Danny shrugged, grinned. “Jamoke. My dad’s favorite insult.”
“You grew up on the Cape, right?”
“Yep. Wellfleet.”
“But not McMansion Wellfleet, I’m betting.”
“Not even close.”
“I forget if you told me, he was a plumber like my dad, right?”
“Contractor. Carpenter, really-that’s what he most loved doing.”
“Bet he was good at it.”
“He was great. A real craftsman. Meticulous. But a lousy businessman.”
“My dad was a good businessman but not exactly meticulous.” He laughed. “But everyone loved him. Did you say your dad passed?”
“No, they’re both alive.”
“Lucky. Mine are gone. Funny how the relationship changes when they get old. You start giving them advice. They even listen to you once in a while. They need your help, and you don’t need theirs anymore.”
Danny nodded.
Galvin went on, “Whatever stuff you went through, whatever ticked you off about your mom and dad, you just move on from that. You take care of them, because that’s what you do.”
Danny nodded. “Dad’s starting to lose it, you know, so we may have to put him in a home pretty soon. But he’s gonna go kicking and screaming.”
“I see the way you look at Abby. I see it in your eyes. You’d do anything to keep her safe.”
Danny felt tears spring to his eyes. “You know it.”
“I mean, I’d kill to protect my family. Bet you’d do the same.”
Danny nodded, uncertain what he was getting at. He looked Galvin in the face, just as he heard Celina say, “What big trouble are you two plotting?”
“Morning, babes,” Galvin said as they kissed.
“Good morning,” Danny said.
He thought about what Galvin had just said. He’d kill to protect his family. From anybody else, that would be a figure of speech.
From Galvin, though, it sounded awfully like a threat.
45
Celina made French toast and bacon for breakfast, which they had along with the pastries from the coffee shop, and then they all suited up and took the Silver Queen Gondola to the summit of Aspen Mountain, six of them in one cabin. The sun glinted off the snow trails, dazzling ice-encrusted trees, the skinny pine trees far below like the bristles of a coarse brush.
The three Galvins were wearing expensive ski outfits. Jenna had on a gold down jacket and ski pants that looked like blue denim but weren’t. Her mother wore a long silver metallic coat with a fur collar, too high fashion to be practical on the slopes. Tom had a bright yellow Salomon parka that resembled a rain slicker with a high collar. A bright green-and-yellow-striped knit cap with a pompom. With that outfit, Danny thought, he should be easy to spot at a distance.
The girls sat on the bench facing the adults and didn’t stop talking the whole way. Abby wore the hot-pink Helly Hansen ski parka that Sarah had bought her a couple of years ago, a little worn and a size too small.
Lucy held Danny’s hand. She leaned in close and said, under her voice, “She really looks happy, doesn’t she?”
Danny nodded. In the bright light, he could see a few faint freckles across Lucy’s nose. She hated her freckles, usually hid them with makeup. He thought they were adorable. She was wearing a light blue down jacket with a blue scarf and white pants that made her great legs look even greater.
Abby paused in midsentence and looked at them. She had the hearing of a bat, at least when she was the subject of conversation.
“We’ve never skied before, have we?” Lucy said.
“This is a first.”
“You know I’m pretty good at this sport, right?”
“I’m not surprised. You’re good at most sports.”
“You’re not going to be embarrassed, I hope.”
“At what?”
“At how much better a skier I am.” She said it with a coy smile, almost flirtatiously.
“Not at all. I’ll be inspired, more likely. You make me a better man.”
“That’s for sure,” she said with a laugh.
But Danny wasn’t thinking about skiing.
He was thinking about a way out. The DEA had him in a corner, it was true, but that didn’t make him powerless. If he were actually able to snap a picture of whoever Galvin was supposed to be meeting with, then he’d have something the DEA wanted.
You want the pictures? How about I get a letter of immunity? Signed by the DEA and the Department of Justice and whoever the hell else was necessary to make it ironclad. The president, if need be. A guarantee that he would never be indicted for anything to do with Galvin.
That would finally banish the threat hanging over his head, which kept them coming back and coming back. He was fed up with being a marionette. The only way to cut the strings was to be ruthless.
But how safe would it be to trail Galvin? If he were actually meeting someone from the Sinaloa drug cartel, he’d take precautions against being followed. And Danny was a writer, not a spy. Not a trained intelligence operative. He didn’t know the first thing about surveillance. From everything he’d read on the subject-mostly, he had to admit, spy thrillers-following someone without being detected was a skill acquired by a professional after long practice. Not a skill he had. No way.
Short of chaining himself to Tom Galvin’s ski boots, there was simply no way to make sure Galvin didn’t go off somewhere during the course of the afternoon. Galvin could ski down the mountain and disappear into the streets of Aspen. He could meet someone at a café, a restaurant, a bar, and Danny would never know about it.
All he could do was keep Galvin in sight as long as possible. And hope he got lucky.
At the top of the mountain, they got off the gondola, snapped into their skis, and gathered to confer.
“There aren’t any green trails?” Abby asked, trying to sound casual. She swallowed hard.
“Just intermediate and expert,” Danny said. “You can snowplow for a while until you get used to it. It’ll all come back to you. Wasn’t it you who said it’s like riding a bike?”
“The blue trails really aren’t so scary,” Jenna said.
The girls didn’t want to ski with the oldsters, and who could blame them? Abby pulled her goggles into place, and the two of them started down the slope, a blue trail called Easy Chair, which didn’t in fact look particularly easy.
Celina said, “Everyone: One thirty at the Sundeck for lunch?” She pointed at the building behind them. “Okay? Girls? Yes?”
Jenna waved an impatient acknowledgment to her mother, and the two girls were off. If Abby was nervous about her skiing ability, she was no longer showing it.
A minute or so later, the adults set off down the same slope, giving the girls enough of a head start to be on their own. Galvin was nimble and graceful, clearly an expert. Lucy was even better. Celina was good, about on par with Danny.
They quickly came to a juncture with a black trail.
“What do you think, Danny?” Lucy said. “Stay with the blue?”
Galvin said, “I’ll probably be doing mostly black trails. Don’t worry about trying to keep up with me.”
There was no way to explain to Lucy why he needed to stay with Galvin at all times. He hesitated a moment, then said to Galvin, “I’ll be fine,” and he followed Galvin toward the expert trail, leaving Lucy and Celina behind.
The black trails weren’t easy. They were scary at times, with some incredibly steep runs, but Danny managed to keep up with Galvin, more or less, for the next two hours or so. They skied on black diamond trails, but not double black diamond ones. The difficult ones, but not the “expert only” ones. He took a few spills, wounding just his dignity. He worried about the camera, hoped the down padding would protect it from damage.