FIGHT

by Brent Coffey

  Gabe cruised down the highway feeling pretty damn good, and he wasn’t sure why. I guess it doesn’t matter why. I just feel good, and that’s all that matters. August sat buckled up in the seat next to him, licking a double-decker chocolate and vanilla ice cream cone, paying no mind to the creamy remnants each flavor left on his lips, nose, and chin. In the past few days, August had seen the zoo, visited a planetarium, rode his own big wheel, rode his own bicycle with training wheels (after Gabe decided that August was too old for the big wheel), braved his first roller coaster, enjoyed his first ferris wheel, ate his first batch of cotton candy, and attended his first Red Sox game. (Curiously, Bruce Hudson had been at that game, along with his old detective pal Richard Dorsey, though neither Gabe nor August had seen them.) Gabe turned many heads, when he and August publicly hung out. But no one who saw them called the cops, because they’d seen Gabe’s acquittal in the news and they didn’t know he’d illegally removed August from his foster home.

  August, too, was feeling pretty good, but, unlike Gabe, he knew why. He felt good because he was with Gabe, and he could tell that Gabe liked him. It felt good to finally be liked.

  Gabe kept a steady hand on his five-speed Mercedes’ stick. He preferred stick shifts to automatics. They kept him more active, more in control. And they were more fun to drive. He was gunning it at top speed down I-395, hovering around 95 miles an hour. He pushed his stick forward, which was already in fifth gear, as if a faster gear awaited him. August, introducing his face to different sides of his ice cream mound, noticed Gabe’s good mood, as Gabe began to whistle along with 107.1’s stream of Blur’s “Song 2.”

  They were having fun, and they both knew it.

  “Vrooooom!” August roared, moving his ice cream cone around like it was a steering wheel.

  “Say, you’re going pretty fast there. Want to go a little faster?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “Well, hot damn, let’s go!”

  “Hot damn! Let’s go!” August repeated. It was the first time he’d cussed in front of an adult, but it seemed okay, it was fun, and it made him feel like he belonged with Gabe.

  The metallic black SUV whirled through traffic, changing lanes around slower cars, and easily out performing less expensive makes. Gabe was having such fun cruising with August, and his sound system was turned up so loud, that it took a good thirty seconds for him to realize that he was being trailed by a Massachusetts state trooper with flashing lights. He looked in his rearview mirror with disgust. What the hell are we paying these guys for? A good portion of the state’s patrolmen were on the Adelaides’ payroll, and it shocked him to be pulled over by one. He slowed the car to a gradual decline requiring several hundred yards and leisurely pulled over onto the highway’s shoulder. August’s eyes grew large and worried, as he saw the trooper’s car in the SUV’s side view mirror. When Gabe shut off the radio, both heard the trooper’s ominous siren. Gabe did a quick double take and was relieved to see that both he and August were wearing safety belts. Looking once more in his mirror, he identified the trooper walking towards them as Andrew Baker, an employee of the Family.

  “Afternoon, sir. Do you know why I pulled you over?”

  “Hello, to you, too, Andrew, and I have no idea.”

  “It’s Officer Baker, if you don’t mind, and I clocked you going 96 on a stretch of highway with a limit of 75. I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

  Gabe couldn’t believe it. This fucker had the nerve to suck the Family teat and then pull him over for speeding? What the hell are we paying you for? Gabe asked himself again. He took out his wallet and found the stuff for Officer Baker, (since that’s the grand title this goon’s calling himself these days, he stewed) and passed it out his window. Baker went back to his patrol car to call in the license and registration, leaving Gabe to further wonder how the ingrate planned on staying on the Family’s good side after this crock of shit. A few moments later:

  “I’m citing you for speeding. You can appear in court and contest the ticket on the noted date, or you have to pay the fine.”

  Baker handed back Gabe’s license, registration, and proof of insurance, and he handed Gabe a ticket for $130. The money was nothing: it was chump change to Gabe. No, he didn’t care about a lousy $130. What he cared about was putting this good-for-nothing-two-bit cop in his place for interrupting the fun that he and August were having with this bullshit speed limit talk. Until now, Baker had turned a blind eye to Gabe’s crimes, ranging from fraud to violence. And Baker had been rewarded handsomely for his willful ignorance of the Family’s activities. The Adelaides had even paid Baker a cool $700 Christmas bonus last year. Gabe didn’t speak, and he locked eyes with Baker’s, expecting either an apology or a punch line (Nah, just messin’, Gabe, you know that!), but neither came. Instead, Baker concluded the pull over:

  “Have a nice day, sir. Drive safe.”

  Gabe glared at the citation in his hand. He crumpled it up and tossed it in the back seat. He had no intentions of paying it, and he wasn’t going to let some cop ruin his afternoon. He waited for a brief pause in the interstate’s onslaught of traffic and pulled back onto the road.

  In the privacy of his patrol car, Baker phoned Victor.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Mr. Adelaide’s office. Can I help you?”

  “Put me through,” was all Baker had to say. The secretary knew his voice.

  “Right away.”

  The phone only rang twice on the special line installed for calls from cops, politicians, and the media before Victor answered it. He never missed a call from this line. A technician had programmed the number to kick the call over to his cell if he wasn’t around to answer the office phone, rather than letting the call go to voicemail.

  “Victor here.”

  “Victor, Baker. I saw Gabe with some kid in his Benz on I-395. They were pretty far out of town and moving along rather quickly. I suspect they’re joy riding. I gave him a ticket for speeding.”

  “You did what, you fool?”

  “I, uh, I gave him a ticket for speeding.”

  Victor paused, put the phone down on his desk, rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand, and squeezed an Earth style stress ball with his right hand (a memento from his last trip to his cardiologist). He paid no mind to how long he kept Baker waiting: he was too damn upset to care. As angry as he was at Gabe for helping the D.A. (and with his money no less!) he still couldn’t afford to push Gabe out of the Family. Without Gabe, his men would abandon the Family to work for competitors, thinking the Adelaides’ days were numbered. After crushing the world in his palm some two dozen times and gleefully visualizing the mass carnage its imaginary residents suffered, he lifted the phone’s receiver and educated Baker:

  “I preferred that Gabe didn’t know I was pissed at him, but you seem to have let the cat out of the bag.”

  “Sir, I was taking your side in this dispute when I gave him a ticket. I thought you’d be glad I’d given him hell, after he used your money for Hudson’s benefit.”

  Victor hissed in the calmest voice he could manage, “I didn’t want Gabe to know that there were sides to be taken between us. But then you went and wrote him up, and he knows that an underling like you is committing an act of insubordination to write up a member of the Family. If I don’t fire you, and make him aware of the fact that I fired you, then he’ll know that I’m okay that you wrote him a ticket, which will tell him that I’m pissed at him. In other words…” (he swallowed the unspoken “Dumbass”) “… I now have to punish you to make Gabe think that he and I are still on good terms. Follow the logic? Did you connect all those dots, Officer Baker?”

  “Yes, sir. I can toss the ticket. I don’t have to turn it in,” he sheepishly offered.

  “See that you do, and when you see Gabe, tell him that I demanded that you apologize. If you’re lucky, this whole thing will blow over.”

  Hanging up for a new dial tone, Victor used his secure
line to call the man who still served as the Family’s jack-of-all-trades, Charlie Unique:

  “Kill Andrew Baker.”

  ------------------------------------------------

  Despite their earlier run-in with Baker, Gabe and August were still having fun. They were currently at Funny Town pizzeria, and, done with their pepperoni pie, they were busy whopping the heads of plastic gophers with toy mallets, as the animals appeared and then disappeared from holes in a plastic table decorated like a forest. August loved it. He’d driven by Funny Town many times, but he’d never been inside. Today, however, he stood with a belly full of pizza and pockets full of tickets that he and Gabe had won from arcade games, tickets that would later be swapped at a gift shop for a prize.

  “You almost got him!” Gabe yelled.

  August, leaning against the elevated table as Gabe picked him up to make him tall enough to play, crashed the mallet down on an empty hole, missing the previous gopher by a half second. He wasn’t very good at the game, as his small arms couldn’t even reach the gophers in the back row, but he was still having a blast taking cheap shots at them with the toy mallet.

  “Get ‘em, buddy, get ‘em!” Gabe called out.

  The game’s electronic timer beeped, as its bright red LED screen flashed the time remaining for this session… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… buzz! The game spat out a measly two tickets for August’s efforts, which wasn’t nearly enough to cash in for a prize. Gabe was determined to correct this deficit by smacking the hell out of every single one of the gophers and handing his winning tickets to August. He fished in his pockets for the special tokens that the game required, tokens purchased for quarters at the restaurant’s gift shop. He inserted two tokens in the system and hit the “Play!” button. The gopher’s holes randomly lit up with dazzling lights and the game’s music started, signifying the action was about to begin. Gabe didn’t want August to miss out on the fun, so he sat him on his shoulders to make him tall enough to watch.

  Whop!

  The first gopher went down, as soon as it reared its head from the hole that it had been hiding in. He’d nailed it with ease.

  Whop!

  Another gopher retreated to its underground lair, having been walloped by Gabe.

  Whop! Whop! Whop!

  The game’s difficulty increased, as the gophers began to appear quicker, but Gabe had no problem keeping up.

  Whop! Whop! Whop! Whop! Whop!

  He made short work of the gophers, not missing a single one. The game’s beeper soon began to sound again, letting its player know that time was running out. When the game stopped this time, it tallied Gabe’s score at a 100% accuracy rate and rewarded him twenty-seven tickets. Gabe snatched the tickets from their perforated feed in the machine and handed all of them up to August, still perched on his shoulders.

  “Here ya go, man. I believe these belong to you.”

  August had as much fun watching Gabe play as he did playing himself, especially since he knew that Gabe would give him the winning tickets. August shoved the long line of attached tickets into his pocket, which was quickly filling up with long rows of the same. Carrying August around the large play arena on his shoulders, Gabe took inventory of the games available and said:

  “I believe we’ve played them all and most of them twice. Whadday say? You ready to cash those tickets in for a prize?”

  “Yes!”

  This was the best day of August’s life. He’d had more fun today than he’d ever had. The fast ride in the car, the ice cream, and Funny Town all combined to seem like a dream come true. When Gabe took him inside the gift shop to redeem his tickets, he knew exactly what he wanted. He’d spied a Plumpy the Beaver doll on the top shelf behind the cash register, when they’d first walked in. Plumpy the Beaver currently had a hit show targeted at August’s age group and a merchandising contract with Funny Town. To kids August’s age, Plumpy the Beaver was cooler than all four Beatles combined.

  “I want that,” he said, pointing towards the doll.

  The cashier didn’t have to ask which toy August wanted. He knew August wanted the same toy that every kid wanted.

  “That’ll be 430 tickets,” the teenage ticket teller responded with boredom, expecting to be told that the kid didn’t have enough tickets, and expecting to then be asked by the adult how much is it to buy the toy, and expecting then to answer, “Sorry, but the doll’s not for sale,” and expecting then to sell more tokens for quarters to keep both the kid and the adult here for hours longer than they intended to be in vain hopes of winning an unwinnable toy.

  Gabe took August off his shoulders and set him on the counter. August kicked his legs in excitement and removed the tickets from his pockets to let Gabe count them.

  “Here you are,” Gabe said. “Here’s 450 tickets, and you can keep the extra ones.”

  The teller took the vast wad of long ticket trails in his hand and mentally cursed the minimum wage fate that was making him count the damn things to verify the existence of all 450 of them. Halfway through counting, he merely pretended to count the rest and said, “You’ve got enough. Here it is.”

  August held the doll in front of him in excited wonder. He smiled at the doll, then at Gabe, then back at the doll. Gabe ruffled his hair and said:

  “You got what you wanted, man. Let’s go.”

  ------------------------------------------------

  Luke Espinoza didn’t know that Victor was pissed at Gabe. Luke also didn’t know why Gabe was paying for Bruce Hudson’s surgery. All Luke knew was that Gabe had told him to pay Dr. Cathy Sandefur a visit and give her half the cash needed for Bruce’s surgery. This was no easy assignment, as Luke was a high school dropout, and he was intimidated around educated people, especially doctors. He needed to sound respectable, and he knew that would be challenging. He didn’t mind talking to docs when they were on the Family’s payroll, but Sandefur was a legit doc, and that worried him.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” Luke greeted the receptionist at St. Knox’s. “I’m here to see Dr. Sandefur.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I have a 10:30.” (This was partially true, as he’d hacked the hospital’s mainframe the evening before and scheduled himself in.)

  “What did you say your name was?” the receptionist asked, reading her computer’s list of names.

  “Luke Argot.”

  “I found your name. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let Dr. Sandefur know you’re here.”

  Dr. Sandefur was between patients and reviewing a chart for a man she’d just seen, when her office phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a Luke Argot here to see you for his 10:30.”

  Dr. Sandefur frowned, searching her memory. The name didn’t ring a bell.

  “Is he a new patient?”

  “No,” the receptionist said, still glued to her computer screen. “The system has him logged as a returning patient.”

  “Okay. Send him back. I’ll be with him shortly.”

  A nurse opened a door to the waiting room and called Luke’s name. He followed her through the door and into the doctor’s office, careful to follow protocol so as not to alarm any staff. He stepped on the scales, submitted to a check of his vitals, and answered a routine list of questions posed to him by Dr. Sandefur’s nurse. Stuffing the handwritten results of today’s pre-exam in a manila folder, the nurse led Luke to a patient’s room and asked him to wait inside for Dr. Sandefur. After the nurse had closed the door on her way out, he took out a miniature audio recorder from his pocket and turned it on. Gabe wanted a verbatim copy of the entire conversation. He soon heard footsteps approaching the closed door of his room and then heard his chart being lifted out of the rack attached to the door. A moment later, Dr. Sandefur knocked twice to announce her entry and stepped in.

  “Hello, how are you?” she asked, scanning Luke from head to toe. He certainly didn’t look familiar, and she remembered most of her patients.

  �
�Good, and how are you doing?”

  She decided to get down to business and ask about his health, but he beat her to the draw and got down to business of his own:

  “Look, Doc, you may have guessed that I’m not actually a patient. Booking an appointment was the only way I could reach you in person,” he said with a disarming haven’t-we-all-been-there grin.

  She quietly applauded herself for not forgetting a patient, but her personal triumph quickly turned to frustration:

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? And how dare you misrepresent yourself.” Without giving Luke a chance to answer her questions, she flatly stated, “I’m having hospital security escort you off the premises.”

  “You might not want to do that, since I’m from Boston Monetary Management, and I believe you have a check from us.”

  She froze. She knew that there was no such group, and she’d turned the check over to law enforcement last week. Andrew Baker had been assigned to investigate the case, and he’d told Victor about the check, when Baker realized that the funds were secured from one of the Adelaides’ offshore accounts.

  “I’ve already contacted the authorities, and I want you out of here pronto,” she said.

  “Yes, I know all about the authorities,” he said in a friendly voice, “and I have no idea why you’d think my company is illegal. It isn’t. We’re a charity that operates below the radar, so to speak, to do good deeds without being noticed. We’ve been keeping track of Bruce Hudson, and we know from local coverage that he’s the area’s bravest D.A. in history. We’ve read all about his thankless task of taking on the Adelaides, and we want to do our part to help him, as a token of our appreciation.”

  “Like I said, I’ve already gone to the police.”

  “And like I said, Dr. Sandefur, I know that you’ve gone to the police. And hasn’t it occurred to you that if my outfit were shady that I’d be in jail right now instead of sitting in your office?”

  He pulled multiple envelopes out of his buttoned blazer. He silently cursed Gabe’s instructions not to bring the money in a suitcase, which would’ve been much more convenient. But Gabe had been right to warn that a suitcase in the doctor’s office would draw attention from both the staff and other patients, and he needed to slip in and out as discreetly as possible. With a dozen envelopes in hand, he ripped one open and waved around a cool $2,000 in hundreds. This immediately stopped Dr. Sandefur’s departure.