Gone (Michael Bennett) Read Free Page A

maniac calls him up a mere two months after his world-famous escape and insists on working together. Like he needed that kind of heat.
    As Licata watched, a beautiful four- or five-year-old dusky girl with light-blue eyes filled the screen. Her cornrowed hair was wet, the sequins of her bright-teal bathing suit twinkling.
    “Who’s the funny man, Daddy?” the little girl said as she squatted, peering curiously at Licata.
    “Back in the pool now, Bianca. I want you to do two laps of backstroke now,” Perrine said lovingly from behind her. “Daddy’s just watching a grown-up show.”
    Licata watched the girl shrug and walk offscreen.
    “What do you think of this TV setup? Amazing clarity, yes?” Perrine said, removing his sunglasses to show his sparkling light-blue eyes. “It’s called TelePresence, the latest thing from Cisco Systems. It’s costing me a small fortune, but I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see and speak with you one last time.”
    Licata opened his mouth to say something, then suddenly found himself weeping.
    “Tears, Mr. Licata? Seriously? You of all people know perfectly well that men in this world fall into two categories, tools or enemies. You refused to work with me. What did you think was going to happen?”
    Perrine took a sip of his drink and wiped his lips daintily with a napkin before he continued.
    “It’s not like I didn’t give you a chance. I offered friendship, remember?” he said. “A mutually beneficial partnership. I explained to you how the world was changing. How I could help you and the American Mafia to weather that transition. In earnest I said these things.
    “Do you remember what you said before you hung up on me? It was rather humorous. You said that instead of working with your organization, my Mexican friends and I ought to, and I quote, ‘go back and do what you’re good at: washing dishes and cutting grass.’ ”
    He brushed an imaginary speck from the shoulder of his pristine silk shirt.
    “Mr. Licata, as you see now, my people aren’t the type that do dishes, and instead of grass, the only things we cut are heads.”
    “You’re right,” Licata said, blood from his wrecked mouth flecking the cement floor. “I was wrong, Manuel. Way, way off base to disrespect you like that. I see how serious a player you are. We can help each other. I can help you. We can work it out.”
    Perrine laughed as he slipped his shades on and leaned back.
    “ ‘We can work it out’?” he said as he put his hands behind his head. “You mean like the famous Beatles song, Mr. Licata? That’s precisely the problem. There’s no time, my friend.”
    “But —” Licata said as the downward-flowing gas finally touched the candle flame.
    Then Licata, his basement, and most of his obnoxious Connecticut McMansion were instantly vaporized as five thousand cubic feet of natural gas went up all at once in a ripping, reverberating, ground-shuddering blast.

PART ONE
    DON’T FENCE ME IN
     

CHAPTER 1
     
    AWAKE AT FIVE O’CLOCK in the morning and unable to sleep with all the incessant peace and quiet, I pushed out through the creaky screen door onto the darkened porch, clutching my morning’s first coffee.
    Dr. Seuss was right on the money , I thought with a frown as I sat myself beside a rusting tractor hay rake.
    “Oh, the places you’ll go,” I mumbled to the tumbleweeds.
    The porch rail I put my feet up on was connected to a ramshackle Victorian farmhouse a few miles south of Susanville, California. Susanville, as absolutely no one knows, is the county seat of Northern California’s Lassen County. The county itself is named after Peter Lassen, a famous frontiersman and Indian fighter, who, I’d learned from my daughter Jane, was murdered under mysterious circumstances in 1859.
    As a New York cop forced into exile out here in the exact middle of nowhere for the past eight months, I was seriously thinking about asking someone if I could take