Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

“It could be worse,” she said.

“Give me the ball,” Brian said.

“How the hell could it be worse, Jane?” Ricky continued. “New York had its downsides, but I had, like, friends, you know? Things I liked to do. Now I’m a hick. We don’t even go to school! I mean, if we had a washboard and a jug to blow into, we could start a band.”

“Give me the ball,” Brian insisted again.

Jane finally flicked it to him.

“He’s telling the truth, you know, Jane. Last week, I even busted Dad listening to country music. I’m starting to think there is no threat from that cartel guy. Maybe Dad’s just gone crazy and turned the whole lot of us into a bunch of crazy backwoods hicks.”

“But I thought you liked the animals, Ricky,” Jane said, ignoring Brian.

“For about five minutes,” Ricky said. “I’m going to be thirteen, Jane. Old MacDonald sitting on his stupid fence has lost his charm.”

“Exactly,” Brian said, overthrowing Ricky again by twenty yards. “It’s bad enough we’re living out here like doomsday preppers. Do we have to actually become farmers? In fact, I say we end this right now. If the peewees want to follow Mr. Cody around, more power to them. My days of waking at the crack of dawn and working for free are done.”

“You said it,” Ricky agreed, throwing the ball back to his brother. “Don’t they have child-labor laws in this state? Only problem is, how are we going to get out of it?”

“He’s right, Brian,” Jane said, intercepting the ball again. “Mary Catherine won’t sit still for that. You know how much she likes Mr. Cody.”

All three of them turned as they heard the rental car start. Agent Parker waved to them before getting in and pulling out. They stood in the field, waving back until they couldn’t see the car anymore.

“No! Come back! Take us with you!” Ricky said.

“Don’t worry, little brother. I have a plan,” Brian said, spinning the ball up in the air. “You just leave it to me.”

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.