I wonder if he’s with Dad. I know he will have won the fight. He will have looked for me, searched up and down that hangar. He would have asked Dad where I was, would have asked Frank if he’d seen me.
He will have gone home to his — our — apartment, and not found me there.
Dad would likely call him in for a meeting the next day. He’d question Duncan. That’s Dad, suspicious of everybody.
When he learned that Duncan had no idea where I was…well, that’s when the hunt would begin.
I glance at my watch, it’s still on home-time. Roughly twenty-two hours have passed since I left the fight.
It’s only a minimal head-start, but I have a plan.
That plan involves changing who I am completely.
Chapter Thirty One
Glass whirls on me, jabs a finger in my face. “God damn it, Duncan, is this your fault? Did you make my daughter run away?”
“No,” I say. “Get your fucking finger out of my face.”
His finger lingers there for a moment longer, but then he snaps it back and steps away. We’re in the living room at his house – I’ve never called it ‘home’ – and perhaps he is remembering the time he tried to shout at Dee, and I got in his way, put a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll talk to me with respect, boy,” he says, starting to shake. “I made you. Without me, you’d just be some rat on the street, some fucking lowlife addicted to meth. Don’t you forget that!”
I lick my lips, ball my fists, but control myself. “Are you sure she’s run away?”
“Her bank account has been emptied, and her belongings from her room packed. She also stole about thirty-thousand in cash from my office safe.”
“How do you know she packed her belongings? You went through her stuff?”
“When you have a child of your own, you’ll understand,” Glass spits at me. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“She can’t go where she wants?”
“Not without my permission!” he barks, huffing, turning around and starting to pace up and down the room. “How do you think it’s going to look? What about my reputation? Johnny Marino doesn’t even know where his own daughter is.”
“She’s an adult,” I tell him. “She can do what she likes.” I say it because I’m indignant on her behalf, but deep inside it rips me apart that she left.
That she left me.
“That fucking girl stole what’s mine!” Glass roars, slamming his fist down on the dining table. He drains his glass of brandy and with shaking hands pours another.
I don’t know what he means by that… stole what’s mine. Is he talking about the money? No… thirty-grand is nothing to him. This is more… personal.
“Did she say anything to you,” I ask him. Glass’ behavior is unsettling, and alarm sirens are wailing inside my mind. There’s something else going on. It’s time I fucking found out.
“No.” he says.
I know he’s lying right then and there. “I saw you pull her aside just before the fight.”
“Oh, that was nothing, just a talk.”
I raise an eyebrow. “About what, Glass?”
“None of your God damn business is what.”
We stew in silence for a moment. I can hear Frank outside in the corridor shifting his feet.
“Did I ever tell you the story of why they call me ‘Glass’?”
I meet his eyes. He’s told me a thousand times. He wants to tell it again.
“Yeah, you have.”
“I was going to be one of the best,” he says, ignoring me. He mimes a one-two jab-cross, ducks left then right. “I had the best technique, was quick as a fucking gazelle. But I could hit like a fucking charging rhino, let me tell you.”
I put my hands on my hips, pace up and down the room. I’m ignoring what he’s saying, I know the story back-to-front.
My mind is on Dee. Where would she go? Why would she leave? I’m certain her father has something to do with it, but I don’t know what.
I need to get him talking.
“I was going to go into the pros. Back then, boxing was all mob-controlled, not regulated like how it is now. You needed to get in with the big boys, you know what I mean? I started out as a scout for Accardo’s outfit. Him, Giancarno, all them boys ran everything here. This was back in the sixties, you wouldn’t know. They fixed the fucking election results for Cook County! I mean, these were big time gangsters. One day, he watches me get into a fist fight, and I just destroyed this guy. I was sixteen at the time, no older then when I found you.”
Glass points a finger at me, and his gold watch slides up his wrist. “Remember when I found you? Plucked you off the street, gave you a life?”