Great. I make Mom sound like a nasty old shrew even while I’m undercover. That’s really uncalled for.
She tells me that she misses having me with her, which makes me smile, but now that I’m coming back sooner than she expected, I can help her with a particular situation. She books a ticket for me as we speak, tells me to go to Terminal C for a flight down to New York where I’ll then catch the flight to Abu Dhabi.
Wait. What? Abu Dhabi?
They’re smart enough to wait for me on the other side of the TSA checkpoint, when they have me for breaking early release. I should’ve spotted it, the way the officer at the podium paid particular attention to me and sent me to the security line at the end. He waved most people disinterestedly on to any available line, but only a few of us to the one on the end even though it was clearly the shortest. What are you going to do, though, once you’re at the podium? Bitch about being given the short line? You’re kind of stuck at that point.
So I stripped, scanned, and passed on through to find two men in suits waiting along with a covey of TSA, and I’m not surprised. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but just walk straight into the trap and hope for the best. Then it’s badges, escort, and into a room. There’s one guy there, on his break, eating a sandwich while reading some magazine about deep sea fishing, but he doesn’t protest when he’s told to get out. He leaves. He looks alarmed.
Nash reminds me of the actor Terrence Howard, when he was in that movie Four Brothers. I’m pretty sure he played a cop in that movie, which probably helps with the connection. I went to see it because I had seen Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow, and although it wasn’t my type of movie, I liked him, so I was happy to see that he was out in another film about a month later. It was the last movie I watched in a theater before the trial took over my life and then sent me to prison.
And now, here he is: Terrence Howard.
His name is actually Special Agent Nassor Collins, which makes me smile and makes him laugh in understanding. He tells me that his mother was crazy into Roots and mistakenly came to believe that her family is originally from the country of Burundi — tied for second, he says, for poorest country in the world. She found out that there was a man living in Burundi with the name Nassor, so it became his name when he was born. But everyone calls him Nash now, to avoid any confusion in this post-9/11 world.
Mom was once something of a minor celebrity. It was how Tonya found herself in parochial school for her junior high and high school years. The waiting list for that place was pretty much impenetrable, but the people in charge knew that bringing in parents with connections, with a name, would only help the cause for everyone, so they gave Tonya a pass because the right people knew Mom’s name.
She was a professor at BC, a visiting professor at Harvard until she became fed up with the politics of the place and walked out, and she had a show on the local WGBH access — It’s About Race! It was one of those half-hour talking head shows that appear at seven in the morning on Saturdays that no one watches. No one except the people who decide which students make it into the parochial schools, I guess. It aired for nearly two years and the only lasting effect was the nice collection of studio suits Mom purchased, all of which were out of fashion before Tonya graduated from the school, and its title, which became something of a code among us sisters.
Out of clean underwear? It’s About Laundry!
What’s for dinner? It’s About Enchiladas!
Hey, I’ll make you a deal. It’s About Succotash!
What are Mom and Dad fighting about? It’s About Money!
I need to use the bathroom now! It’s About Time!
We, of course, never said any of this in front of Mom, but Dad caught on pretty quick because he often heard It’s About Dad! when one of us was explaining to the others the reasoning behind one of his decisions, which could only make sense in the brain of a male or, in some cases, only in the brain of Dad.
Even recently, out at Tonya’s, there were three…actually, four times that the conversation was short-handed by the words It’s About Mom! Generally, it meant that one of us really didn’t want to go into any more details. It still works.
Nash knows about me, of course, so he knows what I had gone through in L.A., which is why I think he softens his tone with me. It pisses off the other guy, though — I can’t remember his name but I know that he’s from the Secret Service and he thinks that Nash is going easy with me because we’re both bu-boys, so he decides to balance the equation some by being extra pricky. He doesn’t have to. I mean, I’m already scared enough. I was caught, outright, breaking release, traveling under a foreign passport, doing all sorts of shit that can send me away for a long time.
Anyway, that’s why things go the way they do. Secret Service is going all bad cop to the extreme on me, demanding answers as he slams his fist on the table and leans down in my face. I wince, trying not to cry, because I really don’t have anything I can tell them. I don’t know what they’re talking about. They go on and on and on about Getting and his operation.
What operation? With Mia? Why should they give a….
“You’re in a shitload of trouble, Scarface.”
I’m near tears at this point, ready to say anything, but when he says that, that last little bit — Holy shit! That’s mean!
His arm, right in front of me, is locked straight to hold himself over the table as his other arm holds back his jacket to show me his sidearm, as if I might worry that he might shoot me or something. I put my palm into his elbow, breaking the lock, and I help his face down into the table with my other hand on the back of his head. It’s not hard, I’m not trying to incapacitate the guy or anything. I’m just hurt by his cruel name-calling, is all.
I take a beating after that — Secret Service grabs the back of my neck and whales on me. To his credit, he uses an open hand and I can sense him pulling his punches. It stings, knocks me about a bit, but he does no real damage. That’s when TSA comes busting in and, along with Nash, pull Secret Service from the room.
I stayed at the Old Man’s for three days, sleeping in the windowless room and eating in a corner of the kitchen. I spoke with no one but the dark-skinned woman whose job it was to watch after me. Her and, on occasion, the Old Man himself. I never stepped back into his office. I never even made it back into the big house, never had the chance to meet any of the white people who I now know were all my relations. No, the only place where I talked to the Old Man after that first time was in his workshop, which was in one of the smaller buildings, out back, between the big house and the building where I was staying. I was led in through a back door, so no one in the big house would see.
If I cared at all about these people, how would they respond to finding out that I’m related to them? Is it okay now, there, in the different South Africa? Would they accept me, like Mom and Dad and my sisters did? Or would they turn me away and tell me to stop lying? Go away and don’t ever come back.
Whatever. I really don’t care, because I have my real family now. Fuck you.
Anyway, when he talked to me in his workshop, the Old Man would first set me on top of a tall stool sitting beside a table covered with the most dangerous, most frightening things I had ever seen. Things I would not touch, even if I were allowed to, because Ma always told me to stay away from the sharp things. I don’t know what they were for. I wasn’t there enough times to understand what the Old Man actually did in his workshop. As far as I knew — as far as I was concerned — he tortured small Coloured girls there.
The Old Man was strong, for an old man. He could lift me up onto that stool with absolutely no effort on his part. I wished it were a strain because then maybe he wouldn’t’ve put me up there. It was a four-legged stool and the legs were not all even, so it tipped, precariously it seemed, as I sat on top of it. I held the small seat tightly to my butt and tried to wrap my feet around the legs. I mean, this was one of those situations that haunt you for the rest of your life, sitting high on a tippy
stool over a table full of Coloured girl torture tools.
The Old Man probably thought I was kind of high-strung, having recently found my dead Ma and all, but I really hadn’t even processed that part of it yet. I was still too busy dealing with the confusion, fear, and general uncertainty about my immediate future.
Dead Ma had to wait.
He asked me questions about her, about Ma, and I sat there, looking at him, trying to not look at the tabletop of death beside me — hanging on for dear life! He kept repeating the questions, wondering, probably, why I wasn’t providing any answers but instead only blinked at him. He probably figured I was stupid, mentally retarded or something, which would only go to confirming his suspicions about his daughter, who obviously gave birth to a retarded Coloured girl. What a disappointment she must’ve been to him.
Of course, I was thinking that he should’ve asked her these questions, while she was still alive. Why ask me? What did I know? She wasn’t even my mother. She was only taking care of me after my own mother died.
I can easily hear them talking through the wall. They’re thinking that they’re working with an interrogation room, that the walls are soundproofed. I mean, there is the table, the chair, the window looking into the room, so they might be subconsciously picking up on these cues and allowing themselves to be lulled. But there are three tables, and they’re round, and there’s soda and junk machines chained to the one wall, because tipping one of those machines over onto yourself happens more often than most people imagine. The walls are pretty thin and the window isn’t one-way, so I can hear everything and see the TSA officer half watching me and half glancing around the corner in the direction of where the loud, easy-to-hear discussion is going on. He’s wondering if he should be doing something.
A woman, pushing one of those carts they use to carry the stacks of toilet paper and the bottles and sprays and brushes they use to clean the bathrooms, comes into view at the other end of the window and pauses after a couple of steps, looking in at me, then looks to the TSA officer who’s looking around the corner, and probably is wondering why people are shouting and what the hell is going on. Why is this small woman sitting alone in the break room, with her hair all in her face?
The TSA notices the cleaning woman and tells her to move along, looking embarrassed to be caught standing around while all this fuss is occurring. The woman points in through the window, saying that she wants to get herself a Mountain Dew, and the TSA tells her that the room is closed for now, go to the next one down. She’s not happy, not getting her soda, but by the way that she looks at me, as she pushes her cart along, she’s happy not being me.
The loud voices stop.
Secret Service appears shortly on the other side of the glass, his head tipped back and a wad of that brown industrial paper towel — the itchy shit — pressed to his nose. His nose isn’t even bleeding. He didn’t hit that hard, but he does have a faint welt on his forehead. He’s glaring at me, as he paces a couple of times, probably wanting me to see him, out there, angry. An angry, angry man.
The pause is long enough for Nash to take a breath, calm himself, and then the door opens and quickly closes again. He comes directly to the table, stopping before it, across from me, between me and the window. TSA and Secret Service pop up on either side of him, as if he suddenly becomes the three-headed monster of the federal government. I would smile, maybe even laugh, if I weren’t so scared.
“You know, you just added Assaulting a Federal Officer to your list.”
His tone tells me that he’s disappointed with me. How can you be so stupid? he’s asking.
Because I am stupid. Stupid and scared and losing control.
Mia’s right. I really need to see someone about this shit.
Now Nash is the one who takes the time to explain to me how odd it seems, to them, that I would be photographed arriving at, and leaving, the home of David Getting. He lays out the color prints as evidence before me on the table. I peer at them. It’s strange, seeing yourself in a candid photo, doing stuff with no knowledge of the camera. It’s disconcerting. You keep expecting that the next one will be the one where they caught you picking your nose.
I look from the photos to him and shake my head, not understanding.
“I was hired by Getting to follow someone for him,” I say.
“And that’s not strange?”
Nash does not believe my story. This is real bu-work — asking questions, over and over, and catching someone when they screw up the answer. Fundamental stuff.
But I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I shrug and shake my head again.
“Getting and you?”
He pauses, to see if I’ve caught on yet. I’ve seen this look before. He thinks I’m either lying or, like the Old Man, I’m a retard.
“Byrone Towers and you?”
“What?”
Turns out, while I was getting all assaulted, torn up, put on trial, and thrown into prison, Byr was getting promoted. He is, according to Nash, now the person-in-charge — the black Don Corleone for the entire West Coast.
Holy shit! That fucking bastard!
“So you’re saying that you don’t know anything about the connection between Getting and Towers?”
Nash is now clearly leaning more towards believing I’m a retard.
“I was hired by a guy named Bouchard, Director of Security at a company called CSRMi.”
As I tell him this, I shake my head at the unbelievably of it all. Jesus, I wouldn’t even believe myself if I were on the other side of the table.
“I didn’t even know who Getting was, or that I was working for him, until I was flown back here to the States the day before yesterday. This all has to do with a woman that he thinks is stealing from him.”
I won’t offer Mia’s name.
“What’s this woman’s name?”
Shit, what else can I do?
“Maria Garcia.”
Nash scoffs, thinking at first that I’m joking but deciding I’m not after watching my expression. He takes a moment, putting his arms across his chest and pinching his bottom lip between thumb and finger as he thinks.
Jesus, didn’t I see Terrence Howard do this same pose?
“Okay, then, former Special Agent McNeil. Let me tell you how this is going to go.”
13
Abu Dhabi
I have plenty to consider during the journey from Boston to Abu Dhabi. Mia booked me a business class ticket, so my seat from JFK to the UAE gives me some privacy, and I’m not able to sleep, so I have an abundance of time to think.
At least I don’t have to worry about being tagged by the TSA. Nash assured me that I’ll be able to travel on my passport freely, as long as I maintain contact with them. Of course, I wanted to point out that I had been traveling around on my passport freely before I met them, but my big-mouthed, smart-ass ways have to be stowed for the duration.
Getting wants me to give him Mia. Nash wants me to give him Getting. Marie doesn’t want me hurting Mia, but then probably doesn’t want me sending her new father to prison either.
Where is Mia in all this? Is she even doing anything that affects Getting in any way? I’m not sure. The name of Getting has never come up. And what about Marie? Would Mia even remember who she is? Mia seems to know and use a whole world full of people, and I doubt that she gives most of them even a second’s thought. Maybe Marie is a Swedish-French-Belgian waffle variation of the Irish Maggie.
Still, it is a strange coincidence, my being brought to the home of a man whose long-lost daughter happens to know the same person he’s trying to destroy. There’s likely a connection there, but it could also be the circle of people Mia deals with. I mean, if she is targeting Getting, something must’ve piqued her interest. Maybe that was Marie. Maybe she spoke of her billionaire father…Wait. No! She didn’t even know he existed at the time she and Mia met.
I wish I could ask Mia about Marie, to get some clarification, but that would link me to Getting
, who, according to Nash, is linked to Byrone.
Shit! This used to be so simple.
Anyway, it comes down to three choices. I can give Nash what he wants, but then I’ll probably have Getting on my ass. Even if he goes to prison, he’ll have the power and the resources to hurt me with nothing more than what he has in his prison commissary. Besides, all I have to look forward to after helping Nash is returning to East Boston, my felony conviction intact.
If I back Getting, however, I can possibly have Getting on my side, and money always trumps law. It’s possible, with his influence, that I can wrangle myself a pardon. It’s been done before, for much crappier people than me. Still, if I backstab Nash I’m certain that they will just lie in wait for me, wait until I screw up again and then come down on me like a ton of bureaucrats. The Bureau doesn’t have resources, but they do have plenty of patience.
And what if I side with Mia? What would that mean? Well, it’d mean I won’t be returning to the States during my lifetime. I’d probably be abandoned overseas and…what? I don’t know. Nash couldn’t touch me. The Bureau would never spend the kind of money to actively hunt me down and bring me in. They would simply go into their waiting mode again. Getting, however…. There would be no way to hide from Getting. So if I do anything, I have to make sure I don’t burn him in the process.
Ha! Mia, Getting, Nash, Marie, Bouchard, Byr, the FBI, the Secret Service, a red-head on a sheep farm in Ireland and her drunk, horny old aunt — what is the one thing connecting them all?
Me!
How the fuck did this happen?
Zwerfster Chic Page 12