Page 12 of A Week Away

He gave me a questioning look but didn’t ask. About six weeks before I’d had surgery on my shoulder. I’d gotten stiff on the plane ride even though it was less than ninety minutes. I took out a calling card and called our house phone. It was ten minutes before midnight.

Ronnie answered, “Hello.”

I didn’t say anything for too long a time.

“I know it’s you, Dom.”

“I’m sorry. Something’s come up and I have to deal with it.”

“So, who’s the kid?”

“His dad is someone I used to know.”

“Where are you?”

“Reno.” Well, he would get the credit card statement, which meant he’d find out anyway.

“Does this have anything to do with the people you were with at the Westin a few weeks ago?”

Okay, I didn’t know he knew about that. My friends Brian and Sugar had come through from Chicago on their way to a Mexican cruise. I’d met them for a drink in the lobby of the Westin Hotel. We’d spend all of thirty-five minutes together and it had gotten back to him. Which didn’t surprise me but also didn’t make me happy.

“No, it has nothing to do with that.”

“What does it have to do with?”

“The kid’s father is missing. I said I’d help him figure out what happened to him.”

“And that had to happen in the middle of our housewarming party?”

“It did.”

He left the kind of silence that shouted ‘I don’t believe you.’

“When will you be back?”

“Soon. I hope.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

“No.”

We left another long pause.

“I don’t want to be doing this,” I said.

“But you are.”

CHAPTERFOUR

September 13, 1996

Very late

Fortunately, I always carried a couple of hundred-dollar bills in the ‘secret’ compartment of my wallet. It’s not that I was walking through life expecting to be quasi-kidnapped by a teenager; it’s more that I knew bad things happened and that bad things generally required cash.

Once we got out of the terminal, I was hit by the frigid air, clearly under fifty degrees. I was wearing a pair of 501s, Vans and a thin red turtleneck Ronnie had picked out. I usually left a jacket in my Jeep, but Ronnie had cleaned everything out when it went to the body shop to be fixed. Not many of my things had worked their way back in.

Unlike LAX and other big city airports, there were not a lot of cabs waiting for us. In fact there were none. I walked down to a recent model minivan that had its windows open and was sitting there idling. The main clue that it might be for hire was that it was illegally parked.