“No,” Gabe told him. “My mother just called me. From what I could gather, someone kidnapped my brother and maybe my sister. She’s hurt.”
“Your sister?”
“No, my mother. Maybe my sister too. I don’t know. My mom can barely talk. She won’t call 911. She’s adamant about that. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Where is she?”
“Somewhere in Los Angeles . . . the Valley, I think.”
“Her old stomping ground. My old stomping ground. What’s her number? I’ll see if I can’t send someone out there to look for her.”
“She doesn’t want the police involved, Peter. Besides, she called me on a phone with a blocked number. It goes straight to voice mail.”
“Why doesn’t she want the police involved?”
“I think . . .” Gabe paused. “I know that she took her kids out of India. I suspect she had a court order not to leave the country with them. You know she’s divorcing her husband. There’s probably a custody dispute.”
“If she took her kids out of the country illegally, she could be a fugitive. Hence, no police.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Maybe her husband kidnapped them back.”
“I don’t know.” Another pause. “Honestly, at this moment I’m less worried about the kids than I am about her. She sounds horrible.”
“Call her again.”
He had already tried six times, but he tried again. Voice mail. He checked his texts. She hadn’t responded. He shook his head. “Blank!”
“Does your sister have a cell phone?”
Gabe hit his forehead. “Duh!” He tried that number. Tried it three times. All he got was voice mail. “No answer. I’ll text her, but I suspect it won’t get anywhere.”
“Gabe, let me call the police. Maybe they can ping a location on the phone.”
“She insisted no police.”
“If she’s really hurt, do you think you should listen to her?”
Gabe felt panic in his stomach. “I don’t think that’ll get you anywhere, Peter. I think both my mom and my sister turned their phones off.”
“What about Sanjay? Does he have a phone?”
“No.”
“Then I’m out of ideas. You’re three thousand miles away and can’t get out there for another, what? Ten hours at the earliest. If she’s really hurt, time matters.”
“I’ve got a performance tomorrow in Boston. God, this is a total disaster! I need to call my agent and cancel. I certainly can’t play with this on my head.” He looked at Decker. “Can you come with me to Los Angeles?”
“Gabe, we’re about to leave for the airport.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Do you want me to cancel the flight? I will if you want me to.”
“No, no, no. There’s nothing you can do anyway.” Gabe’s eyes turned moist. “I love her dearly. But my mom is a disaster! Devek owes money to bad people. So it could have been them as well. I do think her current husband is even worse than my father.”
Decker raised his eyebrows. “Gabe, call your dad.”
Gabe turned to him. “What?”
“Call your dad. He’s on the same time zone, and he owns a private jet. He can probably get there in a couple of hours. Plus, he knows the Valley as well as I do. That’s where he and your mom met. And if she’s running from bad people, he can protect her better than anyone. Call your dad.”
“He’s not going to help.”
“Chris just told Rina he was concerned about your mom’s safety. Why wouldn’t he help?”
“He’s been waiting years for her to crash and burn. I think that’s what kept him alive all these years.”
Decker gave his foster son a skeptical look. “Do you have any better ideas?” No answer. “Do you want me to call him?”
“No, absolutely not.” A beat. “Go back to dinner, Peter. I’m twenty-four. I can handle this.”
“No shame in asking for help.”
“I don’t need help.” Even though he did. “Please. Go back before everyone realizes there’s a problem. I’ll let you know what’s going on later.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.” He watched his foster dad go back into the restaurant. With shaking hands, he tried to punch in the numbers that he knew by heart, but he kept making mistakes. In desperation, he looked it up in his contact list under Dad. Heart banging out of his chest, he pressed the number.
A lot of the time Chris turned his phone off. Sometimes he used burners. Sometimes he changed his number without telling him. Most of the time he didn’t answer even if the phone connected. Christopher Donatti was a very busy man. He didn’t like phone calls. He especially didn’t like phone calls from his son, who was always managing to interrupt some important business his father was doing.
His oft repeated line: You’re losing me money. This better be good.
But this time the phone did ring. Which meant the current number he had was still active. Gabe stood there shivering even though it was the height of summer in New York: the cold was coming from within. Trembling like a frightened child as he waited to connect. “Pick up the phone, you motherfucker!” A moment later he heard the line kick in.
“What?”
Thank you, God. “Dad, you’ve got to help me. Mom called. She’s in California. The San Fernando Valley I think, but I don’t know for sure. She’s badly hurt, but she won’t call 911 or go to the hospital—”
“Hold on. Let me go somewhere private.” A moment later Donatti was back on the line. “Your mother is on the West Coast?”
“Yes.”
“Where are her kids?”
“She had them, but now they’re gone. She’s in the middle of a messy divorce. She might have taken them out of India without her husband’s permission.”
“Ah.” A pause. “Someone took them back.”
“Dad, I know that she wouldn’t let them go without a fight, and I think she got a bad one. She sounded in real trouble. She wants me to come and get her, but I’m in New York and I don’t know where she is. Furthermore, she called me from a burner with a blocked number, so I can’t even call her back. Her regular phone is off.” Gabe paused, but his father didn’t talk. “I’m hoping she’ll call me back. As soon as she does, I’ll get more details. But in the meantime, you’re a lot closer to L.A. than I am. And you’re good at finding people.”
Another pause. His dad waited.
Gabe said, “Look, I know you parted on bad terms—”
“She had an affair, got knocked up by the motherfucker, had his bastard child, and then dumped me unceremoniously. Yeah, I’d call that bad terms.”
“I’ve had issues with her as well. I’ve forgiven her—”
“That’s certainly your prerogative.”
“She’s my mother, Chris!” Silence. “You know what it is to lose a mom.”
“I’m not moved. Try a different tactic.”