CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Travis’s heart pounded furiously as he
crossed the parking lot, stifling the urge to shoot a glance back
toward his parents. This was his idea, after all, and he refused to
look as frightened as he felt. In less than twenty-four hours,
everything about his life had changed, and he was sick and tired of
not having a role in it. This was his contribution. At least now
they’d all go to jail together.
As he climbed the four steps to the
front door, he reviewed what he was supposed to say one more time
in his head. Much of it made no sense to him, but his parents had
assured him that it wouldn’t matter; that Uncle Harry—whoever the
hell he was—would know everything.
The aroma of bacon grew stronger as he
approached the top step, and as soon as he pulled the door open,
that aroma mingled with stale cigarette smoke and the sulfury odor
of eggs. Homer and Jane’s was packed and noisy, filled with people
who looked like they might be on their way to work.
Travis paused in the doorway, holding
up traffic for a few seconds as he surveyed the place and tried to
locate the telephone.
“Make a hole, kid,” said a man dressed
all in denim and sporting a saucer-size belt buckle. Travis stepped
out of the way, but the man nudged him aside, anyway. Not a push
exactly, but it wasn’t friendly, either.
A stern-faced woman approached from
the other side of the diner, wearing a grease-stained waitress
uniform and a scrungy hairnet. “Can I help you?” According to the
guy who just asked for more coffee, her name was
Peggy.
Travis smiled politely, trying to look
the part of a wayward kid. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m wondering if
you have a pay phone?”
Whatever the waitress saw in the boy
garnered more suspicion than empathy. “Are you here
alone?”
What
difference does that make? he didn’t say. “Um, no,
ma’am. My folks are out in the car waiting for me.”
Peggy’s eyes narrowed, as if to shoot
him with X rays. Apparently, he looked like a vandal or something.
Finally, she pointed to the right rear corner of the dining room,
where he could just make out the image of a telephone through the
thick haze of smoke.
He forced another smile.
“Thanks.”
Far from a culinary expert, Travis
nevertheless surmised that this place was a dump. Every booth was
either torn or tilted, and most bore more gray duct tape than aqua
Naugahyde. He tried to look calm and impassive—friendly, even—as he
strolled down the center aisle, surrounded by a dozen pictures of
his parents, held up high for everyone to see while they read the
morning news.
The telephone hung from the wall just
outside the rest rooms, and, judging from the looming stench,
someone had just pinched off a pipe-choker. Certain that everyone
was watching, he lifted the receiver from its cradle and punched
“0” plus the telephone number he’d memorized in the car. He used
the same mnemonic, in fact, that his parents had used over the
years to keep the number burned into their brains.
“I’d like to make a collect call to
Harry Sinclair, please,” he said to the operator after she’d picked
up.
“Who’s calling, please?” the operator
asked.
Travis’s heart stopped. What should he
tell her? Mom and Dad didn’t mention this question. He kept the
operator waiting long enough for her to ask if he was still on the
line. “Huh?” he said, startled by the voice’s intrusion into his
frantic thoughts. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I’m still here. Tell him it’s
Mr. Donnolly.”
“Mister Donnolly?”
“No, Donovan!” he corrected himself
quickly. Shit!
“Uh-huh. Which is it, sir?” Clearly,
the operator trusted him about as much as Peggy did.
“It’s Donovan,” he said firmly.
“Travis Donovan.” What the
hell. At this point, he’d sound suspicious no matter
what he said. He tucked the phone in tight against his shoulder and
looked around to see if anyone was watching. So far, so
good.
A gruff voice answered on the fourth
ring. “Yeah?”
“I have a collect call from Travis
Donnolly for Harry Sinclair.”
“Donovan!” Travis countered.
She did that on
purpose!
The line was quiet for a second.
“Travis Donovan?” the gruff voice asked. “We don’t know no Travis
Donovan.”
“I’m Sunshine’s son,” Travis added
quickly.
More silence.
“Will you accept the charges?” the
operator pressed.
The answer came slowly, suspiciously.
“Yeah, we’ll accept.”
Travis let out a breath he didn’t even
know he’d been holding. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. After the
operator left them with a click, the boy said, “Uncle
Harry?”
“No,” the voice said sourly. “I’m a
friend of his. Who are you really?” The threat in his voice was
heavy; palpable even eight hundred miles away.
The sound of the voice launched a
shiver down Travis’s spine. “I’m really me,” he insisted. “I’m
Sunshine’s kid.”
“This isn’t a joke, is it, kid?” the
voice pressed. “This is the wrong number if this is a
joke.”
Travis swallowed hard. “N-no, this
isn’t a joke,” he stammered. “M-my mom and dad need Uncle Harry’s
help.”
Again, the phone line filled with
silence. “Okay,” the voice said finally. “Hang on a
minute.”
Travis nodded absently. “Okay,” he
said. Fact was, the guy on the other end had unnerved him enough
that he’d stay right there all day and into the night, if he had
to.
“Holy shit, we got ’em!” Paul Boersky
whooped, drawing Irene’s attention away from her mountain of paper.
“The tap on Harry Sinclair’s phone. Not three hours old, and we
already got a hit!”
“Where?” Irene’s voice buzzed with
excitement. She had a call scheduled with Frankel in an hour and a
half, and this was exactly the kind of scoop she prayed
for.
Paul turned his attention back to the
telephone and relayed Irene’s question. “They don’t have it pinned
down completely, but it looks like it’s from West Virginia. Some
place called Winston Springs.”
“Hot damn!” Irene rejoiced. “They’re
recording everything, presume?”
“As we speak,” Paul announced. The
room came alive, with war whoops and high-fives all
around.
While Paul stayed on the line for
updates, Irene set herself to the task of siccing the West Virginia
State Police onto her fugitives.
Harry Sinclair realized he probably
should have mentioned his suspicions to Thorne. Truth be known,
he’d been expecting the call since the news first broke yesterday,
and while entirely unsure how he could be of much help, he remained
committed to doing whatever he could.
He hadn’t counted on the Justice
Department, however. Periodically, they put taps on his phones, but
never before at a time when they could do any real harm.
Thankfully, Harry knew when the taps were to go into place,
courtesy of a well-placed associate in the Chicago District of the
U.S. Attorney’s Office. Harry grew up with the guy’s father back in
the old days on the South Side and invested a few bucks in the deli
he owned downtown. When the friend got hammered by the Health
Department on some technical violations, Harry made a couple of
calls to the Mayor’s Office and got him off the hook. Even fronted
the money to make the necessary repairs. Kids from the old
neighborhood still knew what loyalty was all about.
The timing of Travis’s call could not
have been worse. As soon as Thorne told him who was on the line—and
after he got over the shock of it being a kid—Harry knew they’d lit
a short fuse. How short, exactly, he couldn’t tell.
As Thorne brought the news, Harry
instinctively checked his watch. “How long has he been on the
line?” he asked.
Thorne shrugged. “Three minutes,
maybe?”
Harry nodded. “Okay, scramble the call
for a couple of minutes, then bring it up on the digital
phone.”
Over the course of the next three or
four minutes, the kid’s call would be transferred electronically
all over the world, ultimately ending up on a private line in
Harry’s Dallas office—officially listed as the residence of a
priest—and his staffer there would transfer the call at random to
one of four digital phones at the house whose crystals were changed
every four days, making them virtually impossible to track. Such
precautions were a pain in the ass, but Harry had learned the hard
way just how adept his competition was getting at electronic
eavesdropping. Just two years ago, in fact, he’d lost a
billion-dollar communications contract by a margin of less than a
thousand dollars to a wiseass Texas redneck, and he knew then that
the rules of engagement had changed. Now this business of
call-scrambling was more the rule than the exception. That it also
frustrated the occasional eavesdropper-with-a-badge was just so
much icing on the cake.
The phone tap shouldn’t have been a
surprise, he supposed. God knew they’d slapped them on before, with
far less cause. Nothing pissed off the Justice Department quite as
much as the act of making a lot of money while employing thousands
of workers. If you could do that, then you had to be doing
something illegal. Unless you contributed to the president’s
reelection campaign, of course, and Harry would light a bonfire
with his fortune before he gave a dime to that S.O.B. He’d already
slept in the White House, thank you very much, and truth be told,
the Four Seasons was a hell of a lot more comfortable.
The instant he got word of the tap,
he’d set his lawyers to work getting it quashed. These things took
time, though, and the FBI had undoubtedly snagged a recording of
the kid’s call being accepted by Thorne. That could be a problem.
Didn’t take much these days to establish enough probable cause to
cut a warrant, and with that paper in hand, they’d tear his place
apart looking for Sunshine. He sighed. The Justice Department lived
for moments like this.
Harry’s war with the feds dated back
to the midseventies, when Chicago’s congressional representative
woke up one morning and realized to his horror that Harry was
buying up much of the most valuable real estate in the city and
that every penny of the tycoon’s generous campaign contributions
was going to the wrong party. Alleging unfair competitive
practices, the congressman told an all-too-sympathetic president,
who in turn whispered a few words to the attorney
general.
And so it was, a few years later, that
Harry Sinclair was sentenced to federal prison for income tax
violations that would have netted anyone else in the country a
wrist slap and a fine.
As outrageously unfair as it was, the
experience proved a real eyeopener. Five years was a long time to
live in a concrete room, denied privacy and sunlight, while choking
down the double-fried slave shit they called food—although not
nearly as long as the eight they’d slapped him with initially.
Those were years that he’d never get back; places he’d never visit,
deals he’d never close.
These days, Harry enjoyed the simple
pleasures, rarely making an appearance in his palatial offices
downtown. When the mood struck, he’d take a float in the pool or
maybe indulge in a round of golf. He had managers now to handle the
day-to-day crap. The time had come for him to reap the benefits of
his empire.
Freedom meant everything to Harry; he
wouldn’t wish jail on anybody. Now his Sunshine’s freedom was at
risk again, and he couldn’t bear the thought. He felt an emotion
boiling in his gut that he hadn’t felt in years—not since he’d
stepped away from the negotiating end of the business. He felt
himself bracing for war.
When he heard the chirp of a digital
phone, Harry stood from behind his desk and strolled to the blue
leather sofa along the opposite wall. Always a man of considerable
girth, there was a jiggle now to his ample gut, where once it
appeared to have been made of stone.
Thorne handed him the telephone.
“Thank you,” he said, then motioned for the other man to stick
around. Pausing a moment to find the proper demeanor, he punched
the connect button. “Yes?”
“Is this Uncle Harry?” a boy’s voice said from
the other end of the line, frustration growling in his
throat.
“It is.”
“Finally!” Travis blurted. “God, I
thought I’d never get through to you. Jeeze!”
Harry said nothing while the boy
ranted, waiting instead for him to settle down to listen. He caught
on quickly. The flurry of words ended, replaced with an
uncomfortable silence.
“Hello?” Travis asked. “Are you still
there?”
“Are you finished?” Harry’s tone
carried a stern rebuke.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I just . . .”
Travis stopped himself in midsentence, and as he did, Harry watched
in his mind as the boy calmed himself and got to the business at
hand. “Okay, Uncle Harry, I’m Travis Brighton . . . No, I’m not,
dammit . . . oh, sorry . . . I’m Travis Donovan. You don’t know me, but . .
.”
Harry interrupted. “I know who you
are, son. Now, tell me what you want.” Another deep breath from the
other end and then a nervous chuckle. Finally, the kid found the
handle for his tongue, and he recited the information that his
folks had given him.
Two minutes into the monologue, Harry
stood again and began to pace the carpet. This was the craziest
thing he’d heard in a long, long time.
Paul Boersky slammed the phone down
hard enough to knock a book off the desk. “They lost the
call.”
Irene, on the other line with the West
Virginia State Police, told them to hold on for a minute. “Come
again?” she said. I dare
you went unspoken.
Never a great one at temper control,
Paul launched a trash can across the conference room with his foot.
“They’re onto us. As soon as they took the call, they scrambled it.
I don’t know how, exactly, but they busted the tap. We got
nothing.”
Irene set her jaw, then shook it off.
Murphy’s Law governed all investigations to one degree or another,
but never before had she handled one where Murphy was this much in
command. She said nothing to Paul, whose tantrum seemed to have
peaked, and turned her attention back to Sergeant Bower in West
Virginia.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she said
heavily. “We just got a bit of bad news on our end. Here’s your
opportunity to cheer up my day. Found the number yet?”
She heard some paper-shuffling on the
other end before Bower spoke up. “Got it,” he said. “Homer and
Jane’s Roadside Diner. I can have a unit there in twenty
minutes.”
Irene cringed. “Twenty minutes? Is
that the best you can do?”
Bower chuckled. “This ain’t the big
city, Agent Rivers. Things take time out here. I can guarantee
we’ll do our best for you, how’s that?”
Irene smiled. “I never doubted that
for a moment. Tell your folks to be careful, though. The Donovans
are slippery and they’re desperate.”
This time Bower laughed out loud. “My
troopers work real hard to make our customers be careful around
us, ma’am.”
“Okey-doke, Sergeant. Then you just
have your folks go do what they do best.” She looked at her watch.
No chance, she thought.
Jake and Carolyn were specialists at staying ahead of the law.
Christ, they’d already made it from Phoenix, South Carolina, to
Winston Springs, West Virginia. If nothing else, they knew how to
stay out of reach. No way would they still be there in twenty
minutes.
Hanging up the phone, she turned to
the task of calming Paul. Poor guy was working like a galley slave
to keep his career afloat, and every time he fixed a leak, they
took on another torpedo. Amazing how fragile a career could become.
Like it or not, his was tied to hers, and hers was cloaked in a
suit of eggshell.
“There are grown-ups waiting to use
the phone, young man.” It was Peggy, now sporting a brand-new
grease stain on the front of her apron, and an expression like
she’d just drunk a quart of lemon juice.
Travis covered the receiver and tried
his best to be polite. “Tell them to wait a minute,” he said. Okay,
so much for polite.
Peggy made a face, then flashed a
two-fingered “V” in front of her nose. “Two minutes, smart mouth,”
she warned. “Two minutes, then you’re off the phone.” As she
stormed away, Travis successfully fought the urge to flash a
onefingered wave of his own.
“Listen carefully, boy,” Harry said.
“Tell your parents that the FBI knows where you are. No need to
panic, but they’ll be on their way soon, I’m sure.”
“I gotta go, then,” Travis said
hurriedly. Need or no need, the panic came, anyway.
“Wait!” Harry commanded. “I only need
a half minute. I’ll see what I can do about convincing this friend
of your parents’—Nick Thomas, right?—to cooperate. For the time
being, though, we’ve got to figure out a way to get you and your
folks out of there. Are there any landmarks? A place where we can
meet?”
Travis leaned away from the wall,
trying to get a look out of the front windows, but all he saw was
Peggy, who’d stationed herself in the middle of the aisle, fists
planted on her hips. “I—I don’t know.”
Harry sighed heavily. “Okay, do you
know which way the roads run? North-south? East-west?”
Travis shook his head, feeling
embarrassed; like he showed up for a test without studying. “No, I
don’t.”
Another sigh. Actually, this one
sounded more like a growl. “All right. Listen. Here’s what I want
you to tell your parents. At midnight tonight, a white car will
pull off to the side of the road, precisely two miles to the right
of the diner where you’re calling from. Got that?”
Travis wasn’t sure. “To the
right?”
“Yes, dammit, to the right. We don’t
know north and south, so we’re doing left and right. You stand out
on the road facing the
diner and hold out your right hand. Exactly two miles in that
direction.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say okay unless you’ve truly
got it,” Harry warned.
“No, really. Two miles. Got it.”
Sensing that Peggy was listening to every word, Travis pivoted back
toward the stink of the rest rooms as he spoke.
“Okay, boy, now you all need to find a
place to hide for the rest of the day. I don’t care where it is,
but when I say hide, I really mean hide. Until midnight, when you
need to be at the rendezvous point. Are you still with
me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t grunt at me, kid. I need yeses
or noes.”
“Yes, I’m with you.”
“Wonderful. Now, pay very close
attention to this part. At midnight tonight, a white car will pull
up at the rendezvous point. That’ll be your ride. The driver’s name
is Thorne, and he’ll take care of you. When he gets out of the car
and lights a cigarette, that’ll be your signal to approach. Have
you got all of that?”
Travis was terrified that he’d forget
some detail, but he didn’t dare ask him to repeat himself. “I think
I can handle that,” Travis said.
“Okay, then,” Harry concluded. “Now,
go back and tell your parents to get the hell out of there. Fast.
If you’ve got a car, ditch it as soon as you can. And be in the
right spot at midnight. Sharp.”
Travis nodded. “We’ll be there.” He
couldn’t wait to get moving. “Anything else?”
Harry was quiet for a moment while he
thought. “Yeah,” he said at length, lowering his voice. “Tell your
folks to be careful when they approach Thorne. Sometimes he
misinterprets sudden moves.”
From the tone of voice alone, Travis
understood this to be perhaps the most important detail of
all.
Harry pushed the disconnect button and
relayed the details to Thorne—his personal assistant for nearly
thirty years now. In order to survive in the business world, Harry
firmly believed that you needed a watchdog—an attack dog, even.
Somebody on the payroll who could discover the kind of information
about competitors and politicians that could be used to keep them
under control. You needed somebody to whom you could make a
request, and never question that there’d be results. In Harry’s
company, that man was Thorne. Loyal as a lapdog yet fierce as a
tiger, Thorne’s unspoken job was to occasionally stack the deck a
little. Only rarely did Harry have to rein him in
anymore.
“Do they have a chance?” Harry asked
when he was finished regurgitating his niece and nephew’s latest
plan.
Thorne shrugged. “I think it’s risky
as hell, but yeah, sure. Why not? There’s always a chance. It’ll
take some time, though. A lot of logistics.”
Harry shook his head. “We don’t have
time. They don’t have
time. We need to move quickly. Who do we know in Little Rock?”
Washington contacts were a nickel a dozen, as were friends in
Chicago, New York, and all the other major cities. Out in the
boonies, though, pickings became awfully slim.
Thorne chewed on his lower lip and
scowled. “I can’t think of a soul. No, wait! Didn’t that
dermatologist friend of yours—Tim Vincent—move down there after
they yanked his license in Wisconsin?”
“Oncologist,” Harry corrected. “Cancer
specialist.” And yes, that did ring a bell. A friend from his
college years, Tim Vincent had lost focus for a while about a
decade ago and was nailed by some mutilated patients for all kinds
of misdiagnoses, a few of which, it turned out, had resulted in the
surgical removal of perfectly healthy body parts. The very thought
of it turned Harry’s stomach, but Vincent insisted in one tearful
telephone call that it was all an accident, and he pleaded for
help. Harry had waffled before finally caving in to his sense of
loyalty. Leveraging some very generous gifts he’d made over the
years to the Midwest’s most prominent universities, Harry had been
able to talk a few of Vincent’s peers into taking it easy on him.
He got to keep his license, as long as he agreed to take his
practice someplace where they’d never have to clean up after him.
Last Harry had heard, Tim had sobered up and was doing very
well.
“Okay,” Harry instructed, “give Tim a
call. Tell him I send my regards and that I’ll need him to put up
some friends of mine in the next couple of days.”
Thorne jotted notes on a scrap of
paper.
“And if he can manage to make himself
scarce while they’re there, so much the better.”
Thorne smiled. “Want me to roust your
pilots and get the planes ready?”
Harry had to think for a moment on
that one. “No, we’ve got the FBI watching us,” he mused aloud. He
snapped his fingers as the solution came to him. “Tell you what.
Does Universal Waste still owe us a favor?”
Thorne laughed. “Didn’t we guarantee
Peter van der Horst’s debt?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll
give him a call and see if he’ll let us borrow a couple of planes
and pilots.”
“Just the planes,” Harry corrected.
“We’ll use our own pilots.”
Thorne nodded approvingly and jotted
some more. “I trust you want me to go to Washington?”
Harry shook his head. “No. I’ll go to
D.C. I want you to make the pickup in West Virginia.”
Thorne seemed appalled. “You’re going
to talk to the EPA guy yourself? Forgive me, sir, but I don’t
think—”
“There’s no choice,” Harry
interrupted. “You can’t be in two places at one time, and I want
the fewest possible people involved in this.”
Thorne shook his head vigorously.
“With all due respect, Mr. Sinclair, I’m much more persuasive than
you—”
“And much more resourceful. I need you to be with
Sunshine.” Harry ended the conversation by turning away, his ample
gut heavy with the press of time. “I want to be in Washington this
afternoon.”
Thorne considered arguing but knew
better. There was much to do.
“Oh, and Thorne?”
“Yes, sir?” He’d already stepped into
the hallway but now returned.
Harry regarded him for a long moment.
“You know how much Sunshine means to me . . .”
“I’ll take care of everything . .
.”
“No, listen to me. Don’t go overboard,
okay?”
Thorne bristled. He knew how to do his
job. He said nothing as he left.
Alone again, Harry tried to sift
through it all. It had been fourteen years, for God’s sake! Without
a snag. Now, at the first glitch, Sunshine and her dipshit husband
wanted to throw everything away on this crazy plan. Unbelievable.
Maybe it was just the panic talking. If he could just speak to
Carolyn personally, then he’d be able to talk some sense into
them.
But, of course, he could do no such
thing. As much as he wanted to see his niece again—what did she
look like now, as she closed in on middle age?—he understood that
such a meeting was out of the question. Maybe if the kid hadn’t
called the house directly, but certainly not now. With the
connection made at the FBI, the risk was too great.
Jake started the van as soon as he saw
Travis walk back outside. He considered driving up to meet him but
didn’t, fearing that it might somehow attract
attention.
“Where have you been?” Carolyn barked, the instant the door
slammed shut. “We were almost ready to go in there after
you.”
“Sorry,” Travis replied with a
patently unsorry shrug. Over the next ten minutes, as they searched
with progressively greater urgency for a place to ditch the van,
Travis told them every detail of his chat with Uncle
Harry.