Three Minutes to Midnight

by A. J Tata

  Mahegan was careful to avoid the streetlights as images of his mother flashed in his mind like in a photo slide show, her face appearing, then her smile and laughter at the beach, then her pensive, chewing-on-a-fingernail look as she studied his homework at the kitchen table. She was there in the water, holding his surfboard, and she was on the beach, taking pictures. She was cooking dinner, repairing a leaky faucet, and doing laundry, usually with that beautiful smile on her face. These weren’t chores; they were life. Sam Mahegan had been both mother and father most of the time. His father, while a good man, had rarely been home. His mother had silently pined for his father, but she had focused her abundant positive energy on Chayton, as she had always called him. In Frisco, Mahegan remembered, she had been known everywhere and loved by everyone.

  Maxton was different than what everyone had expected. While his parents had thought that they would quickly blend into the population in Robeson County, given their Native American status, the opposite happened. His father was pushed away on distant construction jobs around the state, while his mother was left to carve out a new niche in a new town. She was a beautiful woman, and good-looking women in small towns usually got noticed, which she did. That was when Mahegan started hearing the catcalls and the whistles as men from all walks of life chased after his mother. But mostly, it was the wealthy men in the town who wondered what man in his right mind would leave a woman like Sam Mahegan alone. They decided that she must have untended needs and desires and that they were the right people to quench her hidden thirst.

  Mahegan began a ritual of walking with his mother whenever he could, to protect her to the best of his ability. It was a tall order for a thirteen-year-old kid. They would meet after wrestling practice in the school parking lot. She would be coming from the elementary school, where she had found a substitute-teaching job; he would be coming from the gym showers, his hair still wet. They would sometimes eat in the Main Street diner, where businessmen in their suits and ties gave her long, hard stares. Mahegan guessed the diner’s business improved significantly, as he and his mother ate there a few nights a week. She was trying to meet people in the community. One night he ordered his usual cheeseburger and fries, while she ate a salad. A man came over and introduced himself, sliding right in the booth, next to Mahegan, so he could look at his mother directly.

  “Noticed y’all are new in town,” the man said. “Appreciate you taking up teaching at the school. Parents are already raving about you and your reading lessons. We’ve got a little barbecue going on this weekend we’d like to invite ya to. Here’s the address. No pressure. Just being friendly and all.”

  Young Chayton turned his head and sized up the man the way a boxer looked at his opponent before they touched gloves. The man wore a threadbare blue blazer over dungarees and a flannel shirt. Mahegan had seen him before. He was one of the ones who had come in after they had eaten in the restaurant a few times. Word had spread: a good-looking woman and her son were in the diner. His alarm bells were ringing loudly, and for the first time in his life, he spoke above his mother.

  “We have plans that day,” Mahegan said.

  “Well, young man, I haven’t even said what day the party is.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We have plans. Thank you kindly, sir.” Mahegan made eye contact with his mother and nodded, as if to say “I’ve got this.”

  “My son has asked me to help him with his schoolwork this weekend. And I’ve got chores to do, as well. You know how moving into a new town can be. We appreciate your kind invitation, but perhaps we could join your group another time.”

  Mahegan nodded again, as if that put an end to it. Expecting the man to leave their booth, Mahegan began to slide back to reclaim his spot in the middle. But the man didn’t move, and Mahegan bumped into him.

  “Pardon yourself, young man. Can’t you see I’m talking to the lady?”

  “This lady is my mother, and my father wouldn’t appreciate you talking to her like this,” Mahegan said. He looked at his mother again, communicating that he wanted this one.

  “Well, that’s part of the issue. None of us have seen a father. And what in the world is wrong with inviting newcomers to a party this weekend?”

  “You’re talking to my mother because she’s beautiful. You don’t care the first thing about us being newcomers. Now, please leave her alone.” His mother had taught him how to do this, how to stand up for himself.

  The man ignored him, as if he didn’t exist; he hadn’t heard him. He looked at Sam Mahegan and smirked. “You clearly have no idea who I am, young lady. If you want to work in this town, teach in this town, live in this town, I suggest you get this half-breed under control. We have protocols here—”

  “Chayton, we’re leaving,” she said, standing. She flipped her salad into the man’s face and followed it with her iced tea. She hurriedly pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her pocket and tossed it on the table.

  But Mahegan couldn’t get out of the tight booth without pushing the man out of his way, and he felt grown up enough to do it. As he pushed, he felt something hard on the man’s waist. It was a pistol, which the man had his hand on.

  “I own most of this town, and you have just made a terrible mistake, ma’am. A terrible mistake. I determine who gets money and who doesn’t. Who gets protection and who doesn’t. You should think about that. A terrible mistake . . .” Mahegan saw the man shake his head when he stopped talking and start leering at his mother. “But I will let you make it up to me.”

  “Please move so my son can come with me,” Sam Mahegan said.

  The man stood, brushing bits of food from his clothes. Wiping his forearm across his wet face, he turned toward Mahegan’s mother. “No man at home and you don’t want a man from town? You banging your son?”

  Mahegan was on his feet. It was the first time he hit a full-grown man. He unleashed a solid right cross as if he were executing a wrestling move, twisting his hip, following through, feeling the man’s unshaven face scrape across his knuckles, and watching his black eyes flutter, as if powered by a dying battery.

  And that was the first time he met James Gunther.

  When Mahegan looked up, his mother was aiming a snub-nosed revolver at the man’s face. “Come near me again and I will kill you,” she said. Turning to her son, she slid the weapon into her purse and commanded, “Let’s go.”

  Mahegan neared Ted the Shred’s town house. It was an end unit in a gated community. It was bigger than most houses he had visited, even bigger than General Savage’s quarters on Fort Bragg. He tucked aside the freshly stoked memories of Gunther, if only for the moment. Focusing on the task at hand, Mahegan slowed his pace and walked quietly through a wooded park to the back of the town house.

  It was a large, hulking brick beast with windows like giant eyes, which watched him move in the shadows. Grace had said that there was a sunken stairway to the basement, that the last step was actually hollow, and that Ted had always hidden a key in there. Mahegan found the last concrete step and pulled at its heavy overhanging lip, and sure enough, it popped up on hinges. He saw a few dead bugs surrounding a shiny gold key, which he inserted in the door. After letting himself in, he immediately went to enter the code for the alarm, which Grace had given him, but saw that it was off, which meant one of two things.

  Either Ted had not turned the alarm on the last time he left his house or someone was in the house and had disarmed the alarm. The basement was not a basement at all, but a bottom floor with a sports pub that included a wet bar, a foosball table, a pool table, an air hockey table, a dartboard, and full taps for beer, brand-name labels and all. The large-screen television was at least ten feet by ten feet. He saw a quiver of surfboards racked vertically in a homemade stand.

  Mahegan stood with his back to the door and listened. The house was quiet. It didn’t seem as though anyone was home, but it was three levels and big, so he couldn’t be sure. He silently moved through the bottom floor, checking the two full bathrooms and the gues
t bedroom adjacent to the sports pub. Certain the bottom floor was clear, he removed his pistol and ascended the oak tongue-and-groove stairs, staying on the balls of his feet to deaden the noise. At the top of the stairs was a door to the kitchen, which was three times as large as Grace’s but equally as organized. Grace might have had something to do with that. In the darkness Mahegan saw that everything was dress right, dress—in its place, squared away, and neat.

  He cleared to his left and found that the kitchen opened to a breakfast nook, which looked out over the lawn he had crossed to get to the “basement.” He rounded the corner into what appeared to be a home office, leading with the pistol, and in the dim light cast by the streetlamp, he saw a head leaning against the back of a chair.

  “You that big Indian they keep talking about?” It was a woman’s voice, one he had not heard before.

  He guessed. “Mrs. Throckmorton?”

  “The one and only,” she sighed, standing. “Well, certainly not the only, but the one. Call me Sharon.”

  Mahegan could see that she had been drinking.

  She slurred her speech as she balanced herself against the chair. “I heard my son was shot. They are blaming it on you. I assume the cops are looking for your ass. But I figure if you were the guy who did it, you would be long gone by now,” she said. She turned toward him. She was crying. “I loved my son. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “You lost a son. I lost a mother,” Mahegan said. “So, yes, I do understand part of what you are saying.”

  “They’re making you and Grace good for the whole thing. I came here to be with him. To just sit here, where we used to talk and laugh. And now he’s gone. Just like your mother, I guess.” Then, after a pause, “I’m sorry. That’s got to hurt.”

  As she stepped toward him, the dim light allowed him to see that Sharon Throckmorton was a beautiful woman. She stood about five feet nine and had striking red hair, which framed the most perfect face a plastic surgeon could create. But still, Mahegan saw natural beauty beneath the scalpel’s work. She had probably had the surgery because she could afford to. Who knew? Maybe it was the only avenue to fight against her husband’s peccadilloes.

  “I was with your son when he was shot, but I didn’t shoot him,” Mahegan said. “The men working for your husband did. I’m not sure if he knew anything about it or not.”

  “Well, I’m damn sure not going to put up with it anymore!” she shouted, brandishing a Taurus revolver. “Ted was all I had, the only one I cared about anymore! All the sex. The lies. The drugs. The whores. It’s all bullshit!”

  “Easy now, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me, you asshole. I could screw you for hours. I can compete in this world!” She pointed her gun at the floor to emphasize her point.

  Mahegan got it. Her husband’s affairs and sexual desires had driven her to believe she was competing in a sport, except the season was year-round. The younger players were always being groomed, and they graduated into the arena. A powerful man like Throckmorton wielded money the way a fisherman used a lure, to attract the biggest fish possible. But if it was a competition for her, it would be no different than any other sport, Mahegan thought. Players got older, and they retired. Except marriage wasn’t supposed to be like that. He hadn’t gotten the full picture as a child, but he knew his mother had loved his father dearly. Mahegan had learned enough from his parents to know the importance of family.

  “We’re not competing here, Mrs. Throckmorton. Nobody’s competing,” Mahegan said.

  “Who are you kidding? Hot body like you gets laid all the time. I already heard you were knocking on Grace. And you’re a man, to boot. You get better with age, apparently.” She sighed. Mahegan saw tears streaming down her cheeks, cutting a path through the makeup.

  Mahegan walked toward her and reached out his arms. As he stepped to her, he placed one hand on her wrist, locking down her hand with the Taurus, and another on her back. Then, pulling her close, he said, “It’s okay. Ted seemed like a good man. And he can still help us.”

  The Taurus dropped onto the Persian carpet with a dull thud, and the echo was soon overtaken by Sharon Throckmorton’s sobs. Twice Mahegan’s age, she cried like a baby into his chest, gripping his shirt with well-manicured fingernails and gulping for air every so often.

  After a few minutes, Ted’s mother went limp. He picked her up and cradled her in his arms, then laid her on the sofa, her red hair fanning out like exotic coral on the white pillow. Tears continued to race down her face, and Mahegan felt intensely sad for her. While Mahegan didn’t have children, at one time he had had a mother, whom he had lost in a similar fashion—to violence. What made the situation worse was that events were unfolding rapidly, which would only heighten her pain when she realized the full extent of her husband’s complicity.

  Mahegan wished he could do something that would reduce her feelings of loss. But he knew from his own past that nobody could do that. Violence had defined his life, he realized, from the moment he’d thrown three older kids in the river when he was thirteen to this very moment. No matter how hard he had tried to avoid it, his world had been a kinetic tornado. Gunther in the diner. Fights in the juvenile system after killing two of his mother’s attackers. Then the military, where he had excelled because of his intellect and strength. Yet, somehow, he had not lost the compassion his mother had cultivated in him through her love.

  And so he gave Mrs. Sharon Throckmorton a moment to mourn her son and the lifestyle she had lost. Mahegan pocketed the Taurus and sat in a leather chair at a small desk beneath an HD television hanging on the wall. To his back was a sliding glass door that led to an overhanging deck that looked out onto the wooded park. He stood, slid the curtain closed, and sat down again.

  His hand bumped a remote-control computer mouse that was sitting alone on the desk. Its silver body and red LED button gave it a futuristic appearance. The HD television screen blinked and came to life with a reel of a surfer dropping down the face of an overhead wave, tucking into the pocket, and letting the lip cover him until he was finally spit out of the tube in a blast of spray as the wave crashed into the ocean.

  The ten-second video was on a loop and replayed continuously, like a giant screen saver. Mahegan realized on the third loop that the surfer was Ted, who was actually shredding what was a nice barrel of a wave. In the background he recognized Crystal Pier in Wrightsville Beach. Mahegan had worked on a deep-sea fishing boat out of Wrightsville Beach more than a year ago and knew the small tourist village. He saw from the GoPro video that the pier was new, its wood still a light tan, the color of sand. The video could be as new as last week or from five years before, when the new pier was completed after a hurricane had wiped out the old one.

  “What’s that?” Sharon asked.

  Mahegan turned and saw that she was sitting upright, running a hand over her skirt.

  “Just a screen saver, I think,” Mahegan said.

  Sharon stared at it. “That’s from two weeks ago. He was proud of that. He rarely got covered up at Wrightsville.” She wiped at both of her cheeks, stood, and walked toward Mahegan. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Lots to be sorry about,” she said, sitting in a chair opposite him.

  “Let’s work in the other direction. Let’s try to find something to be thankful for,” Mahegan said.

  “I already offered that up to you, and you shot me down.” Sharon laughed a tinny, hollow laugh, as if she might be a little crazy. Mahegan realized she was embarrassed.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, but I don’t go where I don’t need to be. Plus, I’ve got a mission to complete, and I think you could help me.”

  “Help you? How?” She leaned back in her chair, interested.

  “I know who shot your son. I can give you a measure of . . . justice.” He thought about that word. Revenge was too simple. The complicated emotions that washed over him every day were more than that. Revenge was about the
avenger. Justice was about righting a wrong, bringing order to the universe, and setting things straight.

  “You said it was someone who worked for Brand?”

  “That’s right. What do you know about these EB-Five folks?”

  “Oh, Lord, don’t get me started on that. All these buff nineteen- and twenty-year-old chicks with those men. Once I saw Brand had his own harem, I freaked. He didn’t have just one mistress. He was like an Arabian king.”

  “To what end, though? Think about that, can you?”

  “I don’t need to think about it. It’s all about getting that natural gas before anyone else does.”

  Mahegan nodded. It was more than that, he knew. “Did you believe Ted to be a good man?” he asked. “At the end of the day, was he the man you raised him to be?”

  “He was,” she said. Sharon paused, looked at Mahegan. “He tried his best to be a prick like his dad, but he was too much like me. Kindhearted. In the end, though, Brand corrupted him and me. Sex, drugs, money, you name it. Grace even came to me crying once that Ted had hit her. I thought, ‘No way,’ but she showed me the bruises. I love Grace, and I believed her. She’s kind and good-hearted. But Brand had beaten me, and Ted had to be like his dad, I guess. When I came over here to talk to Ted, I found him in the bathroom, crying and puking his guts out. He kept saying, ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ So, it happened, for sure. How someone can actually make you a different person than what you know yourself to be . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head solemnly.

  “What happened the night of the party? Why were you with Pete Cassidy?”

  Sharon looked away, then down at the Persian carpet. “How do you know about that?”

  “I just know,” Mahegan said. He wasn’t going to turn on Grace or on Nathan from next door.

  “Brand invited him over. He had been working some kind of small deal with the guy. He was a banker, a nobody, but someone Brand apparently had met somewhere. It might’ve even been LinkedIn. Knew his wife was a fracking expert. Anyway, he wined and dined him and brought him home that night, drunk. Meanwhile, Jimmy shows up with a van full of nineteen-year-old Russian and Serbian girls and some of his buddies. Brand disappears—I presume with one of the hotties—so I said, ‘Screw it. This guy’s drunk and hasn’t been laid in a year. How bad could it be?’”