Sweat

by Mark Gilleo

  “Come on, Dad. I mean, Hasad lives in Turkey, everyone knows that is where they were going.”

  “Son, I make it a habit not to acknowledge that I know where they are going. I’m simply buying them and selling them to an interested third party. What they do with them is their decision.”

  Peter didn’t bother enlightening his son on the best way around export control—transportation on military cargo planes paid for by Uncle Sam himself.

  “Couldn’t that be trouble?”

  “Okay. Let’s say these night vision goggles do go to Turkey. Then what? Let’s say Hasad uses them to hunt Kurds along the border with Iraq. Jake, these guys have been killing each other for thousands of years, and short of a nuclear war, they will be killing each other for a thousand more. The goggles will not change that.”

  “But it is illegal. You could go to jail.”

  “First and foremost, I don’t export illegal goods. But hypothetically speaking, if I did, let’s look at the risks. There are one hundred sixty federal agents assigned to the entire U.S. in the Bureau’s Office of Export Controls. Do you have any idea how many companies export goods in a given year? Thousands. Do you know how many more people have exporting licenses? Thousands more. If these federal agents investigate ten percent of all suspicious exports, they are having a banner year.”

  “It’s still the government. They are still federal agents.”

  “Son. One hundred sixty agents. That tells you the government is not serious about it.”

  A long pause followed.

  “Do you know how much money the Bureau of Export Controls levied in fines last year?”

  “No idea, but I am guessing you know.”

  “Thousands of companies exporting hundreds of thousands of goods… and the amount of all federal fines levied totaled $1.4 million. Peanuts. Son, I could afford to pay that with cash laying around in my money market. That is $1.4 million for the entire country. All illegal export fines. For one year. If someone wanted to export illegal goods, the cost of doing business is low.”

  “The cost of doing business?”

  “Like the tobacco industry. They pay hundreds of millions in tobacco-related class-action lawsuit settlements. But they make billions. Subtract a few hundred million from a few billion and you still end up with one big number, son. The cost of doing business.”

  “How about going to jail?”

  “Jail? Wouldn’t happen. You know how many people these one hundred sixty export control agents put behind bars last year? One, Jake. One. One poor guy in Florida who was stupid enough to try and export shoulder-fired missiles. And they wouldn’t have caught this guy if he hadn’t initially applied for a license to export them and been denied. Then they were watching him. He was stupid and careless, and that is why he was caught. Your odds of hitting the nightly pick-three lottery drawing are better than getting arrested by the federal agents of the Office of Export Controls.”

  “The cost of doing business,” Jake imitated.

  “A payoff-risk analysis,” Peter answered.

  “How can you be so confident, Dad?”

  “Because I have been buying and selling everything from air conditioners to underwear for over twenty-five years.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “The FBI? The FBI couldn’t catch a cold in a Siberian hospital. The FBI only gets involved with the Office of Export Controls in cases of Terrorism and Espionage. And since 9/11, this country is overwhelmingly concerned with what is coming in to this country, not in what is leaving it.”

  “So you cover your bases…”

  “Jake, let me walk you through the deal with Hasad. It’ll be a good hands-on experience. I will show you the ropes myself.”

  “Sure, Dad. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Can’t do it tomorrow, son. I have a golf tournament. The day after tomorrow.”

  “Deal,” Jake said, not sure if his Dad was playing the same game he was, or if his father knew his son was playing at all.

  “Any chance I can borrow a car?” Jake asked, pushing the envelope. “I need to put mine in the shop for a few days.”

  “You feeling responsible?”

  “Always,” Jake answered. What he didn’t want to be called was irresponsible by a man who was the definition of the word. He deserved more than that. Eighteen months of dragging his mother to the hospital. A year of making every meal, doing all the cleaning, all the shopping. Six months of carrying his mother to the bathtub, bathing her, giving her medication. Responsibility was something he understood more deeply than his father ever would.

  “Stop by the house and Camille will have the keys to the Porsche ready.”

  “Your new car?” Jake asked, feeling a fleeting twinge of guilt. “Dad I can’t.”

  “Sure you can, Jake. Just remember it has about three hundred fifty more horsepower than your Subaru.”

  “Okay. I’ll be careful.”

  “Atta boy.”

  As Jake walked out, his father smiled. He could control anyone, but his son was easy. His son was just like him. As the elevator doors began to shut and Jake turned to press the button, the unmistakable sound of a particular bell attached to a particular key ring still in Jake’s pocket let out a “ding.” For a split second that lasted entirely too long, Jake’s eyes met his father’s.

  Chapter 27

  Camille answered the door with a smile, and Jake fell back into immediate infatuation. There was just something about his father’s domestic help. A spiritual connection that transcended current circumstances. Before Jake could ask, Camille reached into the pocket of her blue apron and produced the keys to the one hundred thirty-one thousand dollar automobile.

  “I believe you have come for these?”

  “Thank you,” Jake said as Camille placed the keys in his hand. “How have you been?”

  “I’m good, Jake. How about you? How’s work with your father?”

  “Work with my father?” Jake asked pensively. “Something tells me you already know the answer to that question.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Jake.”

  “In that case, I guess there is no reason to tell Reina thank you.”

  “Like I said, Jake, I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Camille repeated.

  Both knew the conversation Jake wanted to have wasn’t going to take place. He smiled. Camille smiled. And with a silent understanding, Jake stepped off the porch. “I’ll open the garage door for you,” Camille said, as Jake walked down the stone path in front of the house.

  Jake sat in the car, still safely parked in the garage. He rubbed his hand across the top arc of the wheel, depressed the clutch, and ran through the gears of his father’s candy-apple-red Porsche 911 Turbo convertible. He turned the key in the ignition with a mix of excitement and trepidation, and the four hundred forty-four horsepower engine came to life. Jake felt the vibrations rumbling through the seat and immediately understood German automotive engineering. With wheels still frozen to the pavement, one thing was already clear—the beast was built for business.

  He eased the car into reverse and down the driveway. The large ceramic brakes were powerful, and the sudden grip of the brake pads on the rotor pushed his skull into the headrest at the end of the driveway. Definitely not the Subaru, he thought. Jake chugged out of his father’s neighborhood in first gear, the engine purring, begging for more.

  Jake toured the winding roads near Georgetown Pike and cruised the quiet streets of Great Falls that were a dime a dozen among the woods that overlooked the Potomac on the Virginia side. At the entrance ramp to the GW Parkway, Jake needlessly checked the blind spot over his left shoulder, and punched it. The difference between a decade-old, four-banger station wagon with all wheel drive and a German sports car was measured by Jake’s white-knuckled grip on the wheel. He hit fifty before shifting out of second and passed eighty-five with the turbo kicking in. A hundred and ten was fast enough to scare him for the day, and he settled into the traff
ic at an uninspiring seventy mph in a car that cost more money than he had made thus far in his life. He turned the radio up, looked for someone to impress, and kept pace with the lower forms of automotive life.

  He zipped across the Key Bridge against the evening rush hour traffic, thousands of cars straining to ooze out of the city on every available road. He made one trip down M Street and turned a few heads at a safe, almost-stalling speed of twenty-five. Just another young entrepreneur, lawyer, or son of a diplomat showing his worth. He turned toward home. One stop and then it was off to see Kate. Enough was enough. He missed her. He needed to tell her the truth. What better way to make a lasting impression than in a Porsche, he thought. It should have been the car company’s advertising slogan.

  Jake turned left just beyond the fire station and drove by the sparsely populated parking lot on the far side of the three-story brick structure. Kate’s Lexus was there, next to the lone picnic table where they had had lunch weeks before. Jake was tired of calling, tired of leaving messages, tired of thinking that he had lost his girlfriend because of an annoying Turk named Hasad and his ambition with two strippers. Kate may not have wanted to see him, but he was giving her no choice.

  A block from one of the main traffic arteries, the fire station stood in relative isolation. A string of small shops lined the street across from the station, next to a library that had been slated for destruction in favor of a more modern, more audacious building to store books. Jake paused at the stop sign, took a last look around for other cars or pedestrians, and hit the accelerator. The car lunged forward and picked up speed until the thirty-six hundred pounds of moving metal was halted by the laws of physics.

  The eight-man fire-and-rescue team inside the station sat down for dinner for the third time. A two-alarm house fire had interrupted their first attempt at a hot meal. An octogenarian with a system full of Viagra and a twenty-three-year-old wife kept them away from their plates for a second time, as normal dinner hours for the rest of the world flew by.

  The unique sound of crunching, twisting metal is rarely heard by fire and rescue personnel. They deal with the aftermath—the bloody faces, the missing limbs, the unidentifiable remains in an unidentifiable car. The accident scenes they knew were filled with screams of hysteria and cries of pain.

  With the crash in their front yard, the firehouse sprang into action. There was no need for anyone to call 911. No need for a dispatcher to give them the address. The accident had come to them. As the professional men and women of the life support and rescue team prepared for work, the question on everyone’s mind was whether or not to get in the truck. The fifteen-foot doors to the station opened and the rescue team poured out across the driveway to the concrete utility pole. The candy-apple-red Porsche was still a Porsche, but its status as a legal street racer was going to depend on a very good mechanic.

  Kate’s supervisor, the resident expert on accident extraction, reached the driver’s side first. He surveyed the damage to the inside of the car and calculated the possible injuries and potential exit strategies. The steering wheel rested within inches of the victim’s chest. The deflated remains of the car’s airbag hung like an unrolled condom in the space between. Another airbag dangled from the ceiling above the door. Hidden beneath the encroaching dashboard, the condition of the victim’s legs was unknown. He flashed his ever-ready penlight into the eyes of the victim and gauged his alertness. The victim looked back with lids wide open.

  Orders filled the air. Crow bar, neck brace, stretcher. The twenty-five-foot rescue squad vehicle finally rolled from its parking bay and stopped at the end of the station’s driveway, setting a record for the fastest response time in regional rescue history. The head of rescue looked at the victim and scratched his head. The accident was a two on a ten scale. He had pulled far more endangered victims out of far more mangled pieces of metal.

  Kate was on autopilot. After more than a hundred accident scenes, the car half-enclosed around the concrete pole at the end of the drive was nothing more than scenery. Irrelevant background information. Kate, her basic rescue kit in hand, headed around the rear of the car. She approached the driver’s side door, looked in and spewed words her mother didn’t know were in her daughter’s vernacular.

  She didn’t bother with the latex gloves—she had exchanged more bodily fluid with the man behind the wheel than she cared to admit. The victim’s pupils were normal, his pulse was strong. The extraction team peeled the driver’s door back like the top on a tuna can. They removed the victim and placed him on the stretcher. Kate moved over Jake and checked for injuries. She unbuttoned his oxford shirt like she had so many times in the past months, passion now substituted with professionalism. She opened the shirt and cursed again. The head of rescue looked over at the victim.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a note.”

  Across his Jake’s chest, in dark indelible ink, were the words “I am innocent. Let me explain.”

  “Kate, you want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Do I have to? It seems pretty obvious to me.”

  Jake smiled.

  “You’re an asshole,” Kate said quietly.

  “Sometimes it takes an insane act by a sane person to prove a point.”

  Kate tried not to laugh, but a smile formed on her face. Her words were being thrown back at her in the most ridiculous of circumstances.

  “You can let me off the stretcher. I’m fine,” Jake said as he was rolled toward the ambulance.

  “Sorry, Jake. You’re going to the hospital whether you like it or not. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep you for psychiatric observation.”

  “How’s the car?”

  “I take it that was your father’s?”

  “Yes. My first time in a Porsche. The power got away from me.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Jake.”

  “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Is it drivable?”

  “No,” Kate answered looking at the wreck. “How pissed is he going to be?”

  “He’ll get over it.” ***

  Peter went straight from the bar in the clubhouse to the hospital. Jake was in the recovery room, the healthiest patient in the D.C. metro area. He had endured the cursory exam, a standard chest and neck x-ray, and a stern consultation from a young District-licensed psychiatrist who determined Jake to be as mentally sound as anyone he met in his line of work. In fact, his last patient of the day was in better mental health than most of his stressed-out medical colleagues.

  Jake flipped through the outdated Sports Illustrated magazine for the fourth time, having already burned through three issues of Reader’s Digest. Peter met the nurse at the recovery room door, her station a single white table with a chair on wheels.

  Dressed in his favorite golfing shorts and shirt, accentuated with a healthy tan, Peter performed his first fatherly duty in twenty years. “My name is Peter Winthrop. I am here to pick up my son, Jake Patrick.”

  The nurse didn’t get out of her seat. “Last bed on the right, next to the window.”

  Peter walked past the curtains that divided the eight-bed room and stuck his head around the corner.

  “Jake?”

  “Dad.”

  “How are you, son?”

  “I’m fine. Caught a little airbag in the face, but nothing’s hurt except my pride.”

  “And the car?”

  “It may need a little work,” Jake said, putting on his best look of shame.

  “You know, I was on a six-month waiting list for that car,” Peter said, switching concerns.

  Jake didn’t know if his father knew about the note on his chest, and he wasn’t about to volunteer that small detail. He kept up the charade as he got out of bed, and stood. “Dad, I’m sorry about the car. You were right. It was a little more power than I was ready for. I should have been more careful.”

  “I’m disappointed, son.”

  Peter was disappointed, and not just because he would be w
ithout his favorite toy for a while. He was disappointed for another reason. In the midst of the standard hospital formaldehyde scent, he smelled bullshit. The same bullshit he was famous for shoveling. This time it was coming from his son.

  He hoped he was wrong.

  Chapter 28

  The old apartment was an orchestra of creaks and squeaks, groans and moans. The steps, the banister, the doors, the windows, all kept rhythm. The pipes to the sink, shower, and toilet hit all the high notes in various pitch. When the infamous D.C. summer thunderstorms blew in during the late afternoon and early evening, the whole building rattled and rolled. Jake had been there a month, and had yet to sleep uninterrupted until morning. Even when Kate wasn’t there and he didn’t have an excuse for being up half the night. There were hundreds of haunted jaunts in D.C., a winding trail of supernatural leftovers through the city, and Jake accepted that his building should have been an official tour stop.

  Sex usually put him to sleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but between the thunderstorm raging outside and the noise from his apartment inside, he was wide awake. Post-sex dry mouth led him to the refrigerator where he quickly changed focus from thirst to hunger and choked down two pieces of cold pizza while standing barefoot in the kitchen in his underwear. He washed the pepperoni slice down with milk, straight from the carton, as usual. By the time Jake returned to the bedroom, Kate had taken the pole position on visiting Mr. Sandman. The remote control sat on his pillow, a considerate gesture from someone who was too busy studying how to save lives to watch TV.

  Jake turned on the late news, the last edition of headlines for the day in a town with a neverending supply of new ones. Local news focused on the planned development of the Anacostia River front, a filthy stretch of land on the banks of water so polluted, one could do a Jesus impersonation on the cans and dead bodies floating on the surface. The second news story was even worse, and Jake cringed as he listened to the report on the re-entry of an infamous former D.C. mayor into the political fray—a man who once went to jail after being caught smoking crack on an FBI sting video. Framed by a hooker, the former mayor had won his second term, after serving his prison sentence, with the election slogan of “The Bitch Set Me Up.”