Six Bad Things

I slip them on, get into the MGB, grab his sunglasses off the dash, and put those on as well.

He stands next to the car, not moving to open the door for me.

– Hey! Hey, we haven’t talked about the Giants yet. Can you believe the season they had?

I know. I know they dominated the National League West, and won their first World Series since they moved to San Francisco. I didn’t get to watch or listen to a single game, but I know.

– Yeah, I haven’t seen much baseball, Dad.

– Oh.

– But maybe you can tell me about it later.

– Yeah, sure. At the house maybe.

He goes over to the door and pushes the big black button that rolls it up.

– Well, take it easy in that thing.

– No problem, Dad.

I drive home, this town’s most infamous son, dressed as my father.

MOM WANTED to skip her volunteer day at the elementary school where she tutors special-ed kids. I told her it would be better if she and Dad did everything as normally as possible until I left. The specter of my departure made her start to cry again, but she went. Now I’m alone.

When the landlord cleared out my apartment in New York, he sent the stuff to my folks. Mom donated some things to Goodwill, but I’m able to find a couple boxes of my old clothes. The jeans and thermal top I pull on are snug, but they’ll do while the clothes I was wearing go through the washer. In the meantime I page Tim some more and try to distract myself by watching Monday Quarterback.

The guys on TV are breaking down just how bad Miami is without Miles Taylor when the phone rings. I reach for it. Stop myself. I’ll let the machine pick up. If it’s Tim he’ll let me know. The machine picks up and whoever is calling hangs up.

OK, not Tim.

The phone rings again. The machine picks up. The caller disconnects. Maybe it is Tim and he doesn’t want to talk into the machine in case… In case what? God, who knows what that pothead could be thinking? The phone rings again. Christ! The machine picks up. The caller hangs up.

Jesus F. Christ.

The phone rings. It has to be Tim, who else would do this? The machine picks up. Caller hangs up.

Goddamn it, Timmy, you know I can’t answer the fucking phone. Just talk to the machine, you burnout.

The phone rings.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The machine picks up. The caller does not hang up.

– Mr. Thompson.

A voice I don’t know, a caller for Mr. Thompson: my dad.

– Mr. Thompson? Are you there?

I stop holding my breath.

– Mr. Henry Thompson, please pick up.

Oh.

So yeah, turns out the call is for me after all.

MILL’S CAFE is the oldest restaurant in town. When I was in high school, Patterson was so small there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Now there’s a McDonald’s and a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut and God knows what else, all thanks to the Silicon Valley real-estate boom that sent people scurrying farther and farther east of San Francisco in search of affordable housing. We could have gone to one of those new places where all the employees are kids that I’ve never seen, but he wanted to try this place, where the waitress serving us is the same one who used to bring me burgers and Cokes after baseball games. I keep my shoulders slumped, Dad’s sunglasses on my face, and try not to look around too much.

He takes another bite of his egg-white omelet and keeps talking.

– Honestly, it’s easier to explain in terms of political science rather than business.

He pauses, gathers his thoughts.

– OK, OK, I got it, it’s like this. When a country gets a nuclear weapon, the first thing they do is to test it. Publicly. They don’t do this because they want to know if the weapon works, but because they want everyone else to know that it works. For a country, having nuclear weapons isn’t so much about being able to blow up your enemies, it’s about letting your enemies know that you can blow them up. You test your new A-bomb where it can be seen and heard so that you can be sure that your enemies know what’s coming if they piss you off. Now Russians understand this kind of thinking because they pretty much invented it when they tested their first hydrogen bomb after the war. That’s why your particular Russians never sent anyone to kill your parents. What would be the point? They kill your folks and it removes the biggest weapon from their arsenal and they don’t get anything in return. What they wanted was for you to surface so that they could threaten to kill your parents unless you gave them back the money. Now, after that, they would have killed them, and then you of course.

A couple old-timers are at the counter reading the Patterson Irrigator. Other than that, it’s just us. I’m drinking coffee, but I was only able to eat a bite of the English muffin I ordered. When he mentions my parents, that one bite of muffin flops over in my stomach.

– That was a sound strategy, and it was clear to me that it was one I should stick with. Except the part about killing your folks and you once the money is returned. That’s just pure revenge. The Russians had their reasons for wanting revenge, but I could care less about what you did or who you killed. For me this is purely a business proposition, and revenge is a poor business strategy at best. If I get my money, that’s all I care about. And I want no confusion about this: it is my money now. I paid for it.

He’s just a few years older than me, and everything about him screams Manhattan. He’s got one of those two-hundred-dollar haircuts that’s engineered to look like he paid thirteen for it at Astor Place Hair, and the flecks of premature gray at his temples set off the titanium frames of the rectangular glasses he’s wearing. His Levis look worn, but I’m certain they are a pair of phenomenally expensive historical replicas of a pair owned by some prospector in 1849. His feet are tucked into bright blue-and-yellow vintage Pumas, and over a designer T-shirt of some extra-clingy material that super-defines his razor-edged pecs he’s sporting a black leather jacket of such ethereal smoothness that it almost feels like fur when I brush up against it. He’s charming and affable, has bottle green eyes and a toothy Tom Cruise grin. I’d hate him even if he wasn’t threatening my family.

– That’s one of the things I need to be certain you understand. Whoever the money might have belonged to, and, believe me, I’ve done quite a bit of research on this, it is mine now. Sure, you could argue that ultimately it belongs to the depositors at the banks that the DuRantes robbed in the first place, but the insurance companies took care of those people long ago. After that, the most legitimate claim is the Russians, and for awhile they were committed to recouping, but after three years they pretty much gave up. They were ready to call it a day, write the money off, and kill your mom and dad out of principle. If you ever turned up later that would be great, but they were done looking. That’s when I knew it was time for me to get involved. See, what you do is, you look at other businesses for assets you can pick up cheaply, especially from businesses that are struggling, and, believe me, the Russian mob is not what it once was. They had their heyday in the nineties. I mean, who didn’t? But they’re just not cutting-edge anymore, not sharp, and the market wants you to be sharp. So I saw that they had this great asset, which is essentially ownership of a four and a half million dollar IOU, but no real plan for collecting on it. See what I’m saying? Great asset, but they don’t know how to make it work for them. I do. So, what I do is, I