Gone

CHAPTER 13

I waited on the porch until Emily Parker’s sedan disappeared in the distance, and then I went back into the house and took the dishes into the kitchen.

In the corner, I saw that, despite her obvious annoyance at the federal intrusion, Mary Catherine had put on another pot of coffee. When I looked out the window, I could see her sitting on the fence behind the house, showing something green and fuzzy in her palm to Shawna and Fiona. Probably seamlessly weaving in some lesson about the life cycle while she was at it, I thought, teachable moments being yet another specialty of the ever-upbeat and unstoppable Bennett nanny.

Mary Catherine was handing the caterpillar off to Shawna when she looked up and saw me watching. She stuck her tongue out at me, but then she smiled and waved. I smiled myself as I waved back vigorously.

Friends again, I thought. Good. Lord knew I needed all the friends I could find.

I decided to pitch in and wash the dishes at the big porcelain sink. I’d washed a dish or two in my time working in restaurants when I was in college, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually washed any by hand. Then I did remember. It was when my mom went back to work when I was a kid.

She got a job cleaning offices downtown, and my dad and I had to fend for ourselves. My dad, no Bobby Flay, would char some pork chops in a big, black cast-iron pan and boil some potatoes, while I got cleanup detail. It was a grim time, to be sure, but I do remember how proud my mom was of my meticulous dish cleaning.

Remember, Michael Sean, she’d always say, it’s never the job you do but how hard you do it.

I liked to think I’d taken her words to heart in the four-odd decades I’d lived on this planet. I had worked hard as a father, as a cop.

And now where am I? I thought, drying my hands. Hiding out from a violent drug lord with my family in the wilds of Northern California. I’d worked hard, all right. I’d damned near worked myself out of a job.

After I dried the plates and cups and put everything back in its proper place, I opened the tap and poured myself a glass of cold water. I took a long drink and then opened the tap again and cupped some water in my hands and splashed it over my face.

Only then did I go over the full significance of everything Emily Parker had told me.

I had hoped I was just being cynical about law enforcement’s lack of information. I hadn’t been. They really didn’t know anything about the attacks on the Mafia. There were no witnesses, no DNA traces, and no leads.

That wasn’t the only problem, unfortunately. Emily had told me some new, disturbing information that actually hadn’t made the papers.

Throughout the Mexican border towns where the cartels were most active-Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Puerto Palomas, Reynosa, Nogales, and Nuevo Laredo-all the informants for both the DEA and Mexican federales were being systematically wiped out.

It was a veritable purge. In the middle of the night, three or four pickup trucks would show up, and people would be dragged out of their houses by what seemed like army troops dressed in black. The informants’ headless torsos would be found a few days later, dumped in front of police stations, the words ESTO SUCEDE A RATAS spray-painted across their chests.

This is what happens to rats.

It was unprecedented stuff. Some were saying that someone in US federal law enforcement had to be tipping off Perrine. It also had to be someone pretty high up in the FBI or the DEA, since the identities of the slain informants were top secret.

It was almost too incredible to believe that things were actually getting worse. Almost fifty thousand people had died in the last few years of the cartels’ domination. Five thousand people were missing. Now, with the attacks on the Mob, our worst nightmare was coming true. Border be damned, the cartels were expanding into the Mob’s territory. No different from terrorists or an invading army, they were here among us, killing Americans with impunity.

Emily had also explained the egregious political horseshit that was going on in our government. With the approach of an election year, the president, looking for the Hispanic vote, had backed off on strong border policies. In fact, the Justice Department had actually put some pressure on the state governments in Arizona and Texas to tone down their “aggressive border-related law enforcement.”

No doubt about it. It was Alice in Wonderland crazy time. No wonder Perrine was on the rise.

And that wasn’t even the only new terror-inducing bit of inside scoop Emily had given me. Apparently, an insanely toxic and strange white substance had been found at one of the Mob hits in Malibu.

Emily had actually shown me pictures of the Mob boss and his wife, who had been exposed to the substance, and it was something else. Their skin was a shade of purple I’d never seen before. It looked as if they had been turned inside out.

I was standing there, trying to get the frightening images out of my head, when one of the kids hit a Wiffle ball off the windowsill. I looked out the window at my kids, running around oblivious in the side yard.

Jane was in a lawn chair with her nose deep in a Pokémon encyclopedia, while Ricky and Eddie were shooting at each other with gun-shaped sticks. Brian had arranged a game of Wiffle ball for the younger kids, and as I watched, Chrissy hit the ball and began running toward third until Fiona grabbed her and turned her around.

After a second, I pulled open the back door and lifted a second foul ball before Shawna could pick it up. Shawna squealed happily as I actually picked her up as well.

“OK, butterfly girl,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. “Playtime’s over. Who’s going to be the first one to try to deal with Daddy’s screwball?”