Chapter 62

He’d been waving a gun at my parents. Now he waved it at me. He grinned. He looked like his son. That is to say, he looked menacing. “Took you long enough to figure it out,” he said. “Then again, for what I paid that plastic surgeon, maybe not.” With his free hand, he patted his chin and cheeks and neck. “My own mother wouldn’t have recognized me.”

“Or your fellow Shriners,” I made note. “Or my parents. Or the local police or the Feds.”

Ma sighed from the bed. “Hiding in plain sight all these years,” she said.

“Keeping tabs,” Carl, also known as Charles, said. “And working. No rest for the weary, after all.”

It suddenly made sense. “Your son went to Big Sur to run the business from down there, once your family was arrested. That’s why he dropped out of college,” I said, finally realizing the truth. Again, too little, too late. Then I added, “You stayed here to run this end of things, but how is it that the Feds didn’t capture the two of you then?”