Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

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.

At a pancake house on Stone, he pulled in to the parking lot and soon was making phone calls in a nearby booth.

He’d already prepared a speech for these friends and acquaintances who’d been abandoned when WITSEC whisked the Satarianos into the Smiths’ new life.

“Yeah, well, I got this job opportunity on the East Coast and I had to jump at it. Didn’t mean to leave you folks in the lurch.”

That was all he intended to share, other than, “Look, I promise I’ll call again under better circumstances, but Pat and me, we’re crazy with worry, trying to find Anna. We think she got homesick and ran back there to go to the senior prom. Have you seen her?”

This, with minor variations, was how he steamrolled over any questions, and elicited support, since most of those he called were also parents. Then when whoever-he’d-called said he or she hadn’t seen Anna, Michael would say, “Thanks, anyway, sorry, gotta keep looking, ’bye,” and hang up.

This approach was successful in all ways except the key one...

... No one had seen Anna .

Worst of all: no answer when he dialed the number of boyfriend Gary Grace’s parents. And he tried them in between every other call, getting nothing but an endless ring and then the coins rattling back down.

The need to keep the calls brief prevented gathering any other information, such as whether the Graces were out of town. But some information Michael already had: for example, he knew that little groups of the kids always went out to dinner before the prom, nothing organized by the schools, just cliques, socializing, and that after prom, parties (mostly at the homes of various kids) would go on till dawn.

Sometimes the prom itself was held in the Incline Village High School’s gymnasium, but all the crepe-paper streamers in the world couldn’t turn that echoey, sweat-sock-smelling cavern into the kind of romantic wonderland the students had in mind. So most years, the Prom Committee found some other, more appropriate venue in the area; and of course Tahoe offered many nice possibilities.

Several months (that seemed like years) ago, Michael had taken the booking himself, helping out his daughter, who after all had been on the committee: the 1973 Incline Village Senior Prom would be held in the celebrated Indian Lounge of the Cal-Neva Lodge.

This fact may have eluded Pat; in any case, Michael had no intention of reminding her...

When he emerged, unsuccessful, from the phone booth, night had settled over Tucson, and the neon sambo’s sign had replaced the sun. Still in the suitcoat, he raised the lapels against a cool evening that threatened to turn cold.

He pulled into the driveway just after seven.

Pat met him at the door, a beautiful woman who looked terrible, her makeup long since cried off, her eyes webbed with red, her usually carefully coiffed ’do a tangle of greasy blonde worms and snakes; only the yellow pants suit looked crisp, polyester holding up under any tragedy.

He had never seen her look worse, nor loved her more.

“Nothing from the calls,” he said.

“Not a word from Anna,” she said, voice cracking.

He looped an arm around her and walked her into the house, nudging the door shut. Her head leaned on his shoulder.

They settled onto the Chesterfield couch in the front room, their target-like abstract paintings seeming particularly ugly to him at the moment.

“Have you heard from the Parhams lately?” he asked.

She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Molly claims she called everybody she could think of, going back to friends Cindy had in junior high. All the parents were supportive, of course, but nobody knew anything.”

“No big party last night?”

“No. And no other lies about a slumber party at somebody else’s house. This looks like strictly a scheme of Anna’s and Cindy’s.”

“Really looking that way.”

Pat craned her head. “Do you think Anna went somewhere else?”

“Other than Tahoe, you mean?”

“Yes. I mean, if she’s really fed up with us, maybe she went out to California or something. Lot of kids live on the street out there — Haight-Ashbury or something?”

He shook his head. “Our girl’s no hippie. She likes her creature comforts. Really, we’re probably overreacting.”

She reared back. “How can you say that?”

“I mean... because of our specific... situation, we’re reacting in a way that... makes sense.” He shrugged. “But if you take WITSEC out of the equation, Anna’s just a teenager whose parents moved and made her miss prom.”