But that had been self-defense, or at least in defense of his family (admittedly he’d pretty much just whacked Jackie), and he felt he could sort that out with God personally. He would make do without an intermediary in a collar. Besides, even after all these years, he had vivid memories of the pale faces of the priests who emerged from their side of the confessional after his father, the legendary Angel of Death, had dropped by to cash in his latest sins for forgiveness.
Still, Michael felt refreshed somehow, as he drove back to Paradise Estates. Relieved that he and the Man Upstairs were on speaking terms again. He found the pageantry and the Latin liturgy and the Host on the tongue all reassuring; he was taken back to his childhood, before his mother and brother were gone, when the world was big and unknowable but his life had been small and secure.
A stray thought popped into his mind: after Connor Looney killed Mama and Peter, his father had gone to the Looney mansion, to beard the lion in his den; but, before leaving the boy to sit in the car in the dark, Papa had given him a gun and said, “If I’m not back in an hour, go to Reverend Dodd at First Methodist for sanctuary.”
Papa did not want Michael going to Father Calloway at St. Pete’s, because mob money had built that church.
“No sanctuary there,” he’d said.
And one other thing Papa had made very clear: heaven was the next life; this life was hell, and just navigating through its flames was enough to keep a man busy.
When Michael pulled the Lincoln in the drive, Pat came flying out the front door, a whirlwind in a yellow pants suit. For a split second he thought she was glad to see him, and wanted to rush into his arms as a result of last night’s rekindling.
And she was glad to see him, but not because their love had been renewed or that she’d reconsidered about joining a church.…
Her eyes were wide and hysterical, and her voice quavered with terror: “Oh, Mike—Anna’s gone! She’s gone!”
She gripped his arms with steel fingers.
His hands found her shoulders. “Easy, baby, easy. Go slow.”
The words were a rush: “I called across the street, at the Parhams’…to see if Anna wanted to have lunch with us.”
“Right. She and Cindy and some girlfriends were having a slumber party.…”
“But they weren’t!” Her eyes and nostrils flared, and words streamed: “Molly Parham said she thought Cindy was staying with us last night—Molly’s fit to be tied, too, but she isn’t part of the Witness Goddamn Fucking Protection Program, with gangsters wanting to kill her and her whole fucking family!”
He took her into his arms and patted her gently, saying into her ear, “Settle down, honey, settle down—it’s nothing. Just a couple of high school girls putting one over on their parents. Just a bunch of kids trying to…” He remembered Anna’s words. “…Get out from under their parents’ thumbs for one night.”
Pat pulled away to look at him, her dark blue eyes showing red-tinged white all around. “No, no it’s worse than that. She’s gone, Michael. She’s run off!”
“What makes you think that? Did she leave a note?”
Pat shook her head, her blonde locks flouncing, as if the hair itself were as hysterical as its owner. “No…but come inside, Mike. Come inside.”
His wife dragged him by the hand through the living room and down the hallway to the bedrooms, and into Anna’s. She yanked the closet open, dramatically, and then opened several doors, and showed him.
“Most of her clothes are gone,” Pat said, working to control herself now. Making her case. “Not everything—she left enough for me to maybe not notice, right away. And her little powder-blue suitcase, that’s gone, too.”
Michael drew in a breath, let it out as he took in the room. “How did she sneak the stuff out of the house?”
“I don’t know! She says we patrol her like Nazis, but it’s not really true. I’ve left her here alone lots of times, when I’ve gone to the store or whatever.”
He moved closer to Pat. “Do we think that girl across the street helped? Cindy?”
She shrugged helplessly, saying, “Maybe. Cindy told her parents the same lie Anna told us.”
“What about Cindy? Is she gone?”
Eyes flared again. “Well, she’s not home!”
“No, honey, I mean—has Cindy run off, too?”
Pat threw up her hands. “I don’t know…I don’t know. I only know the Parhams are pretty upset.”
“Let’s go talk to them.”
They did.
Sid Parham was in life insurance, and his wife was a substitute grade school teacher; they were solid citizens, and wonderful, generous parents, whose daughter hated them.
But Cindy’s clothes were all present and accounted for, as well as her suitcase. The Parham girl did not seem to have taken off with Anna, though probably had aided and abetted the getaway.
The two sets of parents sat in the Parham kitchen, which was much like the Smiths’, looking out on a familiar fenced-in backyard with pool.
“They took off together yesterday afternoon,” said Mrs. Parham, a slender, not particularly attractive strawberry blonde in a blue-and-white floral-print-shorts outfit, “in Cindy’s new little red Mustang.”
“We bought Cindy a Mustang,” Sid Parham said pointlessly, a bald heavyset Uncle Fester–ish fellow, dressed for yardwork. “For graduation.”
“She hasn’t graduated yet,” Michael pointed out.
“Well, there are a lot of things going on this time of year,” Parham said defensively. Suddenly Cindy having a car seemed to be the problem. “Her having it early made sense. Senior parties and prom and—”
“Prom,” Pat said.
Michael looked at her, and their eyes locked. He said, “Tomorrow night’s the prom, back at—”
But he stopped. He’d come very close to saying Crystal Bay.
“Back where you used to live?” Sid said, finishing Michael’s statement with a question. “St. Paul, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “St. Paul.…If you hear from Cindy, let us know right away. Right away!”
“You’ll be the first,” Sid said.
“Don’t be worried,” Mrs. Parham said. “Cindy does this kind of thing all the time.”
Back in their own kitchen, Michael and Pat sat and held hands, tightly.
“You think she’s gone back home for prom?” Pat asked, shaking and on the verge of tears. Hope and despair fought for control of her voice as she said, “She’s gone back for prom, hasn’t she?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Where else could she have gone?”
“It is a real possibility.” He sighed and shrugged. “But it’s a long damn drive…twelve, thirteen hours.”
Shaking her head, Pat said absurdly, “She doesn’t have that kind of driving experience!”
“Easy, Pat—remember, she doesn’t have a car. If Cindy didn’t drive her, she’d have to take a bus or plane. A girl her age can’t rent a vehicle…unless she has fake ID, which I suppose—”
Pat squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. “What are we going to do? Oh my God, Michael—what in hell can we do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That panic button!” Her eyebrows climbed her forehead. “We’ll call the federal panic button, and they’ll go get her!”
“We could do that. Are you prepared to move again?”
Pat, half out of the chair, froze. “What?”
“If I call our friend Assistant Director Shore, he’ll help us out—send marshals to Lake Tahoe to grab her up…if our assumption is right…but in any case, they will consider our cover blown.”
Still frozen, she asked, “So what?”
“So…it means another name change. Another move. Another city. Another new life—for all of us.”
She sat heavily down. Her eyes stared at nothing. “Oh, Christ…but what else can we do?”
“If we’re right about where Anna’s gone, we retrieve her. I’ll drive
or fly back home, and get her. The prom isn’t till tomorrow night.”
Pat was looking at him now, guardedly hopeful. “We’ll go together?”
“No. I think…I think the first thing we do is call some people back home.”
Nodding decisively, Pat said, “I can do that.”
“No.” He held out a cautionary palm. “I don’t want those calls on our long-distance charges. Hell, for all I know, the feds have our phone tapped.”
Indignation tweaked her expression. “I thought we were the good guys!”
“No—we’re not the good guys, and we’re not the bad guys. We’re the poor bastards getting squeezed between.…I’ll go to a phone booth, and call every neighbor back there I can think of, to see if anyone’s seen Anna.”
Nodding again, frantically, she said, “Start with the Grace house! She’s gone back to be with that Gary, I just know she has!”
He nodded, too, but slowly, reassuringly. “That’s where I’ll start. Can you think of anyone who lives next door to the Graces? Or even in their neighborhood?”
Her eyes tightened. “No.…No, his family lives in Incline Village. That Pineview development, but I don’t know anybody there. Damn!”
He held his palm up again. “Pat, it’ll be all right. Do we have a picture of Anna since we moved here?”
Turning her head toward the hallway, she said, “There are some snapshots on her mirror, from when she and her wonderful-great-good-friend-that-little-bitch-of-a-brat Cindy went horseback riding.”
“Get me one, will you?”
“All right.” She stood, then hovered. “…What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to hit the bus stations, train depots, and the airport.”
“You make it sound like…like she’s a runaway.”
“She is, sort of. But just for the weekend, I think. This is just about prom.”
Again her eyes tightened, in confusion this time. “But didn’t Cindy drive her…?”
“We don’t know that. And that’s a long way to drive, whether Cindy’s along or not. The picture?”
“All right.”
Rising, he said, “I’ll be in my study.”
She eyed him with mild suspicion. “Doing what?”
“Getting something.”
“Getting what, Michael?”
“Pat—just fetch the picture, okay? And stay calm. Stay steady.”
She went off to Anna’s room, and he slipped into his study and from a locked desk drawer got the .45 automatic—the gun his father had taken on the road, the gun he had taken to Bataan, the gun he’d used as an Outfit enforcer—and slipped it in his waistband, in the small of his back, covering it. He wasn’t sure he would need it; he wasn’t even really sure why instinct said to take it with him.
But that’s what instinct said.
And he listened.
He’d just finished snugging the gun away when he heard Pat in the hall. Then she was standing framed in the doorway, holding up the snapshot.
“Everything else we have of Anna,” she said glumly, “didn’t make the trip from Crystal Bay.”
She stepped into the study, and he took the snapshot, dropped it into his suitcoat pocket, then wrapped her up in his arms and looked earnestly at her.
“Darling,” he said softly, “it’s going to be fine—she’s just a teenager who didn’t want to miss her senior prom. Can you blame her?”
Frustration and something like anger colored her face. “Doesn’t she know what she’s done? How she’s put us all at risk?”
“No. Like I said, she’s a teenager.…And even when we get her back home, safe and sound, we may have to seriously consider telling Shore all about this.”
Alarm again widened the dark blue eyes. “You said bringing WITSEC in was dangerous.…”
“It may be more dangerous not t moving on to another identity. I’m going to want to talk to Anna and her boyfriend about just how much contact they’ve maintained, and how they did it. And then, remember…we have another option.”
Confusion tensed her forehead. “Which is what?”
“We still have our half-mil nest egg. We can start over like we were planning to, before WITSEC stepped in—a new life in Mexico or Brazil or some damn place. Without the federal safety net, but also without the federal hassle.”
Her eyes were so tight with thought, they were almost closed. “What will Anna think about that?”
He smirked. “What does she think now?”
She fell into his arms and held on to him tight and shivered. “I want to go with you.”
“Back to Tahoe?”
“Everywhere—to the airport and—”
He held her away, just a little, and locked her eyes with his. “No, honey. You need to stay here. By the phone.”
She thought about that, then said, “You’re right.”
“Anna may call, or the Parhams may hear from Cindy, or Cindy may show up and—”
“You’re right. Go.” She managed a crinkly smile, somehow. “Get out of here and find our little girl…ya big lug.”
“I love it when you call me that.”
“Find our daughter.” The smile from a moment ago was ancient history. “I couldn’t take.…Find her.”
He nodded, and then he kissed her lightly.
She clutched his face in one hand, roughly, in an almost accusatory fashion, and then kissed him—hard.
“I love you, Michael. You’ll come through for us. You always come through.”
“I love you, Patsy Ann,” he said, and kissed her.
And went off to find their daughter.
EIGHT
Michael started with the Greyhound Terminal on South Church, talking to every clerk and vendor and even a guy with a broom. The snapshot of Anna was fairly close up, and she was an attractive girl whose heart-shaped face, big dark eyes, and endless brown mane made her distinctive enough to be remembered. But no one did.
American Trailways on East Tenth drew the same disappointing results, though Michael did catch one slight break. The same clerks were working today, at both terminals, as had been on duty yesterday afternoon. Which was exactly when his daughter would have come around to buy a bus ticket (based on when Cindy’s parents saw the girls drive off in that red Mustang).
Otherwise, Michael would have had to spend much of the day tracking down off -duty bus-station tellers, all over Tucson.
The identical combination of good and bad luck awaited him at the Southern Pacific railroad station on East Toole: same clerks on duty as yesterday, none of whom recognized Anna’s picture. This was repeated at Tucson International, six miles from the city, out US 89, though it took a while—he had to query busy clerks at American Airlines, TWA, and half a dozen other lines major and minor.
From a pay phone at the airport, already pushing four p.m., he called the Parhams to see if they’d heard anything from their daughter, Cindy. They had not.
So he called home.
Pat answered the phone with a painfully eager, “Yes?”
“Just me, sweetheart.” From the sound of her voice, he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked, anyway: “Hear from Anna?”
“No. Any luck with the snapshot?”
“Afraid not.” He quickly filled her in about the air, bus, and train terminals. “I think we can be reasonably sure she didn’t travel that way. I just called the Parhams and they haven’t heard from Cindy, either.”
“You think Cindy drove Anna to Tahoe?”
“Well, it’s just the idiotic kind of road trip a couple of teenagers might take. And with that many hours facing them, two drivers, trading off behind the wheel, would suit the plan.”
“Michael, we don’t know for sure she went home.…”
“No, we don’t. She and Cindy could be hanging out with some of their friends at some mountain cabin, taking their rebellion out with beer or pot or something.”
“That doesn’t sound like Anna.”
“
Not to me, either, but a kid frustrated about her life…on the weekend of the prom she can’t attend…could behave seriously out of character.”
“Oh, Michael…what now?”
The frustration and desperation in his wife’s voice broke Michael’s heart, but he kept his own tone positive.
“Do me a favor, sweetheart. Call across the street and get that Parham woman to phone the parents of every friend of their daughter’s she can think of. If Anna’s still in Tucson, we need to find out.…”
He left unstated:…before I go running around the Tahoe area, breaking our cover, looking for her. Just in case the feds were tapping the Smith line.…
“Yes,” Pat was saying, “yes, that makes sense. I’ll get her to do that right away.…What about those calls we talked about?”
Pat, too, was being cautious about what she said on the phone. She was referring to the long-distance calls to friends in Tahoe that Michael had said he’d make. Good girl, he thought.
“I’m doing that next.…Listen, I know it’s no picnic for you, staying home by the phone. But it’s important.”
“I know it is. And I love you, Michael, for…for springing into action like this.”
“Listen, she’s fine. You just hang in there, baby. I love you, too.”
They said goodbye and hung up.
Before he left Tucson International, Michael bought a ticket on the red-eye to Reno—the flight, on American, would leave at one a.m.; in Reno he would rent a car and spend Saturday in Crystal Bay and Incline Village, tracking down their wayward daughter; and would she be thrilled with her father, when he pulled the prom rug out from under her.…
On Congress he found a drive-in bank that stayed open till five, and just made it in time to trade paper money for rolls of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
His next stop was the library on South Sixth. In the massive two-winged red-brick building, he found a wall of shelves with out-of-town phone books—including one labeled lake tahoe area. He hauled the relatively slender directory out onto a stone table in the library patio and sat in the sunshine for twenty minutes copying numbers onto a piece of scratch paper.
Road to Paradise Page 13