Silent Whisper (25 page)

“Well I’ll be damned,” she said, coming closer. “Christina was right.”

I stood up to face her. “I’m sorry to barge in like this,” I apologized, “I’m Parrish Locke and well…it’s difficult to—”

“Nick’s daughter,” she said, still looking as if she had a bet riding on it.

“What? I mean—uh, yes,” I said, stumbling over my words. “How did you know?”

“Hell, a person only has to take one look to see the resemblance. Sit down,” she said, taking a seat on the settee. “What can I do for you?”

“I need to find my father,” I blurted. “I mean, I know he went into the witness protection program, but I just recently found out that he is my father and I thought maybe—”

“Hold up a second,” she said, raising her hand to stop me. “Nick left WITSEC about twenty years ago. He only stayed in it for five or six years. He wasn’t one that could live an anonymous life like that. Hell, if I’d have known that he wasn’t in it for life, I wouldn’t have divorced him,” she said with a sigh. “There were certain financial perks you see.”

I took a moment to digest the information. Anna took that same moment to try and figure out what my gig was.

“So what’s up?” she asked, looking out the front window at my mother’s car. “Is your mom here to collect on some back child support or something?”

I immediately bristled. “My mother—er, Karlie died when I was only seven weeks old. The woman in the car out there is the mother that raised me. Trust me; she’d rather be anywhere else but here at the moment.”

“I apologize,” she said, “I suppose I should feel a bit guilty now hearing what you just told me.”

“Maybe so,” I replied.

“What?”

“I know what you did when you visited Karlie, what you told her, so there’s no need to explain. But you can make it up to me by telling me where I can find Dominic.”

She stood up, her hands rubbing her forehead. “It’s not that simple,” she started, “He does have a new identity, he’s just not in the federal program any more. All I have is a cell number that he gave me several years back in case I ever needed to reach him. We kind of made a pact, you see.”

I was patiently waiting for her to get to the point.

“Nick told me if I ever needed anything, I could call him. Emergency purposes he said. By the same token, if I ever got information that someone was looking for him, he expected me to forewarn him of that as well. I sure didn’t count on the fact that you’d be the first person to come around. It kind of puts me in a bit of a bind with him.”

She was kind of rambling and I wasn’t sure why—unless she felt more guilt than what she was willing to admit.

“You see, I finally told him about my visit to your mother. He was going crazy looking for her, thinking she’d been the recipient of a hit. I felt badly, so I told him that my conversation with her had likely caused her to run. But I never mentioned the fact that I knew she was pregnant. That would’ve changed everything.”

“What difference would that make now?” I asked; not fully understanding why she felt so conflicted.

“It’s just that he won’t be pleased with me, and financially he helps me from time to time, though it’s been years since I’ve asked. Could you leave your number with me? I just need to take a moment or two and think this through.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said, standing up. I rummaged through my purse for one of my business cards. “Here,” I said handing it to her. “Please give me a call either way. I’m under a bit of a time constraint here.”

She nodded. “I just need to discuss it with Christina first. We always discuss matters such as this. I truly want to do the right thing here, Parrish, for all concerned.”

“Thanks, Anna,” I replied. “I’ll be waiting to hear back from you.”

And that was that—for now. I figured if Plan A didn’t work, there was always Plan B, which was trying to find Marco Trevani. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary.

When I returned to the car, I told Mom everything.

“Why in the hell is she being so funny about giving you that cell number?” she asked. “On one hand you said she feels guilty, but on the other hand it seems like she’s stalling. And who is this Christina she has to talk to about it first?”

“I’m pretty sure Christina is her life partner, Mom.”

“What? She’s a
lesbian
?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well I’ll be damned. Wonder if Karlie knew?”

“I don’t think so, Mom.”

Park City, Utah

Dominic/Nick

I’d just finished taking inventory in the ski shop after one of the busiest weeks we’d had at Alpine Valley Ski Resort when my wife, Sheila, called me on my cell.

“I’m almost finished,” I said into the phone with a smile. I knew she had dinner waiting for me just like she did every evening at seven-thirty. “I’ll be up as soon as Dustin comes back from his break.”

“It’s not that, Nick. You had a call on that prepaid phone of yours. The one that is for Anna Maria only.”

I could hear the tinge of worry in her voice. Sheila had known everything relative to my past and current situation when we had started dating nearly six years before. We’d met through one of those on-line dating sites. She constantly worried that someone from my past was still searching for me, trying to even some score.

“Not to worry,” I said, “She probably just wants to hit me up for some cash. I’ll call her as soon as I get there.”

I hated that my wife didn’t feel entirely at ease after all of this time. Still, I had come from a very different life than she had.

Once I returned to our large A-frame villa that overlooked Parley’s Canyon, she handed me the cell and quietly left the room. Anna had left a voicemail simply requesting that I call her back as soon as possible. I hit the ‘call back’ feature and waited for Anna to pick up.

“Nick,” she said, as soon as she answered. “I have some news.”

“I’m listening,” I replied, sitting down on the sofa in the living room, watching the dancing flames of the fire in the stone fireplace, and listening to the crackling and popping of the wood waiting for whatever news she was hesitant to share.

“Anna?”

“Look,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “Promise me that you won’t get angry when I tell you this, please? I wasn’t even going to tell you, but Christina said it would be bad karma if I didn’t and well…”

“For the love of Christ, Anna, just spit it out.”

“Your daughter stopped by here looking for you. My God, Nick, she’s the spitting image of you. I didn’t tell her where you were, just that I’d let her know if you wanted to meet her.”

Daughter?

“Nick?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Anna?”

Brief silence.

“I never told you the whole story about…Karlie. You see, I was having her followed back then, because I—well I knew there was something different about her—with you, I mean.”

“Go on,” I said, my blood starting a slow boil.

“Well, the P.I. that I hired for surveillance came back with a full report of her comings and goings, and it seems that she was seeing an obstetrician. She was pregnant, Nick. I mean I assumed it was your child, but you never really know about these things I mean with someone…like Karlie, so I never told you
that
part of it.”

“Fuck you, Anna! You kept it from me for your own selfish reasons.”

I was beyond angry; I was furious and everything inside of me was screaming at the injustice of all of this; everything that had mattered in my life was gone, and the one thing that might’ve compensated for the loss had been hidden from me. I wanted to kill Anna at that moment; and had she been standing before me right now, that’s exactly what I would’ve done.

I imagined the pleasure I would have gotten as I wrapped my hands around her neck and squeezed the fucking life out of her. I had to compose my anger for now, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have all of the information I needed to find my daughter.

As calmly as possible, I posed the question. “Anna do you have her contact information?”

“Yes, I do. But there’s one thing I need before I give it to you, and then I’ll not ask again.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand dollars, Nick. I want it wired to my bank account in the morning.”

“It will be there,” I replied.

“As soon as the bank confirms, I’ll call you with her name and number.”

My brain was still in a fog as I stood up and went to the kitchen where Sheila was putting our dinner on the table. She glanced over as I came in, and did a quick double take.

“Oh God,” she said, alarm evident in her voice. “What happened? What is it?”

I sat down at the table, and ran both hands through my hair, trying to put all the pieces together so that they made some sort of sense. How could I not have known? Why had Karlie kept something so important and so blessed like that from me?

“Nick?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I said, looking up at her worried face. “I just learned from Anna that Karlie and I—we had a child together. A daughter. She’s looking for me it seems.”

“Oh my lord,” she said, rushing over to me, kneeling down in front of me, taking my hands into hers. “That’s wonderful news, right? I mean you’re happy about this, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “I’m stunned for the moment, but yes, of course. It still hasn’t totally registered with me. I’ll feel better once Anna provides me with her name and phone number.”

“What?” she asked, a puzzled look now taking over.

“You know Anna,” I deadpanned. “Everything has a price. But it doesn’t matter,” I shrugged. “She can name her price for this one, because there’s no way I’m letting anything stand in the way of finding my daughter. My daughter,” I repeated, loving the way it felt to say it. “My daughter with my Karlie.”

It was two days later when I got a call on my cell. The caller I.D. simply read ‘Utah Call.’ I was grateful that Mom had left to go shopping. She’d not been more than six feet away from me since we returned to Richmond.

“Hello?” I answered tentatively, my heart beating faster.

“Parrish Locke, please.” The deep, rich voice said. It was a familiar voice to me, because of my…episode.

It was him.

“This is Parrish,” I managed to squeak out, hating how apprehensive my voice sounded.

“This is Nick Parenti,” he said, “Anna gave me your number and explained…the situation.”

The…situation?

“You’re my father,” I blurted in my Parrish Locke sort of way. “I don’t want anything from you; I just want you to know that right from Jump Street.”

Seriously? Did I just say ‘Jump Street’?

I heard a soft chuckle from the other end. “I believe you,” he replied. “Anna admitted her duplicity to me in all of this. I’m so sorry that I never knew…I really am.”

“It’s not your fault,” I conceded. “I didn’t know about you either until just recently.”

“When were you born?” he asked.

“April 11, 1987, in Richmond, Virginia.”

“Damn,” he said. It was almost a whisper. “April 11th is my birthday as well.”

“My mother, Karlie,” I clarified, “died before I was two months old.”

“That part I learned of many years ago,” he replied, and there was a sad edge to his voice. “But I knew very few details.”

“You
knew
?” I asked, for some reason this angered me and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because Mom hadn’t known that he
knew.
Here she’d been, literally hanging in Limbo all this time so that she could make sure he found out, and he already freakin’ knew it!

“Yes,” he replied, “A former colleague of mine, Marco, had the means of checking the Social Security Death Index. I asked him to help me find her about twenty years ago.”

Marco - the FBI agent who wiggled his way into the mob.

Sweet.

“So you never visited her grave?” I asked, incredulously.

There was a brief pause. “No,” he replied, “I’m not sure where it is even located. All I wanted to do was to find her, and when I found out that she had passed away, it was such a shock to me. I didn’t think to find out where she was buried.”

“I see.”

“Parrish, I want to meet you,” he said. “I live in Utah now, but I’d be happy to fly to wherever you live so that I can see you.”

“I live in New York,” I replied, “But right now, I’m in Richmond, Virginia with my mother. I was in a car accident a week ago, and I’m recovering.”

“Not too serious, I hope?”

“It was enlightening,” I replied, thinking he probably thought I was a hot mess with a response like that.

“I can make flight arrangements to Richmond if that’s where you’ll be for the next few days,” he said.

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll call you back when I have my travel arrangements confirmed.”

“Okay.”

“Talk to you soon, Parrish.”