“If you don’t show me that stuff, I’ll leave you.” It hurt a lot more. He didn’t have anything to say. “Besides,” said Diane, “I’m not leaving you, you’re leaving me.”
“Can I come over?”
“All of you or part of you?”
Part of me, and fuck you.
“I guess I’ll see you when I get back,” he said.
“Maybe.”
She hung up.
Good going, Neal, he thought. Well, probably for the best, anyway. You’ve raised self-pity to an art form; this will give you a chance to create another masterpiece.
He checked the clock. It was 11:30. He dialed Levine at home.
“Hi. I hope I woke you up.”
“Not exactly.”
“And you answered the phone? How is the little woman? On top of things?”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll need a safe house.”
“What’s wrong with a hotel?”
“It has other guests. I’ll need a safe house.”
Neal could hear Janet’s voice in the background. A fine whine that had improved with age.
“I’ll work on it,” Ed said. “What else?” “Cash.”
“Keep accounts.”
“When Allie ran away before, did you pick her up?”
The pause was just a shade too long. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Nice try, you lying sack of shit.
“Nothing. Listen, go back to what you were doing.”
Levine slammed the receiver down.
How come everyone’s hanging up on me tonight?
He dialed Graham.
“Dad!”
“Son…”
“Find anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“How about in Ed’s desk?”
“Zip. If we ever dealt with Allie Chase, there’s nothing there to show it.”
“Well… thanks for the effort.”
“Always a pleasure. When do you take off?”
“Tomorrow. Next day. I’m waiting on some stuff from Ed.”
“Mind if I go back to bed?”
“Sweet dreams.” He hung up quickly, just to break the pattern.
Neal rooted around the refrigerator until he found a beer hiding in the back. He popped it open and drained about half of it in the first swallow. Maybe if he just showed up at Diane’s, displayed his sweet, sad face, she’d take him in. Probably not. He finished his beer and went to bed.
The phone woke him early.
“Wake up, fuckhead,” Levine said.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Ed said. Then he hung up.
The doorbell rang about noon. Neal was making coffee, strong, black hangover coffee. The kind of coffee meant to bring life back to your fingertips. He wasn’t thrilled to hear the doorbell. Maybe it was Diane, but probably it wasn’t. He thought about ignoring it, until it went off again, machine-gun-style, as if somebody was leaning on the button.
Joe Graham was leaning on the button.
“Wakey, wakey,” he said when Neal opened the door. He didn’t wait to be asked in, but walked past Neal, sniffed the coffee, and grabbed a cup out of the cupboard. He examined it carefully. “Is this clean?”
“I washed it personally.”
“I’ll take a chance.”
He poured himself a cup, found milk and sugar, and poured in a healthy measure of each. Then he poured another cup-black, no sugar-and set it down on the counter. He lifted his own cup in a toast. “Bon voyage.”
“You know something I don’t?”
Neal took a sip of the coffee and believed once again in the possibility of a supreme, merciful God.
“I know a lot you don’t know, son, about everything, but I also know that you’re leaving tonight at eight o’clock,” Graham said. He took a ticket packet from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Neal. “I know that some guy named Simon Keyes-are you ready for this? he’s a safari guide-will meet you at the airport. He’s going to be gone most of the summer. You can use his apartment to detox the kid.”
“A safari guide? This is getting bizarre, Graham.”
Neal started on his second cup.
“He safari guided The Man once. Friend of the family, so to speak. Guess what else I know.”
“Decency doesn’t allow-”
“You’re supposed to have the kid back by August first.”
“Any particular time?”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously.”
Graham ground his rubber hand into his natural one, the way he always did when he was worried. “This coffee isn’t too horrible. I’m surprised. They also don’t want her back much before August first.”
“Children should be seen and not heard?”
“Something like that.”
Yeah, something like that, Neal thought. John Chase is walking a narrow line, and he thinks he’s the only one who knows it. He wants Allie back just long enough to play her role in “The
Waltons Go to Washington,” not long enough to sing “Daddy’s Little Girl.” He must want to be Veep pretty badly to take that kind of risk.
“Today is what, May twenty-eighth?”
“Twenty-ninth.”
“Twenty-ninth. That gives me something like nine weeks to find her, get hold of her, fix her up, and persuade her to come back, and these people want it brought in on the button? Gee, what if I can’t?”
The rubber hand was really busy now, rubbing away. Graham didn’t like this thing, either.
“If you can’t bring her in on the date… forget it,” he said.
“Forget it?”
Graham shrugged. It was an eloquent gesture, the answer to a Zen koan.
“Yeah, okay,” Neal said. “I get it.”
Allie is useful for a few days if it’s the right few days. Otherwise, leave her where she is.
“Smells, right?” Graham said, rubbing a sheen onto the rubber hand.
“Like a garbage strike in July.”
“Right?”
Graham poured another cup. Neal saw he wasn’t finished with the news.
“What else do you know?” Neal asked.
“Your graduass-school thing. You can pick it up again.” Graham stirred the sugar in with great care. “Next fall.”
Could be worse, Neal thought. They could have just tossed me out. But the rubber hand was turning again. There was more, and he knew what it was.
“If I bring Allie back by August first.”
Graham frowned and nodded.
The sound of one hand clapping.
Part Two
The Main Drag
13
Foggy london town was sunny and hot, really hot. Summer had taken an early jump on spring. Neal stepped out of Heathrow’s struggling air conditioning into an outdoor sauna.
“A bit on the warm side, I’m afraid,” said Simon. “We’re on to having a drought, actually. Everything is turning sort of monochromatic brown.”
“I thought it rained all the time here,” Neal said.
“I’m glad I’m off to Africa, where it’s cooler,” Simon answered.
Neal laughed politely at the joke, until Simon’s puzzled expression told him he wasn’t joking.
“It is, actually, cooler there. Have you ever been?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
Simon was an eccentric. Neal guessed his age at late fifties, but knew he could be ten years off in either direction. He was tall and angular, with an Adam’s apple that belonged to a different species, and he walked with that particularly British purposefulness that people find so endearing or annoying. With the temperature tilting toward eighty, it tended toward the latter.
Simon was wearing a pink striped shirt, leaf green trousers, paisley ascot, blue argyle socks, and shoes that looked like moccasins but laced up. All this was topped off by a gray head with the odd lock of brown, shiny blue eyes, and a nose that should have been on Mount Rushmore, except it’s a small mountain.
He was a friend of Kitteredge, had taken Ethan and wife on safari, and based himself out of London. He found very little in the civilized world of much interest, and therefore could be trusted never to reveal the story of Allie Chase. He was to be Neal’s London host.
“I’m off in a week, actually, but that should give us time. I gather I’m to be your local expert. You’re some sort of man hunter, or some such thing.”