The Good Atheist (28 page)

“I’ll call you when the espresso is ready,” he said.

I returned to the table and sat down across from Octavia. She handed me a lighter, a big silver thing that looked like it could jump start a small hovercraft. I flicked it open and lit my cigar, slowly turning it as I held it against the flame.

She watched me closely while I was occupied with the cigar. I got it going and took a nice long draw. It was smooth and mellow. I’d forgotten how much I liked cigars. I rolled the smoke around in my mouth before breathing out.

She looked at my hat. “Would you please take that silly thing off your head? You look ridiculous enough as it is. Wherever did you find it?”

I took another puff. The hat stayed where it was. “Is my father here, or did you just bring me here to insult the way I dress?”

She smiled and pulled out a smartphone from a pocket someplace. Her clothes were so tight-fitting I wondered where she could have been keeping it. “That depends.”

“On what?”

She touched a bright icon on the display of her phone. “On how you answer a few questions.”

“What’s with that?”

“To make sure you really are his son. You wouldn’t be the first heretic hunter who tried to infiltrate the church looking for Morpheus.”

“His name isn’t Morpheus. And I bet you really aren’t Octavia.”

She just stared at me without moving for a moment, and then took another drag from her cigarette. The guy at the bar nodded in my direction and placed a white cup on the counter. He made a point of looking at my hat when I went up to get my espresso. Seemed like everyone had an opinion about it.

“So, who are you?” I asked when I got back to the table with my espresso. “And how do you know my father?”

“I don’t want to say too much until I feel more sure about who you are, but let’s just say for the moment that we are close.”

I got the distinct impression that she meant
intimately
close.

Dad, you old dog.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to prove that,” I said.

She took a long draw on her cigarette. “When was the last time you saw your father?”

“At breakfast, before he left for work the day he disappeared. I was eight.”

“What was the last thing you remember doing with your father?”

“Eating breakfast. Was that a trick question?”

“No, I mean the last time you two did something fun together. An outing, fishing, or something like that.”

“We went to the movies the weekend before. After that we went to the park, and played catch.”

“What movie did you see?”

“The second movie in the Zombie Overlord trilogy.”

“What happened after that?”

“Well, it’s been a while, but as I remember the Zombie lord captured the princess and threatened to eat her brains if the humans didn’t…”

“No, I mean, with your father. What happened after that?”

“I wouldn’t know. Ask my parents.”

She asked several questions about my childhood and times I’d spent with Dad. After ten minutes it started to feel like a therapy session, where the shrink asks you a bunch of questions about your childhood to figure out why you are so screwed up.

“This is getting a bit too Freudian for me,” I finally said. “Can we move on?”

She ignored me and kept asking questions. The next one hit a raw nerve.

“Why haven’t you tried contact him before now?”

“You might try asking Dad the same question. How come I haven’t heard from him? How come I’ve had to come looking for him in the underbelly of Queens and sit here with a woman I’ve never met before asking a bunch of humiliating questions about my childhood?”

To Octavia’s credit she had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I really am sorry about that, but we need to make sure you are who you say you are. So, why haven’t you tried to find him before now? Why now, after all this time?”

“Because until last week I thought he was dead,” I said. “I think that’s a pretty good reason not to go looking for someone. What’s his excuse?”

She paused and looked at me without moving. “How did you find out he was still alive?” she asked.

“Uh-uh. That involves news about my grandfather that I need to tell Dad in person, and I think I’ve already said enough to prove who I am. I’ve told you things about my childhood and Dad that no one else could have known.”

Octavia’s smartphone was still lying on the table between us. She glanced down at it, then twisted in her chair and looked back. I followed her gaze towards the back of the pub. A man sat alone in the shadows of a high-backed booth in the far corner. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and the shadows covered his face. He took his hat off and set it on the table. Then he leaned forward until his face came into the light.

He looked older than I remembered, but I would have recognized his face anywhere.

25

He got up out of his booth and walked across the floor towards us. I stood up, and watched him make his way around the other tables on the floor. When he reached me, he stopped, and we stood looking at each other for a few moments. His hair was cropped short, dark brown tinged with grey, and his face was leaner and more lined with care than I remembered, but his broad smile was the same. His eyes glistened, and I thought I detected a hint of a tear.

I put out my hand to shake. “You’re shorter than I remember, Dad.”

He ignored my hand and, grabbing my shoulders, pulled me forward and enveloped me in a bear hug. “It’s been a long time. Too long,” Dad said.

I hugged him back, and we held a long embrace before he stepped back to look me over. His face was a picture of joy. “It’s so good to see you.” His eyes were moist, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to cry.

“Jack, I believe you still need to be properly introduced to the light of my life, Haddie, my wife.” He gestured towards ‘Octavia’. 

Haddie smiled up at me. “Apologies for the subterfuge, but it was necessary.”

“We have so much to get caught up on,” Dad said. “How long will you be in town?”

My emotions were in turmoil, and I hardly knew what to think now that the moment had come. Joy at finally finding him, alive after all these years thinking he was dead, mourning for what we’d missed, tinged with a bit of anger, all swirled and broiled and I hoped my face did not betray everything going on inside me at that moment. I’d have to sort it all out later.

“I can stay in town a couple of days. Dad – ”

“Excellent! Stay with us. We’ll have lots of time to visit. I’ll take a few days off, cancel my appointments.”

“Sure, Dad. I’d love to. But – ”

“Wonderful,” he said. We sat down at the table. Dad pulled his chair next to Haddie. We just looked at each other for a few minutes. “Dad, I’ve got news. It’s Grandpa,” I said. I didn’t feel like I could get on with everything else that would need to be said between us until I told him about Grandpa.

“I already know.”

“How?”

“Jorge got a message to me last week, before the funeral.”

I wondered why Jorge hadn’t told me, but then it was only two days ago that he’d told me that he knew how to reach my father, and events had moved along pretty quickly. It didn’t matter now. “I didn’t think you knew, because you weren’t there.”

“I knew,” he said softly.

“Then why weren’t you there?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t. I wanted to, believe me. But it would have been far too risky. The police were almost certainly watching for me at the funeral. But if I’d known you would be there I would have risked it.”

The bartender brought a drink over for Dad, and a refill for Haddie. He seemed to know what Dad and Haddie drank. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m good, thanks,” I said. The bartender left. Bartenders don’t normally make house calls, I reflected. Dad must be highly regarded at this watering-hole.

Dad looked at me. “I’m so glad you found me. When did you find out I was alive?”

I told him about the lawyer finding me in Chicago, going to the funeral, and how Grandpa left me the cottage. Then I told them about finding the letters and other evidence that convinced me he was still alive.

“How did you manage to find us here in Queens?” he asked.

But Haddie placed her gloved hand over his on the table. “Not here, dear. Let’s get home. It’ll be easier to talk there. I’ve already messaged the cab company.”

• • •

A beat up old hover-cab met us at the front door of the pub, and the three of us climbed into the back. “Where to folks?” the cabbie asked through a speaker set in the Plexiglas between us.

Haddie and Dad looked at me. “We should go back to the hotel and get your bags,” Haddie said.

I gave the cabbie the name of the hotel, and we sped off. It took us twenty minutes to get there. The cab waited out front while I ran up to my room and quickly packed up. On my way out I put the key in the drop box at the counter. The clerk sat behind the Plexiglas watching television. “I’m checking out,” I said.

He didn’t take his eyes off the television. “Congratulations,” he said.

“Thanks so much for the warm hospitality,” I said. “I’ll be sure to recommend your fine establishment to all the people I dislike the most.” Maybe the clerk was able to think of a witty rejoinder, but I’ll never know. I didn’t wait to find out. I went out the front doors to the cab.

“Where to now?” the driver asked Haddie as I got inside.

“Just drive. I’ll direct you on the way,” Haddie said.

The cab pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. “Lady, it’ll be a lot easier if you just tell me where we’re going.”

But Haddie wasn’t listening. She was looking out the back window as we sped down the street. The neighborhoods gradually improved from outright slummy to lower-working-class. “Take the next right, cabbie.”

The driver obeyed. Haddie kept an eye out the back window. A few blocks later she said, “Next right, cabbie. Then go two blocks and take another right.”

The cabbie gave me a quizzical look in the rearview mirror but followed directions. I looked at Dad, who just stared out the window like everything was normal. We crossed the main road we had originally been on and proceeded another block. We approached a green light at a busy intersection. “Cabbie, stop right here.”

“Lady, it’s a green light, for crying out loud.”

She leaned forward and stuck a roll of Euros into a little slot in the Plexiglas divider. “Just do as I say.”

He picked it up and whistled, after which there was a noticeable improvement in his demeanor. “For that kind of currency we can sit all day at a green light if that’s what you want.” He came to a full stop.

Haddie kept looking around and behind as the traffic flowed by. Then a car came to a sudden stop behind us. It bobbed and swayed a bit in the breeze while honking. When we didn’t move, it swished around us, horn blaring, and sped away.

“Anything?” Dad asked, staring out the side window.

“I think we’re clean,” Haddie said.

The light changed to red. Then back to green. The cabbie looked at us in the rearview mirror, waiting.

“Drive, cabbie, drive,” Haddie said.

She directed him for another thirty minutes, involving a few more turns and random stops, until we finally came to a stop in front of a deli called Francine’s in a trendy upscale neighborhood. We got out and the cabbie sped off, shaking his head. Haddie led us into the deli quickly, and we found a table at the back.

“What was that all about?” I asked when we sat down.

“Countersurveillance measures,” Haddie said matter-of-factly, as if people did that kind of thing all the time.

“What?”

“Just making sure we weren’t followed from your hotel or the bar,” Dad said. “The limo will pick us up here. We don’t want the limo to get followed back to the penthouse.”

“Limo?” I said. “Penthouse? Did you just mention a limo and penthouse all in the same sentence?”

“Yeah,” Dad said.

“Why didn’t the limo just get us at the pub? You could still do all the crazy stuff to make sure we don’t get followed.”

Haddie shook her head. “The limo would have been too noticeable. People would remember it. But it won’t attract any attention here or where we are going.”

The all-night café was packed. We ordered coffees and waited, talking little. I was bursting with questions, and I could tell Dad and Haddie were as well, but the little round tables had no privacy. We were practically rubbing elbows with the other patrons. Forty minutes later Haddie got a message, and we went outside.

A stretch limo hovered before us, about two feet off the ground, a long black cylinder glistening under the street lights. There was a fairly stiff breeze, but the gyros compensated so well I couldn’t detect any movement. With a pointed nose and stabilizer fins at the back, it looked like a shiny black torpedo.

We were going in style, wherever that was.

A door radiated open in the side like retracting flower petals, and Dad gestured towards the open portal. “After you, Haddie dear.”

Haddie got in. I climbed in after her and sank into the rich leather seats. Dad sat down across from me and the door whizzed shut. I couldn’t see the driver. We were cocooned in deep black leather, mahogany, and chrome.

I looked at Dad sitting across from me. “I didn’t know you were rich,” I said.

He laughed. “Far from it. But we have a few rich friends who take good care of us.”

We ascended quickly, and I stared out the window. We merged with level-three traffic at two hundred feet. The traffic at that level was very light. Not many people could afford level-three driving permits.

I seldom rode at this level. I was only licensed for level two. Selene and I had talked about upgrading our licenses, but I didn’t want to spend the money. Insurance was high, and the license for level three also required a higher vehicle rating. The cost was prohibitive to most working people.

We glided across the river, following the flow of traffic into Midtown, and the traffic got heavier. Once in Manhattan we turned north and whizzed along through canyons of steel and concrete. I looked down, and the traffic below looked like some manic version of Tetras.