Shark Infested Custard (29 page)

       "She rides in the front seat, but she's been told not to touch my pistol. After all, I've got some ten thousand dollars worth of silverware to protect, and it isn't against the law to carry a gun in your car for protection."

       "What about the silverware?" The sheriff turned to the deputy.

       "The trunk's loaded with it," the redhaired deputy said. "What about the pistol?"

       "Put the safety on, and stick it back in the glove compartment. Then lock the car and wait outside for a few minutes."

       The deputy left, carrying the pistol, pausing at the threshold to glower for a long moment at Don before he closed the door.

       The sheriff chuckled. "Red's got four kids, you see, and he won't even take his pistol home with him. Keeps it locked up at the substation when he's off-duty. But he's right, you know. It isn't a good idea to keep a loaded pistol where kids can get it. They're curious, you see, and—but that's your business. If I were carrying valuable silverware in my car, I'd want a pistol for protection myself."

       "I'd like to know what's going on, Sheriff," Don said.

       "Well, Mr. Luchessi, we have a small problem here. I think we can work it out all right, but here it is. About an hour ago your daughter woke up the manager, John Rouse, and told him that she was being kidnapped—"

       "That's ridiculous! I'm her father!"

       "Yes, I know. She even looks like you. Anyway, John drove her over to my house and brought her in. He could've taken her to the substation, but he knew I was home and they'd've called me anyway, so he figured that was the easiest way. As he said, he brought her over without waking you up because he didn't want to take any chances, you see. I talked to your daughter, and she told me you were her father all right, but when she told me you had a gun I didn't take any chances myself. I asked her where you were supposed to be taking her, and when she said that you were going to Disney World tomorrow, I didn't take much stock in her story. She would be the first little girl to ever complain about being kidnapped to Disney World!" He chuckled. "Anyway, Mr. Luchessi, I checked the thing out before I drove over here, and sure enough, it was on the wire tonight that you kidnapped your daughter, or that you're suspected of kidnapping her. What do you have to say about that?"

       Don shook his head. "I don't understand. I left a note for my—wife," Don lied, "telling her that I was taking Marie with me. The only thing I can think of is that Clara didn't find the note. Why would I kidnap my own child, for Christ's sake?"

       "I don't know, Mr. Luchessi, but your wife might think, that is, if she didn't find the note, that you were running out on her or something. So that's the position we're in right now. You and your daughter have been reported missing, and you are alleged to have her—well, illegally, I suppose. Anyway, that's what we're faced with, and although it isn't a big problem it is a problem, and we'd better work something out."

       "I could call my wife," Don said, "but if she didn't find the note she's probably hysterical by now, and it wouldn't do much good to have her tell you to forget the whole business, and withdraw the allegation. I have a hunch she'd be sore, and she'd want Marie back in Miami immediately."

       "Yes, I think you're right. She wants her back, all right."

       "Meanwhile, I've got to go to Tampa on business, and I don't feel like driving back to Miami and then up again to Tampa tomorrow. So I'll tell you what, Sheriff. I'll let you call the Miami police, or the sheriff, whoever put out the missing report, and then I'll give you the money for expenses and transportation. You can send someone down to Miami with Marie, and I'll go ahead over to Tampa and complete my business. By the time I get home again, two or three days from now, my wife will be cooled off some and I can talk to her and straighten everything out. What do you say to that?"

       "It's an intelligent way to solve your problem." The sheriff looked at the ceiling for a moment, and then put on his hat. "In fact, I might take the trip down to Miami myself. I'll bet it's been six—no, closer to eight—months since I've been down to Sin City."

       The sheriff got to his feet and stretched, and Don joined him at the desk. Don picked up his silver ballpoint pen and signed seven twenty-dollar traveler's checks. He handed the filled-in checks to the lawman.

       "Will one-forty be enough? I know it is if you drive down, but if you take a bus—"

       "I'll drive my own car down, Mr. Luchessi. Now, I suspect you'll want to talk to your daughter, won't you?"

       "For a minute. I'm wide awake now, so I'll just go ahead and check out and drive to Tampa afterwards. Let's get Marie's clothes in the bag."

       Don checked out of the motel, and followed the sheriff's car with its flashing blue light to the lawman's house. He waited at the curb while the sheriff went inside to get Marie. She came out shyly and reluctantly, wearing her new jeans and one of her Dolphin T-shirts. The sheriff and his wife remained on the front porch, and the red-haired deputy sat in the front seat of the police car. The blue light on top of the sheriff's vehicle was on and whirling, and Marie's pale face looked a ghostly blue to Don as she came down the walk. Don dropped down on one knee and opened his arms. Marie started to cry and then ran into his arms. He enveloped her, hugging her tight, and kissed her wet cheek.

       "You're ten years old, baby," he whispered, "and you're old enough to understand. And if you can understand, you'll be able to remember this night. Do you understand, Marie?"

       "What, Daddy? Understand what?" Marie wiped her streaming face with the backs of her hands.

       "It was 'your'' choice, not mine. I'm leaving now, and you'll never see your daddy again."

       Don rose. Marie clung to his legs, crying, "No, Daddy, no!"

       Don disengaged her arms gently and got into his Mark N. He waved to the sheriff and his wife on the porch, backed up a few feet to clear the sheriff's car, and then drove away. For two blocks, before Don turned right to get to the Interstate, the blue light continued to flash in his rear view mirror.

       Every time, Don thought, every time Marie sees a blue light flashing, every time for the rest of her life, every time she will remember me.

PART IV

Larry "FUZZ-O" Dolman: Any man who is willing to accept responsibility is always loaded down with more and more of it, because there aren't that many men around who will accept responsibility.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It was a stormy March night, but Hank and I, after talking about it on the telephone that afternoon, decided to go ahead with Don's birthday party. Besides, it was more than just a birthday party for Don; it was a celebration for me, as well. Don, after sitting around in Eddie's apartment for a month doing nothing, except for watching TV all day and drinking Pagan Pink Ripple wine, had finally snapped out of his lethargic depression and had gone out and found ajob selling Encyclopedias Americana. And I, because of Merita, had taken possession of the apartment above Hank, the one Don was supposed to get, and all of my furniture had been shipped up to me from Miami.

       I liked the apartment, and so did Merita. Eddie, who enjoyed having Don live with him, or said he didn't mind at any rate, had told us—Hank and I—that Don wasn't ready to live alone yet, so I had taken the vacant apartment two weeks before Don's new birthday. My furniture was installed, with everything the way I wanted it, so the party was a combination housewarming and birthday celebration.

       I was above Hank, and Eddie and Don were across the hall from me. There was an inside stairwell, and Hank's apartment was directly below mine. There were a fireman and his wife living across from Hank, in 3624 1/2, a middle-aged Polack who was planning to buy a house with a yard in a few months. When the fireman moved out, we had already made arrangements with the real estate agent for Don to get his apartment, and the four of us would then have the quadriplex to ourselves.

       Meanwhile, everything was working out well. The fireman, Mr. Sinkiewicz, was on duty at the fire station for one full twenty-four hour day out of every three, and on the two days he had off he worked at a Philips 66 gas station. His wife, Anna, cleaned Hank's and Eddie's apartment one day a week, and I had Merita to keep mine spotless. Merita had polished my harpsichord, and it was more beautiful now than I had remembered it. She had used a full can of New Gloss wax on the harpsichord.

       When Don had arrived in Schiller Park, Eddie and Hank had been concerned all out of proportion to the problem he presented. Without consulting me they had talked to Don at length, trying to persuade him to go back to Miami. Their arguments were rational enough, based, as they were, on practicality, but they either did not understand or take into account Don's emotional commitment. They worried about all of that silverware Don had appropriated, and they were also afraid that Clara would report the Mark IV Continental as stolen. She had the legal title, not Don, and they were afraid that Don would go to jail, both for stealing the silverware and for stealing his own car. This was a possibility, of course, but there were ways to get around it. If Don went back to Miami, time was also on his side, because Don's bosses were far away in England, and it was possible for Don to absent himself from Miami for two, three, or even five weeks without his company even finding out that he still wasn't in his office. He mailed them two reports a month as a general rule, but even if they didn't get a report for a few weeks, he could always say that he had mailed it and that it was lost by the Post Office. So Don could go back to Clara easily enough, and keep his well-paying job without his company knowing that he had spent a fortnight's vacation in Chicago.

       Don listened to them patiently, but he told them that he was not going back, ever. They heard him, but the tone of his voice was so despairing they didn't believe him. He had left Clara once before and had gone back to her, so they felt that a precedent had been set.

       When Don had failed consistently to respond to "reason," they asked me to talk to him. Eddie and Hank had listened to themselves, but I listened to Don. Don was not going back, ever, and he meant exactly what he said. What they took for despair in his statement, "I'm not going back to Clara, ever," was resignation—not despair.

       "Okay, Don," I said, "if you aren't going back, what do you want to do?"

       "I don't know yet, Fuzz-O, but I'll have some dough after I sell the silverware, and I can decide later. Right now, I don't want to think about it, and I don't even feel like going out to hustle the silverware."

       "What about child support? If you send Clara money, you'll be traced, you know"

       "I'm not sending Clara shit."

       "Then you'll have to change your name and disappear. Either that, or we can ship the silverware back to Miami, which'll clear you of that charge, and you can mail in a letter of resignation to your company."

       "I can't do that, Larry, I'll need the money."

       "All right, then," I told him, "I'll take care of it for you—the whole business, and you can start all over again here in Chicago with a new name."

       "You can fix all this for me?"

       "Sure. Pick a name, and I'll get it for you."

       "I don't care about the name," he said. "A kid can't pick his name when he's born, so if you're going to handle the whole business for me, I don't give a shit about the name either."

       I used the resources of National Security to get Don a new identity—"Donald Lane." If he didn't get into any major troubles with the law, the new identity would hold up for all ordinary and practical purposes. I got him a Social Security card with a new number, a driver's license, a birth certificate, and a transcript from the University of Chicago in the name of Donald Lane with forty-eight college credits. In time, I told him, if he joined a few clubs and had some calling cards printed, no one would ever question his identity unless he got into trouble. Insofar as a work record was concerned, he would have to come up with a list of previous employments on his own, jobs that couldn't be checked out very well—like farm laborer, counterman, and so on.

       "That will more or less disqualify me for any decent position," he said.

       "Not exactly. That's the new dropout lifestyle these days, and if you want to—you've got forty-eight credits already—you can always go back to the University of Chicago and work on your degree."

       "Is this a genuine transcript?"

       "Of course."

       "What happened to the real Donald Lane?"

       "He dropped out of college five years ago. I don't know what happened to him. You'll also notice that the Don Lane on the birth certificate is two years younger than the Don Lane on the transcript, but you'll have to work out these discrepancies and make up your own phony biography and memorize it. I can't do everything for you."

       "I know that, Larry. I didn't think you could do this much."

       I didn't do very well on the car and the silverware, but I didn't want Don to go around the city trying to sell the sets one at a time and risk getting caught with hot silverware. So I checked our N. S. files again, and sold the Mark IV and the silverware to a fence in Peoria, Illinois, for a total of $7,400. If Don was disappointed in the sum, he didn't say so. He took the cash and opened an account in the name of Don Lane at the Schiller Park Bank and Trust Company, and he established credit at the Sunset Drugstore and Karl's Liquor Store in the shopping plaza four blocks away from our quadriplex.

       Hank Norton, of course, as was to be expected, had two long distance calls, one from Nita Peralta, and one from Clara Luchessi. Both of these women were charged emotionally on the wire, Hank told us, but Hank was able to convince them that he had neither seen nor heard from Don in several weeks. He also promised to telephone them immediately if he did get a letter or call from Don.