“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.
“Daaad,” Annie almost whines. “You’re not paying attention, are you?”
She’s right, but a quick scan of the TV screen and my memory tells me where we are in the movie. “The central computer just changed Logan Five’s life clock to flashing red early. Now he has no choice but to become a Runner himself.”
“You’re right. But doesn’t he kind of like that Jessica Six girl enough to run anyway?”
“I think he probably does, yeah.”
Annie’s eyes settle on me. “Are you sure I can’t call my friends?”
“Sorry, babe. It’s only for a few days, hopefully. Is there somebody you really miss talking to?”
“All my friends, really. But something happened just before you pulled me out of school, and I want to know what the teachers did about it.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody stole Jody Campbell’s cell phone. I think it was Haley Winters, the meanest girl in my class. But when the teachers finally went through the lockers, they found it in Maria’s locker.”
“Maria Estrada?”
Annie nods. “She’s the only Mexican girl in our whole school. I think Haley put it in her locker to get Maria in trouble. I think that’s the whole reason she took the phone.”
“Do you have any proof?”
Annie frowns and sighs angrily. “No.”