Things were almost normal again. The keyword to understand the situation was “almost”. Jill was in the backseat of a Honda Prelude. Not the Honda Prelude they had in their driveway back in the days where their family name was Shaw. Just a Honda Prelude with no Redskins logo hanging from the rear view mirror or any boys band cds clanging in the disc compartment. That car was a bad replica of the vehicle that moved a once happy family around.
Dad was back though, still wearing those stupid Top Gun aviator glasses that made him look like more of a bad impersonation than a true All-American aviator. Jill chuckled at her own thought. Maybe he had been an aviator after all. Maybe that’s what the real deal looked like, infatuated with their own importance. He had lost his smile though. This fake peasant I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on smile that he bore for so many years. What she saw was the true person, Michael Penske, the ex-military, FBI Agent and not the phony she grew discomfort living with. Her new daddy was clenching his teeth from anxiety.
For a sister companion in the back seat, she had that fat, sweaty dude that pretended to be a junkie. His acting couldn’t be any more off the mark. Jill considered she had seen enough of junkies on television to know none of them was fat and that neither of them was constantly pacing and breathing like Eskimos. His white make-up was also dripping all along his neckline. He broke the silence in the new awkward family car.
“L…L…look, I don’t have anything to do with this, whatever you’re in. I’m a security a…a…gent, my name is Brand..Brand..on Vi..i..ckers.”
“Shut the fuck up fatso, don’t embarrass yourself. I still haven’t figured out what I would do with your corpse”.
“DADDY! Don’t talk to him like that” said Jill, offended that her dad could show such a violent behavior.
“Allison, don’t get involved in this.”
“MY NAME IS NOT ALLISON, STOP LYING TO ME.”
“BE POLITE YOUNG LADY”
“LOOK, I KNOW WHO’S BEHIND ALL THIS” yelled Brandon.
Both Jill and Mike looked at each other and looked at Brandon. He was introducing interesting variable in what was turning into a family quarrel.
“So do I, smartass” said Mike with noticeable contempt. “You know what, I should cap you right fucking now.”
Jill saw the butt of a shiny, chromed gun stuck in Mike’s belt buckle and her nervous system immediately went in emergency mode. To counter a potential anxiety attack she felt climbing up her spine with a cold shiver, she went into offensive mode.
“YOU’RE LYING, LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO. YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT, YET YOU THINK YOU DO. JUST DOWN AND LISTEN TO WHAT HE HAS TO SAY FOR GOD’S SAKE.”
Despite that he was wearing sunglasses, shock was readable on Mike’s face. He hadn’t got talked down like this by a woman. Not even by his mother, not even by his teachers in primary school, not even ever. To his, women were obedient creatures at the service of men. Traditionalist perception of human relationships inherited by a lineage of strong and successful men in the Penske family. If a woman wouldn’t take her place, it was the man’s duty to shape her and make her take her rank. He had thought he did just that when he got that street scum she was dating arrested. Seeing his daughter trying to get the upper hand on him like this irritated him, but Jill had gathered enough shock value to create a lull. As Mike was lost in between anger and culpability, Brandon wiggled himself in the conversation with the vigor of a hurricane Katrina survivor:
“Harold Mason, Colonel White, Dale Sterling, does it ring any bell?”
“Colonel White?” asked Michael. “Are you sure? You better watch your mouth fatso, don’t drag great men like Marvin White into your bullshit.”
“It’s true, I met him too” said Jill.
“What?...Hem…what would he have to do in all this? He’s above this small time politics bullshit.”
“Small time? It’s about a FUCKING war criminal dad. Murat Aksoy is in Washington D.C , doing god knows what.”
Mike chuckled. A nervousness chuckle. It didn’t make any sense to him. Nothing of that did. He got sent to Russia in an urgent diplomatic mission and found himself almost smothered to death by a Moscow escort who had him drugged. Mike didn’t talk about it to anyone because it was visibly an inside job. He just took a flight back to USA on a commercial airline, business class, the old anonymity trick. He could easily understand how someone would get him terminated in a Moscow hotel and thrown into an anonymous suburban grave, but why his daughter would get mixed up in all this?
“Allis..Jill, wahtever, what, who got you involved in all this?” asked Mike, turning into the parking lot of a motel. “Murat Aksoy is a dangerous man, even worse, he’ll a full-fledged psycho. We have thick files on him at the office. You know he’s guilty of torture and over a hundred corpse desecrations? Some of them were soldiers, like your old man.”
In a split second, what seemed like an important discussion to everyone present in the car was engulfed in a wall of flames. Mike knew they weren’t going to die because everything in the car didn’t immediately turn extremely hot. No heat wave, no backfire signs. This wasn’t a bomb. They were attacked with a grenade. Lack of immediate danger signs was only perceived by Mike. It didn’t stop everything in the car to turn orange for a split second. Brandon, already on the edge, urinated in his trouser.
Mike looked behind the wall of flame, expecting to see an asshole with a rocket launcher and steel toed boots come out of it like if he was in a Hollywood movie. For a few seconds, everything he saw was the curious dance of a blazing inferno, eating away at what used to be his hotel room. Suddenly, with a precision so tight that Mike could notice it in a nick of time, the butt of a rifle came slamming down on the door handle, making the lock pop from the inside. By the time he turned his head around to see who was the destructive and intrusive individual, a hand reached to his throat and yanked him outside the car with a powerful thrust.
Jill didn’t see his face, but she recognized the clothes. Croc shoes, black silk pants, Gucci shirt, golden watch, Gino. Salvatore’s right hand man with obscure family ties. Through the raging groan of the fire, she could hear the slap of Salvatore’s boots against the concrete. The pace reminded her of her friend’s Joy’s dad. When he was angry, old Gerald had a fast and annoyed pace to his steps. Gino threw Mike down in the parking lot and Salvatore swung with a kick worthy of Italia’s recent soccer world cup victory. The swing was so powerful that Mike was propelled a few feet back.
“Here you are you fucking stronzo, I’ve been looking for you” said Salvatore while removing his vest and rolling up his shirt sleeves.
The vein in his neck was pumping blood at an industrial rhythm. By the time Mike reached for his hand gun, Gino’s foot came crashing down on his spine. Mike’s nose crashed against the concrete and started bleeding. Salvatore, swarmed by his own fury, yanked the gun away from Mike, loaded it and sat on his chest. He pointed the weapon against his jaw and yelled:
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU SHOULDN’T LEAVE YOUR FUCKING CHILD WITH DEMENTED ARMY PSYCHOPATH, WHAT KIND OF A FATHER ARE YOU”?
Jill ran out of the car and started yelling : “SAL, DON’T. DON’T SHOOT MY DAD.”
Mike tried to use the distraction to get out of the vulnerable position, but as soon as he tried to get back up, Salvatore pushed down on his shoulder with his knee and pinned him down for good. He looked at Jill, crying and looked back at Mike, who looked also very preoccupied.
“Honey, your father is a bad, bad man” said Salvatore.
“I know, but he’s my dad.”
Salvatore’s heart was broken at the sight of Jill’s fear and confusion. He was even sadder that he’d have to break the news that her dad was much more of an asshole than she even could’ve think of.
“Your dad’s a fucking traitor to the nation baby, I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“Michael Penske, dishonorably discharge from US army in 2000 after a trial for treason and inhuman treatment. Not enough proof that he had been selling people on the Turkish border. What do we do? We let him go and we find him a desk job with phantom ops. It’s idiots like him that wants to go through me to import weapons in the country. “ said Salvatore. Then he turned to Mike and said: “Sorry, but she needed to learn the truth.”
“Just shoot me now” was Mike’s only answer.
0 comments:
Post a Comment