FIGHT

by Brent Coffey

  “Would Sara Madison please come to the customer service desk, please? Would Sara Madison please come to the customer service desk, please? Thank you.”

  She was surprised to hear the page. Who wants me now? She hurried towards the customer service desk near the store’s entrance, across from a bank of registers.

  “Um, hello, I’m Sara Madison, and I believe I was just paged.”

  “Yes, ma’am, one second,” the attendant said, wearing a blue vest and sporting a red tag reading I’m here to help! The attendant walked to a different section of the counter and stooped to retrieve something. When the attendant stood up, Sara saw the employee was holding her stolen purse.

  “I believe this is yours. A guy said he found it in the parking lot.”

  Sara was shocked. It was her purse all right, instantly recognizable with its large gold S emblazoned on the front of her customized Ralph Lauren.

  “Oh my God, thank you!” She eagerly took her purse and nearly ran to her car in excitement. As she made her way to her Civic, a feeling in her gut told her to be wary of the purse snatcher’s return. Hope he hasn’t realized he dropped this and come back for it! She clung to the purse with both hands, using strength that surprised her. Safe inside her car, she took inventory.

  Nothing.

  Nothing was missing.

  And a lot had been added. Wads of cash rolled newspaper style and held together with rubber bands stuffed her purse from side to side, giving it a pregnant bulge. Her jaw dropped; she’d never seen so much cash. Her career as a social worker paid her a respectable $38K a year, but a quick glance told her the cash in her purse was worth much more than her annual salary. She took a roll of bills out and stripped off the rubber band. It was a bunch of $50’s. Straitening them back to their originally flat shape, she thumbed the bills’ edges. There’s nearly a couple dozen here. (She multiplied.) That’s a cool grand! Do I really have that much money in my hand? She certainly hadn’t left home with that much money. Where did this come from? Dazed, it slowly occurred to her that she should count the number of rolls of cash in her purse. Furiously scanning inside, she estimated a good two dozen rolls. Two dozen rolls at 5 grand each… that’s roughly $120,000.

  “Holy crap! Who gave me this?”

  Digging through the rolls of cash, she discovered an unlabeled white envelope at her purse’s bottom. Inside the envelope was a neatly folded white page reading:

  “Perhaps being nice will work better. Give August to the Hudsons.”

  She read it in disbelief. How did Bruce get all this money? How did he pull off this heist and my purse’s return? Her last conversation with Bruce sprang to mind. He’d mentioned something about the mob being interested in August. Can there be any truth to that? She’d written off Bruce’s warning as a scare tactic concocted to manipulate August’s adoption in his favor. Now, uncertainty (and fear) shook her once firmly held conviction that he’d been lying. Her trashed condo also sprang to mind. What if he was innocent the entire time? What if the mob really is involved? But, but why would the Adelaides care about who adopts a foster kid?

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  The phone rang close to 7 that evening. Martha was quick to answer.

  “You’ve reached the Hudsons.”

  “Yeah, hi, Martha. It’s me, Sara.”

  Martha didn’t need a name: she knew the voice.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to apologize, especially to Bruce. There’s no way to say this without sounding crazy, but I think he’s right about the mob being interested in August.”

  “What happened?” Martha demanded, grabbing the kitchen countertop with her free hand in fear of the worst.

  “Let’s just say that I got an unexpected gift today. It was quite a lot of money. There was a note with it telling me to give August to you guys. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be missing $120 grand would you?” Sara lightly chuckled.

  “How much did you say? $120,000?”

  “Yeah, crazy, right? Anyway, is Bruce there? I’m not sure what to do with the cash, and I thought he might know.”

  Before Bruce took the call, Martha briefed him. He then listened to Sara’s account of the day’s events. He intended to ask her for a description of the purse snatcher and the getaway car, but, before he could, his colitis overwhelmed him and the sudden need to take a shit became more urgent than his questions.

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  Sara knocked on the Ringers’ door and rang its bell. She wanted to see August ASAP. Waiting no more than two seconds, she did both again.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Gina called out.

  When Gina saw Sara through the door’s peep hole, her tone become noticeably less impatient.

  “Sara! Didn’t expect to see you today. Did you stop by to bring August his blocks?”

  “No, actually, I forgot again. Sorry. But I need to talk to you about something. Can I come in?”

  Hurrying to the Ringers’ sofa, Sara turned down Gina’s offer of coffee and cake. She skipped the pleasantries and got down to business:

  “I think August is in trouble.”

  “What?”

  “I know this sounds kind of crazy, and, trust me, I struggle to believe it myself, but I think August is in some sort of trouble with the mob.”

  “The mob!”

  “Yeah, the mob. Particularly, the Adelaides. For reasons I can’t wrap my head around, I think the mob wants August to be adopted by the Hudsons. I have no idea why. I’d give you more details if I had them. I know this makes no sense. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the mob is planning some sort of revenge against Bruce Hudson for trying to prosecute Gabriel Adelaide, and, somehow, that involves August.”

  Gina silently recalled the recent visit from the Kid Center rep who’d paid her $1,000. She’d long been suspicious of the guy, but she decided not to mention the recent visitor. The mob’s money was green too.

  “Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Sara wanted to know.

  “No, nothing’s new on our end,” Gina lied. “What should we look for?”

  “Anything unusual I guess. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what to expect myself. I guess no one’s contacted you about the Hudsons adopting August, or said something like ‘Give August to the Hudsons’?”

  “No. No one’s mentioned anything about August living with the Hudsons. Last I knew, all that fell though, because Mr. Hudson was too sick to adopt.”

  “You’re right. I did say Mr. Hudson is unqualified because of his health and…” (she started to add “and his age” but opted not to, since Gina wasn’t much younger)… “and we in social services aren’t looking to place August in an adoptive home at the moment.”

  Thank God! Gina rejoiced. Her monthly stipend was safe.

  “I’m concerned that someone might contact you about the Hudsons adopting him,” Sara explained, “and, if that happens, you need to let me know right away. Also, if a stranger shows an unexpected interest in him, try to get a description of the person, a license plate, anything.”

  “Of course! Dear Heavens, this is just unthinkable. The little man has been through so much, with his parents’ death and all, and now this! I worry about his poor little soul,” Gina said, laying it on thick.

  “He’s quite the trooper. I’m not sure I could deal with all the stuff he’s been through.”

  “I’ll definitely let you know if I spot anything odd,” Gina added convincingly.

  Sara was relieved. She’d feared Gina would freak out when she mentioned the mob. Gina’s quite the trooper too, Sara believed. She’s taking this threat in great stride.

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  That night, two very different men went to bed in Boston. One turned in for the evening in an elderly Victorian home in Boston’s wealthy Back Bay neighborhood; the other called it a day in a modest brick house in Boston’s Charleston
area. One worked against the law, and the other worked for it. Before they slept, each had a 5-year-old boy on his mind. They had similar thoughts. They wanted him to be adopted by the same family.

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  He’d now practiced law for thirty years, built up an impressive ratio of trial wins to losses, and was widely viewed as one of Suffolk County’s most skilled court orators in recent times. He’d put his time in, busted his balls, and done everything from grunt clerical work to risking his life by pissing off Boston’s underworld. But financially, Bruce’s effort didn’t matter. Bruce didn’t have the $44,000 needed for a colectomy, the removal of his infected colon, and his insurance company had bailed on him, citing his colitis as a previously existing condition. Since his colitis wasn’t killing him (yet), no hospital was required to perform an emergent colectomy that the Emergency Medical Treatment Act of 1986 would’ve granted him. In one of the cosmos’ crueler jokes, Bruce was too healthy to get medical help. He couldn’t ditch the colitis unless he ditched his colon, and he couldn’t ditch his colon unless he was dying. Bruce was shit out of luck.

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  Dr. Cathy Sandefur, a colorectal surgeon at St. Knox’s Memorial Hospital, had written three letters over the past two years to the National Gastroenterology Association, seeking funds for Bruce’s operation. All three letters were answered with “Increasing requests and insufficient funds blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So when a nurse that Dr. Sandefur didn’t recognize walked in her office (without the decency to either knock or introduce himself) and said, “This is for you,” handing her an envelope containing a cashier’s check from Greater New England Bank for $44,000 signed by Boston Monetary Management with a bottom left-hand memo reading “For Bruce Hudson’s Colectomy,” she nearly shit the kind of brick that she treated patients for. Dr. Sandefur held the check with enough shocked disbelief that she didn’t have time to question the disappearing nurse. Who, how, and why questions exploded like fireworks in her brain. It was too good to be true, and she didn’t dare call Bruce with the good news until she confirmed that this check was legit. She called her lawyer.

  “You’ve reached Larry Buntmore.”

  “Larry, who the hell is Boston Monetary Management?”

  “Well, hello to you, too, Cathy, and I have no idea,” Larry, her attorney, replied.

  “Listen, Lar, this Boston Monetary Management just sent me a check for $44G’s to pay for an expensive operation for a patient of mine. I want to know that this isn’t a joke and that these funds are real, before I contact this guy and tell him the surgery he’s been waiting for is now paid for.”

  “Alright, can do. Give me a couple of days to track this outfit down, and I’ll bring you up to speed as soon as I know something.”

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  It hadn’t seemed like a good idea. Far from it, actually. He knew he’d be recognized, and he was right. When Gabe showed up at her door, Gina recognized him from local stations’ coverage of his trial, and she immediately recalled Sara having warned her that the mob had taken a dangerous interest in August. The knock on her door had come a couple days ago, and, despite Sara’s heads-up, she hadn’t expected it. He knew the risk he was running: another crime, another indictment, another trial. But he wouldn’t leave August with the Ringers a single day longer. He’d heard too much from Luke…

  “They don’t seem to like the kid,” Luke had told him.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because they’re constantly yelling at him, usually over bullshit.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the other day, this Ringer lady’s out grocery shopping, and she tells the kid to bring her a jar of mayo. The kid drops it, and what does she do? She goes ballistic. Full-blown banshee wailing bitch. You’ve never heard worse. Poor kid just stood there in tears.”

  Gabe didn’t like what he was hearing, but he was reluctant to assume the worst.

  “Maybe she was just in a pissy mood,” Gabe suggested.

  “Don’t think so. Seems like a typical mood for her. She yells at the kid constantly. ‘You’re too slow! Your shoe’s untied! You’re too stupid to pass kindergarten!’ That sorta thing. I’m telling you, she’s constantly yelling at the kid.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “He doesn’t seem to give a damn.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because he doesn’t seem to know his name. He just calls him ‘that kid,’ even in front of the kid.”

  “So? You call him kid, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know his name.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t call him ‘that kid’ in front of him. There’s a difference.”

  Gabe had been hard pressed to argue, and he’d decided to check things out for himself.

  Gabe sat parked across the street in a rental car (one he was sure no one would recognize) and used a set of headphones to listen in on the conversation inside the Ringers’ home, courtesy of Luke’s handiwork with some well hidden bugs.

  “August, dinner!” Gina called out.

  “Don’t call that kid in yet,” Bill objected. “I want to relax for a while.”

  “Okay. I’ll send him back.”

  When August appeared, Gabe heard:

  “Go clean your room! You aren’t eating until your room’s clean.”

  He couldn’t make out August’s response: it was too quiet. He turned up the headset’s volume as high as he could.

  “I didn’t ask you when you cleaned your room last!” Gina screamed.

  Gabe’s eardrums nearly burst from the increased volume.

  “I said clean your room, and I don’t care if you already cleaned it today. Clean it again! Clean it now! Go!”

  Gabe heard what he thought to be a very timid, “Yes, ma’am.” After that:

  “Let me know when you’re done, Bill, so I can feed the little twerp.”

  The sliding whoosh of a patio door muffled Bill’s response.

  Gabe had heard enough. He shut the headset off, pulled it off his ears, and clutched it in his hands… stretching the two ear pieces so far apart that he eventually snapped the plastic casing holding them together. He didn’t have a plan, but he had enough anger to compensate. He got out of the car, no longer caring about trying to hide behind the tinted windows of a rental car. No, it hadn’t seemed like a good idea. But that was before he’d heard Gina scream at August.

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  “No, you listen to me!” Judge Conner barked at the defendant from his television stage that doubled as a courtroom. “The law of the state of New York is clear. You have to give a landlord 30 days notice, minimum, to vacate the premises, if you expect your security deposit returned!”

  Watching from her living room, Gina loved it. The defendant, a single mom of two with pink highlights and a nose ring, was getting her ass handed to her in front of countless Americans, and Gina thought it served the little floozy right.

  Probably on welfare, Gina grumbled to herself. She loathed people who benefited from the state, and, thanks to a heaping dose of willful ignorance, the irony that the state cut her a check for taking care of August was lost on her. Give it to her. She cheered on reality TV’s Judge Conner.

  “Not only did you fail to give the required notice, but you also left the place in a complete mess. Ron,” Judge Conner said, speaking to the actor who played his bailiff, “take these photos to the defendant. I want to jog her memory about the condition that she left the apartment in.”

  This is getting good! Gina thought. The floozy was about to be presented with evidence of her trashy lifestyle, and the camera would pan to the photos of the mess that she’d made, for onlookers around America to gawk at with scorn and wonder. Gina couldn’t wait to be offended at the trash, clutter, and mold that were sure to flash across her screen. That was when the damn knocking occurred. Not
wanting to miss a second of the lynching that the defendant was about to receive when Judge Conner slammed his gavel and declared, “Judgment for the plaintiff!” she muted the set, hoping whoever was at the door would scram if she didn’t make a sound. She’d enjoy the defendant’s misery in silence by watching the pained expression on her face, and that’d be entertainment enough.

  The knocking continued. It sounded authoritative. It consisted of three loud raps, a brief pause, and two more loud raps. Gina rolled her eyes. She wasn’t expecting company (and for good reason, as what few friends she had almost never visited). It’s got to be a salesman. Or a Mormon. She tried to wait out the knocking so she could get back to her evening of Judge Conner. A pause. The knocking seemed to be over, but she hadn’t heard footsteps walking away. She wondered if the loiterer was still hanging around. She decided to try a quick peep out of the living rooms blinds, confident that she could lift one of the plastic bars just high enough to look through her window without being caught. She put both knees on the couch that backed up to the window, and, very slowly, barely raised one of the blinds’ rails.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Gina screamed and fell off the couch, banging her head against the coffee table. A fist had pounded the exact spot on the window that Gina was spying through, as Gabe had seen the blinds shift.

  “Goddamn!” She yelled, holding her head and getting off the floor. In an ill tempered voice she announced that she was coming to answer the door. When she opened it, she forgot all about the pain in her head, Judge Conner slipped her mind all together, and her aggravation at being interrupted now seemed trivial.

  He wore khakis, a collared shirt tucked into his pants, and a spiffy set of brown shoes. The man himself. The man that she’d rooted against for months, as she’d followed the developing story on her evening news, hoping that a real judge would give this defendant very real punishment. Gabriel Adelaide. He smiled, as every muscle in her surprised face went lame with paralysis. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t begin to comprehend the reality that a man she believed to be as guilty as a convicted felon was standing at her door… looking at her oh-so-casually, as if he made these sorts of house calls all the time.