Family life was a different beast from what he’d known before—unlike Tourism, it actually was life. So he learned. First, to accept, and after acceptance came affection. Because the Slope wasn’t about the nouveau riche torturing café workers with elaborate nonfat coffee specifications; Park Slope was about Milo Weaver’s family.
The Tiger had called him a bourgeois family man. In that, at least, the assassin had been right on the mark.
At Garfield Place, he climbed out of Grainger’s Mercedes with a promise to talk the next morning in the office. But he knew, as he mounted the narrow interior stairs of their brownstone, that he had already made up his mind. Family man or not, he was going to Paris.
At the third floor, he heard a television. When he rang the bell Stephanie shouted, “Door! Mom, door!” Then Tina’s quick footsteps and, “Coming.” When she opened it, she was buttoning her shirt. Once she had him focused, she crossed her arms over her breasts and in a high whisper said, “You missed her show.”
“Didn’t Tom talk to you?”
He tried to come in, but she wouldn’t step out of the way. “That man will say anything to cover for you.”
It was true, so he didn’t dispute it. He just waited for her to make up her mind. When she did, she grabbed his shirt, pulled him close, and kissed him fully on the lips. “You’re still in the dog house, mister.”
“Can I come in?”
Tina wasn’t truly angry. She came from a family where you didn’t hide your anger, because by venting it you stole its power. That’s how the Crowes had always done it in Austin, and what was good enough for Texas was good enough for anywhere.
He found Stephanie in the living room, splayed on the floor with a pile of dolls, while on television cartoon animals got into trouble. “Hey, girl,” he told her. “Sorry I missed the show.”
She didn’t get up. “I’m used to it by now.”
She sounded more like her mother every day. When he leaned over and kissed her head, she wrinkled her nose.
“Dad, you stink.”
“I know, hon. Sorry.”
Tina threw a tube of moisturizing cream at Milo. “For that sunburn. Want a beer?”
“Any vodka?”
“Let’s get some food in you first.”
Tina boiled ramen noodles—one of the five things, by her own admission, that she knew how to cook—and brought out the bowl. By then, Stephanie had warmed to Milo’s presence and climbed up beside him on the sofa. She gave a rundown of the other performers at the talent show, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and the utter injustice of the winning performance—Sarah Lawton’s rendition of “I Decide.”
“But what about yours? We worked on it for weeks.”
Stephanie tilted her head forward to glower at him. “It was a stupid idea.”
“Why?”
“Because, Dad. No one understands French.”
Milo rubbed his forehead. He’d thought it was a fine idea, his child performing a Serge Gainsbourg hit. It was unexpected. Innovative. “I thought you liked that song.”
“Yeah.”
Tina took the far end of the couch. “She was incredible, Milo. Just stunning.”
“But I didn’t win.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “One day you’ll be running the New York Philharmonic, and Sarah Lawton will be serving up fries at Fuddruckers.”
“Milo,” warned Tina.
“I’m just saying.”
A crooked smile filled Stephanie’s face as she gazed into the distance. “Yeah.”
Milo dug into his noodles. “We’ve got it on video, right?”
“Father couldn’t get it in focus. And I’m too small.” That was how Stephanie differentiated the men in her life: Patrick was Father; Milo was Dad.
“He told you he was sorry,” said Tina.
Stephanie, not in a forgiving mood, climbed to the floor to rejoin her dolls.
“So?” said Tina. “You going to tell me?”
“This is good,” Milo said through a mouthful of noodles.
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Tom’s sending you off again. That’s why he called—to soften me up. He’s the least subtle CIA man I’ve ever met.”
“Now, wait—”
“Also,” she cut in, “I can see the guilt all over your face.”
Milo peered over his bowl at the television. The Road Runner was defying gravity once again, as Wile E. Coyote suffered the fate of the rest of us, the ones chained to the laws of physics. Quietly, he said, “I need to go to Paris. But I’ll be back by Saturday.”
“You don’t do that kind of work anymore.”
He didn’t answer. She was right, of course, but over the last year he’d disappeared on more and more “business trips,” and Tina’s worries had found voice. She knew enough about his life before they met to know that that man wasn’t the kind of husband she’d signed up for. She’d signed on with the person who’d left all of that behind.
“Why’s it so important you go to Paris? It’s not like the Company doesn’t have a whole army of goons to send.”
He lowered his voice: “It’s Angela Yates. She’s got herself in some real trouble.”
“Angela? From-our-wedding Angela?”
“They think she’s selling information.”
“Come on.” She made a face. “Angela’s the poster girl for Us-Against-Them. She’s more patriotic than John Wayne.”
“That’s why I need to go,” said Milo, looking up as Wile E. Coyote climbed out of a sooty hole after having plummeted a mile. “Those internal investigation guys—they won’t take that into consideration.”
“Okay. But you’re back by Saturday. We will fly to Disney World without you. Isn’t that right, Little Miss?”
“For sure,” Stephanie said to the television.
Milo held up his hands. “Promise.”
Tina rubbed his knee, and he pulled her close, smelling her freshly washed hair as he gazed at the television. That’s when he realized he’d been wrong: Wile E. Coyote wasn’t subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of us. Against all odds, he always survived.
Tina sniffed, then pushed him away. “Jesus, Milo. You stink.”
To visit the tower at the intersection of West Thirty-first and the Avenue of the Americas, you first had to know that you were being tracked by cameras that covered every inch of sidewalk and road around the building. So by the time you entered, you were expected, and Gloria Martinez, the dour forty-year-old Company desk clerk, was ready with your ID. Milo made a sport of flirting with Gloria, and she in turn made a sport of rebuffing him. She knew his wife was, as she put it, half-Latina, and