“A what?” He looked at her and nearly went through the intersection as the light changed. He slammed on his brakes at the last minute, grateful that there was no one behind him.
“A Tootsie Roll Pop. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.” There seemed to be no recognition on his part. “It’s a sucker.”
Yes, the latter label might apply, he thought cynically. That’s what he was. A sucker for letting himself come this far along a path he shouldn’t even be taking. Fooling himself that he could back away without any problem anytime he wanted to.
For the sake of image, he denied it. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m a jawbreaker, Clancy.” He slanted a look at her as the light changed again. He eased off the brake. “There’s nothing soft about me.”
He could talk until he ran out of breath. She wouldn’t believe him. “What do you call tonight?”
“Therapy.”
The twists and turns he went through to deny the very obvious truth fascinated her. “Oh?”
“McAffee’s brother-in-law told me to keep your spirits up.” He said it as if he were citing chapter and verse from a textbook. “You like these frothy things, for some unknown reason. I took you to one and look, you’re bubbling like a shaken bottle of champagne.”
She was, but it wasn’t because of a performance of Man of la Mancha, no matter how magnificently it had been staged.
“That’s because you did something wonderful and you did it for me.”
Mitch sighed, and she could sense another denial coming. She lightly touched her fingers to his lips, silencing him. “I won’t have you explaining it away and trying to belittle it. You did something wonderful and you’re going to have to suffer the consequences.”
She saw his brow arch. “Which are?”
“Destroying that unfeeling, oaklike alter ego of yours.” The wheelchair clunked against the back of her seat as Mitch changed lanes, adding reinforcement to her convictions. Very few men would have been thoughtful enough to realize just how she felt. “You’re not a hard man, Mitch. You only like to think you are.”
There was no point in arguing with her. He knew what he knew, but she wouldn’t stop until he agreed with her. “Whatever you say.”
His tone was dismissive, but she wouldn’t rise to the bait. “Yes, whatever I say.”
Clancy settled back against the seat, smiling to herself. She was right. She just had to find a way to make him see that, make him see the good within him the way she did. It was a challenge she thought she was equal to. Mitch had reawakened her spirit. She knew she could do anything she set her mind to.
Chapter Fifteen
There was something wrong. Mitch was aware of it the moment he put his key in the lock. When he turned it, there was no customary click, no feel of a tumbler turning. The door wasn’t locked.
Someone was in his apartment.
Mitch dropped the mail he had just collected. His service revolver was in his hand almost instantly.
Very slowly, his fingertips spread out on the wood, he pushed open the door.
“You used to like to play cowboy when you were young. Remember that silver-plated toy gun I bought you in Cheyenne?”
Stunned, Mitch holstered his gun. Bending to pick up the scattered envelopes at his feet, he moved as if he were submerged in a tank of water. His eyes were on the thin figure sitting on the sofa in his living room.
After ten years, his father had suddenly materialized. Mitch dropped the mail on the table, his gaze never wavering from the man who had willingly deserted him.
“What are you doing here?” Mitch’s voice was cold, detached. As cold and detached as he felt. He approached his father warily, as if he was not completely convinced that Sam Mitchell was actually in the room.
“I heard you were looking for me. I let myself in.” Sam spread his hands in what passed for a self-conscious shrug. “Sorry, old habits.”
Old habits that were still alive and well, Mitch thought. The act didn’t wash. His father had never felt helpless or self-conscious in any situation.
“How did you find me?”
Sam laughed shortly. “Please, don’t insult me. I might be old, but I haven’t lost my touch completely. Surveillance was always one of my hobbies.”
That accounted for the inexplicable feeling Mitch had had that he was being watched. He had been. By his father. “As was stealing works of art.”
Sam spread his hands again, his eyes shrewd. “I’ve gone straight. But then,” he said with a smile, “Jake already told you that.”
Just as Jake had probably told Sam a great many things. Mitch had known that his father’s friends would get the word to him. He had never doubted that the network was alive and functioning. He just hadn’t expected to see his father on his doorstep. Or on his sofa.
Mitch brought a chair from the kitchen, then straddled it as he studied him. His father met his gaze head-on. The man had nerve.
“There have been a rash of burglaries in Beverly Hills.”
Sam nodded. “Yes, I know. I’ve been following them in the newspapers. Makes me nostalgic.”
Mitch regarded him skeptically. “But you didn’t do them.”
The smile was as guileless as the man was not. “I already told you. I’m retired. Have been for a few years.” Sam looked around the room. It was almost Spartan in appearance, with no decorations of any kind. It was a home that belonged to an honest cop. But then, he already knew that. “I thought you should hear it from me in person.”
After all this time, his father had just conveniently popped up? Mitch wasn’t buying it. “Why now? Why not before?”
Sam shrugged away his son’s suspicions. “We get older, we have regrets.” He leaned forward, warming to his subject. “It was a great life, Alex, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I’m only sorry that you were left behind.”
His father’s life had never appealed to him, even in the beginning, when he had first learned of it. “I couldn’t have been part of that.”
Propping his fingers in a steeple, Sam leaned back on the sofa. “I know, and that’s why you were left behind.” Had things worked out differently, he would have taken Alex with him, would have apprenticed him. He’d always felt a pang, leaving the boy with Polly. “But you turned out all right, just as I knew you would.”
It seemed ludicrous, but Mitch thought he actually detected pride in his father’s voice. His eyes narrowed. How could the man possibly take credit for that? “Yeah, I did. No thanks to you.”
The slight shoulders beneath the black turtleneck shirt rose and fell. The expression on Sam’s face clearly indicated that his opinion differed from his son’s. “Well, maybe a little.”
The man’s gall was astronomical. “How do you figure that?”
“Easy.” He flashed the kind of smile that inspired confidence in the people he dealt with. Sam Mitchell had his own code of honor. “Having me hover in your brain goaded you on, made you push a little harder to be as good as you are, just to negate what you thought was my influence.” He wouldn’t have chosen to become a cop himself, but the life worked well for his son. “So, in a perverse way, I did help you.”
Mitch crossed his arms on the back of the chair. “So I’m supposed to believe you now?” Anger that had been years in the making pushed forward. He had a difficult time reining it in. “You come here, go through the motions of a reunion and I’m supposed to say, ‘Nope, that’s not my old man making off with the paintings. He’s retired.’” Mitch’s expression made clear what he thought of that idea.
Sam inclined his head, unfazed by his son’s tone. “Something like that.”
It just didn’t wash. What he couldn’t quite work out was why Sam had bothered coming to see him at all. Mitch’s eyes narrowed as he studied the thin, angular face. “And why would I ever believe something like that?”
“Because I never lied to you.” The smile remained, but the eyes had grown solemn. Some things a man owed his son. Like the truth. “Never once.�
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Mitch wouldn’t dispute that now. Perhaps he couldn’t. But there were other issues. The role of saint didn’t fit. “You lied to Mother.”
Sam had his faults—he’d be the first to admit that. But lying to those in his inner circle had never numbered among them.
“No, not even in the beginning.” He knew that what he was saying would be difficult for his son to accept. It would go a long way in destroying the order of things. But Mitch was old enough to face the truth now. Just as Polly had been. “She knew what she was getting into.”
Vividly, Mitch remembered the denials. The ranting. The indignation that accompanied the words. His father had been the personification of evil, and she the lamb that had been led astray.
Your father deceived me. He led me to believe that he was from a wealthy family. I never knew he was a thief. Never. His mother’s words echoed in his mind, the way they had all those years ago. Could she have deceived herself so completely that she had believed what she’d told him? Or were those lies, instead?
Mitch looked at his father skeptically. “She said you lied to her.”
The smile, small, sparse, didn’t reach the steely blue eyes. Sam understood Polly’s rationale, even though it had cut him off from a part of his life he would have remained in contact with if he had had the choice. But he had learned early on to roll with the punches. There was no use in lamenting the past.
Still, he wanted Alex to know the truth. “Those were stories she created to assuage her conscience.”
He saw the spark of doubt entering Alex’s eyes. Who to believe—his mother, who had remained with him, or his father, who had left?
“It was hard for a moral, religious woman to admit to herself that she was actually marrying a thief. That she had been led into the union by a rush of feelings that were impure and that made her abandon a path she’d always walked.”
The smile that crossed Sam’s lips now was genuine. “She was something, your mother. I wish you could have known her the way I did.” He leaned back, his eyes seeing something that Mitch couldn’t. “For a while, what I did was exciting, thrilling to her. There was laughter in her eyes.” His gaze shifted to his son’s face and he saw the disbelief there. Sam laughed. It was a rounded, rich sound. “Yes, your mother.”
“You make the kind of life you led sound glamorous.” There was contempt in Mitch’s voice. “It wasn’t. You were a thief.”
If it was meant as condemnation, Sam didn’t take it as such. He knew exactly what he’d been. And exactly what he was. He’d made his peace with it all. Except for his son. “Yes, but a good one.”
Somehow, the word good seemed out of place when connected to his father. Mitch had certainly never thought of him in that light. “You walked out on us.”
Sam looked at Mitch in mild surprise. But he realized that he should have expected nothing less. Polly had been responsible for that. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s not what I think.” Mitch rose, too restless to sit in his father’s company any longer. “It’s what I know.”
“She sent me away, boy.”
Mitch turned. The look in his eyes warned his father not to lie.
“She told me she didn’t want me living with her anymore. That she’d turn me in if I didn’t leave. I had no choice.”
Mitch felt as if he were listening to someone else’s life, not his own. He struggled to make sense of the information. Everything had been turned upside down, like a neatly arranged drawer whose contents had gone tumbling to the floor. The anger hung on.
“So you abandoned us without so much as a qualm.”
“There were qualms, Alex. There were plenty of qualms.” Sam’s life with his wife had turned sour very early on, but he had still cared for Polly, had still wished things had worked out differently. In his heart, she would always remain the girl with the laughing eyes. “And I sent money regularly.”
Mitch’s eyes narrowed, pinning him. He’d caught him in a lie. “We practically lived in poverty.”
Sam’s expression didn’t change. “I know.” He watched Alex raise his brow in bewildered surprise at the admission. “She gave it all away. To charity, I suppose.” He shook his head. Poor Polly. She would have been better off if he’d never crossed her path. “She had a great need to do penance for what she thought of as the sins of her life.”
His eyes skimmed over Mitch’s tall, well-built frame. “I’m just glad she didn’t manage to take you down with her.” He rose and faced his son. He was nearly four inches shorter and far less robustly built, so he had to reach up to place his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “In my own way, I’m very proud of you.”
Mitch thought he would flinch instinctively, but he didn’t. The hand on his shoulder seemed oddly binding. “Would you be that proud if I arrested you?”
Sam dropped his hand to his side. “I already told you, I have nothing to do with those burglaries.” He studied his son’s face, his own calm. “Would I be stupid enough to come see you if I had?”
There was another side to that. “You might be clever enough to do it.”
The laugh was lusty. Mitch had managed to tickle him. “I always knew my mark, Alex. And you were always too much of a white hat to let things like family ties get in the way.” Sam sobered slightly. “If I was guilty, I wouldn’t be here.”
For the sake of argument, Mitch let the point pass. “If you didn’t do it, do you know who did?”
Sam countered with a question of his own. “If I told you, would you believe me?”
Mitch didn’t know. “I might.”
The boy didn’t lie, either. They had that in common. Before answering, Sam moved around the small room. He could have done better for him, if Alex had allowed it. But then, he knew his son never would have.
He turned again to look at Mitch. “Consider it a present, then. I don’t appreciate being imitated.” He knew the culprit was copying him only to throw the authorities off the scent. The thief had obviously done a little research in the newspaper morgue and had no style of his own. “I never believed that it was the sincerest form of flattery.”
Crossing his arms, Sam gazed out the window. His voice lowered, taking on a nonchalant air, belying the importance of his words. “If I were you, I’d look to the ranks.”
Mitch slanted a glance at him. “A cop?”
Sam cocked his head in Mitch’s direction, amused at the duplicity. “Who better to know the rounds, the routines? Vacationing people like to notify the authorities that they’ll be away, mistakenly thinking it’ll keep their property safe. Our man is young, quick, agile. Smart. In short, could be a carbon copy of me in my prime.”
The argument Sam made had validity to it, but Mitch wasn’t completely convinced. “Could be a lot of people.”
“Could be.” Sam nodded. “Could be Richard Slattery. Could be someone else.”
Mitch knew his father wasn’t just dropping a name. He was certain. “Slattery?” The man was well regarded and had two commendations. He was outgoing and friendly. Mitch suddenly remembered that he had gotten the theater tickets from Slattery. And there had been a robbery that same night.
Slattery fit the general description they had on the burglar.
As did his father.
Alex was obviously unconvinced, though wavering. Sam had anticipated as much. In his place, he’d probably be the same.
“Perhaps you’d like to stop by his place for a visit? Look around. There might be something interesting for you in his storage unit. A large conduit pipe, wrapped in plastic. He seems to have gone to a great deal of trouble for just a hunk of tin.” Sam smiled. It had taken a great deal of networking to get his information, but the old connections were still the best. “The last buyer got cold feet.”
His father was nothing if not clever. That much Mitch remembered about him. “How do I know that you didn’t plant it at his apartment?”
“Good point.” Sam nodded. He had one last card to play before he withdrew f
rom the game. “All right. Slattery’s been paying a great deal of attention to the Monroe house on Walnut. The Monroes are in Europe until the end of the month. I’d post a stakeout there if I were you. The end of the month is almost here.”
He saw the unspoken question in Mitch’s eyes. “He likes cutting things close. You know.” Sam waved his hand loftily. “The thrill of evading discovery. I can identify with that.”
Mitch shoved his own hands into his pockets. It still didn’t make any sense to him. “Why are you telling me all this? You were safe. I wasn’t any closer to finding you than I ever was.”
The choice had been entirely Alex’s own. Sam had kept tabs on his son for a long time now. “I know. Call it mending fences.” He shrugged casually, as reluctant as Mitch to talk about feelings and reasons. “You never know how much longer those fences will exist.” He wasn’t as young as he used to be. Or as immortal.
Sam looked up, his expression clearing. “I live in Atlantic City now. I’m just here on a visit to look up old friends.” And because Jake had told him that Alex was looking for him. “If you’re ever on the East Coast, look me up.”
It was time to leave, but he had one more thing to say. “I did love your mother, boy. And you. Things just weren’t meant to turn out, that’s all.”
That said, Sam turned and walked from the room.
He was almost out the door before Mitch called to him. “Dad?”
To his own ears, Mitch’s voice sounded rather like a child’s. He felt like a child—like the boy who had watched his father walk out the door for the last time.
Sam turned, his hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”
There were too many things to say. And no way to say them. “Thanks.”
Sam smiled. The similarity between father and son became very evident. He understood and nodded. “Don’t mention it.”
* * *
Clancy saw the excitement in Mitch’s eyes the moment he walked through the doorway. She just didn’t know how to read it.
Brooding Angel Page 20
