Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

“Betty? It’s Michael.”

“Michael! Is something wrong?”

The response was appropriate: two months ago, Pat had made a supervised phone call, through the WITSEC switchboard, to inform her sister of their situation, to tell Betty that the family had been relocated by the Witness Protection Program, but not giving her their location or new names. He and Pat had the right and ability to make other such WITSEC-routed calls to Betty, their only close living relative, but hadn’t chosen to.

Betty’s husband, Ralph, was a nice guy but a born-again preacher of some kind, spun off from the Baptists, who were just not Holy Roller enough. Pat and Betty had rarely talked in recent years, because their conversations always deteriorated into political arguments. Nonetheless, the O’Hara sisters had grown up together and had been close for decades, until wild girl Betty suddenly got saved, after her second divorce, and grew a stick up her ass.

Carefully, he said, “You haven’t heard anything?”

“Haven’t heard what? Michael, what is this about ?”

She sounded irritated, which was typical, but also frightened.

“Betty, I have bad news.”

“...Oh no. What is it? Should I sit down, Mike? I should be sitting down, shouldn’t I?... It’s Patsy Ann, isn’t it? Is she sick?”

“We lost her, Betty.”

Silence.

“Do you understand, Betty?”

The voice returned, with a tremor in it. “What... Mike, what happened?”

“She was killed, Betty. Our house was attacked by the people I’m supposed to testify against, and they killed her.”

“Oh my God... Oh dear Jesus.” She wasn’t swearing; but she wasn’t exactly praying, either. “Anna! What about Anna?”

He told his wife’s sister in almost no detail that Pat had been murdered in her sleep. That neither he nor Anna had been harmed, but that his daughter and he were on the road, and in danger.

“ You did this to her! You did this to her! You and those gangsters you work for. Gambling and drinking and debauchery... you did this!”

He sighed. It would be unkind to point out that, in her time, Betty had indulged in far more gambling and drinking and debauchery than either Michael or Patricia.

Then her voice changed. “...Michael, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m so sorry that I...”

“Blame me if you like, Betty,” he said without rancor. “I really don’t mind. If it helps you, blame me.”

“What good d would it do? Nothing will bring her back. Was she... right with the Lord, Michael?”

“She loved Jesus very much, Betty,” he lied. “We were talking about it just the night before she died.”

“Thank God. Praise Jesus. What can I do to help, Michael? What can Ralph and I do?”

“I need you to do right by your sister.”

“How?”

“I’m going to give you a phone number and a name.”

“I’ll get something to write with...” Ten seconds later, she said, “Ready.”

He gave her the number and said, “Talk to Harold Shore, he’s the associate director of the OCRS — the government agency we were dealing with.”

“ Were dealing with...? You’re not anymore?”

“No. For obvious reasons, I don’t have a high opinion of their ability to protect me and what’s left of my family.”

“Does that... include us?”

“You and Ralph are in no danger. Anna won’t be, either, when I’m out of the picture.”

“What does that mean, ‘out of the picture’?”

“It means people are trying to kill me, and they may well succeed. But in the meantime, you call Director Shore and tell him you want to claim your sister’s body.”

A sudden intake of breath leaped from the receiver. “Oh, Michael... I hadn’t even thought it through that far...”

“I’m sure the government can have Pat’s body sent to your local mortuary. I know they’ll do that much for us.”

“Michael, oh... oh, Patsy...”

“I won’t be able to attend the funeral. Neither will Anna. That would be a high-risk proposition, our being there... but not for anyone else. Pat had a life in DeKalb. Friends. History. I’d like her to be buried next to her parents in the cemetery there.”

“All right, Michael. All right.”

“I’ll send you money for—”

“I’d like you to let Ralph and me handle that, Michael.”

“Well, actually, that’s generous. Kind. Loving, but I need you to buy a plot for me, too. I’ll want to be buried next to my wife — when the time comes.”

“Oh, Michael...” She was crying. “...Forgive me for being so... so darn terrible.”

Yes, “darn” terrible. Betty wasn’t allowed to be “goddamn” terrible, anymore...

“There’s one other thing, Betty... There’s a chance Anna may turn up on your doorstep one of these days.”

“We’d love to have her,” she said, in a painfully forced, upbeat way. “Sheila’s only two years younger than Anna, and they could be like... like sisters.”

Betty was crying again. He heard a male voice, Ralph’s, saying, “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”

Michael let her deal with her husband, then when she returned, told her, “I’m hoping, if something happens to me, that Anna will go to college there in DeKalb, and have you folks to fall back on. So she’s not... alone in the world. Would that be agreeable?”

“Of course it would, Michael.”

“She’ll have her own money.”

“Well, Ralph and I would be glad—”

“No. She’s a young woman, and she will be self-sufficient. What you don’t know, Betty, is that Anna was married recently.”

“Married! At her age! Michael, that’s—”

“Her young husband was murdered yesterday. He caught a bullet meant for me.”

“Ooooh... oh God...”

Fear in her voice now. Finally. Good.

“Betty, these are deep, dark waters. And treacherous. If she comes to you, treat Anna like a grown-up, because she is one, or anyway will need to be. And she won’t have time for ... or, knowing her... patience with any sanctimonious bullshit. You just be a good loving aunt to her. I don’t mean to be unkind, but am I clear on that?”

“You are,” she said, nothing irritated in her voice at all now. “I promise you that, Michael.”

“Thank you, Betty,” he said, and hung up.

In the morning, Anna woke before him. She had already showered and was in bell-bottom jeans and wedge sandals and a dark blue scoop-neck tank top, all that brown hair cascading down her back. She was brushing her teeth when he approached, still in his commando black.

“What’s,” she said, and spit out toothpaste into the sink, “with the getup?”

“Oh. I slipped out for a little while last night, after you went to sleep.”

“Ninja convention in town?”

“There’s a powerful man I had to see.”

“What... one of your gangster friends?”

“Sort of. I needed to make sure where we stood with him.”

She rinsed, spat. “Where do we stand, Daddy?”

“He’s with us. I think.”

“Oh. Well, gee, that’s comforting. But other people still want us dead?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head, smirked humorlessly, said, “Bathroom’s yours,” and brushed past him.

He shat, showered, shaved, changed into a fresh Banlon, rust-color, and tan trousers. He was brushing his teeth when Anna popped up in the bathroom doorway, as he had done with her.

“What’s the plan?”

“The plan,” he said, and spat into the sink, “is to keep us both alive.”

“Okay. But with Mom dead, and Gary, being alive doesn’t quite have the... appeal like it used to, huh?” Her eyes were filled with tears that belied her flip manner. She’d had twelve hours of sleep to replenish her tear ducts.