loveeverhas 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 couldbeapinchephilanthropist.” 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.”
