Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

“Do they usually have their yardwork done? I thought they did their own.”

“No, they get help, this time of year.”

“Do you recognize that service?”

“It sounds familiar. From Reno, I think.”

“That who Ron and Vicki regularly use?”

“I don’t really know.”

Michael grunted something noncommittal.

Anna said, “Is this the big news? The Parkers are getting their lawn looked after?”

Michael turned to her. “Do you remember what I talked to you and Mike about?”

Anna’s upper lip curled in a kind of contempt reserved only for parents of teenagers, by teenagers. “Sure, Dad — I remember the time you talked to Mike and me... Little more help, please?”

Michael’s expression had a terrible blankness. “I went over this subject more than once — I think the last time was right before Mike enlisted. About the kind of people I work for. And the problems that could lead to.”

Anna’s smart-ass tone vanished. “Oh, Daddy... Is that what this is...? Is something bad... about the people you... Daddy, don’t scare me.”

“Right now,” he said, “being scared is not such a bad idea.”

And he took the tube-snout silenced automatic out from under the black raincoat — folded between him and Pat in the front seat, on top of the briefcase — knowing Anna, leaning up in the backseat, could see it.

The girl sat back, hard and quick; then she covered her mouth with a pink-nailed hand.

“We’ll put the car in the garage,” he said.

Pat used the remote opener for him, and the Country Squire slid into place, Michael’s eyes everywhere; the door closed behind them. They sat in near darkness for a few moments.

“I’m going to check the house,” he said to Pat.

She nodded.

He looked back at his daughter. “Anna, I’m going to leave this with you...”

And he handed back the silver-snouted weapon.

But Anna was shaking her head, holding her hands up and shaking them. “No way, Daddy — no way.”

He half-crawled over the seat and pressed the gun in her hand and held her eyes with his. “Your mother doesn’t know how to use this. You do.”

“Daddy...”

Somehow Pat’s own protestations could not make the trip from her mind to her mouth. This was why Michael had insisted his two children become familiar with firearms, despite all her objections. And he’d been right, hadn’t he?

Just as now he was right to give the gun not to his wife, but to his seventeen-year-old daughter, who was after all trained to use the goddamned things...

“Nothing’s going to happen,” father was telling daughter. “This is... just in case.”

Anna swallowed; her dark eyes were huge and unblinking. “I’ve never shot at anything but a target, Daddy... You know that.”

With a nod, he said, “If someone tries to harm you or your mother, that’s your target. Do you understand?”

She swallowed again, and nodded; the pistol was in her two slim hands, its grip in her right, silver tube cradled in her left.

Michael turned to Pat. “I need you behind the wheel. If something happens in the house, you don’t think about it — you just get out of here.”

“Michael, I’m waiting for you...”

“No. If you hear gunfire, you get out — now. Drive to the end of the block — Country Club Road? You can still see the house from there. Wait three minutes. If anyone comes out of the house but me, go. Go .”

Mind whirling, shaking her head, Pat asked, “And what then?”

“Head to Reno.”

“Reno!”

“Yes — the church parking lot at St. Theresa’s. Wait there for two hours. If I don’t show, check into a motel somewhere.”

“ Where somewhere?”

From the backseat, Anna was saying, “Daddy, please, please, you’re scaring me...”

Michael said, “Good... Pat, any motel anywhere, but drive at least two hundred miles first.”

“How will I know...?”

“Watch the papers, TV. If the news about me is... bad, then you take this briefcase and... Remember, Pat, what we talked about, at the bank. Okay? And you two... you two’ll be fine.”

Pat didn’t think she could cry, not as long as she was on this medication; but now she began to.

He did not comfort her, exactly — he just put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Time for that later. Right now, be strong. For yourself and for Anna... Anna, you be strong, too, for you and your mother. We may have many moments like this — when I walk into that house, it’s probably going to be empty.”

Pat got out a Kleenex from her purse and nodded and dried her eyes and her face.

Anna wasn’t crying. She’d found resolve somewhere, and just nodded once, curtly.

He smiled at them, one at a time — Pat first. “I love my girls.”

“I love you, Michael,” Pat said quietly.

“Daddy, I love you.”

“See you in a minute.”

And Michael, looking every bit the respectable resort manager in his gray suit and tie, got out of the station wagon, moved to the door that connected with the kitchen, and, just like always, stepped inside the Satariano home.

Just like always, except for the .45 automatic in his hand.

Afternoon sun slanted through the glass patio doors as Michael paused, having just stepped from the garage into the yellow-and-white modern kitchen. Sun rays, floating with dust motes, were bright enough to make him squint, lending a surrealistic unreality to the mundane surroundings, the world within the Satariano home that seemed as normal as the loaf of Wonder Bread on the counter.

He toed one slip-on shoe off, then the other, and moved on in his socks, the silence broken only by such innocuous household sounds as refrigerator hum, dishwasher rumble, and various ticking clocks.

First he checked the pantry and laundry, just off the kitchen at his left — nothing. The adjacent door to the basement stairs made him wonder if he should check down there — semifinished, the basement consisted of the laundry room (beneath where he stood), a storage room, and a big open space with a ping-pong table and a small sitting area on an old carpet with a second TV and a ’60s hi-fi. He decided the cellar could wait for last — unlikely any intruders would be down there, unless they’d ducked out of sight upon hearing the station wagon come into the garage.

So he would have to watch his back.

The kitchen fed both a formal dining room, off to the right, and the rec room, straight ahead. He had good clear views of both, though in either case he had to lean in to get a good look — not that there was any place for anybody to hide in that open dining area, with the Bauhaus chairs and marble-top table and ankle-deep white carpeting that had meant only the rarest meal had ever been taken here.

The rec room — with its comfortable bench-style sofa against the wall (behind which no one could hide) facing the wall of shelving he’d built to house the TV and stereo and all his LPs and Pat’s Book of the Month Club selections — was also a mostly open area. The carpet was a shag puce, and on one side was a window on the backyard, sending in more mote-floating sun rays, and on the other a wall of the tin Mexican masks Pat had been collecting, strange faces watching him in blank judgment.

With the .45 in front of him, like a flashlight probing darkness, Michael padded through the living room, Pat’s current modern approach finally pleasing him — not the yellow-and-white geometry of it all, but the lack of hiding places this cold European style provided an intruder. The red-and-green-and-black-and-white abstract paintings screamed at him as he passed, as if warning of what might lie beyond. He tiptoed through the foyer into the hallway that split the horizontal house vertically, side-by-side bedrooms for Anna and Mike, then a bathroom, the master bedroom, another bathroom, and his study.