A Cool Breeze on the Underground

4

At forty, ethan Kitteredge looked younger than Neal thought he would. A lock of ash blond hair fell over his forehead and the pale blue eyes that peered from behind his wire-rim glasses. He was about five ten, Neal guessed, and weighed maybe one seventy, one seventy-five. The body under the gray banker’s suit was trim: tennis or handball.

Then Neal quit playing Sherlock Holmes, because The Man was reaching out his hand and smiling.

“You must be Mr. Carey,” he said. His handshake was firm and quick: nothing to prove.

“And you’re Mr. Kitteredge.” Witty, Neal, he thought. Great first impression.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Kitteredge said. “How is your graduate work coming?”

“I’m missing an exam as we speak. Otherwise, it’s going great, thanks.”

Graham found something fascinating on the floor to stare at. Levine stared at Neal and shook his head.

“Yes, I chatted with Professor Boskin about it,” Kitteredge said. If he was bugged, he didn’t show it. “He mumbled something about giving you an Incomplete.”

“That was nice of you to do, Mr. Kitteredge, but I like to finish what I start.”

“Just so. Gentlemen, please sit down. Coffee, tea?” Three wooden chairs had been placed in an arc facing Kitteredge’s desk. Levine sat down on the right, Graham on the left. Neal plunked himself down in the remaining chair. The center of attention.

Kitteredge stepped to a silver coffee service. Neal noticed he moved in the awkward manner produced by generations of New England breeding-stops and starts which imply that any choice of motion is merely a necessary evil, that the real virtue is to remain still. Nevertheless, he managed to pour four cups of coffee and serve them around.

This took a while, and Neal used the quiet moments to study the office, which was pure bank, pure Kitteredge. The twentieth century had yet to intrude its vulgarities. Sunlight shone a soft, filtered amber on a room ruled by mahogany and oak. Glass-enclosed bookshelves lining the walls housed leather-bound sets of Dickens, Emerson, Thoreau, and, of course, Melville. Bowditch’s Navigation held a prominent spot, flanked by various obscure whaling memoirs and sailing treatises. Wooden models of old China clippers completed the decor. These were the vessels that had carried Kitteredge tea, Kitteredge guns, Kitteredge opium, and Kitteredge slaves across the oceans, and Neal imagined that the profits from these voyages still rested beneath his feet in Kitteredge vaults.

One modern memento held the pride of place. An exquisite scale model of the sloop Haridan sat on the glossy polished oak of Ethan’s desk. Some skilled craftsman had faithfully rendered the boat’s sleek structure and clean lines. Ethan spent every free moment on Haridan, sailing Narragansett Bay, Long Island Sound, and the open Atlantic. He often docked on Block Island, where he kept a summer home. For Ethan Kitteredge, responsible banker, responsible husband, responsible father, Haridan meant rare and precious moments of heady freedom.

The coffee successfully served, Kitteredge took his seat behind his desk and pulled a file from the top center drawer. He looked at the file for a moment, shook his head, and handed it across the desk to Neal. Then he sat back in his chair and pressed his fingers together in “This is the church, this is the steeple” fashion.

Kitteredge talked like he walked. “Some… uh… old family friends have a bit of a… problem, and we have offered our… services… to assist them in finding a resolution.”

He smiled, as if to suggest that disorderly people were amusing, weren’t they, and a bit of a bother, but they are our friends, and we must do our best. He paused for a moment to allow Neal to open the file.

“Senator John Chase comes from a prominent Rhode Island family,” said Kitteredge. “The family name has undoubtedly been an asset… in his political progress, but I hasten to add that the Senator is a talented, intelligent, and… ah… energetic man.”

Okay.

Kitteredge Continued: “The Senator sits on several important committees, where his performance has attracted… national attention, from the press as well as party professionals. Despite the somewhat distasteful fact that John is a Democrat… we support him in his ambitions.”

Money in the bank.

“The probable Democratic nominee will need to look northward for a running mate. Ah… emissaries have already been sent.”

Kitteredge paused to allow the import of this last statement to sink in.

It didn’t.

So what? Neal thought. Despite the somewhat distasteful fact that I’m going to vote for whatever Democrat is running, what’s all this have to do with me?

“There is, however, a problem.”

Which is where I come in.

“The problem is Allie.”

Neal turned a few pages of the file and saw a picture of a teenaged girl. She had shiny blond hair and blue eyes and looked as if she belonged on a magazine cover.

Kitteredge stared at the model of Haridan as he said, “Actually, Alison always has been the problem.”

He seemed lost in his thoughts, or in some more happy memory on board his boat.

Neal said, “But specifically now?”

“Allie has run away.”

Yeah, okay, so we’ll go get her. But there was something else going on here, Neal sensed. Things were a little too tense. He looked at Graham and didn’t see a clue. He looked at Ed, but Ed wouldn’t look back.

“Any idea where?” Neal finally asked.

“She was last seen in London,” Ed said. “A former schoolmate saw her there over a spring-break trip. He tried to speak to her, but she ran away from him. It’s all there in your file.”

Neal looked it over. This schoolmate, a Scott Mackensen, had seen her about three weeks ago. “What do the British cops say?”

Kitteredge stared harder at the boat. “No police, Mr. Carey.”

This time, Ed did look at Neal-hard. Neal buried his face in the file, then asked, “Alison is seventeen years old?”

Nobody answered.

Neal looked through the file some more. “A seventeen-year-old girl has been gone for over three months and nobody has called the police?”

Another few seconds of silence and Kitteredge would actually will himself onto the model boat: a tiny model captain on a toy boat.

Levine said, “The Senator was reluctant to risk publicity.” Less reluctant to risk his daughter.

“Does the Senator like his daughter?” Neal asked.

“Not particularly.”

This came from Kitteredge, who continued: “Nevertheless, he wants her back. By August.”

He wants her back. Not right away, not tomorrow morning, but by August. Let me see, what happens in August? It gets hot and muggy, the Yankee pitching falls apart… oh, yeah. The Democrats have a convention.

“I trust you will not be offended, Mr. Carey, when I say that sometimes a… situation… arises that requires a blend of the… common

… and the sophisticated. When someone is needed whose education has occurred as much… in the street… as well as in the classroom. This is just such a case. You are just such a person.”

Except I don’t want to do it. God, how much I don’t want to do it. Not after the Halperin kid. Please, no more teenage runaways. Never again after the Halperin kid.

Levine frowned as he said, “You’re going to go to London, find Alison Chase, and bring her back in time for the Democratic convention.”

No I’m not.

“What happens if Chase doesn’t get nominated, Ed? You want me to throw the kid back?”

“Your fine sense of moral indignation will not be required, Mr. Carey.”

“I’m not the man for this job, Mr. Kitteredge.”

“The Halperin… tragedy… was an aberration, Mr. Carey. It could have happened to anyone.”

“But it happened to me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, son.”

“Then why have I been on the shelf since it happened?”

Kitteredge’s hand traced the sleek bow of Haridan. “The… hiatus… was for your benefit, not Friends’,”

Well, then, it worked. After the drinking, and the insomnia, and the nightmares had gone on for a while, I found Diane. And school again. And now I don’t want to come back.

“For once, I agree with Carey, Mr. Kitteredge,” said Ed. “He’s wrong for this one.”

“I’m sorry to pull you out of your classes, but your adviser understands,” Kitteredge said. “He’s a friend of the family.”

So that’s it, Neal thought. You bought me; you own me.

“I’m sorry, Neal, but this assignment is important… vital.”

Neal closed the file and put it in his lap. He knew a dismissal line when he heard one. “I’ll need to talk to the Senator and Mrs. Chase as soon as possible.”

Because the first place to start looking for a runaway, he knew, is at home.

“This is a case for the New York Rangers,” Neal said to Graham out on the sidewalk.

“It stinks on ice, all right. But there it is, son. You gotta pay rent.”

They were following Levine they knew not where, and he was pacing out in front of them.

“Just because she was in London three goddamn weeks ago doesn’t mean she’s there now. A kid with her money could be anywhere in the world. And even if she is in London, there are what, twelve, thirteen million people there with her? The odds on finding her are-”

“Shitty. I know.”

Levine led them into a parking garage.

Neal kept at it. “So what’s the point?”

“The point is… it’s your job. You do your best, you take the money, you forget about it.”

“Cold.”

“Hey.”

They were walking up the ramps. What does Ed have against elevators? Graham asked himself.

“And why do they all of a sudden want their kid back? Why now, why not three months ago when she first took off?”

“Talk to them.”

They were on the third level, the orange one, when Ed turned around.

“White Porsche. Guy’s name is Rich Lombardi,” he said to Neal. “He’s Chase’s aide. He’ll brief you, take you to the Chases’.”

Graham tried to look serious. Neal didn’t bother. “What’s all this ‘Mission Impossible’ crap, Ed?”

“Professionalism.”

“Right.”

“Everything you need to know is in the file.”

“Got Allie’s London address in it?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll need some prep time in the States.”

“For what?”

“For trying to find out a little about this kid. For talking to the boy who saw her. Little shit like that.”

“Read the file. I already talked to him.”

“So go get her then.”

“You don’t have a lot of time on this thing.”

“No kidding.”

“So get going.”

Graham put his heavy rubber arm around Neal’s neck and pulled him a few feet away. “You know Billy Connor, the alderman? You know how much he takes in under the table? Think about how much a vice president hauls in. Don’t fuck around with this one, son. See you back in the city.”

“Take it easy, Dad.”

Neal had taken about five steps away from them when he heard Ed’s cheerful voice.

“Hey, Neal, try to bring this one back alive, okay?!”

The guy in the driver’s seat of the white Porsche was reading the Providence Journal when Neal tapped on the window. He looked about thirty. Thick, wavy black hair tamed by cutting it short. Brown eyes. Pressed jeans, red sweater, and running shoes. White socks. He seemed confident and comfortable and was probably the kind of a guy who looked in the mirror and said, “Confident and comfortable.”

The guy smiled broadly as he rolled the window down. “You’re Neal Carey, right?”

“And if you know I’m Neal Carey, that makes you Rich Lombardi.”

“Hey, we’re both right.”

Neal stepped away from the door so Lombardi could get out. Lombardi shook Neal’s hand as if he could pump money out of it,

“I have to tell you we’re really glad you’re on board, Neal.”

Have to tell me?

He took Neal’s shoulder bag and slung it into the backseat. “Hop in.”

Neal hopped in. In fact, he sunk into the deep upholstery of the bucket seat. If Chase’s gofer drives a Porsche…

“We hear you’re the best.”

“Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah, Neal?”

“Want to do me a favor?”

“Hey, you’re doing us one, right?”

“Quit stroking me.”

“You got it.” He started the car, took a perfunctory glance in the rearview mirror, and backed out of the slot. “I mean, the way we hear it, if you’d been at the Watergate, Nixon would still be President.”

“Good thing I wasn’t there, then.”

“Hey, you got that right.”

Hey.

“Where are we going, Rich?”

“Newport. You ever been?”

“No.”

Lombardi wheeled the car into the light traffic. He made a few semi-legal maneuvers through the narrow downtown streets and then hit the entrance ramp onto I-95. If he was worried about cops, his foot sure wasn’t.

“We’ll take the scenic route,” he said.

The scenic route took them across two bridges that spanned Narragansett Bay. Sailboats danced on the blue water.

“Welcome to Newport,” Lombardi said. He turned down Farewell Street, which ran alongside a cemetery, and drove on past the quaint houses that had stood since before the Revolution. The island town of Newport had seen many lives, having been a pirate haven, a fishing port, and a home for whalers and sea traders. Widows’ walks and carved wooden pineapples attested to the maritime tradition. The captains’ wives would stroll the widows’ walks, scanning the horizon for the sight of a sail that might be bearing their husbands home. These stalwarts, once home, and not having been with their mates in maybe two years, would place a pineapple on the front steps when they were ready to leave the bedroom and receive visitors. Eventually, the carved pineapple became a symbol of hospitality. Or fertility. Or sexual satiation.

There was actually zoning in certain parts of old Newport that would demand the houses be painted only in colors available in Colonial times. The BMWs could be any color, though.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Newport became a playground for the old and new rich, whose mansions lined Bellevue Avenue and the Cliff Walk and were just “summer homes.” These cottages, each about the size of Versailles, were inhabited by their owners for about seven weeks in the short Rhode Island summer. They survived the bitter, windswept winters, the corrosive salt air, and the autumn hurricanes, only to succumb to the mundane but lethal assault of the graduated income tax. Most of the larger places had become museums or junior colleges. Few survived intact. One of the few was the Chase home.

Lombardi entertained Neal on the drive with a description of Allie.

“Allie Chase,” he had begun, “is one messed-up kid.”

“I sort of figured that out.”

“Alcohol, drugs, whatever. Allie has done it. Last time I searched her room in D.C., I found enough stuff to stock a Grateful Dead concert. Allie doesn’t care if she goes up or down, just as long as she goes.”

“When did this start?” When did this start? Christ, I sound like the family physician. Neal Welby, M.D.

“Allie’s what, seventeen? Around thirteen, I guess. Call her an early bloomer.”

If they noticed it at thirteen, it means she really started at eleven or twelve, Neal thought.

“Make a list of the best boarding schools in the country,” Lombardi continued, “and title it ‘Places Allie Chase Has Been Thrown Out Of.’ She’s had at least one abortion we know about-”

“When?”

“A year ago last March, and affairs with at least two of her teachers and one of her shrinks. Title their book Men Who Will Never Work Again, by the way.”

“Are you telling me all this so Mom and Dad won’t have to?”

Lombardi laughed. “A big part of my job is to spare the Senator any embarrassments.”

“And Allie’s a big one.”

“The biggest. Cops and Reporters I Have Bullied or Bribed, by Rich Lombardi. Drugs, minor in possession, shoplifting… all gone without a trace.”

“Congratulations.”

“A lot of work, my friend. Still and all, I like the kid.”

“Yeah?”

Lombardi looked startled for a second, then laughed. “Oh, no, babe. Not me. I like my job. You have a suspicious mind, Neal.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Comes with the territory, I’m into it. So here’s the problem, Neal. We think we have a real shot at the VP thing, and after that, who knows? The Senator is of that stature, Neal. Trust me on that, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Right. Call our movie Remember the Eagleton. Conceptually speaking. You remember the Eagleton thing, Neal. McGovern’s people tab this senator from the Show-me State, turns out his brain runs on batteries. The Party is a little touchy on the subject. Now they check these things out a little more closely. Like a proctoscope.”

“So a drugged-out, boozing teenage thief stands out.”

“There we go.”

“I’d think, then, you’d want her to stay disappeared.”

Lombardi stopped the car at a gate. He pulled one of those garage-door gadgets out of his pocket and hit a combination of numbers. The gate swung open.

“Ali Baba,” he said. “It’s this post-Watergate ethics thing, Neal. Everybody’s talking values. Family. You have a front-runner who’s been ‘born again,’ although you’d think once was enough, right? Everybody looking for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Shit, we’d probably run Jimmy Stewart, except he’s a buddy of Ronald Reagan’s.”

Lombardi pulled the car slowly down a long, crushed-stone driveway flanked by willows.

“The front-runner,” Lombardi went on, “dresses like Robert What’s-his-name in Father Knows Best, and drags his daughter around all over the place. We have more kids in this campaign than in the Our Gang comedies.”

“Maybe Chase should just buy a dog, with a cute little ring around the eye.”

“I’ll make a note. But seriously, Neal, we have to have Allie back by convention time.”

“Looking like Elinor Donahue.”

“Yeah. And quietly, Neal. The press and the Party people are going to be all over us.”

He parked the car on the side of the circular driveway in front of the house, or in front of part of the house. The house was endless, like The Ancient Mariner. A broad expanse of manicured lawn led down to the ocean and a private dock and boat house. Neal saw a fence he assumed screened a pool, and a double tennis court. Grass.

“Where’s the helicopter pad?” Neal asked.

“Other side.”

Lombardi handed Neal’s bag to your basic livened servant, who disappeared with it.

“Hey, Rich, I have an idea. Maybe you could make like Allie never existed-airbrush her from photos, steal her birth records, kill anyone who remembers her…”

“Pretty good, Neal. But don’t joke like that in the house, okay?”

Okay.

Senator John Chase was one of those rare people who resemble their photographs. He was tall, craggy, and muscled, with an Adam’s apple and a set of shoulders that competed for attention. He looked like an Ichabod Crane who had bumped into Charles Atlas on the road someplace. He stalked into the room and headed straight for the bar. “I’m John Chase and I’m having a scotch. What are you having?”

“Scotch is fine, thank you.”

“Scotch is fine, and you’re welcome. Soda or water?”

“Neither.”

“Ice?”

“Mr. Campbell in fifth-grade science told me ice melts and becomes water.”

“Mr. Campbell wasn’t drinking fast enough. Here you are.”

Just because the room was exactly what you’d expect doesn’t mean it didn’t impress, Neal thought. Three walls were glassed in, and all the furniture was casual and expensive. Each seat offered an ocean view. Neal took the proffered drink, perched himself on the edge of the sofa, and took a sip. The whiskey was older than he was. A point that Chase picked up on right away.

“Are you as young as you look, Neal?”

“Younger.”

Chase turned a chair around and sat down, leaning over the back. It was a campaign photo of the no-nonsense legislator getting down to some serious turkey talking. “I thought the bank would send somebody a little more mature.”

“You can probably still trade me in for the toaster or the luggage.”

“How old are you, Neal?”

“Senator Chase, how old do I have to be to find her? How old did you have to be to lose her?”

Chase smiled with all the joy of a dog eating grass. “Rich, get Mr. Kitteredge on the phone. This isn’t going to work out.”

Neal finished off his scotch and stood up. “Yeah, Rich, get Mr. Kitteredge on the phone. Tell him the Senator wants Strom Thurmond or somebody.”

“Let’s just everybody sit down, shall we?”

Neal looked at the woman who had just spoken, and couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed her standing in the doorway. She was a lovely woman and she stood framed in the doorway just a second longer than necessary to let Neal realize that she was a lovely woman. She’s made such entrances into this room before, Neal thought. She used the door frame like Bacall used a movie screen, but she was small. Her long blond hair was pulled tightly back, almost prim. Brown eyes flecked with green smiled at him. She wore a black jersey and jeans. She was barefoot. She walked over to her husband, took a sip of his drink, made a face, and moved behind the bar, where she poured grapefruit juice over crushed ice. Then she sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from Neal and pulled her legs up under her. Nobody said a word during all this. Nobody was expected to.

“Neal Carey is twenty-three,” she said to the room at large in a voice that whistled “Dixie.”

“How do you know?” Chase asked.

“I inquired.”

“And you don’t think he’s too young?”

“Of course I do, John. I think they’re all too young. But what you and I think hasn’t worked out all that well, has it?”

She fixed her husband with those brown eyes. The issue was settled.

Then she turned them on Neal. “I’ll bet you have some questions for us.”

It was all pretty much as Rich Lombardi had described. Alison Chase was a brat of the first order, a spoiled baby turned spoiled kid, turned spoiled teenager, and on the fast track toward turning ruined adult. Bored by age ten, jaded by thirteen, hopeless by the time she celebrated sweet sixteen, Alison was the classic case of too much too soon and too little too late.

Child Allie had garnered all kinds of attention from the doting parents who hauled her out to perform for dinner guests and hauled her back in when the evening’s supply of cute had been played out. She made the usual adolescent progression from ballet to horses to tennis, and had littered New England and Washington with the tattered detritus of dance teachers, horse masters, and court coaches. The proud parents made all the recitals, most of the field trials, and quite a few of the tennis matches until Allie started losing and the fun went out of it.

As Allie grew up, John Chase’s political career thrived and the demands of the young congressman’s time increased, especially when he made the giant step to Senator. Likewise, the politician’s wife made her obeisance to the Junior League and the torturous committees of Washington wives who devoted their afternoons and evenings to worthy causes such as saving other people’s children.

Nothing was too good for Allie, however, so off she went to the very best schools, first to day schools in D.C., and later to those New England boarding schools whose role it is to prepare young women for the next generation of committees. And as Allie had learned young that she had to perform to get attention, perform she did-badly. Because while nothing was too good for Allie, Allie was never good enough for Mom and Dad. Not the tentative jete, the imperfect seat, the lazy backhand that sliced out, certainly not the grades that started with B’s and made a steady slide to F’s as desperate but futile stabs at perfection gave way to sullen indifference and then determined screwups. If she could not be the perfect success, she would be the perfect failure. If she could not be the ideal princess, she would be the ideal dragon. She would turn her beauty around to be the beast. And nobody had intended that to happen: not Mom or Dad, not the coaches or the teachers-not even Allie.

What in most girls was adolescent rebellion settled into a protracted war: Allie against her folks, Allie against her teachers, Allie against the world, Allie against Allie. She had no real friends, just a series of temporary allies and co-conspirators. She did most of her talking to shrinks, then stopped talking to them altogether, unless to exercise her blossoming talent for sarcasm and disdain.

Allie discovered early on that the pretty bottles in the household bars and liquor cabinets gave her a powerful weapon in her war against life as she knew it. Surreptitious sips from guests’ glasses soon became nighttime raids to snatch half-full bottles, bottles that gave her a breezy high to chase boredom away, smoothed the anxieties, and placed her parents at the far end of a telescope when looked in at the wrong end.

She met the challenge when Mom and Dad took to locking the liquor cabinets, as willing cohorts at school taught her that credit cards opened doors in more than the symbolic sense, and that your basic manicure tools, when handled with panache in a manner never described in Seventeen, will open most of the locks installed to prevent the servants from pilfering.

Later on, she discovered the potential hidden in Mom’s medicine cabinet. How when you drop a Valium in a glass of scotch, your afternoon is pretty much taken care of. She drifted through entire days and nights without a hassle in sight or a care in the world except how to restock the chemical larder. An unusually cooperative shrink bought her story about anxiety attacks and prescribed the stuff for her, in nifty five and ten mils, and Allie became known in the hallways of academia as a girl who could actually give pharmaceutical change. Then Allie went to another doctor and claimed to be really, really depressed, whereupon the good doctor referred to his PDR and discovered that the treatment for depression was an antidepressant and wrote scrip for it. So Allie had an unlimited and legally sanctioned supply of speed. Allie had her dawns and dusks, and could swap and trade with her friends.

Teenage boys, their hormones bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls in a vacuum, sniffed her out as an easy mark. Allie discovered sex, which wasn’t so bad except she didn’t discover birth control with it, and she got pregnant. Scared enough to confide in her mother. Allie then made the discreet visit to the discreet office. (“Dad is going to have you killed,” she told the doctor and nurse, “to keep you from talking.”) After that, teenage boys became too immature for Allie, who made the important transition from prey to predator and found any number of older men willing to be stalked and brought down.

And it was pathetically easy; boring, really. Allie had inherited her mother’s hair, and from somewhere a pair of blue eyes that shone with life even in the photographs. The genetic sculptor had fashioned a classically chiseled face and a form that embodied the current American ideal. “How could a girl as pretty as you…” was a refrain that Allie heard over and over again after spectacular screwups or misbehavior. She was expected to be the prom queen and the sweetheart, and she responded to these expectations with an almost savage perversity. Sex was a weapon. Sex was revenge.

So by age seventeen, she had done it all: all the drinks, all the drugs, all the boys, and all the men. And she was so tired of it all. So one fine day, she looked out her window at the big ocean and decided that the other side might offer something new, and she whipped out the old credit card one more time to open the airplane door and flew to Paris. That was three months ago, and nobody had heard from her or seen her until three weeks ago, when some kid had spotted her in London.

The description of Allie’s youth had taken some time, and a working lunch had been served by a staff quite used to serving working lunches. Chicken sandwiches, fruit salad, wheat crackers, and cheeses had been laid out quietly and consumed with no great enthusiasm. Allie’s story had a way of sapping an appetite-except Neal’s. He ate it and enjoyed. Surveillance work had taught him that whenever food appeared, you ate and appreciated it.

“Why did you wait three weeks to tell anyone that Allie had been spotted?” The more interesting question, Neal thought, was why they had waited three months to do anything at all, but he knew better than to ask. That was a question for later, if at all.

“We didn’t. Scott did,” Chase said eagerly, finding something for which he couldn’t possibly be blamed. “Teenage loyalty, whatever. He came to us just five days ago. We went to Kitteredge.”

“Who did Scott call? You or Mrs. Chase?”

“Me,” said Liz Chase.

“Was he a boyfriend?”

“Just a friend.”

Neal picked a stem of grapes from the plate and popped one in his mouth. Something was screwy here. “And he just happened to run into Allie in London? Why was he there?”

“A trip with his school.”

Nice school, thought Neal, whose own class trip had been to Ossining.

“Anything unusual happen just before Allie took off?” Neal asked, feeling stupid. It was a stupid, pat question, and usually the kind of information parents volunteered.

Nobody answered. Neal chewed on another grape to kill time. Two grapes later, he said, “Shall I take that to mean that nothing unusual happened, or that something unusual did happen and we don’t want to talk about it?”

“Allie was home for the weekend,” Liz said. “She just hung around, really.”

“No, Mrs. Chase, she didn’t just hang around, really. She flew to Paris. You see, in most runaways, there is what we like to call a ‘precipitating factor.’ A fight with the parents, a fight between the parents… maybe the kid had been grounded, forbidden to see a boyfriend… had her allowance cut-”

“Nothing like that,” said Chase. He sounded really sure about it.

“Too bad. It helps if there was. If you know what a kid is running from, you have a jump on what she’s running to. But just business as usual?”

More grapes.

“When did you last see Allie?” Another stupid, pat question.

“Saturday night I went to a party, a fund-raiser,” Liz Chase said. “John was in Washington. He got home… when, darling?”

“Ten, I suppose.”

“I didn’t get in till late. I imagine it was after one. I looked in on Allie in her room. She was asleep.”

“Asleep or passed out?”

Chase said, “I don’t particularly care for your attitude.”

“Neither do I,” Neal answered, “but we’re both stuck with it.”

Liz jumped in. “When we got up Sunday… late… Allie was gone. She’d told Marie-Christine-”

“Who?”

“One of the staff. Allie told her that she was going for a walk.”

“Which she did.”

“Which she did.”

For a second, Neal felt that he should stand up and pace around the room. One of those “nobody leaves until” numbers. Instead, he sank back into the sofa and said, “All right, so after you have your coffee and omelets and read the Sunday Times, you notice that Allie hasn’t come home yet. Then what?”

“I drove around looking for her,” Liz said.

The Senator didn’t say anything.

“And you didn’t find her.”

“But I did find the car, parked downtown by the bus station, so right away I thought…”

She let her thought drop off as if she was trying to think up a new ending. From the looks on everyone’s faces in the ensuing silence, Neal thought this one could be a four- or five-graper. He couldn’t take it.

“You thought that Allie had taken off again.”

Liz nodded. She hit him with those brown eyes flecked with green and filled with sadness. What are you trying to tell me, Mrs. Chase? “How many times has Allie run away?” Neal asked. He flipped through the report. No mention of previous times. Swell.

“Four, maybe five times,” said Lombardi, doing his job.

“Overseas?”

“No, no,” Lombardi said quickly. “Twice to New York. Fort Lauderdale once. L.A.”

“One time to her grandparents in Raleigh,” Liz said. “That was when we were in Washington.”

“Is Allie close to her grandparents?”

“Allie is not close to anybody, Mr. Carey,” said Mrs. Chase.

The sun was calling it a day. Neal watched the ocean turning a slate gray.

“So then you called the cops and the FBI and the state patrol and the National Guard?”

“I called her school,” Lombardi said as Chase turned a deep red, “and asked to speak to her-”

“Slick.”

“And they said she hadn’t come back from her weekend home.”

“So then you called the cops and the FBI and the state patrol and the National Guard.”

This was called “baiting the client” and was the kind of thing that got you canned. Or it could get the client jazzed up enough to drop his guard and tell you something juicy. Or it could do both.

“Or did you call the Gallup poll?”

Set the hook and yank the line. Chase came out of his chair like a trout out of a stream.

“Listen, you little bastard-”

Why is everyone calling me a little bastard today?

“Darling-”

“It’s all our fault, right? All the parents’ fault! We gave that kid everything! Now I’m supposed to destroy my future for her? She doesn’t want to be here, fine!”

“Yeah, it’s okay with me, too, Senator, but now you want her back in the picture.”

“You don’t work for me anymore!”

Neal stood up. “I don’t work for you, period. I work for the bank. They tell me to go after your kid, I go after your kid. They tell me to forget it, I forget it.”

Lombardi got up. Then Liz got up. “Find my daughter.”

It wasn’t a plea, it was a command. It was the kind of command that comes from a beautiful woman, the kind of command that comes from a mother. It was the kind of command that comes from a wife who doesn’t need Hubby’s okay. Neal heard it all three ways.

Good old Marie-Christine brought in coffee and they started again.

No, Allie had not used the AmEx card since buying the air ticket. Yes, she had trust funds from both sets of grandparents but no way of touching the funds without her parents’ signatures. She had her own bank account as well, but she hadn’t drawn anything from that, either. So she was on her own financially, which was very bad news. It meant that she could either beg, steal, or sell herself. Begging wasn’t very lucrative, and you usually had to buy your begging spot from the local thug. Stealing takes considerable skill. Selling yourself doesn’t.

And little Allie would need a lot of money, because drugs aren’t cheap and the people who sell them are.

“If it was strictly up to me,” Neal said, “I’d advise you to clean out Allie’s closets, make yourself a nice album, and get on with the business of mourning. Because the girl you knew probably doesn’t exist anymore.”

Because sometimes it’s just too late, folks. The streets take the child you know and turn that child into someone you don’t even recognize. Neal flashed on the Halperin kid, on that goofy look he had on his face all the time, even after…

“May I see Allie’s room now, please?” he asked.

Liz and lombardi took him there.

It looked like a hotel room: elegant, sleek, comfortable but nobody lived there. No pictures, souvenirs, no posters of rock stars on the wall.

Walk-in closet, private bath, of course. Bay window, view of the ocean. “This is going to take a while,” Neal said.

“If we’re not in the way…” Liz answered.

Neal gestured to the bed. Liz and Lombardi sat down and put their hands in their laps.

Neal searched the room. It was a relief to be doing something practical, something quiet, something he was good at. He went through the drawers and the closets carefully, slowly.

“Are you in the habit of searching Allie’s room, Mrs. Chase?”

“Wouldn’t you be, Mr. Carey?”

“But you haven’t removed anything.”

“No.”

Neal opened the top drawer of Allie’s dresser and ran his hand along the inside top. He felt the edge of the tape and gently pulled it off. He smelled the two joints.

“Emergency stash,” he said. “Expensive stuff, too.”

“Money is not Allie’s particular problem in life,” Liz said.

Didn’t used to be, Mrs. C.

Searching the contents of the drawer, Neal asked, “Did you used to take away drugs you found here?”

Liz nodded. “We fought about it.”

“What about the prescription stuff?”

“Same thing, once we caught on.”

Neal finished with the drawers and moved to the closet. Allie had a few clothes. Neal flipped through the dozen or so jackets before he found another strip of medical tape stuck to the inside lapel of a nice little denim job.

He removed the three joints from the tape and flipped them to Lombardi. “Hawaii Fourth.”

He didn’t find anything else until he got to the portable Sony TV. He twisted the fine-tune dial off and found the Valium that had been glued to the inside rim.

“Not to worry,” he said. “They use the same kind of paste you used to make in kindergarten. You can eat a quart of it and you won’t get sick.”

“I never dreamed…” Liz Chase was shaking her head.

“You’re not a pro, Mrs. Chase.”

Neal moved into Allie’s bathroom. The medicine cabinet alone took almost half an hour and yielded nothing very interesting. Likewise, the underside of the bathtub rim. Neal emptied the sink cabinet and crawled underneath. He found Allie’s major stash in a small plastic trash bag taped to the bottom of the sink.

“Jackpot!” he called out.

Liz Chase stood in the doorway. “What?”

Neal sat on the floor, rooting through the bag. “Well, we have your uppers, and your downers, and some grass and hash, and a little coke.”

“My god.”

“It’s not all bad news. No needles.”

Neal handed her the bag and smiled. “May I take a look at Allie’s car, please?”

“It’s in the garage.”

It had a lot of company. There were seven cars in the garage. Allie’s was a modest Datsun Z. The others were all sleek little sports jobs that Neal didn’t recognize. That wasn’t too hard, though. Neal didn’t know too many cars that weren’t on the IRT.

“John was very interested in cars for a while,” Liz explained. “As a matter of fact, so was Allie. It gave then something they could share, I think.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

Neal started with the glove compartment, just in case there was a note in there nobody had noticed. Maybe a note that read, “I’m in such and such a place and here’s my address and phone number.” He didn’t find it. He found the usual glove compartment crap. A couple of road maps, a service manual, an open package of cherry Life Savers, lipstick, an emergency pack of cigarettes, a comb, a brush, a pint bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

He felt around between the seats for “she went that-away” clues and didn’t find any of those, either. He also didn’t find any dope of any kind, which sort of surprised him. It was dark by the time he finished.

Neal sank back into the bathtub that came along with the guest room. He had filled it with steaming hot water to try to ease the ache in his body and his soul. The first sip of scotch spread a soothing warmth through his insides, and after a few minutes he was able to pick up his paperback copy of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and lose himself in the eighteenth century. Which was his life’s goal, anyway.

He relished the quiet. Chase and Jimmy Cricket had headed back to Washington for one of those crucial votes. The missus was preparing herself for yet another fundraiser for an undoubtedly good cause. What had Dickens called it? “Telescopic Philanthropy”? Although Neal had to admit that given a choice between Mrs. Jellyby and Liz Chase, there was no contest. Anyway, she’d hoped that he “wouldn’t mind dining alone.” He didn’t. The cook laid on, with hopefully unintentional irony, a London broil, rice and asparagus, and followed it up with a raspberry tart. Neal washed it all down with the appropriate wine, and was about half-bagged when he hit the tub. After a chapter of Pickle, he laid the book down and thought things over.

Allie hadn’t planned to take off. No good doper leaves a stash like that behind if she’s thought about it. No, Allie was upset when she left. She’d made the decision in a hurry, impulsively, sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning. She’d given it a little more thought in the car and taken whatever stuff she had with her. But she hadn’t gone back to the house to collect anything else, which meant she was a piss-poor druggie, or she really didn’t want to go home.

Also, she wanted to stay gone. Most casual runaways, who are fed up with the discipline, or bored at home, or want attention, want to be found. Consciously or unconsciously, they leave clues all over the place. They also find that life out there is a lot worse than life at home, and they come back. Unless life out there is better than life at home. Or life at school, which was something he’d better look into, except he didn’t think he’d be allowed to. The Chases had simply withdrawn Allie in absentia as it were, to avoid a scandal. So forget that. But it impressed him that spoiled little Allie hadn’t reached for the plastic, or wired for money. She was gutting it out, and this was a girl who wasn’t used to gutting it out. So why?

He fiddled the hot-water tap with his foot. He didn’t feel like sitting up to reach it and it left his hand free to fiddle with the scotch. He wished he’d taped the afternoon’s interview, because there was something back there that was bugging him, really bugging him, and it was rattling around in the dimmer corners of his mind, just out of reach.

Neal checked his watch when he heard the knock on the bedroom door. It was a few minutes past two in the goddamn morning. He said “Come in,” anyway.

Liz Chase shut the door behind her. Neal wondered why she was wearing black silk to sleep alone in, but that was her business. The black turned her blond hair gold. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled her legs up underneath just as she had that afternoon, and tugged the hem of the nightgown down around her knees. Then she just sat there looking at him.

Neal had read about this kind of thing in detective novels, but it never had happened to him. He didn’t think it was happening to him now, either, but his throat tightened up and he swallowed hard nevertheless.

“Yeah?”

“This is not easy for me.”

She bit her lip and nodded her head several times, as if she was trying to make up her mind.

“Allie has been with a number of men,” she said.

“There are worse things, Mrs. Chase.”

“Apparently… the Senator is one of them.”

Whoa.

Allie had left a note-in the car, where she knew her mother would find it, because she knew dear old Dad wouldn’t come looking.

It had been going on for years, since she was “old enough,” like ten, and it had started with fondling and extra-special hugs and bonus kisses. It hadn’t been all the time, just every once in a while, and she had been scared to tell. She had tried to tell Grandpa and Grandma that one time, but she couldn’t, she was so ashamed. “Please, Mom, don’t be angry, don’t hate me,” she wrote. And they had never done… you know… gone all the way, until last night and Daddy just wouldn’t stop, just wouldn’t stop, just wouldn’t… and she didn’t know what to do. She just couldn’t face them, just couldn’t face her mother, and so she was taking off for good.

So let’s take another look at little Allie, who was never good enough, but good enough for Dad. Allie, who drowned the memories and numbed the feelings, and who went out looking for sex instead of love because she didn’t know the difference, and who maybe had it buried real deep in the past until Daddy took her again, except this time she was old enough that she’d never forget, and old enough to know what it meant. And you thought you knew this kid, Neal. You thought you had her pegged. You never learn, do you?

“Where’s the note?” Neal asked when Liz was finished,

“Is it important?”

“It will be when I take it to the cops, and if you destroyed it, Mrs. Chase, it makes you guilty of a half dozen crimes I can think of.”

“You’re going to the police?”

“Soon as I get dressed. You want to come with me?”

“My husband-”

“Fuck him.”

She held up for another second or so and then she lost it. Suddenly. As if she’d been stabbed in the heart and the pain had just hit her. It seemed like the beautiful face aged ten years in the seconds that she held back the tears, and then they came out in wracking sobs.

“My baby. My poor little baby. She needs so much help. She needs me and I don’t know where she is! I have to tell her! I have to tell her!”

“Tell her what?” Neal asked, and if she said something like “That I love her,” he was about ready to smack her in the mouth.

“On top of everything else, what she must be thinking! I have to tell her, at least that.”

“Tell her what, Mrs. Chase?”

She settled herself down, he had to give her credit for that. She drew herself back from the edge of hysteria and settled down to help her daughter. She caught her breath and spoke quietly-slowly.

“He’s not her father.”

Whoa and double whoa.

She had turned around while Neal put his clothes on, and she sat patiently while he poured himself a drink and tossed down half of it. If he smoked, he would have lit one up.

“Does the Senator know that Allie isn’t his?”

She nodded.

“Since when?”

“I suppose Allie was eight or nine. We had a terrible fight. I threw it at him.”

“But you never told Allie.”

“I’d been meaning to.”

“Where’s the note, Mrs. Chase?”

“In a safe-deposit box-my own.”

Smart lady.

“Does anyone else know about it?”

“No.”

“So the Senator doesn’t know that you know that-”

She shook her head. “I haven’t said anything to him about it. If I did, I’d have to leave him, and if I left him, I wouldn’t get the help I need to find Allie, would I?”

No, lady, you probably wouldn’t.

“Are you going to the police?” she asked.

“No.”

Because you’re right, Mrs. Chase. If I take this to the cops, it’s all over. I’m off the case, the Senator is out of office, Friends loses interest, and Allie gets to read about it in the foreign edition of Newsweek and will bury herself even deeper than she already has. No winners.

So the basic rules apply. John Chase is a wealthy member of the U.S. Senate, and he might be President someday, and he has money in the bank. So he gets to rape his stepdaughter and get away with it and also get someone like me to clean it all up. Neal Carey, Janitor to the Rich and Powerful.

And that son of a bitch is counting on Allie’s shame to shut her up while she’s posing for “The Waltons Go to Washington” pictures, and then he’ll stick her away in some really faraway school someplace, maybe one of those Swiss jobs. And I’m going to help him do it. Because it’s better than having that kid out there thinking she’s had sex with her own father and quite possibly dying over it. And because I want to finish college one of these days.

“There’s something else to think about, Mrs. Chase. If Allie needs drugs, and food and shelter and all that, and she doesn’t have money… she’ll do anything to get it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Allie would never do that.”

“Yes, she would. You’re doing it. I’m doing it.” And we ain’t even haggling over the price.

Neal lay awake for most of what was left of the night. He hadn’t had dreams about the Halperin kid for months, and he didn’t want to start again. But when he closed his eyes, he saw the kid again, and thought about the “ifs.” If they had only let the kid be what he was-an amiable, not overly bright gay teenager. If they had treated the case as more than a ground ball and sent two guys instead of just Neal. If only room service hadn’t been closed that night.

He gave up trying to sleep around five, took a wake-up shower, said a quick goodbye to Elizabeth Chase, and asked for a ride downtown. The driver let him off at an Avis counter, Neal got lost about fifteen times before he found Scott Mackensen’s school in Connecticut.