Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) (8 page)

“You can go,” I said peremptorily.

He stood his ground, as they say in Florida after they shoot somebody they shouldn’t have.

“Can I ask you something?”

I nodded.

“Are you out here to do the thing for my grandfather?” he asked tentatively.

I was a little surprised. He wanted to talk. Rare in the Davidson clan. And what he had to say could be important. This was an opportunity. Or as the Help Wanted ad in the Burger King window once said, a whopper-tunity.

“You eat breakfast yet?”  I asked.

He ordered a Grand Slam and I ordered another. I felt entitled, since I still had a meal to make up for from last night. After the same waitress I had had before gave me some shit about my cholesterol, she left and Jeremy was again completely at a loss. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, let alone me. But I knew. I wanted him to take the first turn of whatever conversational game we were going to play, so I waited. I was getting good at waiting. It’s an art. You have to be like a Buddha, all-knowing and unmoving, my favorite position to assume, even though I was completely unqualified for it.

Finally, he turned to me.

“I’m sorry about the tires. It’s just…my mom was upset. She didn’t want you to do what you were doing.”

“So she told you to come after me.”

“No. I just went on my own.”

That was a surprise. I guessed Angela was just protecting him by taking responsibility. Turned out she was a real mother and not just the kind of mother I had previously thought she was - the kind of mother that’s half a word, as Sammy Davis Jr. used to say. 

The waitress brought him a coffee and me my zillionth Coke Zero of the morning. I was starting to get that weird feeling I get after drinking too much of it, like bugs were dancing in my brain.

The kid kept on talking.

“I was studying some CIA tracking techniques and thought I’d try them. Maybe I could stop you without anybody knowing. Maybe my mom could relax about you making some kind of problem at least.”

“She’s been nervous lately?”

“Real nervous about Grandpa. He’s had a bunch of small strokes.”

I sized the kid up. “That was pretty ballsy, coming after me like that and not knowing anything about me.”

“It’s PMA,” he blurted out.

?

“PMA,” I repeated.

He continued to blurt, because he was nervous. “It’s a discipline taught by this guy, this guy who was the Ultimate Fighting Champion, Andre Gibraltar, you probably heard of him. PMA is what he says he uses in fights and in life, to make things happen the way he wants them to happen. The ‘P’ stands for ‘Power.’ You have a powerful idea you want to accomplish, right? That’s where it starts. Then you move into the ‘M,’ that stands for ‘Mind.’ You have to mentally have the will to put that power into action, everybody has ideas, not everybody has the will to go to the next step, and the next step is the ‘A,’ which stands for ‘Action.’ When you have the will in place, you translate that will into action and make things happen.”

Oh sweet, sweet Jesus.

“You spend a lot of time by yourself, don’t you?”

“I really want to join the CIA,” he said too quickly. “If I put PMA to work in my life, I’m pretty sure I can become a great agent.”

“Aren’t you still in school?”

“Just got out of high school. Well, I graduate in June, but I got all my credits done last semester. I’m supposed to start college in the fall, but…”

He stopped. Then he began to study me with a little too much intensity.

“Is there egg on my face?” I asked.

“No, I just…you look kinda pale. I was wondering if you were okay.”

“I’ve never had so many people concerned about my health.”

“Sorry.” He looked down, a little embarrassed, and not just about asking about my skin tone. I think he surmised that I was skeptical of the whole PMA thing.

“So you know your grandfather hired me.”

He looked back up.  “Um…yeah.”

“You know why he hired me?”

“Um…yeah. My uncle, right?”

I sipped my Coke Zero. I was about to try and cross the Rubicon if this kid would hand me a paddle to help me do it.

“What do you think about it?”

“My uncle? Well…I don’t know. He was always a little out there. I mean, I only saw him a couple of times when I was a kid. I was pretty young when he died, nine or ten maybe.”

“What was he like?”

“He was really…I don’t know…intense? Kinda…angry?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. He and Grandpa used to yell at each other about war stuff. Something about what my uncle was doing over in Afghanistan. I don’t remember much. I do remember this one time, because it was really weird, when he came over with this guy…and Grandpa called the guy his ‘girlfriend.”

“What was this guy’s name?”

“His first name was Herman. I remember that because I never met anybody named Herman before.”

“I still haven’t. What about Herman’s last name?”

He shook his head and shrugged. “My grandpa acted like he knew him, but I don’t know how.”

“So you think your uncle was gay?”

Jeremy shrugged again, but no head shake this time. “I don’t know. I didn’t really understand what gay was back then.”

Interesting. The first personal information I had about Robert Davidson was the fact that he had a girlfriend named Herman.

Meanwhile, Jeremy was starting to seem like a smart and earnest boy. I didn’t really appreciate earnest as much as some others, but in this case, it seemed to fit. The PMA stuff was a phase, a way for him to try to become a man, which made me think the father wasn’t much in the picture. I had to wonder - why was he telling me all this, when the rest of his family wouldn’t?

“Are you with the CIA?” he asked.

“I used to be. Now they just hire me for jobs like this.”

His eyes lit up. “You carry a gun?”

“It’s been a couple of decades since I even fired one. Kid, the truth is I was a desk jockey the whole time at the Agency. They liked me for my brain, which was all I had to offer.  I don’t do Kung Fu and if I jumped through a window firing guns in both hands like they do in the movies, I’d probably end up falling on my face and accidentally shooting myself in the balls. So don’t get it in your head that I’m any kind of superspy.”

“I practice Kung Fu. Not Kung Fu strictly speaking, but MAU. Martial Arts Ultimate.”

“Three letters again. Must be Andre’s idea.”

“Yeah, it puts together the best parts of Taekwon-Do, Danzan Ryū and Shootfighting.”

That sounded painful. Our food came, which was a good thing, because it was time to get back to business.

“So why does your grandfather think your uncle is still alive?” I said casually as I poured syrup over my new set of pancakes.

“No idea.”

“Where’s your dad, if you don’t mind?”

“He lives in Chicago.”

That’s all he said and I didn’t go further. It was probably another long story I didn’t want to deal with right now. I sent my fork in after the cakes, mentally assembling my next line of questioning. But then he changed the subject before I did.

“I…I really want to go with you.”

My fork stopped in mid-air. I looked back at the kid. He was serious.

“I mean, before, I know….well, I know I tried to stop you, but…but things happen for a reason. Now I think I got sent to meet you on purpose. Maybe we should work together to find out the truth. It’ll be good for Grandpa and maybe Mom too. And I think I can learn stuff from you.”

“Your name’s Jeremy, right?” He nodded. “Well, Jeremy, here’s the thing. The reason I’m pale and sore today is because yesterday a black SUV rammed me from the side while a few hundred feet away from me a house was in the process of blowing to smithereens. One smithereen even landed on my car hood.”

His eyes widened.

“So I don’t know what I’m in for here. I do know if I get you killed, many people would be angry at me – including me.” 

He ate a little, trying to come up with a response and finally found one. “But it wouldn’t be like it was your fault or anything, it would be my choice, not yours – so my fault if anything did happen.”

“That’s not how everyone else would see it. Believe me, I’ve taken enough blame in my life.”

“I just want my grandpa to be proud of me. He needs somebody to be proud of.”

“So – join the Army. Wouldn’t he want that more than anything?”

“I don’t want to kill anybody, that’s why I thought the CIA was good for me.”

I laughed. “You don’t think the CIA kills people?”

He shrugged. He was embarrassed again and I could see he felt stupid. I was a dick.

But at least now I knew why I liked the kid.

He was like me – he lacked the killer instinct. It was why my father didn’t go far at the Agency and why I ultimately opted out. You either were okay with killing people – as a matter of fact, you saw it as the path to progress – or you couldn’t get past the part where someone had to die for your ambitions, whether they be personal or political. Once someone at the Agency saw that sentimental streak in you, you wouldn’t ever have a shot at rising to the upper echelon. Because they really didn’t believe you belonged there at all.  

“Okay, okay, kid, I know what you’re saying, but…no. The other thing is, I’m going to be gone a while. You should get back to your job and your mom.”

“That wouldn’t be a big deal, I could just tell my supervisor I was helping you. And I could tell my mom they gave me a job that would keep me out of town for a while, she wouldn’t know I was with you or anything.”

I chewed my pancakes. He wouldn’t stop and he still wasn’t done. I was seeing PMA in action.

“I know what my uncle looks like. And I can talk to him, if he’s still alive. He can’t just blow me off, I’m family, right? I’m an asset here.”

An asset? The kid was sharp. He made sense, but this was still ridiculous. The PMA inside him, however, wouldn’t let up.

“And, look, I can tell you don’t feel very good, you said so yourself. You’re banged up and you could probably need some help, right? Just with running errands or something, getting food, whatever, I’m up for it.”

Oh shit, I was starting to listen to him. What was next, a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate through pie charts and animated graphs the enormous advantages of bringing Jeremy Davidson along for the ride?  I wouldn’t have been surprised the way he kept staring at me, trying to mentally will a positive ending to his proposal. PMA was winning the day.

“Look, kid, let’s just finish the food. After we eat, we’ll go back to my room.”

He gave me a funny look.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a pedophile.”

A weird little smile crossed his face.

“Well, technically, I’m 18, so I’m legal.”

We caught each other’s eyes. He had a twinkle in his, so I laughed a little as I shoved the cakes in my mouth.

Inside my room, I packed up my Banana Republic shopping bags while he watched.

“So – I’m going with you, right?” he asked impatiently.

I finished up and looked over at him. I had just postponed the inevitable because I couldn’t bring myself to say no. But now, I had to.

“Jeremy, it’s not going to fly. There’s no way I can justify bringing an inexperienced eighteen-year-old kid along on this trip. And don’t be offended by the inexperienced part, hell, I’m too inexperienced to be doing this.”

The kid suddenly turned angry. His eyes were set and looked just as scary as his grandfather’s. This was the side of him that packed a box cutter, the side he fed with his PMA.

“If you say no, then I’ll follow you again. I’ll…I’ll slash your tires again.”

Whoa.

I half-smiled. “Really? You probably just took a cab to the Denny’s from the airport, if I’m not mistaken. You gonna have the cabbie tail me across state lines? Or are you going to Uber my ass?”

“Well, you told me you have to get a new car. I’ll get one too. And I’ll follow you.”

I used to have a terrier who weighed twenty-five pounds. When she planted all four paws on the ground, you couldn’t move her with a hundred-foot-tall construction crane. This kid was reminding me of that dog. He was quiet in his resistance, not hysterical, but that made it all the more powerful.

“Look, PMA,” I had decided right then and there that PMA was his new nickname. “All I have to do is call your mom….”

“You can’t stop me. And she can’t stop me,” he said simply enough.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“Nothing. This is just about my family.”

“Family has its downside, you know. Trust me on that. You can end up realizing it’s just a prison you have to break out of.”

He got quiet again. I didn’t want him to feel bad.

“Hey, I get it. You’re fond of the old guy.”