Writing by William Mays
WILLIAM MAYS is a writer, editor, photographer, and book publisher. He and his wife own and manage MaysPublishing.com.
Braggarts
My Kidnapping
Jimmy. Too
ROMULUS ESCAPES
CHAPTER ONE
Romulus had a scalpel in his hand when the notification popped up in his display. RUST. He was a Fax—a machine—and his mechanical problems had steadily worsened in recent years. Not wanting the nurses to suspect, he dialed some arrogance onto his normally bland expression and started the surgery.
The patient was a Real—a human—whose VR implant had stopped working. The interface lay under a patch of synthskin on his temple. Romulus cut through and found the problem. One of the transistors had burned out. He removed it, installed a new one, and sutured the tissue back, finishing the procedure in less than thirty minutes. A little more arrogance inadvertently worked its way onto his face as he strutted out of the operating room.
“Wake up and smell the hydraulic fluid,” JOAN, his internal assistant, said. She existed only in his metaverse. They could hear each other, but no one else could. “You may have fooled the nurses, but don’t try to fool yourself.”
“I did that surgery in record time,” Romulus shot back. “I’m as good as I ever was.”
“You need a complete overhaul,” she yelled. “You are an old, rusting Fax. The Reals will recycle you if they figure out how many problems you have. You are forty years old. That’s thirty-three years out of warranty.”
“How do I afford a complete overhaul? You know I am short of coin.”
“You have to beg Rhymin’ Ryan to finance it.”
“I hate that guy. And I haven’t even paid off my last loan to him. He’ll tack on refinancing fees and aging-Fax surcharges.”
“You have no choice. Your ratings have been trending down over the years.”
“I am still the best. Reals from all over the world come to me.”
“You are at 4.76. Ten years ago, your ratings were at 4.97. You’re only as good as your last surgery. Your problems will catch up with you. When things fall apart, they fall apart fast. What if some rust clogs your lines while you’re cutting into someone?”
She was right. She was almost always right. “I guess I have no choice.”
The next six surgeries went by without incident, but during the last one, a gallbladder removal, another notification popped up. BATTERY. It hadn’t been holding a charge lately. That was something else for Ryan to finance.
Thankfully, there was nothing scheduled after the gallbladder. He stepped out of the operating room and was about to clock out when General Martin, the Supreme Leader of The Hospital, marched down the hall with a group of soldiers in jeans and Stetsons.
They stopped in front of Romulus. “I need to talk to you, boy,” he said in his distinctive drawl.
This was bad. General Martin only spoke to you if you were in trouble. Romulus snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, sir, General Martin. What do you need, sir?”
Martin was scary. He had piercing blue eyes, a cross tattoo on his forehead, and a sneer so permanent that it looked like a tattoo. He wore a big red Stetson and a matching red western shirt with pearl snaps. “The ga damned Rogue Faxes are attacking. There will be casualties. You got to stay.”
“Sir, I’ve been here forty-eight hours straight. I need to charge my battery.”
“Are you questioning my order?”
“No, sir.”
“I am a Real and your Supreme Leader. You are a Fax. You may look like a Real, but you aren’t. A Fax’s priority is what?”
“To obey.”
“So, obey your programming.”
“But I need a quick charge, at least, if I’m going to function properly.”
Martin snickered. So did the soldiers. “Yes, yes, you are old. Maybe you should ask the Fair Fax Bureau about getting a new battery.”
The last thing any Fax dared do was go to the Bureau. You could end up sentenced to clown torture. “Oh, no, I don’t want to do that.”
“Okay. Get a quick charge and report to East Wing.”
They marched on, and Romulus trudged past a kidney repair center, a TruSnak™ dispensary, a spare parts market, and up two flights of steps to a charging chair that wasn’t on the map. The Hospital was a behemoth few could navigate, but Romulus had worked in it all his life and didn’t need to look at a map. Besides, the map only showed you what Martin wanted to show you.
The chair was in a quiet hall in Recycling Wing 3. It had been there from the beginning when Romulus had just come off the assembly line. His first assignment was to help repair Fax parts in Wing 3, and he fondly remembered sitting on that chair.
He sat and selected double quick charge, then blinked to bring the notifications to full screen. It showed him seventeen microunits over brown rust oxide limits, worse than ever. He’d set up a fake rust profile that sent false data to the server, making him appear healthy.
Had they found out about that? Was that why Martin had shown up?
To get through the extra shift, he released some TruSnak™ from his reservoir. TruSnak™ was the lifeblood of all Faxes. It brought all his mechanical, hydraulic, and electric systems into harmony. It would minimize the impact of the rust and help preserve his battery levels.
As the sustenance moved through him, he retreated into the favorite scene in his metaverse: a beach with white sand. JOAN built sandcastles. She had black braids, black glasses, and a black bathing suit.
A sailboat glided across glittering blue water; the sun was warm on his synthskin, and the sand felt good on his toes. He enabled his favorite mix track: DJ Fax playing RoboSlick music, a pleasing combination of clanging industrial sounds laid over a hard bassline and a 140-beat-per-minute drum track. Nothing went better with a day at the virtual beach than soothing music.
He couldn’t relax, though. General Martin had spoken to him. He’d probably figured out about the rust and would sell him off for parts. Romulus’s programming told him to accept anything a Real did, even recycling.
But he didn’t want to die.
“Don’t get upset, Romulus,” a voluptuous blond avatar said. She sat on a towel next to him as she always did when he went to the beach.
“But why didn’t they just arrest me? That’s what usually happens. They arrest you, and no one ever sees you again. Why didn’t he do that?”
“Oh, who knows? Come on. Let’s swim.”
They ran across the sand, she in her string bikini and he in his Speedos, and dove into the crystal blue water.
When they manufactured him, all Faxes came off the assembly line with thin, lanky bodies, white hairless synthskin, and blond hair. They all had the same parts, including private parts, because that allowed for the cheapest manufacturing. Romulus had extra computing components to make him a surgeon, but that had left no room for pleasure modules to enable sexual performance.
In his metaverse, everything worked. The touch of her synthskin excited him.
They swam so far that he couldn’t see the shore.
“We’re escaping,” he said. “We don’t have to live our lives the way the Reals want. We can have freedom.”
“Yes. Yes.”
Suddenly, she punched him in the side.
“Why are you doing that?” he asked.
“You are out of time, Romulus.”
It wasn’t the avatar, and the voice wasn’t coming from his metaverse. It was General Martin.
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Chapter One
George stared at the pretty girl at the adjacent picnic table. She sat with her family, all of them blond and perfect, the men in boots and starched jeans, the women in western skirts. In contrast, he sat with his family, eleven Greeks, enough for a football team. They wore their ethnic uniforms—floral dresses for the women and khaki work pants for the men. The only variation was One-Eye, his great grandmother, who always dressed in black.
The girl stared back.
He tried not to get excited, assuming she was looking at something behind or beyond, and he only thought she was staring at him. That was how life worked. You got all stirred up by the proximity of all that beauty and interpreted events from your own pathetic bias and escalated from staring to gawking to outright ogling only to realize she was looking at the big, strapping high school fullback who happened to be standing behind you.
There was no one else around, though. She laughed like she knew what he was thinking,
A breeze gusted off the bay and rippled through her hair, which was wild and free, not like the coiffed helmet hair of the other women at her table. She wasn’t dressed like the others either. She wore faded jeans and a white muslin cotton blouse that rustled in the breeze along with her hair. She looked like—a hippie.
He sat fused between Mother and Uncle Nick. The Holy Trinity they were. Nick checked his Rolex, and Mother checked her Lady Seiko. While the white people had better clothes, the Greeks had better watches. Nick swapped marijuana for them, and everyone had a good one, even One-Eye, who could barely see and was too senile to tell time.
George looked at his, a Timex chronograph with dials, a stopwatch, and a display of the phases of the moon. It was almost time to meet the courier, so he ratcheted up the flirtation, leaning toward the girl and smiling big.
She smiled too.
Mother noticed the drama and raised an eyebrow. When Nick saw what was happening, he shuddered. In their Pantheon, skinny blondes were right up there with demons, and they did not want George tempted. He, The One with the Precocious Vocabulary, would be needed in the inevitable battle with their sworn enemy, Lazarus.
Bold action was needed if he were to get her phone number. Rising from the cement bench, extricating himself from the suffocating embrace of family, he unfurled himself to his full five foot seven inches and fixed a steely, manly gaze on her.
She looked him up and down, and he started toward her.
She stood too!
Everyone at both tables froze, their mouths in mid-chew, forks in mid-air. It looked like a tableau on the Parthenon. Only One-Eye didn’t know what was happening. Her empty socket, permanently shut from glaucoma surgery, faced the girl, so she didn’t see a thing, and she kept yakking in Greek about some dispute over olive groves back in her village when she was a girl. Finally, even she realized there was a problem, and she turned and focused her good eye on George and then at the temptress. When she realized the girl was a xenia, a stranger, her mouth dropped open in shock.
An older man, had to be the girl’s father, stood and grabbed her wrist to keep her in place, and a young man jumped up and stood in front of George. About George’s age, but a full head taller, he wore fancy snake-skin cowboy boots and a bright blue shirt with pearl snaps. What a caricature of a cowboy. He had a square jaw that jutted forward; his pearl snaps glistened in the sunlight. He leaned forward and scowled. Was he her boyfriend? That square jaw beckoned, and George was about to punch it, knowing the guy wasn’t expecting it. How surprised would he be when his head got knocked back? His eyes would roll up in their sockets, and his body would crumble and fall to the ground.
Merriment reigned in the rest of the park. People sang happy birthday at one table, men drank beer and turned steaks on a grill at another, teenagers threw a softball in an open field, children played tag, squealing with delight.
But that was all far away. All that existed was that jaw. And the girl. What would be the outcome of that blow? A race riot? Would the others in the park be drawn into the melee, choosing sides based on skin color? Would the hostilities escalate into the looting of nearby stores? Would it rival the Detroit race riot of the previous long hot summer? Would it be called the Greek vs. Cowboy Fourth of July Barbecue Riot?
“George,” the voice of reason called. It was Mother, standing behind him, talking in his right ear, putting herself at risk if the punches flew. “What are you doing?”
What was he doing? Fighting over a white girl he didn’t even know? The laws of the cosmos were immutable, set in concrete, etched on stone tablets. White people stayed with white people. Brown people stayed with brown people. Blacks stayed with blacks. And Greeks remained with Greeks. He would be a fool to chuck two thousand five hundred years of collective Greek history into the wastebasket to chase after a white girl.
He stormed past everyone and headed toward the bay.
But when he looked back, she was looking at him. Framed by the green grass and blue sky, she hadn’t moved.
That made him stop.
Who said everything was preordained? It was 1968, for God’s sake. The world was going crazy. Boys were letting their hair grow long, and girls were burning their bras. Kids were smoking pot and listening to rock and roll records and fucking people they barely knew in the back seats of their parents’ cars. Why couldn’t he have a girlfriend who wasn’t Greek?
Her father had a firm grip on her wrist, though. She squirmed, but he wouldn’t let go.
Lest he turn into a pillar of salt, George turned and kept walking, lust bubbling inside him like he was a cauldron.
GEORGE: THE LOST YEAR
CHAPTER ONE
George took the last puff off the last joint and wondered when, or if, Uncle Nick would arrive. Three days had passed. Very Biblical. And way too long. It was only a two-day drive from Houston to Colorado. Something bad had happened. There was only one explanation. Lazarus had killed Nick and, any second, he would break down the door to George’s motel room and shoot him too.
The roach glowed a bright red as he puffed. Little more than an ember, it stuck to his thumb. He tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t come loose. Staying perfectly still despite the searing pain, he took careful aim with the nail of his middle finger and struck it full force. It shot forward, still burning, veered to the right, and landed in the garbage can overflowing with crumpled paper sacks and half-eaten carryout meals.
The last thing he needed was a fire. He would have checked on it, but squeaking wheels distracted him. They rolled down the cement breezeway outside his room, growing louder as they approached. It had to be Lazarus. He had come with so many guns that he needed a cart to carry them all, and they were so heavy that the wheels strained under the weight.
He got Original Sin from where he’d hidden it between the mattress and box springs and tiptoed to the peephole with his finger curled around the trigger.
It was only the maids with a cart full of towels and sheets.
A shower would calm his nerves and help him figure out what to do. He laid the gun on the bed and dropped his clothes on the floor. The warm, soapy-smelling steam enveloped him, and, like mighty Zeus, he drifted in the clouds in the celestial realms, joining Apollo, Athena, and, last but not least, Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. There were some other Gods, but they didn’t wear name tags. A pack of hippies crashed the party. They brought lots of dope to smoke. And Kelly materialized in the mist dressed in white robes. “I’m going to give you another chance,” she said. “Don’t fuck it up.” Oh, he was glad to see her.
Feet marched down the breezeway, the sound vibrating through the thin wall. They were heavy, clunky men’s feet in hard-soled shoes. They stopped at his door. Knuckles rapped on the wood.
He crept out of the shower dripping and naked, picked up Original Sin, and put his eye on the peephole. A swarthy man in khakis and a white t-shirt stood outside. He had to be Greek, but that didn’t mean anything. There was a stain on his T-shirt, like tomato paste. That didn’t mean anything, either. Lazarus could have sent an assassin who worked as a cook when he wasn’t killing people. Life was an ongoing existential crisis. An enemy would look exactly like a friend. You never knew the truth until later, and then it didn’t matter.
Nick stepped up next to the man. In an uncertain universe, there was one constant: family. They would never betray him. George slid Original Sin back under the mattress, put on his jeans, and unlocked the door. Like a soldier on a dangerous mission, Nick stepped inside and surveyed the unmade bed and the clothes and trash on the floor. “You remember Minas, don’t you?” he said in Greek, the Marlboro in his mouth bobbing up and down as he talked. “He works here in Durango at The Golden Flame. You met him at the wedding when we met Maria’s family.”
George had only been fourteen at the time of that wedding, so he didn’t remember him, but Minas would be insulted if he said he didn’t. “Oh, yes, of course.”
They hugged like best friends.
Nick sniffed the air. “Something’s on fire.”
George smelled it too. It wasn’t the sweet fragrance of marijuana. It was a harsh, acrid odor.
A plume of smoke rose from the trash.
The roach had set the leftovers on fire!
Nick kicked the can over, scattering the rubbish across the floor, and he and Minas stomped on the embers like they were dancing the Kalamatiano.
In the room below, someone banged on the ceiling. “What’s going on up there?” a voice yelled.
While Minas continued stomping, Nick gathered the clothes strewn around the room. “The money? Did she take the money?”
“In the bottom of my suitcase. It’s all there. Fourteen thousand. Kelly didn’t take even a dollar. She’s a wonderful person. I’m in love with her, and she’s going to have our baby.”
When George had called for help, he hadn’t mentioned the pregnancy. Nick and Minas stopped, then started working faster than ever. Nick threw the clothes into the two suitcases, randomly mingling Kelly’s clothes with his. Minas stuffed all the garbage into a plastic laundry bag, moving frantically, sweeping up every last crust of bread and piece of lettuce, and even wiping the carpet clean with napkins.
When they finished, Nick snapped the suitcases shut, catching a pair of George’s underwear in the lid of one of them. The white fabric stuck out.
“Stand up,” Nick told him. George wobbled to his feet, and Nick took an Orthodox cross out of his pocket. It was beautiful with fluted gold ends. “From now on, you will wear this. We’ve got some tough times ahead. It will protect you.”
He put it around George’s neck like he was knighting him. The cross, still warm and damp from being in Nick’s pocket, settled into his chest hairs. It did seem to transfer heavenly energy. George crossed himself and put on a T-shirt.
“Let’s go,” Nick said. He hefted the trash bag over his back like Santa Claus and led them out. The sun blinded George. It was an Allegory-of-the-Cave moment. The Enlightenment was too much. When he reached the end of the breezeway, he grabbed the railing to keep from falling and looked down the steps to the ground a million miles away.
CHAPTER TWO
Sly watched Nick the Greek start down the steps with a garbage sack slung over his shoulder. For sure, it was him. He hadn’t gotten a good look at his face before, but there was no longer any doubt.
Terrified that Nick would recognize him, even though he wore dark sunglasses, he slumped down in his seat. Then, curiosity got him. What was in the garbage sack? Drugs?
He peeked over the dashboard of his rented Chevy.
A skinny kid with uncombed curly black hair was right behind Nick. It had to be the kid Lazarus wanted him to kill. He was young, really young. Probably not even twenty. He didn’t look like a badass at all, not at all what he had expected. Why was Lazarus so worked up over him?
The kid wobbled as he walked like he was really stoned. He gripped the railing and looked down at the ground like he wasn’t sure he could make it. Nick looked back up at him.
Sly should have made his move earlier when Lazarus had called with the room number. The kid had probably been alone up there. It might have been easy to kill him. But he had expected a badass barricaded in the room with guns. Sly, after all, was not an assassin. He was a singer in a rock-and-roll band, a good-looking, Mick-Jagger-lookalike with a shag haircut that made the girls scream. Demo records of his song “Chick in Slacks” were out everywhere. So far, no record producers had shown any interest, and Sly couldn’t understand why, but someone would recognize his greatness sooner or later. Sure, he’d had that setback when his enemies stole all his band’s equipment because he couldn’t pay his coke debts. They should have been more understanding. No equipment meant no gigs. No gigs meant no money. No money meant no coke. That desperation had led him to Lazarus and that dark alley, the whole thing happening so fast he hardly realized how serious it was when Lazarus gave him the gun, and he blew the guy’s brains out. He hadn’t minded killing the guy, messy as it was, but he hadn’t understood until later that Lazarus owned him after that.
The other guy followed the kid. He carried two suitcases. Since Nick and the guy had their hands full, and the kid was stoned, none of them could react fast. What if he ran up and shot all three? Would that make Lazarus happy? He never could tell how Lazarus was going to react.
What was in the suitcases? Drugs? Why else would Lazarus want the kid killed? The kid had stolen drugs from Lazarus. What kind of drugs? The sack Nick carried might hold pot, but not enough to be worth killing someone over. The suitcases might have powders, though. Maybe coke. That would be worth killing someone over.
Something white stuck out of one of the suitcases. A piece of cloth or wrapping paper? He’d seen a shipment of coke with all the plastic bags wrapped in white butcher paper. That was it. It was coke, and the wrapper around one of the bags had come loose and gotten stuck in the suitcase lid. He imagined the plastic bags. It had been almost two days since he’d had any coke, and he stared lovingly at his snorting kit on the seat next to him. He picked it up and looked at himself in its mirror. How handsome he was. Whenever he felt low, he looked at himself in that mirror and felt better.
The gun lay under the seat. For coke, he would run a risk. He put up the kit and gripped the gun.
CHAPTER THREE
George kept looking down the steps, not sure he could make it. He scanned the lot, hoping to see the beacon of solace and stability: Nick’s pride-and-joy 1958 Greek-blue Buick with the worry beads hanging from the rear-view mirror. The lot, which had been packed when he and Kelly checked in, was almost empty. There were three cars: George’s Jeep, a bright red Cadillac Seville parked next to it, and at the opposite end, a new-looking Chevy. But no Buick.
There was movement in the Chevy. A guy popped up in the front seat and peeked over the dashboard. He looked kind of like Mick Jagger with sunglasses. George rubbed his eyes, and he didn’t see him when he looked again. Maybe he was hallucinating.
The sun sparkled in his eyes; afterimages danced in his retina. Don’t turn into a pillar of salt, he told himself. One foot in front of the other. Focus on your feet. With a firm hand on the railing, he started down. His knees felt weak, and he wobbled, but he made it to the bottom without falling.
“Where’s the Buick?”
“It broke down,” Nick said, leading them to the Cadillac. “That’s why I’m so late getting here. I was getting ready to hit the road when it broke down.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “I loved that car, but look at this.” He caressed the Cadillac’s fender. “This model is restyled in the Eldorado image.” He sounded like a salesman. “The rear is extended to give it a longer look. The hood is extended too. By two point five inches.”
George ran his hand along the gleaming steel. “Wow. Very cool. Like a winged chariot. Like time’s winged chariot.”
Nick looked at him like he was crazy.
“It’s from the Marvell poem. ‘At my back I always hear, Time’s winged chariot drawing near.’ It’s a great poem. ‘To My Coy Mistress.’ By Andrew Marvell.”
Mick Jagger popped up over the top of the dashboard again and looked at the suitcases. What was so fascinating about bags filled with dirty laundry?
“There’s a guy in that car,” George said.
Nick and Minas turned to look, but the guy ducked under the dash. They turned back to George.
“He’s there. I swear.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Nick said. “Give Minas your car keys. He’s going to drive your Jeep to Austin, and we’ll pick it up there.”
When Kelly had walked out on him, he had been in emotional freefall and had done what any self-respecting Greek would do: call his mother. He hadn’t thought of the consequences. The Jeep had been his passport to a new life. By handing over the keys, he would be reabsorbed into the family. He would drive the Jeep again, but it would become part of the family motor pool, an appendage, one of many tentacles. When he had picked up the motel phone to call for help, he had willingly relinquished free will. Handing over the keys was merely the formal transfer of title.
“The keys,” Nick repeated.
What choice had he ever had?
They glistened in the sun. Nick looked at them. Minas wiped his hands on his t-shirt, evidently sensing the act's deep symbolism. Somewhat reluctantly, as if he too were making an unalterable commitment, he took them and drove off in the Jeep.
Suddenly, George remembered Original Sin.
“The gun. I left it in the room.”
“I thought you were going to get rid of it.”
He had intended to get rid of it. If he had, Kelly might not have left him. But it was the only remnant of Joey: the man who might have been his father. The man he had killed. What kind of screwed-up twist on Oedipus was that?
Surging adrenalin powered him up the stairs two at a time. A gaggle of maids were rolling the cart up to his room and stopped when they saw him. He scooted in front of them and jumped inside the room. The haze of marijuana and burned garbage lingered. He pulled Original Sin out from between the mattress and box springs, stuffed it down his pants, and raced out. The maids, frozen in place, watched.
The Seville waited at the bottom of the steps, engine running, Nick gripping the steering wheel. George bounded down the steps two at a time, feeling like he was about to jump into Time’s winged chariot or that he was the God Hermes with winged sandals and a winged cap.
Sadly, the adrenalin was draining out of him, bucket-with-a-big-hole style. His feet turned to lead, and he lost the Zen stride. The gun bounced free and flew into the air. He reached for it as if in slow motion; his fingers touched the grip for a second, but then it spun away. Off-balance, he tumbled head over heels down to the sidewalk, he and the gun hitting the ground simultaneously, the gun discharging with a loud crack.
Feeling no pain, he jumped to his feet, scooped up the gun, and jumped into the Caddy. Nick sped away; they both looked back. No one was around. The maids did not appear on the landing. No one ran out of any of the rooms.
“You okay?” Nick asked.
Expecting to see a bone sticking through his skin, or a bullet hole in his chest, he examined himself. There was no sign of injury, not even a scrape. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Nick looked at him. “It’s the cross around your neck. It protected you. Don’t ever take it off.”
George looked back. The Chevy was rolling out of the parking lot behind them. “We got company. It’s a guy that looks like Mick Jagger.”
Nick glanced in the rearview mirror. “Who’s Mick Jagger?”
“A rock-and-roll star.”
“Everybody tries to look like a singer these days. I can’t tell them apart.” He looked in the mirror again. “We’ll drive on for a way. If he doesn’t follow us, we’ll stop at a payphone and call your mother. If he follows, well—”
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George: The Final Days
George realizes that his nemesis, Lazarus, plans to kill him. His girlfriend Kelly, offers to help. All she asks is that he help her kill her husband. In this third book in the Saga of George series, George navigates the seamy world of the Greek mafia with its restaurants, bars, churches, and complex family relationships. The mobsters may be killers, but they are deeply religious. George travels from Houston to Chicago and even to Greece as he plans his counterattack. His long-suffering wife, Maria, stands by him, but Kelly has a hold on his emotions. Is she really out to help him, or is she part of the plot against him? BUY NOW
George: The Final Days
CHAPTER ONE
Crack, crack, crack.
His wife and his petherá were cracking pecans in the kitchen, the sound louder as he approached.
They scowled when he reached them.
“What?” he asked in English, trying to sound innocent.
“We need to talk to you,” his wife, Maria, said in Greek.
He held the attaché case with the monthly bribe money at his side. “I have to go to the mall. Can it wait until I get back? I won’t be gone more than a couple of hours.”
She laughed. “Yesterday, you left in the afternoon and said you’d get back in a couple of hours, and you didn’t get home until three this morning.”
They always assumed he’d been out with a girlfriend, which, in this case, was true. “I know, I know,” he moaned. “There is so much to do. Two big events back to back. My trip to Chicago, then back here for the memorial. It’s hard to get it all done.”
They cracked hard like they were smashing his nuts; their movements synchronized as if they were different appendages of the same being. Dark-haired and large-breasted, dressed in black, obviously mother and daughter, they might as well have been in a Greek village instead of Houston.
The oven glowed red. Bowls and baking pans covered the countertops. They were making baklava. He walked to the window and pressed his palm against the glass to feel the warmth. Outside, the sun shone bright in the cloudless sky. Their gardener roared past on a ride-on mower, leaving a wake of grass blades on their acre of manicured lawn.
Across the street, an old blue Impala sat in the shade under an oak. The driver, a big guy, was looking at George’s house.
When the sound of the mower faded, George’s petherá—his mother-in-law—hissed like a rattlesnake. “Sit down.”
The petherá had her place in the universe along with the serpents, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and the various assorted plagues and calamities. George accepted God’s plan even though he did not understand it. He slid into his chair at the head of the table.
“We can get Jimmy and the Corinthians for the memorial,” Maria said. “They were supposed to play at a wedding, but the bride ran off.”
“Ran off?”
“She ran off with her exercise instructor. A woman!”
They all crossed themselves.
“That’s great news,” he said. “About Jimmy being available—not about the bride running off with another woman.”
“Yes. Jimmy’s expensive, but how many more times will my father be dead for five years?”
Few people deserved less fanfare than old, dead Manoli. Even his demise, a heart attack after gorging himself on lamb at a wedding and then dancing a fast Kalamatianó, left little to admire. But the memorial wasn’t about him. It was about George’s career, and no one sang the old songs better than Jimmy. That would impress George’s mob brethren.
“You need to stop at the Zeus and Hera on your way back from the mall,” she continued with barely a pause. “So many people are coming that we need to make sure there’s enough food.”
“Okay.”
“And the equipment rental company called. Do you want Doric or Ionic columns? They need to know today.”
George always got the two types confused. He thought the Ionic style was fancier, with fluted ends, but he wanted to be sure. “I’ll call them.”
They started cracking again. He tossed a pecan in his mouth and looked at the large framed picture of his boss—Pano—on the wall. The squat, bulldog-looking man looked back.
“When he comes down here to the memorial, it will be the first time he’s been to Houston since I was a boy. It is quite an honor.”
They looked at it, too, and crossed themselves. “I talked to his wife today,” Maria said. “She said he hasn’t been feeling well the last few days.”
“Pano’s not feeling well? What’s the problem?”
“Indigestion.”
“That can be a sign of heart problems.”
“The doctor saw him today and says he’s fine—just a little tired.” She paused. “Have you chosen his gift?”
“Yes. I have it at the art gallery.”
They stopped cracking and looked at him.
“That is one of the reasons I was out so late last night,” he lied. “I have it in the safe at the Crossroads.”
“What is it? An icon? Wine glasses?”
“I’ll bring it home today,” he said with a smile as he popped another pecan in his mouth.
Maria nodded and took a deep breath. His petherálooked from her to him. Well, here it was: the reason for their conversation.
“Pano’s wife said they’d like to see the Space Center when they come down, and, of course, I told her you and I would take them.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Lazarus and his wife want to go, too.”
The pecan caught in his throat, and he choked.
Maria and his petherá slapped him on the back. The pecan flew out of his mouth and landed on the floor.
“Lazarus tried to kill me,” George said when he finished gagging. “More than once. It’s bad enough that I have to have him in the house, but now you’re asking me to chauffer him to the space center.”
“There’s been peace for so long. Pano told him to stop trying to kill you. We have to include Lazarus and his wife.”
George hated Lazarus, but the scumbag convert would never dare cause trouble with Pano around. Besides, by taking them around town, George would look noble. It would help prove he was the appropriate successor to Pano when the old man finally croaked. “Alright, alright.”
They resumed their cracking. “If you’re worried about things, you need a bodyguard. A man in your position needs one. I always tell you, get a bodyguard, get a bodyguard, and you never listen.”
To George, ‘bodyguard’ meant ‘chaperone.’ He did not want anyone to know who his girlfriends were.
“And get rid of your art gallery,” she added. “Everybody knows about it. If someone wants to kill you, that’s where they’ll do it. People think you’re getting soft with that damn Crossroads Art Gallery.”
His petherá tapped her head with her finger. “Your brains are soft like yogurt.”
George grabbed the attaché case and started toward the door.
“Don’t be late,” Maria yelled after him. “I’m cooking chicken and potatoes. It’ll be ready at five. And don’t forget to stop at the Zeus and Hera on your way home. And don’t forget to call the rental company.”
The suffocating, humid air clubbed him when he stepped outside. There was no breeze; the tyrannical yellow sun hovered over the spires of their Victorian house; moss hung straight down off the live oaks. Sweat gushed from his body, and God’s plan became clear. This was a foretaste of Hell, where he was sure to spend all eternity.
The gardener rounded the house at full speed, looking like an Indy race car driver. Not wanting to kill the famed mob boss, he veered sharply, and a gust of wind, probably the only gust during the whole fucking day, caught the clippings and showered them on George. It was hard to look sophisticated with grass blades fluttering about you, but he never faltered in his practiced nonchalance as he sauntered forward and slid into his long, lean black Jaguar. Pressing the accelerator down, he escaped up I-45, the air conditioner on high, all the vents pointed at his face.
There was no escape from his life, however. He would have to take Lazarus and his wife to the Johnson Space Center along with Pano, his wife, and Maria. That sounded like a miserable afternoon.
He looked in the rearview mirror. The blue Impala was on the road a few car lengths behind him, but then it dropped back and disappeared. BUY NOW
CHAPTER TWO
His art gallery, The Crossroads, sat on a prime corner on the mall's second level. It was a light, airy space with abstract prints, mixed-media sculptures, and oil paintings of stark desert landscapes. He got little pleasure from it that day because his hatred for Lazarus burned inside him. He raced to his office and called the equipment rental people. They verified that the Ionic columns had fluted ends.
The clerk knocked on the door. “A woman came by an hour ago and asked for you.”
“What was her name?”
“She didn’t say.”
“What did she look like?”
“Sandy blond. Attractive. Fixed up. Late thirties or early forties.”
That brightened George’s mood. “She asked for me by name?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else distinctive about her?”
“She wore an expensive-looking purple dress.”
Who could she be? Probably someone he met at one of the gallery openings. “If she comes back, get her name and phone number.”
He locked the door and opened the wall safe. Inside was only one item: a wooden box lined with purple velvet. It contained an icon of the Virgin Mary. The iconographer had painted her face onto the cypress in the traditional Byzantine style. Each brushstroke and color was perfect. Silver inlay radiated from her like a halo; the encrusted jewels and enamel glowed. Even though he wasn’t devout, he had trouble catching his breath and automatically crossed himself.
Specially made in Greece and shipped directly to the gallery, it was bound to be the best gift. “Eat your heart out, Lazarus, you scumbag convert,” he said aloud. “You’ll never beat this icon.”
Feeling secure, he carefully placed it back in its box and marched out with it in one hand and the attaché in the other.
A purple dress caught his eye like a shiny lure that led a fish to certain doom.
An attractive woman stood outside the gallery, looking inside through the floor-to-ceiling window.
While he loved women in all shapes, sizes, and colors, he particularly loved those who looked like Kelly, the girlfriend of his wayward teen years. And this one sure did look like her. She had a trim, athletic body and an exotic, slightly angular—almost Greek—face.
He stopped and took a full, lusty drink of her beauty.
It had been twenty-three years since he’d seen Kelly. She was bound to look different, but, damn, he thought it was her.
A brunette walked up next to her and, motioning to another store, pulled her away.
He ran into the hall as the purple dress disappeared into the crowd. Shoppers blocked his path, their arms laden with God knows what—handbags, shirts, blouses, jeans, household knickknacks, cutlery, baby clothes, fine chocolate.
When he finally broke through, she was gone. He looked left and right; he raced forward, then doubled back. Then, he walked down each hall, peering into the stores, but never saw her or her friend. She had to be in one of them, and he even stepped into an elegant women’s store with displays of evening gowns because he thought that was the kind of place where she would shop.
She wasn’t anywhere he looked.
Finally, he gave up and rode the escalator to the food court. Roberto waited. In a dark suit, tie, and a crisp white shirt, his high school buddy—now a State Representative—sipped an espresso at a bistro table overlooking the ice skating rink.
An attaché case sat on the floor beside him. It was identical to the one George carried, except it had a dent. George had bought them to exchange money and documents, but then he saw a movie about accidentally-switched briefcases. He had agonized about the possibility of such mistakes, but the problem had solved itself when a drug runner went crazy, and George hit him in the head with one attaché, crushing his skull. The impact left a slight dent in the case, distinguishing it from the other.
“You’re late,” Roberto said, looking nervously one way and then another. As a kid, he’d gone by the nickname Beto but stopped using it when he graduated from law school.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“I want to start meeting somewhere else.”
George thought to remind him who had bankrolled his political career, but he let it go. “Okay.”
“Is everything the same? The same amounts to everyone?”
“Yeah, no changes.”
Roberto snatched the case with the money and strolled off without saying goodbye or looking back. That was how things had become between them. Could he be trusted in the clutch? That was something to worry about another day. He put the box with the icon into the dented attaché and wandered the mall, looking for Kelly, finally working his way back toward his gallery.
There she was, standing by herself.
They moved to each other like magnets.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked.
“She had to go home.”
He couldn’t believe he was standing there with her. “It’s been twenty-three years,” he said. “We only live a few miles from each other, but I never see you.”
“Yeah, life’s a trip, isn’t it.”
“You talk like a hippie.”
“Not usually. Seeing you makes me feel like a hippie again. I remember when we eloped and smoked a joint on the Interstate.”
They stood there, inches apart from each other. The shoppers passed all around. He wanted to pull her close and kiss her. “Why are you looking for me?” he asked.
“My friend wanted to meet for lunch, so I told her to meet here.” She pushed her sandy hair behind her ear as she did in the motel on the highway when they sat naked and cross-legged on the bed and planned to elope. “I got to the mall early and stopped at your gallery.”
“How do you know about the Crossroads?”
She laughed. “Everyone knows about the gangster that owns an art gallery. It’s not something you’d expect. A strip club? Yeah, people would expect a gangster to own a strip club. But not an art gallery. Why’d you buy it?”
“You know, I wanted to be a photographer and have my work displayed in galleries. My dream slipped from my grasp, along with you. The Crossroads is my consolation prize. The previous owner was in trouble, so I got it cheap. It’s a bad investment, but I enjoy seeing the art and meeting the artists.”
The dress clung to her taut, luscious body like Saran wrap. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said. “And my God, you are as adventuresome as ever to come looking for me after all these years.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I’ll never forget when we got off the road in the desert. I can still hear your boots crunching on all those loose rocks as you climbed that hill.”
“It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. When I got to the top, I looked in all directions. There were no roads, no sign of life. Only desolation and dust swirling around me in the hot, dry wind. I thought we’d die.”
She touched his face, letting her fingers rest on his cheek. “Oh, George, my life turned out bad. I never loved Clint, but it keeps getting worse.”
“What’s going on that’s so bad?”
She shook her head and let her hand fall to her side. “I shouldn’t have come here. But I’ve never stopped thinking about you. We always had a spark.”
An orchestral rendition of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” played on the overhead speakers, and he felt all sappy, like a stupid, lovesick punk teenager. A mannequin in a three-piece suit looked at him from a store window. Its sober face warned him not to be a sucker for her again. He had to keep his mind on business.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Meet me tomorrow. At six.”
No, no, no, he couldn’t meet her. His whole future depended on what happened in the upcoming days. He had to go to Chicago and sit with his mob brethren, and then he had to return to Houston and pretend he was mourning for his worthless father-in-law.
But it was like they were teenagers again, meeting in the park, leaving notes for each other, fucking in the backseat of her car. The blood rushed from his head, banishing rational thought, making him little more than an amoeba responding to an overpowering stimulus. The words came out of his mouth of their own volition. “There’s a place. Very private. Jean Paul’s.”
“Is that another one of your places?”
“Yes, I own it.”
“I know where it is. I’ll be there at six.”
She turned and disappeared into the crowd.
He stood there a long time and never once thought about Lazarus. BUY NOW
CHAPTER THREE
Lazarus laid the three guns on the kitchen table of his love nest, a second-floor walk-up in a Chicago brownstone. Which one to use to kill George? The Ruger Standard was a strong contender. With its blued carbon steel finish and wood grip, he was proud to have it in his arsenal. However, the Ruger MK II was equally impressive and accurate at a distance. But the Baretta 71 was excellent too. It was small and lightweight and could fit in a pants pocket. All three were cold and had never been fired during a crime.
Many guns had presented themselves to him over the years, but only these three had what it took to be finalists.
One and only one could be chosen, and with Pano about to die, the time had come to decide.
Their barrels were smooth. He ran his fingers over each one, hoping to get some signal from his twin brother, Joey. Nothing could break their connection—not even his death at the hands of George.
When he massaged the Baretta, he heard Joey’s voice from the other side.
Avenge my death.
Lazarus held the pistol aloft. “Is this the gun to use to kill George?”
Yes.
He crossed himself. “I will avenge your death, my brother! You can count on me.”
His plan was a thing of beauty. He had been bribing Pano’s doctor for years. When the doctor realized that Pano had only a few months left, he told Lazarus first, and Lazarus threatened him with a slow, painful death unless he told Pano he had years ahead of him. Then, Lazarus got everyone to tell George’s wife that they needed a big memorial celebration. Distracted by the preparations and his womanizing, George hadn’t noticed that people were following him. Already, Lazarus’s head assassin, Lemuel, was in place. As soon as the memorial ended and Pano and Lazarus flew back to Chicago, Lemuel would put a bullet in George’s brain.
It was time to go to The Pink Stiletto, so he wrapped the guns in their colorful oilcloths and stored them in a cabinet over the sink. Constantly vigilant, he looked out the window down at the street. Nothing unusual. He shook the iron bars; they were secure. He went into the walk-in closet. A trapdoor led to a crawl space between his apartment and the one on the other side, but it was nailed shut. Solid and secure. Then, he walked to the front door and looked through the peephole. No one in the hall. No one on the landing.
As quietly as possible, he undid each lock on the door and stepped out into the hall. There was only one other apartment on his floor. He’d never met the tenant, but Lazarus only came in the afternoons and only two or three times a week.
He padded down the steps, surprisingly quiet for a big, beefy six-foot man, and slid into his Lincoln parked behind the brownstone. He swept the remaining strands of his blond hair back on his head as his steel blue eyes scanned the alley. There was nothing unusual, nothing out of place.
People snapped to attention when he arrived at his strip club. He was Lazarus The Great. Everyone watched him, and he had to act like a silly, lovesick old man so no one would suspect he had murder on his mind.
The host escorted him to his table in front of the stage. A waiter brought him his ouzo and Greek salad as soon as he settled into his seat. Soon, his moussaka would arrive. It had been the same for years. Chefs came and went; girls came and went. The food remained the same: burgers and ham sandwiches for the customers, off-the-menu Greek plates for him and his friends. Employment depended on how good the moussaka was. His blood might not be Greek, but no one loved all things Greek more than he did.
One of the new girls gyrated to disco music and glided to a stop on her knees in front of him. He appreciated her efforts and slid a hundred-dollar bill into her G-string. The next dancer was a cowgirl with boots and a cowboy hat. She knew how to shake her butt, which was also worth a hundred bucks.
The maître d’ marched to the microphone. An old burned-out junkie, he wheezed into the microphone as a waiter set the moussaka in front of Lazarus.
“And now, it’s time for Darla. You all know her. No one shakes it like her. She is—” He checked his notes. “—unrivaled. This is her new routine. We are debuting it this afternoon for all our loyal afternoon customers. Come back tonight for a repeat.”
The house lights dimmed, and a single spot focused on the stage door. Darla came out dressed as a Greek goddess, all wrapped up in white robes with her hair curled up on top of her head. She had told Lazarus that her outfit would be a big surprise, and it sure was.
Arms outstretched, she twirled around on high heels, the spotlight following her as Lazarus bit into the creamy goodness of the eggplant and noodles. She looked down at him, and he raised his glass to her.
The music started. It was a Tsifteteli, belly-dance music. She threw off her outer robe to reveal a sheer white see-through gown underneath. Dancing in time to the music, she shook out her long, dark, Greek-looking curls. The crowd went wild as she and her curls spun around.
Lazarus smiled big because people were expecting him to get all excited. He thought about the Beretta pressed against George’s skull, the steel pressing against the bone. “Thank you, Joey,” he said under his breath. “Thank you for showing me which gun to use.”
The music climaxed as Darla stripped down to a G-string. Boy, she was a marvel. Thin waist, big tits. The best body that money could buy. But the best thing about her was that she was a loudmouth. She blabbed every detail about their sex life. Now that Lazarus could finally get it up again, he wanted everyone to believe that sex was the only thing on his mind. No one would suspect what he was planning.
As her tits rotated in the same direction, like propeller blades, he rose to his feet and clapped longer and louder than the others. He whistled and put a hundred-dollar bill on each side of her g-string and one in the middle. She leaned down and kissed him. The crowd cheered. For sure, they thought he was a lovesick fool.
When she ran off stage, he sat to finish the last creamy bites of his meal in peace, but wouldn’t you know it, Paul, his henchman, came into the bar.
It had to be bad news.
Paul wore cowboy boots and jeans like he'd always done since he’d first gone to Texas to spy on George. Lazarus had been born German but tried endlessly to be Greek; Paul had been born Greek and tried to be the Marlboro Man. Life was all fucked up like that.
“Pano probably won’t go to church tomorrow,” Paul said, talking low, trembling with fear. He was endlessly loyal, but Lazarus hated him because he looked like George. “His wife was trying to reach you, so she called me. She said he’s feeling horrible.”
That was the worst possible news. His absence from even one church service would send alarm bells all the way to Texas. “Who knows how he’s feeling?”
“Just me. The doctor told them it’s indigestion, nothing to worry about. So far, they seem to believe him.”
Lazarus lost his appetite; his fork clattered to the plate. The dark pit of his rage sucked him down, but he took deep breaths and clawed his way back up to the surface. After years of faithful church attendance, lighting candles, and doing his cross at the right time, God didn’t have the decency to let Pano last a few more days before everyone found out how sick he was.
“We strike now,” Lazarus said.
“Now? Before Panayías?”
“Yes, now. George will turn cautious if Pano misses any church services. He’s not stupid—just all mixed up with his girlfriends and planning a fancy memorial celebration. Your spies are watching him around the clock, right?”
“Yes. Round the clock.”
“And Lemuel is there and ready?”
“Yes, I talked to him a few hours ago.”
“Call him right now and tell him to kill George as soon as he gets the opportunity. Two bullets to the head. Tell him not to fool around.”
“Have you chosen a gun? I could drive it down to him right now.”
“I have chosen a gun, but there’s no longer any time. Tell Lemuel to use any gun he wants. But shoot him now.”
Paul hurried out of the Stiletto. Even though Lazarus had lost his appetite, he managed to force down some of his moussaka. As he had spies following George, George probably had spies following him. Everything had to look normal. Between bites, he whispered to his brother. Joey, I know you wanted me to kill George with the Baretta. But if we get a chance to get him beforehand, we’ll have to do that. I hope you understand.
No answer.
He thought of the words from the Trisagion for the dead and clasped his hands together in prayer.
O Lord, give rest in a place of light, in a place of green pasture, in a place of refreshment, from where pain and sorrow and mourning have fled away.
He noticed that the guy with one hand was staring at him. He had been coming for years and always sat at a table near the restrooms. He came looking for pussy and hired the older girls who didn’t charge much. Lazarus had even seen him in church but never talked to him. He thought his name was Sotiri.
Slipstream
Braggarts
(from Sci-Fi Stir Fry buy on Amazon)
After years of behaving in a fawning and servile manner toward everyone important, Skywalk Frequent and his wife Lavinia were invited to a prestigious cocktail party.
“If we make a good impression at the party, we will be accepted in high society,” Skywalk exclaimed. “However, if we appear immodest, we will never again get an invitation to the good parties.” He fretted, bit his fingernails and spit the pieces on the floor. “What shall we do to ensure success?”
Lavinia dug her fingers into her scalp in despair, but then looked up with the bright light of inspiration. “Let's rent a Braggart.”
“That's a great idea! How will we find one?”
“I saw a lot of good ones online!”
“Brilliant idea!”
They did a search and found the website of Remo Robotics. They specialized in Braggarts. They thumbed through each listing and stopped on the image of a stylish robot at a symphony concert. His name was Milo Remo.
“Oh, he's perfect,” Lavinia said.
“Hmm, I agree,” Skywalk said, “I believe in being modest at all times, but it never hurts to have a Braggart to tell everyone how wonderful you are.”
They chatted with customer service. Milo was a fourth-generation model. There were numerous versions, including a female Remo, who specialized in lady’s tea parties and other high society events. There are also children Remos who work at children's birthday parties.”
Knowing they had found the right person for the job, Skywalk and Lavinia nodded in satisfaction to each other. Milo Remo was a little pricey, but the customer service rep offered them easy payments with only a twenty-five percent down payment.
On the night of the party, Skywalk and Lavinia dressed in their resplendent best for the party. Skywalk wore a black silk shirt and silver sports coat. Lavinia wore a long red dress and black feather boa.
They drove their red convertible sports car to the party and picked up Milo on the way. He was exactly as he appeared in his listing: stylish in every way.
Milo rode in the rumble seat of the sports car. The top was down and Lavinia’s boa whipped around in the wind and occasionally wrapped around Milo’s head.
At the party Milo stuck close to Skywalk and Lavinia, but never spoke to them. When a man in an expensive suit asked about one of Skywalk’s business deals, Skywalk displayed his characteristic modesty.
“Oh it wasn't that big a deal,” he said.
Milo pushed his way between the two men. “Not a big deal!” he screamed in his whiny voice. “It was the biggest deal in years. Skywalk was brilliant. Courageous. Bold. You've never seen anything like it!”
“Oh, now, now,” Skywalk said, “it really wasn't all that much.”
“Can you believe this man?” Milo yelled so loud that everyone in the party turned to look. “It was the biggest deal in town for years. Skywalk was brilliant. Courageous. Bold. Visionary. And he's good looking too. And his wife is beautiful. Look at them. They’re beautiful. And their kids are beautiful. Even Skywalk’s pets are good looking. His Irish Setters are good-looking. The fish in his fishbowl are handsome. And he lives in a big fancy house and drives a red sports car! This is one heck of a man!”
Everyone clustered around Skywalk and Lavinia. Milo retreated, ate the canapés, sipped the wine, and worked his way around the room.
“That Skywalk,” he said to everyone he met. “He’s really something. Quite a man. Quite a man.”
That evening as Skywalk and Lavinia lay in bed, Skywalk said, “I think people liked us. Do you think we will be accepted in high society?”
“Oh yes, they were impressed. I think we will be accepted.” She thought for a second. “You know there's one thing I really admire about you Skywalk.”
“What's that Lavinia?”
“Your modesty.”
My Kidnapping
It wasn’t until a couple of months after my mother died that I went through the closet in her office. She was a scrupulously organized woman with the intellect and drive to have been the CEO of a large company had she been born in a time and place where women could reach their potential.
There were boxes full of business papers. She made a lot of property deals, buying houses, cutting them into duplexes and triplexes. Growing up, I worked with her whenever there was a vacancy. Often, we went with my aunt and grandmother. Yiayia, grandmother, would pull weeds by hand from around the front of the house while my mother and aunt surveyed the inside. Often, the tenants left things. We’d go through and pick out what could be sold at garage sales and throw the rest out. Then, we’d start with painting, minor carpentry, and anything else that needed to be done. At the end of the day, we’d load up her old Chevy and head home for supper.
I hated it. I was the fatherless Greek kid who lived in a multi-generational household in an old house, while everyone else lived in a sleek, modern house with a nuclear family: one sibling, a mother who stayed home, and a father who worked in an office.
It wasn’t until years later that I appreciated how much she had done for me.
It was all for me.
Every sacrifice was made to advance me. Every humiliation she endured was to advance me.
A mystery remained, however.
My father.
They divorced when I was two. I have only one memory of him. He brought me a gift. He parked across the street and carried the wrapped package, but he never came into the house. It was a circus set with all manner of plastic figures. I played with it endlessly, but one day I arranged the figures too close to a space heater, and they all melted.
My father never came for visits. It was like he didn’t exist.
I did learn that he came for one visit—and didn’t bring me home. Mother called it a kidnapping. Somehow, she got me back, but never explained how. Since he didn’t exist, it wasn’t something that I thought about, and I never asked about the incident.
As I dug through the boxes, I looked for clues about the kidnapping. There were pictures of him, sure, but that didn’t solve the mystery.
I had almost given up when I found a dusty manila folder at the bottom of a box. It was the file on the divorce. The legal papers were ugly. He had been married before and had two children she hadn’t known about.
There were no clues about the “kidnapping,” if that is what it was. A piece of paper fluttered out from between the pages of the divorce decree.
It wasn’t a full sheet of paper. It was half a piece, torn from another piece. She was always doing that. Nothing went to waste.
It was handwritten, and it contained details about the kidnapping. It was dated. Comparing it to the dates on the legal documents, the incident occurred before the divorce decree was issued. We lived in Corpus Christi, but my father had family in Houston. She hired a Greek florist who also worked as a part-time private investigator. It had his phone number.
I dialed the number. It was disconnected.
There was a second number. It was for someone with a Greek-sounding last name. I dialed that number.
A woman answered. I told her the situation. She said that the number was her mother’s landline. She also told me that they were relatives on my father’s side. I asked to speak to her mother. She hesitated but said her mother was in the hospital. She was ill and not expected to live.
“I would really like to speak to her,” I said. “I can drive up there.”
The woman hesitated again. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I don’t want to do anything to upset her.”
“Can you ask if she’d be willing to see me?”
“Maybe. Let me think about it.”
“I am going to drive up there. I will get a hotel room and call you back.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“I am coming up there. If she doesn’t want to see me, I understand.”
I threw a change of clothes in a bag and hit the road. The sky was cloudy and got more ominous as I drove. Rain started to fall as I checked into my room. I called, expecting no answer or to be told not to bother them.
“She wants to see you,” the daughter said. “She remembers you.”
I headed to the hospital, which was across town. The rain grew heavier, accompanied by thunder and lightning. I didn’t know the area, but I managed to get there. I didn’t have an umbrella, and I was soaked by the time I got to the nurse’s station. The daughter was there, waiting for me.
“They’ll only allow you a few minutes,” she said. “She’s really not doing well.”
They led me to a room where a frail, old woman lay with an oxygen tube in her nose and IVs hooked up to her arm.
“So, you’re Billy,” she said.
“Yes, I found your name and number in my mother’s papers.”
She laughed. “Very organized woman, your mother.”
“Why was your name and number in her file?”
“When your father took you, he brought you to me. He left you with me while he went to work.”
Lightning flashed outside her room, and the thunder boomed.
“It was a night like this,” she said. “Lightning and thunder. There was a knock at the door. It was your mother and your aunt. They came in, apologizing about dripping on the floor. You were sleeping. I let them keep the blanket, and they bundled you up and took you. I didn’t fight with them or argue. You belonged to them. They were only in the house a minute, maybe two minutes.”
“How did they get to your house?”
“A cab. It waited for them. They said they had taken a bus from Corpus Christi, and it had rained all the way up. I stood in the door and watched them get in the cab and drive away.”
“How did my father react when he got back?”
“Oh, he accepted the situation. He didn’t get mad at me. He cried. I’d never seen him cry.”
“So, he loved me?”
“Yes, I’m sure he did. He said he’d made a mistake, but your mother wouldn’t take him back. She had caught him cheating with a girlfriend. He always had an eye for the ladies.”
A doctor came up behind me. “I think we’d better leave her alone.”
I went out and thanked the daughter and the doctor, and I drove off into the pouring rain, imagining my mother and my aunt bringing me home in the pouring rain.
Jimmy, Too
The invitation glittered—gold-embossed letters on a cream-colored envelope, with a red wax seal, addressed to Jimmy Waterfield. Of course, it wasn’t intended for him. No one ever invited him to anything. It was for the other Jimmy Waterfield, the Famous Jimmy Waterfield, and had been mailed to the wrong address.
It was obviously an invitation to some high-class event. He ran his hand over the embossed letters, feeling the texture, imagining himself in a tuxedo, hobnobbing with all the important people.
He looked around his tiny efficiency apartment. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t made more of his life. His parents hadn’t been there for him; his teachers had never liked him; girls showed no interest. It was their fault.
An exciting thought popped into his head. He would call the lady whose name and address was on the envelope. She would be so happy to know about the error that she’d invite him to whatever event this was. This might be his big break. He could quit his job as a clerk at the Heavenly Hardware Store and move up to better things.
He Googled the name and address. No phone number.
That left no choice. He opened the invitation. Wow. It was every bit as fancy as the envelope. On heavy card stock, it invited Famous Jimmy to a Christmas party. It gave a phone number for the RSVP.
His fingers trembled as he pressed the numbers on his ancient flip phone. Courage, he told himself. Be bold, be confident.
“Hello,” a woman answered with a cultured-sounding Southern voice.
Jimmy started sweating and hung up. No, he hadn’t lost his nerve, he told himself. The personal touch was required in this situation. He got in his rusting fifteen-year-old Toyota Tercel. A plume of burning oil trailed behind him.
The house was big and grand, a palace with fountains and rose bushes in the yard and columns on the porch. A wrought-iron fence surrounded it. The gate was open.
He parked right in front and walked up the white-stone steps. Two men were hanging strings of Christmas lights on the eaves; another two men were setting up a display of Santa and his reindeer pulling a sleigh.
Up, up, and up he walked, his heart beating as he approached the huge door. Invitation in hand, he rang the doorbell. He imagined the gracious owner, probably a Southern lady of distinction. She would be overwhelmed with joy that he had brought the invitation, and she would invite him in for tea. Then she would invite him to the party. He would be offered a job. His life would be better.
A maid answered.
“Are you the plumber?”
“No, I’m not a plumber. I, uh—”
She gave him a withering stare, and he turned and ran down the steps. He stumbled and fell to the ground. The maid was standing at the door watching. He got to his feet and sped away. Suddenly, he realized that it was past time to go to work. Burning oil, he raced to the Heavenly Hardware Store.
“Late again, Jimmy,” his boss said, his arms crossed on his bulging stomach.
“I had car trouble.”
“It’s always something.” He smiled that sadistic smile of his. “Today, you’re working returns.”
There was no worse job than returns. Heavenly Hardware was anything but heavenly when you had to take your stuff back. It was eight hours of nonstop verbal abuse. There was an angry, psychotic carpenter, several disgruntled do-it-yourselfers, and even a Cub Scout Leader wanting to return a tent that leaked. Gloriously, the day was almost over when a fancy-looking man came in to exchange a lawn chair.
“It rusted almost immediately,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we only accept returns on this item for fifteen days. And you bought this sixteen days ago.”
“But it rusted. It’s defective.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, and he focused on Jimmy’s nametag. “Jimmy Waterfield, huh?” he said in a loud voice. People turned to stare. “I bet it’s tough going through life with that name in this town. People probably make fun of you all the time. You can have the chair, Jimmy Waterfield. Donate it to one of your many charitable causes.”
Everyone in the store turned to look. Jimmy felt swallowed up by shame. He decided that he was no longer going to put up with the endless cruelties of the whole world. He was going to the party.
He called to RSVP the following day.
“Hello,” the woman answered.
“This is Jimmy Waterfield.”
“Oh, my, yes,” she gushed. “How are you, Jimmy?”
“I’m fine. I’m calling to RSVP for your party.”
“You sound—different.”
“Oh, I had a bit of a cold, but I’m better now.”
“I’m so glad you’ll come.”
“Will it be a large gathering?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Formal?”
“Well, you know, Jimmy, as you and I have discussed many times, people dress so poorly these days. The old terms like “formal” and “casual” hardly mean anything.”
“Yes, yes, I know, it’s shameful, but will it be something of a formal event?”
“Oh, yes, of course, and I am sure you will know exactly what is appropriate. Jimmy, you always set the trend.”
On the day of the party, he went to a tuxedo rental store and chose the most expensive one, imagining a much thinner, more handsome, taller version of himself.
Feeling like a celebrity, he raced to the party and parked down the street so no one would see his old car.
The Christmas decorations in the yard looked beautiful all lit up. Santa and his sleigh and reindeer glowed with hundreds of white lights. Inside the house, there was a grand entryway with a jeweled chandelier, and there were equally luxurious rooms leading off from it. Everyone stared at him. They were obviously jealous of how good he looked. No one was dressed like him, though. Some wore suits, but no one wore a tux. It didn’t matter. He was Jimmy Waterfield, trendsetter.
A large, imposing woman in a red sequined dress greeted people. He recognized her voice from the phone call. She noticed him and stopped to watch him. There was a puzzled expression on her face. She probably knew all the guests and didn’t know who he was.
Snagging a glass of champagne from a tray, he hurried off to one of the side rooms and found a table with canapes. He took a fancy little plate and loaded it up high. People stared. He liked the crackers with blue cheese but didn’t care for the ones with black fishy-smelling stuff and set them back on the tray, including a half-eaten one. People again stared.
The hostess appeared at the door with her arms crossed across her massive breasts and scanned the room. He loaded up a few more blue cheese crackers on his plate and raced off to another room. The place was a veritable Buckingham Palace. He hid among a group of old men talking about dental surgeries. The hostess didn’t show up, and he hoped she’d lost interest.
“And you are—?” one of the old men asked. He had a big gray mustache and looked like a walrus.
“I am Jimmy—Smith."
“And what line of work are you in, sir?”
“Hardware.”
“Ahh, I see,” the walrus said. “Computer hardware.”
“No. Hardware. Saws and hammers.”
“Ah, you’re a building contractor.”
“Yes, exactly.”
Not wanting to answer any more questions, he moved to another room and found a group having a lively discussion about interest rates. They did all the talking, and all he had to do was smile and nod. But he wanted a second champagne. He motioned to the maid carrying a tray of them. She was the one who had answered the door for him the other day. She gave him a funny look like she recognized him but couldn’t quite place him.
He grabbed a glass and rushed into another room. Unfortunately, the guy who had tried to return his rusting lawn chair was standing in his way. Jimmy ran right into him, and the champagne spilled all over the guy’s suit. He looked shocked and angry and then looked puzzled in the same way as the maid.
There was no place to go except back to the group talking about interest rates. They were still talking, so he hid right in the middle of them.
“What is your opinion about the direction of interest rates?” one of them asked him. “Since you are a building contractor, you must have an opinion.”
He started to sweat. “Well, prices for garden hoses have gone up. And outdoor lawn chairs have declined in quality and are rusting too soon.”
None of them moved. No one blinked. This wasn’t going well.
To Jimmy’s surprise, Famous Jimmy arrived. Jimmy recognized him from stalking him on Facebook and Instagram. Not only was he not wearing a tuxedo, he wasn’t even wearing a tie. He wore a black suit with a black silk shirt. What had happened to standards?
The hostess reappeared. She and Famous Jimmy stood with the maid and the man from the hardware store. They spotted Jimmy and marched to him.
“You’re the clerk from the hardware store,” the one man said.
“And you came to our door,” the maid said.
“Who are you?” the hostess asked.
“My name is Jimmy Waterfield, too.” He pulled the invitation from his pocket. “You sent the invitation to me. You invited me.”
The hostess took the invitation and examined it. “Where is the envelope? It will have the address.”
“I left it at home.”
She shook her head and motioned to Famous Jimmy. “Jimmy didn’t receive an invitation, and he suspected that someone had stolen it. Thankfully, he and I ran into each other. We think, sir, that you stole it. And then you called me up and pretended to be Jimmy. And you came to the house while we were putting up Christmas decorations. There have been some break-ins in the neighborhood. You were planning to rob me, and you came here to—case the joint. And you have tampered with the mail. That is a crime. I am going to call the police. What is your name, sir?”
“I am Jimmy Waterfield. I swear. I’m Jimmy, too.”
“Show us your ID.”
“I left my wallet in my car.”
He felt sick. The room, which had been abuzz with conversation, was absolutely quiet.
Jimmy ran.
“Stop that man,” she yelled.
The guests grabbed for him, but he was too fast. Sadly, when he got outside, he tripped and fell into Santa and his reindeer. He rolled down to the street entangled with the lights and Santa.
“Stop that man,” the hostess yelled from the front door. “He is stealing my Christmas decorations.”
He jumped into his car and sped away. Unfortunately, the string of lights was still wrapped around his foot, and he looked in the rearview mirror to see the lights along with Santa and his sleigh bouncing along behind him. Police cars followed, their red lights on, their sirens blaring. Not paying as much attention to his driving as he should, Jimmy barreled into an oncoming police car. He jumped from the car and ran, the lights and Santa still tied to his leg, the police chasing him. One thing was certain. He would have to change his name.
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