James Patterson - Gone

“Why, what is this?” he said in mock surprise. “Where’d all you kids come from? Aren’t you supposed to be doing your lessons? Let me guess. The gang’s had it with everything, is that it? Y’all picking up stakes and hightailing it out of here for greener pastures?”

The kids stared at the old farmer silently, their wide eyes on the saddled black horse. They wanted to ask if they could ride, of course, but Mary Catherine had forbidden them ever to ask for anything from their long-suffering host. If he offered, they could accept, but they could never do something so rude as to ask. In the silence, Chrissy and Shawna stared up at Double Down like they were going to explode.

“Cat’s got all you guys’ tongues this morning, I see,” Cody said, peering at them. “Well, before you leave, could you do an old man one last favor? These horses of mine need to be rode, and I can’t find a cowboy or even an Indian anywhere to give them some exercise. I know it’s last-minute and all, and I do hate to impose, but do you think you crew could ride ’em for me?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Cody,” Mary Catherine said as the kids bounced up and down by the horse-yard gate. “These kids do love the horses, but there is their schoolwork to consider. Maybe we should just head back to the house and get our lessons out of the way.”

“No!!!” they all squealed, unable to contain themselves another moment.

“Horse. Need to ride horse,” Trent chanted like the goofball he was as he pretended to pass out.

“OK, OK,” Mary Catherine said, finally relenting. “Form a line, children. Excellent. There you go.”

She turned as a car came into Mr. Cody’s side yard. It was Leo, in his government-issued Crown Vic. What now? Mary Catherine thought as she rushed over.

“What is it, Leo? Is something wrong?” she said as she got to the passenger window.

“No, no. Everything is fine, Mary Catherine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought I’d see if you guys were OK one more time and say good-bye.”

Mary Catherine blinked at him rapidly.

“What do you mean? You’re leaving? You’re not going to be working here anymore?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” Leo said, smiling. “I just meant that my shift is over.”

“Oh, oh, of course, Leo,” she said, fingering a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “You didn’t have to go to all the trouble of coming out here.”

“No trouble. I wanted to,” Leo said softly, smiling as he stared into her eyes. “By the way, Juliana and Jane were saying that you guys haven’t had pizza in about a month, and I was wondering if it would be OK to pick up some for you guys for lunch today and bring it back.”

“Oh, sure. That would be nice, Leo. Really nice. The kids would love you.”

Maybe not just the kids , thought Mary Catherine.

“I’ll see you later, then, Mary Catherine,” Leo finally said.

“Later, then,” Mary Catherine whispered to herself as she watched him drive away.

Two days of sifting through the disaster in Newport Coast had yet to uncover hide or hair of Manuel Perrine. Even after we went back to Brentwood and tossed the rest of the dead smuggler Scanlon’s house and went through his phone records, we didn’t come up with one lead.

The only high point, if you could call it that, was a fresh palm print in one of the upstairs bathrooms that matched the one we had in Perrine’s file. That proved, at least, that he had been in the house and was probably still in the country.

There was some grumbling in both the bureau and the LAPD that someone in our task force might have tipped off Perrine, but I wasn’t buying it. It wasn’t so much that there couldn’t be a mouse in the house as it was that I knew Perrine was an extremely paranoid individual. There were a hundred different ways he could have learned about our siege on the house in enough time to sneak out via what Parker had come to refer to as the mansion’s “crazy man cave.” I preferred to call it the California billionaire sex chamber escape hatch myself, but I guess that was like the man we were searching for: neither here nor there.

For all my griping about the LAPD, the entire task force had come together after the botched raid and redoubled its efforts. They were all, even Bassman, extremely dedicated, extremely professional cops. It wasn’t their fault that Perrine was such a slippery fish.

On the third day after the fiasco, Parker was called off the hunt to do her FBI mandatory pistol qualification. With my partner out of commission for the day, I decided to take a much-needed break. I woke around seven and took a shower and got dressed and headed out on a self-guided day tour of LA.

Our Santa Monica hotel was on Ocean Boulevard, right across the street from a park that had enormous palm trees. As I was standing there, staring out at the Pacific glistening between the palms, a Harley chopper pulled up at the light beside me. Riding it was a white-bearded, tuxedo-clad guy with a little white Benji-like dog panting happily in his lap. A moment later, a neon-teal lowrider with an elaborate Virgin Mary painted on the hood arrived behind it.

How do you like that? I thought, watching the vehicles rumble off. One foot out the door, and I’d already spotted a random act of randomness under the sunny Cali sky.

Following the recommendation of the guy at the hotel desk, I walked over a few blocks to the Third Street Promenade. It was a really neat pedestrian-only outdoor mall lined with shops and restaurants. After a block or two of window shopping, I stopped in this place called Barney’s Beanery.

At first, I thought it was a coffee shop, until I spotted the large screens blaring a soccer game, license plates on the walls, and the line of car seats that were used as bar stools. It turned out the zany sports bar actually did have breakfast, though, so I sat and tore into a massive delicious Mexican breakfast of shredded beef and eggs and chili on flour tortillas.

After breakfast, I walked back toward a Hertz I had spotted near the hotel and rented a car. Staying off the highways, I drove around aimlessly at first, then headed inland, east up Santa Monica Boulevard. When I got to Beverly Hills, I hooked a left and somehow found myself on a twisty road called Coldwater Canyon Drive. I took it north, marveling at all the cutting-edge architectural-glass houses up and down the slopes of the Hollywood Hills.

I made a right after a while onto iconic Mulholland Drive, then another onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard. When I came to the intersection with Hollywood Boulevard, I found a garage and parked and walked around.

I did the full tourist tour. I stopped at the TCL Chinese Theatre first and looked around, smiling down at Old Hollywood’s hand- and footprints. I found the Walk of Fame, and when I came to Elvis’s star, embedded in the cement, I laughed as I snapped a pic of it for Mary Catherine, who couldn’t get enough of the King. Then I bought some postcards for the kids and, for ten bucks, had my picture taken with a Jack Sparrow pirate look-alike who was walking around.

I texted the pictures to Mary Catherine:

Just me and Johnny on the set. We’re heading over to Tom’s later to do lunch and play some hoops. How’s your day going?

She texted back:

Not as good as yours, apparently, Mr. Movie Star. Don’t let all that fame go to your head. ☺

I texted back, for some unknown reason,

But you’ll always be my number-one fan, won’t you?

Actually, I did know. I was missing home, as well as the great relationship Mary Catherine and I had had up until pretty recently.

I knew I’d probably pushed it when she didn’t text back. Then my phone beeped as I was starting the car.