Point of Impact

was falling asleep in my chair watching TV. You have to change your priorities.”

“Yeah, I hear that. I can see it all now: I’m gonna wind up like a certain fat old general, too stiff and tired to walk from the couch to the bed. It’s a pitiful thing to think about.”

“Fat old general? You want to run the course, Lieutenant, and see just how fat and old I really am? Perhaps I should give you a handicap. Ten seconds? A minute?”

“Your ass, General, sir. I might be in terrible shape, but that’s compared to a twenty-five-year-old SEAL, not a man your age.”

“I’m not a man my age, Julio. I’m getting better every day.”

“You got your stopwatch?”

Howard smiled. “As it happens.” He pulled the watch from under his shirt where it hung on a loop of old boot-lace.

“Start it. I’ll see you at the end. Time you get there, I can probably shower, shave, and catch up on my sleep.”

“Go, Lieutenant. The clock is ticking. But be careful of your heart.”

Julio smiled, and took off.

* * *

On the way home, Michaels’s virgil played a few bars of Franz Liszt’s Les Preludes, a somber, regal musical sting that, according to Jay Gridley, was the basis for the theme that announced the Emperor Ming in the old Flash Gordon movie series in the ’30s. Buster Crabbe, the swimming champion, had starred in those, Jay had told him. Jay had been to what had once been Buster’s house, as a boy in SoCal. It had a big swimming pool in the backyard. Talking a bigggg pool…

It was Susie. He saw her tiny picture appear on his virgil’s screen, and he activated his own minicam so she could see him.

“Hey, yo, Daddy-o!”

“ ’Daddy-o’? What happened to ‘Dadster’?”

“Oh, that’s so yesterday,” she said. “You really did go to school with the dinosaurs, huh?”

“It’s true. I had to hike a prehistoric trail ten miles long every morning, in the tropical heat, uphill both ways, and be careful of stepping into the tar pits. You have it easy, kiddo.”

“So Mom says.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Everything going okay with, ah, Byron?”

“Yep. He’s a good guy, really.”

Michaels felt his belly clutch. He had thought he was going to lose contact with her after the nasty business with Megan, but somehow, his ex-wife had relented. Thank God for large miracles.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. Boy, that came hard.

“He argued with Mom something awful about letting me see you.”

Michaels felt the heat begin in him, threatening to rise and shut off his breathing and vision. That bastard!

“Didn’t like the idea, huh?” he managed to say, faking a smile. She could see him, after all.

“Oh, no, Daddy-o, it was Mom who didn’t like it. Byron said it wasn’t right to keep a father from seeing his daughter. He wouldn’t give up until she agreed.”

Michaels’s anger turned to wonder. “Really?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t like you much after you insulted Mom and knocked him down, but he tries to be fair. He’s just not you. I miss you, Dad.”

As always, that broke his heart. “Me, too. You tell Byron thank you for me, would you?”

He debated for a moment about whether to tell his preteen daughter that she was going to have a new little brother. Well, half brother. Then he decided she ought to hear it from him.

“I have some news for you. Did you know you’re going to have a baby brother in a few months?”

“Mom told?” she said. “She told me I couldn’t say anything to you. But it’s not a brother, it’s a sister.”

For a moment, he couldn’t track what she said, it was as if she had spoken words he understood but arranged them wrong. What she said made no sense.

Then it came to him:

Megan was pregnant!

“Daddy-o, where’d you go?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, sweetie, I’m in my car, I had to, uh, switch lanes.”

“Pretty cool, huh?” she said. “A baby sister. Almost none of my friends have any that little. Chellie’s got a brother who’s two, and Marlene’s got a sister who’s like one, but nobody else’s mom is preggers.”

“Pretty cool,” he said. “Congratulations.”

Susie’s slip brought up a whole wave of things he didn’t want to think about. He loved Toni, and she loved him in a way Megan never had. He was over his ex-wife, finally. Well, almost over her. There was always that little wonder about the road not taken, even though the roads they had traveled the last few years had been pretty ugly. But she was Susie’s mother, and there had been some good times. Wonderful times, at the beginning.

Now that she was having another man’s baby, the old jealousy tried to rear its viperlike head, and for a moment, he almost let it.

No. That serpent was dead.

And now what did he tell Susie about her half brother? Should he say anything? He didn’t want to get into any kind of competition with Megan for his daughter’s affection as much as he didn’t want to lose it.

And yet, if he was going to continue to be part of Susie’s life, Toni was also going to be a part of it, as would their unborn child.

Sooner or later, word would get back to Megan; somehow it always did, and he would rather Susie hear it from him.

“Well, Li’l Bit, it looks like you are going to be really cool.”

“Huh?”

He smiled into the virgil.

19

Santa Monica, California

The Safari Bar and Grill was first on Tad’s list. This was an old but little-known watering hole not far from Santa Monica City College. The food was good, the drinks generous, and the place was far enough off the main drags so the locals had mostly kept it hidden from the tourists.

Tad approached the assistant manager on duty and gave him the bullshit story he’d worked up.

“Say, man, I got a problem maybe you can help me with?”

The assistant manager, a smiling black guy of thirty with nice teeth, dressed in khaki safari shorts and matching shirt, said, “What’s the problem, bro?”

“Okay, look, a while back, my brother and his wife were having some difficulties. I uh, got together with her to, you know, help them out. We had lunch here a few times.”

“Uh-huh, so?”

“One thing kinda led to another. My sister-in-law and I, well, we, ah, stepped over the line, you know what I mean?”

“You punching your brother’s wife? That’s bad biz, bro. Gonna make Thanksgiving dinners a bitch.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It just happened, you know. Anyway, they got their shit worked out okay, they’re back together. But my brother, he’s a jealous type, and he suspects that while they were on the outs, his wife maybe did some stuff she shouldn’t have done.”

“He’s right, too, idn’t he?”