At all costs

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.