The Jack Hammer

by Derek Ciccone

  “We hung out and watched a hockey game, just a boys night out.”

  “Not even a smart, pre-med student with a cute accent? A future doctor … I must say you’ve come a long way, my son.”

  Cam flashed a baffled look. Satisfied that she’d once again blown his mind, she revealed her source, “You forgot your baseball cap at Nellie’s, and a nice girl named Anna called this morning to tell you as much. We had a splendid conversation.”

  “The waitress called here? How would she even get this number? It’s unlisted.”

  “Was it one of your hats from when you played at Yale?”

  “Yeah, actually it was. Why?”

  “Well, then she probably saw where I sewed in your name and home number inside the hat.”

  “You did what?”

  “When you went off to college, I sewed your pertinent identification information into all your hats and jackets underneath the tag … like I did when you were little, in case you lost them. It’s really an insignificant point, except that maybe you should think about purchasing a new hat. Now please stop trying to divert my questioning, and tell me about my future daughter-in-law.”

  “We did form a sort of a bond, but it wasn’t the connection you’re talking about. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t think it was a love connection. I am a little surprised she called after the way Geoff treated her, though.”

  This sent his mother into a momentary trance. When she came out of it, she said, “You promise me this baseball thing is all about what you want, and has nothing to do with the ghost of your father? Or the expectations of others?”

  Cam nodded as he washed down his eggs with a swig of orange juice.

  “Then I think you should re-hire Geoffrey to represent you—as you said, you know him better than anyone. I think you understand each other.”

  Cam almost choked on his food. “You can’t be serious. How’d that work out last time?”

  “Things change, people change, minds can change.”

  Cam didn’t think this was a good time to remind her of the old adage—the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or that her youngest son seemed to be up to his old tactics with a Cuban pitcher.

  He blew out a deep breath. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good, because I want to see my son play in person, and I’m not going to Newark to see you play for some independent team there. Too dangerous,” she said, as she cleared the plates and placed them in the dishwasher.

  He needed to get sources like hers. “Too dangerous? You spend half your life in Kabul and Baghdad.”

  “Those places are vacation destinations compared to Newark.”

  “Come on, it’s changed. Big urban renewal plan.”

  She smiled. “See, Camelot—things can change … I rest my case.”

  Chapter 22

  “Sweetie, please put that down,” Samantha O’Connell said to her daughter with a mix of tender and stern—a tone she’d mastered since Milla broke onto the scene just over two years ago. “No sweetie, I meant put it down nicely, not throw it.”

  Milla seemed to have inherited the more vivacious personality of her Uncle Tim. The renegade two-year-old was testing Sam’s laid-back personality. Good thing she is too cute to be mad at, she thought.

  The Queens office of O’Connell Investigations was a windowless, cluttered mess. Not a great place for daycare, but Sam couldn’t afford anything more, which is why she took the job with her brother’s floundering agency. It sat on the bottom floor of the two-story building, right underneath the apartment she shared with Milla and Tim. But if Tim kept burning up the profits to search the globe for Anna’s father, she and Milla might be looking for another place to spend their days. Typical Tim, she muttered. Falls in love, and jumps feet first in front of the speeding truck, then is shocked when he gets run over.

  But she’d never seen him fall this hard before. He would go to the moon for Anna, and he almost did—Sam still couldn’t believe the trip to Russia. “Do you know what that costs!?” she screamed at him. Sam knew exactly what it cost—she did the books—a lot of red ink this past year.

  Being a single mom was hard enough. Being a single mom with little money was harder. Being a single mom with no money living in New York was downright unkind. She couldn’t believe one night could change her life so much.

  She had only dated one guy, Tony Calabria, since high school. She went on to get her undergrad at Queens College, and had been accepted to Fordham Law School. She had aspirations, but Tony fought them every step of the way. If he wanted a traditional Italian housewife, he picked the wrong girl. If Sam wanted a less controlling guy with a future, she picked the wrong guy. After about a year of fights and procrastination, the break up came during an ugly fight in Nellie’s, where she worked to help pay her tuition.

  She was consoled by a bartender named Michel. The adorable French accent masked the fact he had nothing intelligent to say, either. But his main quality was being tall, dark, handsome, and very available when she was most vulnerable. Michel also happened to look a lot like her childhood crush, Cam Myles. Who was she fooling—she still had that crush.

  She ended up at Michel’s apartment that night. She never did anything like that before, or since. Michel didn’t even wait to get the final test results before he hopped on the next bus back to Montreal, and she hadn’t heard from him since. Not ideal, but better than Milla having a father who was going to jump in and out of her life when it was convenient, constantly breaking her heart. At least there was some clarity to the situation.

  She tugged on the overalls she wore over a long sleeve white shirt. She adjusted her abundant breasts, which refused to stay in the right place, and wanted to send them to their room for a timeout. She had no idea what guys see in those things—what a pain! She checked the time. Anna would be arriving in five minutes, at noon, to babysit Milla.

  Sam didn’t look forward to their looming conversation, in which she would ask her to back off the search for her father. She practiced her speech during Milla’s brief nap. She didn’t think Anna was maliciously using Tim. She badly wanted to find her father, and was so hopelessly naïve that she didn’t have a clue that Tim was spending his life savings to help her.

  Sam sat at the cluttered desk in the “reception” area. The office had two rooms—and since the front door connected to this one, it was where most of the action took place. The chairs in front of the desk were the “waiting” area, and the spot where Milla stood five feet away was the “daycare” center. The fast food restaurant across the street housed the restrooms, along with the cafeteria, if a client requested a cup of coffee, or perhaps a cheeseburger.

  Tim kept his office locked at all times. The door was disguised as a bookcase like out of some old mystery movie. Sam didn’t blame him for his paranoia. She understood what he did for a living, and knew it wasn’t out of the question that a cheating spouse might return at some point looking for revenge. He tried to shield her and Milla from it, but he could only do so much on that front since they now lived with him.

  Anna walked in at two minutes past twelve. For her, that was late. Anna owned two moods. One where she was on some distant planet and was oblivious to all around her. The other consisted of her being annoyingly cheery and optimistic. The cynical city had yet to get to her.

  She entered the office wearing a simple sweater and jeans. Her dark hair was tied back in the usual ponytail. She wore no makeup, but really didn’t need any.

  “Brrr,” she said, referring to the chilled office, and pulled her arms close to her chest. Sam was balancing conserving heat and her child’s potential hypothermia.

  But Anna didn’t let the cold front get her down. A big smile appeared on her face. “You’re never going to believe who I met last night, Sam.”

  “Somebody I know?”

  “Someone you want to know.”

  “The man of my dreams?”

  “Sí senorita.”

  “Then it
must be that guy who won the lottery last week. I think it was like fifteen million. We could really use that.”

  Anna turned to the hyperactive Milla. “You know your mama is silly?”

  Milla just gave a big toothless grin and repeated “silly” four times.

  “To make a long story short, I was waiting tables last night and none other than Cam Myles walks in …”

  Chapter 23

  Sam felt like her head was going to spin off her neck. “Cam Myles? Why didn’t you call me? No, wait … I’m glad you didn’t. I’d have been too nervous.”

  The subject of her lifelong crush on Cam Myles might have come up once or many times between the two friends.

  Anna reached into her ever-present knapsack. Sam bought it for her last Christmas, because her old one looked like sharks had eaten it as she swam across the Atlantic trying to escape Cuba. She pulled out a dark blue baseball hat with the letter Y on the front.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  Sam just shrugged, she was too busy planning her fantasy wedding with Cam Myles to be bothered with such mindless trivia.

  “This is the phone number of his residence in Connecticut.”

  “That’s strange, because it looks a lot like a baseball cap to me.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Anna said as she pointed to a place inside the cap. “This happens to be Cam Myles’ baseball hat that he left at Nellie’s last night. But luckily, his name and number was sewn into it, in case he lost it, which is very pragmatic, I might add.”

  “Oh my God—he left it there on purpose for you. I’ll bet that’s his move,” Sam said excitedly, but then she thought of her friend taking her dream guy, and the fantasy became less appealing.

  Milla stood directly under the hat, her hands reaching straight up, almost begging Anna for it. She obliged and placed the hat backwards over Milla’s dark hair.

  “His move? No, I think he just left his hat there by accident. Which is why I called him to let him know I had it.” She shrugged. “It must be special to him if he put his number in it.”

  Sam stood and started pacing nervously. “You called Cam Myles?”

  “I didn’t talk to him … I talked to his mother.”

  “You talked to Katie Barrett from the news? Oh. My. God! What did you say?”

  “I told her who I was. Then she started grilling me—asking me about my future plans and such. But she seemed nice.”

  Sam felt dizzy, so she sat down behind the desk. She put her head in her hands and began talking in a muffled tone, “Of course he likes you. Why wouldn’t he? You are beautiful and smart … and you are always so damn cheery.”

  Anna began laughing. “Sam, trust me on this one, Cam Myles and I can never be together in the way you are talking about. But I can see us having a friendship, kind of like brother and sister.” she said with a coy smile. Anna was never coy. Something was up.

  But Sam remained too focused on her own crumbling fantasy to inquire. “And why would he want me anyway? I have a crappy job with no future, and I have the world’s youngest commando on my hands,” she said with a huge sigh and lifted her head from her hands.

  Right on cue, Milla began throwing magazines around the makeshift waiting room.

  Anna lifted Milla into her arms. “I told you that your mama is silly. Any man with half a cerebro would be interested in her.”

  She turned to Sam. “So if you’re done selling yourself short, you said you needed to talk to me about something.”

  Sam took two deep breaths. She really didn’t want to hurt her feelings … even if she was about to steal her fake boyfriend. “You know how we are talking about crushes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if you have noticed, but Tim has sort of a crush on you.”

  Anna blushed. “He likes me that way?”

  Sam searched for some sign of disingenuity. But there was none. How could she not know? He practically dropped his life for her.

  “Yes, Anna, he likes you like that.”

  She continued looking perplexed. “He really sees me that way? Are you sure? Did he tell you?”

  “I’m his sister—he didn’t need to tell me. The question is; do you see him that way?”

  “I never really thought about it. I don’t really have time to have a boyfriend. I’m surprised he would see me that way.”

  Sam took another deep breath and slowly released it. “Anna, the reason I bring it up is because when Tim falls for someone he will go to the ends of the earth for them. And that’s why he’s putting all the company’s resources into this thing with your father. I know it’s important to you, but from the bottom line of this company, it’s not a very profitable use of time and resources.”

  Anna set Milla down and took a seat facing Sam’s desk. “It is a big deal … in fact it’s the biggest.”

  “I understand how much you want to find your father, but we need cases around here that make money. Finding your father is a favor to a friend. He is doing this for free.”

  “Sam, you know how we were just talking about Cam Myles?”

  “I vaguely remember the name coming up.”

  “We were talking last night in Nellie’s. And did you know he lost his father when he was real young, just like I did?”

  Sam turned impatient. “Of course I do. It was one of the biggest news stories in the last thirty years.”

  “Well, actually he didn’t,” Anna said.

  Chapter 24

  Anna handed a photo across the desk. “This is a picture of my father. It’s the only one I have ever seen. Take a good look at it.”

  Sam studied it, not believing what she was looking at. “Oh my God, Anna, your dad looks exactly like freaking’ Jack Myles!”

  “Freakin’ Jack Myles,” Milla repeated like a parrot.

  Anna took her picture back and secured it safely in her knapsack. “Correction, Sam—my father is Jack Myles. That is why Tim is working so hard on this case. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, so please don’t let him know I told you.”

  “You think Jack Myles is your father?” Sam repeated in disbelief. It didn’t make sense on any level. It had to be some con job—someone taking advantage of Anna’s blind trust.

  “Last year, a game was playing on one of the TVs at Nellie’s. There was a ceremony where they were dedicating a statue to Jack Myles. As a baseball fan, I’d heard of him, but had never seen what he looked like. We were always kept from any American news down in Cuba.”

  Light bulbs began going off for Sam. “So all those questions you asked me about …”

  “It was not about your infatuation with Cam, it was about me. I apologize for being deceptive, but it was the only way.”

  “Is that why you met with him last night? Does Cam Myles believe his father is alive?”

  “Last night was a coincidence—only Tim and I know ... and now you.”

  “What does Russia have to do with this? Tim used half our savings to go to there.”

  “My father used another alias—Alexander Kushka. In fact, it might be his real name. Tim traced him back to Russia.”

  “What did he find?”

  “That he allegedly committed suicide ten years ago. Just like Jack Myles died in a car crash. Just like my father died in a military conflict. The timing fits, and you should see when Tim puts all three of their pictures together … it’s quite eerie.”

  “You really think Jack Myles is your father?” Sam repeated again, still in a state of disbelief—not sure what to think at this point.

  “Freakin’ Jack Myles,” Milla shouted out, now running in circles.

  Sam stood and began to pace—her method to compose herself. It was a crazy idea, but not as crazy as it was five minutes ago. A professional baseball star could move freely without being questioned. Strange towns and strange people. And like Anna mentioned, Cuba would have been the ideal place for him to lay low after escaping America.

  But then she caught herself. It made
no sense. Jack Myles died almost thirty years ago! Someone would have figured it out by now, like the FBI or CIA, or some other important sounding agency with three letters. Not a med student and a struggling PI.

  Her thoughts turned to Tim. “What’s he doing in Arizona?”

  “Have you ever heard of Natasha Kushka, the tennis star?”

  “How could I help it, when all the guys at Nellie’s are gawking at her when she’s on TV?”

  “She is my sister, also. So Tim thought if he could talk to her, he might find a clue. She was the oldest of any of the children when he left.”

  Feeling lightheaded, Sam sat back down. “So did he … get to talk to her?”

  “Didn’t you see Tim on TV? She yelled at him at a press conference because she thought he was a tabloid reporter. But he called me later and said he got to meet with her, and she invited him to meet her in Las Vegas this weekend.”

  “Anna, I have a two-year-old, I don’t have time to eat, forget about watching TV,” Sam said, then thought for another moment. Things were starting to compute. “So according to what you’re telling me, Cam Myles is your brother and Natasha Kushka is your sister?”

  “Same father, different mothers. And don’t forget my other half-brother, Geoff Myles … who didn’t make a very good first impression, by the way.”

  Sam couldn’t shake the worry that had come over her. She wasn’t sure what Tim and Anna were onto, and she had her doubts about the Jack Myles theory, to say the least. But whatever they were chasing sounded dangerous and needed to be stopped. “What does Tim plan to do if he finds this guy he believes is Jack Myles?”

  “All I asked for is a meeting with him. I just want to ask him why he left us.”

  “Anna—it sounds like this guy has gone to great lengths to remain hidden. There must be a reason for it, which means he might be really dangerous. This has got to stop before someone gets hurt.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t say anything.”

  “Then you will talk him out of it. He’ll listen to you—he’s in love with you.”