Which meant Anna and her rubber-sporting beau were at a restaurant in Reno, or on their way back, or possibly even were already at the Cal-Neva...
But Gary’s otherwise specific note (the handwriting was not Anna’s) did not indicate what restaurant...
He sat on the edge of the bed, but for just a moment, standing up as if the sheets had been hot; he looked back at the rumpled bedding and shuddered. As he left the boy’s bedroom, he knew that any hope of heading them off here, at the Grace home, before the prom, was as empty as those Trojan wrappers.
The house he’d already prowled before checking the bedroom — making sure he was truly alone — and had seen enough slate floors, knotty pine, rush-matting, and cane-seating to last a lifetime. But back in the kitchen a pile of unopened mail on the counter tweaked his interest; among various bills, he found one from the phone company.
Within seconds he was staring at the Graces’ monthly Ma Bell damage — which included ten long-distance calls to the number of the Smith family in Tucson, all in the last two weeks, juxtaposed beside dollar-and-cents figures sure to dismay the Graces when they got home... unless four-hundred-buck-plus phone bills were the norm around here.
He helped himself to some sandwich meat in the Amana fridge and settled for a can of Tab to wash it down. Then he gathered his daughter’s overnight bag — carrying it in his left hand to leave his right free for the .45 if need be — and returned to the Lincoln in the driveway. He stowed her bag in back with his Samsonite, which he opened, withdrawing a white shirt and a dark blue tie, putting them and his gray sport jacket on; he stuck the dirty clothes in the suitcase and snapped it closed.
Poised to get in on the driver’s side, he looked at the sky. Dusk had given over to night, and the same clear starry tapestry with full moon that accompanied him across the desert was waiting for him at Tahoe.
He said silently to the sky, This isn’t a prayer. But if Pat was wrong, and you are out there, not dead like some people say... I could use any help you want to give me, getting Anna out of here to safety.
Dispensing with the “amen,” but this time not giving God the finger at least, he left the Grace home and Pineview development and headed for Crystal Bay. Driving up the pine-framed “strip” of Lake Tahoe, the familiar glowing garish neons — crystal bay club, nevada lodge, bal tabarin, cal-neva — welcomed him home; but they seemed unreal. Was he asleep behind the wheel of the Lincoln, out in the desert, dreaming and about to run off the road...?
The Cal-Neva lot was brimming with luxury cars; but here and there a Chevy II or Plymouth Fury or GTO nestled between vinyl-topped Eldorados and Rivieras — one indication of the prom going on in the Indian Lounge tonight. Another was the steady stream of sideburned guys in tuxes (red or white or light blue, never black) with ruffled shirts and bow ties the size of small aircraft, arm-in-arm with shellac-haired gals in frilly pastel Guinevere gowns heading into the A-frame lodge under a banner shouting: welcome class of ’73!
Near the front a Mercedes pulled out and glided off, and Michael slipped the Lincoln into the spot, gaining a perfect clear path to the front entry; then he sat in the dark watching teenage couples go in, and considered his options.
If Anna and Gary weren’t back from Reno yet, he could simply wait for them, and grab the girl on the Cal-Neva doorstep. But that Reno reservation was for five, and the two kids could have eaten and made it back to the Cal-Neva by as early as six thirty or seven.
And it was almost eight o’clock now...
Michael exited the Lincoln, his manner seemingly casual, but keeping his right hand ready for the .45 in his waistband. He strolled around the side of the building where fir trees and darkness conspired with a recession in the building, between added-on sections of the lodge, to allow him to climb a drain pipe to the slanting roof, walking Groucho-style up to where it flattened out.
Sinatra’s most grandiose excess awaited Michael — a rooftop heliport atop the Celebrity Showroom that had not been used since the days (and nights) when the Chairman of the Board had flown Jack and/or Bobby Kennedy in from Sacramento, or Dino or Marilyn or the McGuire Sisters from Hollywood. As the moon lengthened Michael’s shadow across the rooftop, he ran on those quiet crepe soles to the dormer housing a doorway to a stairwell.
Padlocked on the other side, the door had panels so weathered and thin that Michael tapped one with an elbow and it splintered.
The unlighted stairs were not difficult to navigate; they led to a landing with off shoot stairs down to performer dressing rooms as well as a side door to the Sinatra Celebrity Showroom. The main stairs, however, took Michael below to the cement-block-walled tunnel with its indoor-outdoor carpeting and nest of overhead pipes. From this juncture the tunnel snaked under the kitchen, casino, and Circle Bar, coming back up to provide a pathway to what had been Michael’s office.
As far as Michael knew, the last time the secret stone-pillar fireplace “door” had been used, an assassin had come into the office and got immediately shot and killed for the trouble. He hoped the new Cal-Neva manager, whoever that might be, wasn’t as quick on the trigger; at least he knew the Garand rifle wasn’t over the mantel anymore — it was in the suitcase in his car, in pieces.
The scraping of stone on stone was unavoidable, so Michael shoved it the hell open, and burst in the office, fanning the .45 around what appeared to be an empty room, illuminated only by the picture window filtering in moonbeams and their reflection off the lake.
The new manager wasn’t here, at least not in his office. Nothing much seemed to have changed, but for a wall arrayed with celebrity and politician photos; they were hanging crooked, which was nothing new for the politicos, anyway.
He cracked the door and looked out into a dark hallway of offices; busy casino noise, and the laughter of those high school kids, echoed down from the lodge — the Indian Lounge was nearby.
He recalled what Anna had said about their home in Paradise Estates — that she felt like a ghost haunting her own house. Michael had that same bizarre sensation setting foot in the Indian Lounge again — his ten years at the Cal-Neva had been his single longest stint at any one facility, and no job had pleased him more; no workplace could have been a better fit.
Now the most familiar face at Cal-Neva over the last decade relegated himself to the shadows of the lounge, which was suitably darkened for the occasion. That was why he’d put on the shirt and tie with sport jacket, to better fit in with the parent chaperones who would be staying on the sidelines, not bugging the kids.
The lounge had the usual streamers and crepe-paper balls in green and gold, the school colors, and another banner over the stage — where a cover band in pirate shirts and bell-bottoms bellowed, “Slow Ride, take it easy!” — said, prom ’73 — highland fling! (the school teams were the Highlanders).
But the open-beamed lounge’s natural decor would have overwhelmed the most ambitious decorating committee, with its black California/Nevada state line painted on the floor through the massive sixty-foot granite-boulder fireplace, and natural wood walls arrayed with deer, elk, and bear trophies and Indian art and blankets.
At least fifty couples were out on the dance floor and at the round tables with gold or green cloths, and the sea of red, white, and light blue tuxes and froufrou pastel gowns made the kids fairly interchangeable in the dim green light. The cover band was doing a badly out-of-tune “Bridge Over Troubled Water” now, but the couples clutching each other out there didn’t seem to mind. He moved along the periphery, trying to get a better vantage point, hoping to spot Anna and Gary...