by Nancy Adams
“The place is in a tenement block,” John was saying to Sam. “It’s pretty worn out. We got guys watching the place since ten o’clock this morning, but we haven’t seen any activity, so we’re gathering that the family are in.”
“You have an exact address?” Sam asked blankly.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll go up there alone and meet with them.”
“I can’t let that happen, Sam. I need to send at least one armed guard with you. We don’t really know who else lives in this block of apartments; you could run into anyone that happens to find one of the richest men in the world a very good prize to fall into their lap. The place could be ruled by gangs, like so many of these types of buildings in Mexico, and if one of them figures out who you are, we could have a bloodbath on our hands.”
“Then just you come along with me.”
John mused on this for a moment, biting his lip as he did. After a moment, he nodded his head and assented.
Having reached the end of the street that the tenement was on, the convoy came to a screeching stop and they got out, Sam’s mass of security men all forming a perimeter around him as he left the center vehicle. The people in the street looked on, confused and wondering at the new arrivals. Standing beside Sam, John inquired if everything was good through his earpiece and got the all clear back.
“Okay,” John said to Sam, “let’s make this quick. Come on.”
He led Sam quickly across the street, through an alleyway and into the tenement’s main courtyard, which was full of people sitting around and chatting. As the smartly dressed men walked through the place with rapid steps, almost all of the inhabitants in the courtyard glanced at them in confusion. In the corner, John led Sam to a stairwell and they began ascending the steps through several floors, John glancing around them nervously the whole time, his jacket open, his hand on his pistol that remained for now in its holster.
Eventually, they made it to the door of the apartment they needed. As he stood before it, Sam became nervous, suddenly felt unsure what he should do next. Since Paul had told Sam that he had a son over two days ago, Sam had thought about nothing except retrieving the boy. Now he was so close, however, he began to wonder if he hadn’t acted in haste. He hadn’t even considered what his next move would be after he introduced himself to the family. Did he wish to take custody of the boy? Even that, he hadn’t really considered. Would he help the family and watch over them as a benefactor, never revealing himself to the boy but helping from afar? Even that appeared ridiculous.
John glanced at him and frowned, wondering why Sam was taking so long to do something as simple as knock on the door.
Sam took in a deep breath and knocked heavily.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Claire, Beth and Will were all sitting around the dining room table. Claire and Will were each drinking wine and the pregnant Beth was joining them with a fruit juice. They’d been there for much of the evening and it was past midnight now. Under the effects of the wine, Claire was bemoaning her lot.
“I just wanna know whether he's found out about the boy yet,” she was saying.
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as he made out,” Beth reassured her.
“Sam said that he was being raised in a trailer park in south L.A. That doesn’t sound great. I could have offered him more than that.”
“Hey,” Will put in, a little tipsy from the several glasses that he’d already had, “many of my closest friends grew up in trailer parks.”
“Like who?” Beth asked.
“Like Benny Philips.”
“Benny Philips the meth-head?”
“Okay, then. What about Matty Hughes?”
“Well, Matty’s a nice guy. But he’s only a busboy in a diner. And he’s still on parole for that burglary. But I guess Matty’s doing okay now.”
“Oh God!” Claire exclaimed gently, placing her head in her hands.
“Hasn’t he given you any updates?” Beth inquired.
“Nothing,” she muttered from within her hands. “The number I have for him is dead and he won’t answer my e-mails. If only he’d answer my calls, at least talk to me. But I have no chance of getting to him. It’s not like I can just walk up to his place and knock on the door.”
“Where do you think he is at the moment?” Beth asked.
“When his assistant Karl drove me to the motel in L.A., he told me that Sam was staying with his daughter at the Cliff Face.”
“The ‘Cliff Face’!?” Will erupted. “What’s that?”
“It’s his private estate here in Colorado.”
“Oh! You mean the reserve?” Will went on.
“Yes, the big reserve.”
“But why does he call it the Cliff Face?”
“Because his house there is built into the face of a cliff; it has a waterfall running down the back of it which you can see through a strip of glass wall.” She added this last bit tipsily and brought her glass up to her mouth, her final words echoing inside of it.
“Sounds pretty awesome,” Will remarked.
“Well, maybe you can ask him and he’ll let you live out there with him,” Beth put to her husband.
“Maybe I will,” he put back. “Some hunting pals of my dad are always going in there anyway. I bet I could get to his house. They reckon that they’ve been on his land loads of times.”
“They have?” Claire asked with attentiveness, looking instantly up from her hands.
“Yeah, they’re always going fishing in the rivers there or just walking around the place. Burgess has security men there—like park rangers—but most of the time if you avoid around the house, you can get away with it.”
“Could they get me there?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Beth looked across the table and saw the look that suffused over Claire’s face, a dreamy look that appeared to be considering something.
“You ain’t seriously thinking of going out there?” she inquired of her friend.
Claire looked over at her and replied, “Yes.”
“Ha!” Will let out. “Really!? I was only kidding. My old man’s pals are a bit nuts; they talk a lot of shit. They were probably just having me on.”
“You sounded pretty definite a minute ago,” Claire put to him.
“I’m drunk. We were talking about Burgess’s reserve and I gave you a little story about it. We were talking shit. Or at least I thought we were. I’ve never been out there myself and watched them do it.”
“But you could find out if they have for sure, couldn’t you? Find out if they really can get inside?”
“I guess so.”
“But even if they can,” Beth said addressing Claire, “what are you gonna do then? Go out there and knock on his door? Will just said that you can’t get close to the house. These guys he says he knows—”
“I do know,” he corrected.
“—have only ever been to his estate; not up to his house.”
“But I have to try something,” Claire exclaimed in desperation.
“A romantic gesture,” Will remarked after he’d taken a sip of wine.
“Shut up!” Beth snapped at him.
Will merely nodded drunkedly and took another sip of wine.
“If I can just get him to look me in the eyes,” Claire let out despairingly, “I know he’ll listen to me. I need to know what he’s doing, what he’s thinking. I need to be with him. For him to just see me. I have to…”
Claire had gradually fallen into tears as she’d said this and broke down at the end. Beth got up from her chair, went around the table and took her sobbing friend in her arms.
She then looked over at her husband, who sat with an embarrassed look on his face, and said, “You can really ask these guys if they’ll help her? You’re not just full of shit?”
“I can call my old man and get their numbers first thing in the morning. After that I’ll find out if they weren’t just pulling my leg when they told me, or if they actuall
y have been in there. Then I’ll ask them to help get someone in there.”
“But you can’t tell them why,” Claire put in from within her friend’s arms.
“I’ll think of something,” Will assured her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Juliette was with David ordering a chicken for their lunch from the butcher at the local market. She was going to make chicken casserole. Just behind them, Jules stood watching, keeping an eye on his wife, while also admiring the simplicity of the market square, the colors of the vegetables and fruits that lay stacked on old wooden stands, the row of spice shops with domed piles of each colored spice that sat at the front in heaps, the cages of chickens that David ogled nervously, never having before ordered a live chicken for lunch. Jules watched the boy as the butcher took the chicken he’d helped select around the back of the stand and a loud cuckoo was heard ringing out, stopped sharply, before the butcher appeared a moment later with the plucked and gutted bird wrapped in newspaper. Jules grinned as he watched David recoil slightly when he felt that the package was warm.
It was while watching this that Jules’s phone went off in his pocket and a wave of trepidation flew through him. Only Jose and Ricardo had his number and were to call it only at the most urgent of times. The feeling of its vibrations against his leg made his physically flinch.
Pulling it out of his pocket, he saw that it was Ricardo.
The second he answered it, Ricardo began to speak.
“Jules, jefe, I just got a call that three blacked-out trucks came into the street and several mean-looking gringos in suits came out. Two of them were seen coming to the apartment and banging on the door for a while until they were sure you were out. After that they left.”
Jules’s mouth went so dry that he was unable to answer until he took a gulp. His heart was pounding rapidly in his chest and the marketplace appeared to dissolve around him. He felt sure that they’d been caught and that it was the American authorities after them. He could, of course, have had no clue that it was Sam Burgess that had appeared at their hideout and that the real authorities, who had already found out that the family had passed into Mexico, weren’t willing to waste the resources going down there to get them back.
But how was Jules to know? He thought that Uncle Sam had sent his boys after them with full force.
“Jules, you still there?” Ricardo went on.
“Yeah,” Jules stammered. “You think we’re safe to go back now?”
“I don’t think so. The main guys went, but they left some people behind who are keeping an eye on the place and they’re apparently armed to the teeth. What is it that you and your old lady been up to? Jose said that it was the government threatening to take your wife into psych care, but these guys look for real.”
“I don’t know,” was all Jules could think to answer. “I guess they take their hearings real serious in the States. What do you suggest?”
“I suggest that we stay off the phones. I spoke with Jose and he said that no one’s so much as asked him anything about it. They gotta be listening in.”
“But why would they do all of that for me?”
“Like I said: I don’t know. But what I do know is that you can’t come back to this apartment; not tonight; not ever.”
“Where do I go?”
Ricardo was quiet for a while.
“I’m sorry, homie, I ain’t got nothing. Maybe go find yourself somewhere to stay for the time being and I’ll give you a call when the coast is clear. But I still think they’re listening in, so we better get off the phone.”
“Okay. And thanks again, Ricardo. You've really saved my ass.”
“No sweat.”
With that, Jules put the phone down, placed it back inside his pocket and walked casually over to Juliette and David, his body trembling the whole time.
When he reached his love, he whispered into her ear, “We gotta move.”
“What do you mean? I have chicken for the casserole.”
“They just sent someone to the apartment. Ricardo just tipped me off. There was a lot of them and they were armed.”
“Oh, my!” Juliette let out.
“We gotta go.”
“But where, Jules?”
“South, I guess. Hide away for a while, somewhere out the way, where no one goes. Ricardo said he’ll call us the moment it’s clear.”
“But guns, Jules? Why are they coming after us with guns?”
“Maybe because we’re with David and they think we’re a danger to him. I don’t know. I didn’t think they’d even bother coming after us, let alone so soon. Ricardo reckons that they must have been listening in on our calls. There’s no other way.”
“Listening to our calls!? How ridiculous!”
“I know. But the call I just got was for real—he sounded real worked up.”
“So we just run then?” Juliette put to him.
“That’s all we have,” he answered forlornly.
“To run forever? Think about David, please! I’d rather spend the rest of my days in some white room than think that we’re harming him in such a way. We can’t go. We have to face them.”
“Please, Juliette, I can’t lose you to a place like that. I just can’t.”
“Yeah, Ma,” David said from between them, making them both look down at him. “I don’t wanna lose you either.”
With that, he dropped the chicken that he was earlier holding and placed his arms around her waist. She instantly reached down and took him in her own arms.
“I don’t want to harm you both,” she said sadly.
“You’re not,” Jules told her. “Family stick together.”
Once he’d persuaded her, the three of them made their ways out of the market, giving the chicken away to a poor family that they found at the edge of the market selling corn on a mat. Soon they were back inside the car with nothing but their money and documentation on them, which Jules had refused to leave at the apartment and carried on him in a rather large money belt that was strapped to his belly.
While driving along, Jules’s phone went off once again and he instantly grabbed it from his pocket. When he brought the screen up to his eyes, he saw that it was neither Jose nor Ricardo, but a new number that he’d never seen before. He handed the phone over to Juliette and she too looked down at the screen as it rung away in her hand.
Looking up from it at Jules, she asked, “Who could it be?”
“Them, I guess.”
“Should I answer it?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Juliette answered the phone and placed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Who am I speaking with? Is this Juliette?” came a male’s voice on the other end.
“This is she,” Juliette replied almost in a whisper.
“Juliette, I’m gonna cut straight to it. My name is Sam Burgess and I want to help you. Do you know who I am?”
Juliette removed the phone from her ear, placing her hand over the mouthpiece and giving Jules a sidelong look.
“It’s a man saying he’s Sam…” She took her hand away and addressed Sam. “Sorry what was your name?”
“Sam Burgess,” came the reply.
Placing her hand back, she addressed Jules, “Sam Burgess.”
Jules frowned as he drove, turned to Juliette and inquired, “The billionaire tech guy!? Is this a joke?”
“Which tech guy?” she wanted to know.
“He’s the world’s richest man, or at least founded the world’s biggest company. You’ve seen him a hundred times on television, you’ve simply forgotten.”
“What should I say to him?”
“Ask him if this is a joke. Or if his name simply happens to be the same name as the other Sam Burgess.”
Juliette once again took her hand away and asked, “Are you the same Sam Burgess who is the rich man?”
“The same.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No joke, Juliette, I assure you. It w
asn’t the American government who came to your place today, and who your friend tipped you off about, it was me and my men.”
Again she turned to Jules and said, “He says it was him that came to our place.”
“Ask him why he was armed.”
She was about to ask, but Jules asked her to put it on speakerphone, so that they could have an open discussion.
When the phone was set on speaker, Jules cried out, “Why were you armed? My friend said you were armed. What do you want from us? We ain’t never had nothing to do with you, Mr. Burgess. Why you coming after us like this?”
“Firstly, Jules—it is Jules I’m speaking to?”
“It is he.”
“Firstly, Jules, because of my status as a very wealthy man, it’s not safe for me to come unaided into dangerous territories such as Durango Town, Mexico. My men were there for my protection and not for you. It was a necessary precaution and no more.”
“But why are you after us?”
“Like I told your wife a moment ago, I know of your predicament and want to help.”
“But what are we to you? I don’t see Sam Burgess helping many other folks like this. Why ain’t you personally helping all the other poor saps that got themselves into trouble?”
“I only want to discuss that in person and not over the phone. But believe me when I tell you: I wish to help your situation regarding the state of California’s recent ruling regarding your wife and son.”
“Yeah, and how are you gonna do that?”
“Because the ruling was unfair for one. I’ve already had it all looked over by my law team.”
“But how could you do that? Ain’t no one can just take a look at court papers?”
“My security team can. The same as I can see that you’re just passing the San Jose turning on the freeway.”
Jules looked up and saw the sign for the very same turning.