“And you don’t have any business being here alone. Find us a TV show. I told you I didn’t want no reality.”

WALT GARRITY HAD NOW lain beneath the bed for so long he was worried about getting a blood clot. At some point he was going to have to try to get out, because it didn’t look like the Valhalla lodge was going to be empty for a long time.

He was about to switch on his burn phone to test for reception again when he heard a metallic thunk outside, and then the big turbo sitting atop the helicopter began to spool up. With painful effort Walt dragged himself out from beneath the bed and pulled himself up to the curtained window. This time he saw the scene he’d watched earlier played in reverse. Black-clad SWAT troopers ran from the far building to the chopper’s door, their German shepherd alongside them. Every man carried at least one assault weapon.

Gut-churning fear awakened in Walt. He saw no reason for this kind of action unless someone had located Tom. Every fiber of his being told him the time had come to bolt and find someplace with cellular reception, but it would be stupid to try before the chopper left. Worse, he could see the goddamn pit bull leaping and barking at the cops as they boarded the helicopter.

Walt rubbed his forehead and cursed quietly, thinking of his wife back in Texas. If he were ten years younger, and single, he would make his break as soon as the chopper departed. He’d kill the dog if it made a sound, and then rely on his wilderness skills to get him to his vehicle ahead of any pursuers. But there was no point kidding himself. He wasn’t that man anymore. He would have to make the best of the situation and the skills he still had.

And Tom would have to do the same.

CHAPTER 41

THE EMOTIONAL TRANSITIONS I’ve made today have left me shaky and hypersensitive to almost all stimuli, but the past few minutes have gone a long way toward healing that. Annie and I are eating sandwiches and watching TV in the bedroom she commandeered in our makeshift safe house, the Abramses’ old place on Duncan Avenue. My mother made the sandwiches: tuna fish with apple slices, like those she used to make for my friends and me when we were kids. Since Annie was unable to find an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or House, M.D., she settled on Logan’s Run, the sci-fi movie starring Michael York and a boyhood crush of mine, Jenny Agutter.

“How come they chose thirty to be the oldest you could get?” Annie asks, munching on a triangular half of her sandwich. “I mean, you turn thirty, and then you walk into this thing where they kill you?”

“The people in the bubble city don’t know they’re going to die. They think they’re going to be recycled, sort of.”

“But the people who run don’t believe that.”

“Right. The writer probably chose thirty because at that age you still feel pretty much like you did as a teenager. Also, there used to be a saying: ‘Never trust anyone over thirty.’”

Annie knits her brows. “Huh. Weird.”

Despite all I’ve been through today, I can’t help but laugh.

While a young Farrah Fawcett welcomes Michael York to a plastic surgeon’s office, Annie says, “This no-school deal is pretty sweet.”

“Don’t get too used to it.”

“I know. But I miss talking to my friends. Are you sure I can’t call anybody? Just for a couple of minutes?”

“I’m sorry, babe. You can’t risk it.”

She stares at me for several seconds without speaking, then turns her attention back to the movie. Soon she’s lost in the drama of Sandmen chasing Runners, and my mind wanders back to the brief conversation I had with my mother when I arrived.

Despite the drama of the confrontation at Edelweiss, what dominated my mind after reaching the safety of this house was my memory of the Ford Fairlane my parents owned when I was a toddler. The more I thought about that gleaming car, the more I realized how incongruous it was, given my mother’s tales of penny-pinching frugality and part-time jobs during the early years of their relationship. While Annie went upstairs to find us something to watch, I sat Mom down in the banquette in the corner of the Abramses’ kitchen and asked where she and Dad had got “the old Ford that’s in all the family pictures.”

“The Fairlane?” she asked.

“The car with the tail fins.”

“Oh, Lord. We got that when we were in New Orleans.”

A wave of heat flashed across my neck and shoulders. “Really? I thought you only got it after you got back from Germany.”

“Oh, no. We needed a car long before that. And back then the army would carry your car over on a ship. I’m so glad we had it overseas. I’d have never made it to the hospital to have you without that car.”

“So where did you buy it? That was a pretty flashy car for that time. You didn’t get it new, did you?”

Mom’s eyes widened. “New? Lord, no. But it was only a year or two old, and in really good shape. I think it was a 1957. Maybe a ’58. That’s one of the few great deals Tom ever made. He actually saved his money without telling me, and then one day he brought it home as a present. It was our anniversary, I’m sure of it. 1959.”

“The anniversary you told me about last night? When you guys went to that Italian restaurant?”

“Yes!” A smile of authentic pleasure revealed her still-white teeth. “Oh, that was such a grand time. You don’t know what something like a car really means until you’ve been poor and had to walk everywhere, rain or shine.”

I could scarcely keep my mind on what she was saying. All I could see was squat, saturnine Carlos Marcello with his arms wrapped around them both at Mosca’s, asking how they liked the spaghetti with clam sauce.

“You know what I remember most?” she asked, her voice laced with nostalgia. “In Germany they told us never to let our gas tank get below half full, in case the balloon went up and the Russians invaded.”

“Wow,” I said dully. “That must have been scary.”

“Oh, your father wasn’t scared. He said his army unit had nuclear artillery shells, and they could stop the Russians. But I didn’t believe that. Neither did the Germans. If you even said the word ‘Russian,’ those women would shiver.”

“So you don’t know where Dad got the car?”

“I guess I don’t.” Her smile faded into concern, then worry. “Why are you so concerned with that car?”

“I don’t know.”

Mom watched me in silence for a few seconds. “Is it something to do with Carlos Marcello?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because you were asking about him last night. But he didn’t have anything to do with that car. Tom saved up and bought it.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. Forget about it.”

But I knew she wouldn’t. No more than I would.

Before I went upstairs—while Annie helped Mom make the tuna fish—I walked into the backyard and made two phone calls on my burn phone. The first was to Dr. Homer Dawes, a Natchez dentist who’d been in dental school in New Orleans while my father attended med school. They became good friends, and later, by chance, ended up settling in the same town. After Dr. Dawes’s wife brought him to the phone, I told him I was working on a novel and needed to know what Dad’s salary might have been for working in the Orleans Parish Prison in 1959. Dr. Dawes laughed and said he knew exactly how much that job paid, because he’d been the dental extern for the prison in 1958. “Most of our compensation was room and board,” he said. “Beyond that, they gave us a stipend of fifty dollars a month.”

Fifty dollars a month. A month.

I thanked Dawes and got off as quickly as I could, assuring him that Dad was doing fine and his “trouble” would soon be straightened out. Then I called Rose, my secretary, and asked her to find out how much a 1957 or ’58 Ford Fairlane would have cost in the year it was made.