Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

“Not to mention Jack Kennedy,” Michael said.

Shore ignored that, and blurted, “We have a golden opportunity here, Michael! Giancana is no Mad Sam DeStefano — he’ll be testifying under oath, selling out the CIA, but revealing nothing at all about the Outfit. Omertà runs deep in an old made guy like Giancana.”

“So, Harry, you see my wife’s murder as a golden opportunity?”

“No, no, no... It’s just, Giancana is full of himself, thinks he’s smart and clever; but he will perjure himself in the process... and with you on our side, Michael, with your knowledge, your testimony, we’ll take him down.”

“On perjury.”

“That will just be a start !”

“I’m looking for the finish, Harry,” Michael said, and hung up.

The metal detector was a tunnel four or five feet long, and he had to walk a ramp up inside, and back down. On a trip to Hawaii six months ago, before everything went wrong, he and Pat had talked about how airline travel just wasn’t fun or special anymore; once upon a time, two or three years back, passengers wore suits and dresses, and the food was decent, and the stewardesses were friendly, and anyone with the price of a ticket was a kind of jet setter. Now you had to submit yourself and anything you carried onto the plane to a frisk.

“Like a common criminal!” Pat had said. “All the romance is going out of it.”

His wife and her voice in his mind, Michael walked casually toward his gate and didn’t spot Marshal Don Hughes until nearly too late.

The lanky, Apache-cheeked Hughes, his back to Michael, was at the check-in counter talking to a stewardess, showing her something — a picture of Michael probably. Two other guys in off-the-rack suits and snap-brim hats — who the fuck wore hats anymore, but feds! — were bookending Hughes, and fortunately both men also had their backs partly to Michael.

One marshal began to swing around, probably on the lookout for Michael, who lowered his head and fell in with a few other passengers, and moved on past the gate.

The airport was fairly dead this time of night, and it wasn’t as if a crowd was available to get lost in. But finally he found another small group to walk with and headed back. He watched in the reflection of a closed newsstand’s window to see if Hughes and/or his Joe Fridays were on to him.

Apparently they weren’t, because soon Michael had made it back out into the terminal lobby, his mind clicking through a thousand things, including wondering if Shore had been keeping him on the phone so Marshal Hughes could arrive and nab him.

Then he stopped in his tracks. Oh shit , he thought, sick with visions of his money and his guns catching the plane without him, going to Phoenix to make the connecting flight on their way to Reno...

He went directly to the American Airlines counter, where he sucked in a relieved breath as he saw his Samsonite still waiting amid half a dozen others to be passed through for loading.

“I’ve got a sick kid at home,” he told the woman at the counter. “I have to scrap this flight. Can I get my bag back?”

He waved his boarding pass.

“No problem, sir,” she said, with a friendly apple-cheeked smile. The blue-eyed blonde looked just a little like Pat — or was he reading in? “I remember you — you seemed distracted. I hope your, uh... little boy?”

“Little girl.”

“Hope she gets better. You can use your ticket at a later date, no problem.”

Within two minutes he was again in the yellow-lit parking lot, unlocking the driver’s side of a wine-color Lincoln that he had never expected to see again. He unlocked and opened the back door, and threw the Samsonite in on the seat. He clicked the suitcase open, got the .45 out, stuck it in his waistband, closed the case, and soon was driving out of Tucson International Airport.

The terrible reality was he had only one option: driving to Lake Tahoe. The trip would take at least a dozen hours, possibly more, and he’d already had a long traumatic day. His soldier’s detachment had saved him so far, but fatigue could eat away at that, and emotions could get out of their cage...

Right now, as he headed north, he tried to decide whether Anna was in any immediate danger.

She was not Giancana’s target. But if the “Smith family” cover had been blown due to Anna keeping in touch with Gary Grace, the girl’s current whereabouts would be known to the Outfit. The nastiest scenario he could come up with was Giancana goons snatching her and using her to get at Michael. If they already knew where she was, such a kidnapping had probably already taken place.

Bad as that was, she stayed alive.

Associate Director Shore seemed unaware of Anna’s status, although admittedly that could have been a scam. If WITSEC did know about the girl running away, and where she’d gone, Michael could do nothing about it. And the feds were no threat to her, really.

Perhaps he should call that panic number again, and send Shore after Anna, to protect her in case Giancana sent his forces after her...

...But what if it hadn’t been Anna’s indiscretion with Gary that had blown the Smiths’ cover?

What if WITSEC had sprung a leak?

Pushing the panic button in that case meant handing Anna over to their betrayer.

No .

His only option was to go after his daughter himself; and she wasn’t going anywhere, not until after prom, which was Saturday night at eight p.m.

At Cal-Neva Lodge.

One eleven a.m., still near the airport, he pulled into a Standard station and told the gawky high-school-age attendant, “Fill ’er up.”

The Lincoln’s gas tank was what, twenty-one gallons? But he was getting around ten miles to the gallon. So he bought a canister of gasoline and two quarts of oil, as well as several big jugs of water, and put them in the trunk.

The coveralled kid, in the process of cleaning the windshield, grinned as he chewed his gum and said, “Must be gettin’ ready to do some desert driving.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’re smart to do it at night.”

“Not sure ‘smart’ is the word. You got any coolers? Something on the small side?”

“Sure.”

“Throw some ice in one, and toss half a dozen cans of Coke in there, too. And a couple Snickers bars.”

“Sure thing!”

He gave the kid a twenty-keep-the-change, and then bore north on 89, going straight up through Tucson, barely noticing the slumbering city. He started with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner on low — cool enough outside without it, but he didn’t relish the rush of wind. Wasn’t like he was setting out in a buckboard into the wilderness — the Lincoln had comfy bucket seats, a Cartier clock, and plenty of headroom, not to mention horsepower.

Washed ivory in moonlight, the open plains of the desert, bordered by blue-tinged mountains, had a soothing, otherworldly beauty. Few other cars were on the road, and he had the two-lane stripe of concrete mostly to himself, often driving straight down the middle. He and Pat had taken this route to Vegas now and then, because they liked to spend the quiet time together, listening to music, enjoying the strangely peaceful landscape and the feeling that they were the only two people in the entire world.

He thought about her, various little incidents over the years, jumping from high school to just last year, from their early days in Chicago to Crystal Bay — nothing major, just tiny anecdotes that his mind kept playing for him, one memory triggering another and another.

An odd detached calmness settled over him as he drove and drove and drove. Whenever he came to a gas station, he would stop and fill up, since one never knew in the desert; many of these stations were twenty-four-hour, but the desert didn’t listen to reason, so better to keep the tank as full as possible.