people who just take crap like this. My family blows up things. If your dad had a family, they’d blow up things, too. Your dad is smart, he’s quick, and he’s brave, which he proved today, proved forever. We’re going to figure this out, and we’re going to strike back, and we’re going to make this Waxx sonofabitch regret he ever stepped into our lives.”
“Vengeance,” Milo said, as he had said to me in his room two days previously, when the review was published.
The word sounded less offensive now than it sounded then.
“Justice,” Penny said. “Call it justice. One way or another, we’re going to crush Shearman Waxx with a big damn load of justice.”
I began to wish I’d spent the past ten years writing thrillers, because then perhaps I would know something useful about tracking devices, electronic surveillance, phone tapping, and techniques of evasion when pursued by psychopathic book critics.
In the storm-dimmed light, most drivers were using headlights, which inspired happier thoughts of the impending Christmas holiday by transforming the falling rain into tinsel streamers, the foaming gutter water into angel hair, and every puddle into collections of silver ornaments waiting to be hung on a tree.
“Hud called me on my cell phone,” I said, “but I immediately called him back on the disposable. That couldn’t have been how Waxx found us because he was already watching us then. He opened fire a couple minutes later.”
“I thought you only had the disposable.”
“No. I’m keeping my phone in case John Clitherow decides to contact me again.”
“What did the Hud call about?”
“Heard our house blew up. Thought you might want to dump Alma, get a new agent.”
“What’s he trying to imply—that Alma blew it up?”
“No. But he seems to feel you should be worried that Alma’s clients are dying on her.”
“Gwyneth Oppenheim?”
“He wants you to think maybe Alma’s good karma is past its expiration date.”
“And now her clients are going to die like flies?”
“Should I invite him to your funeral?” I asked.
“No way, not the Honker,” Milo said from the backseat, and Lassie issued a low growl.
After I pinched my nose and honked, I said, “He thinks a blown-up house could get me on Oprah.”
“Well, that’s a big step up from Dancing with the Stars.”
“It was like three years ago he wanted me to do that, and I still haven’t taken samba lessons. I am such an ungrateful client.”
“Remember that dinner, I’d finished the first bunny book. He spent an hour arguing, Pistachio shouldn’t be a purple rabbit?”
“He said purple on book jackets doesn’t sell.”
“He urged me to go green for the environmental crowd.”
“And make the rabbit a kitten,” I recalled.
“Pistachio, the green kitten. Except he said Pistachio wasn’t a good name for marketing.”
“Hey, I forgot that part. What name did he suggest?”
“Toot. Toot the green kitten.”
“Toot. I guess that works if you’re marketing narrowly to little kids who’re cocaine addicts.”
With a faint note of disapproval, Milo said, “Are you guys thinking how to get another car?”
“Yes we are, dear,” Penny said. “We’re multitrack thinkers.”
“We already have a slew of ideas,” I said. “We’re carefully evaluating them before we decide what to do.”
Milo said, “I have a pretty good idea.”
Penny and I glanced at each other, and I said, “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Well, but you’re the parents, I’m just a kid. I should defer to you, hear your ideas first.”
I said, “Nobody likes a wiseass, Milo. What’s your idea?”
He had a good one. We decided to pursue his scheme before taking time to evaluate our slew of more complicated ideas.
Penny dropped me off at a discount store and drove continuously through the surrounding neighborhood while I bought three raincoats with hoods and long-handled flashlights. If the Explorer contained a tracking device, we would not appear to have stopped anywhere.
As I waited outside the store with my purchases, the SUV did not quickly appear. Nausea overcame me, and fear. Then Penny returned.
From there we drove to the serviceway behind St. Gaetano’s, the church we attended. Penny stopped, and I hastily pulled our remaining luggage from the back of the SUV and dumped it on the pavement.
She departed, and after trying a back door to the church and finding it locked, I walked around to the front of the building. In my long black raincoat with hood, I suppose I appeared monkish. I climbed the steps and entered by the main door.
As the true twilight replaced the false and as nine-to-fivers began to leave work, no services were under way at St. Gaetano’s. Vespers