Jo-el

Chapter 44 MAGGIE

I nursed a single malt scotch at the Italian restaurant waiting for Maggie. The Russian was on my mind and it doesn’t hurt to change things up from time to time. The restaurant was modern, known for its eclectic Italian dishes, small potions but exquisite. For a Monday it was busy, most tables already full. I was seated in a booth, surrounded by etched glass, that was ample for two people and cozy for four. I had decided to keep quiet for the time being about my Alta-ego with Maggie, the less she knew the less, hopefully, she would worry. Once the world was a safer place, I’d confess.

I saw her enter the restaurant and speak to the hostess. She was wearing designer jeans and a dark green sweater, her hair looked ruffled, her face intense. She found me but there was no joy on her face as she marched to my table.

“What the fuck is going on, Dad?” she hadn’t even sat down. No ‘kiss-hello’ or ‘how are you doing?’ I was taken off guard. She slid into the seat opposite and waved at the waitress, who was close by, “vodka martini” she barked with a wave of her hand. She flashed her driver’s license at the girl, who left without giving it a glance.

“It’s not her fault, sweetie,” I said.

Maggie froze and glared at me, “no, it’s yours, isn’t it?”

Oh crap! what on earth does she know? I took a larger than normal swig of my beverage and delighted in the burn in my throat.

“What do you know, Maggie?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“That’s the problem really, nothing. But I know something. I mean why the fuck would Sean and I be whisked off to fucking CIA headquarters without a damn word. Have you any idea how scared I was? I shook the whole bloody way there.” Her drink came, she took a deep gulp.

“Maybe a little quieter, sweetie,” I looked around the table, but no one seemed to be paying us any attention.

Maggie leaned forward, then stopped what was on her lips, she sat back again and viewed me up and down. Then she gulped another mouthful of her vodka martini. “It’s you!” she blurted out, her eyes widened with her mother’s sparkle. She looked a lot like Mary, reminded me of the time when Mary and I dated in Ireland. It made my heart sing just looking at her, allowing me to reminisce. “You’re him!” she now searched around the restaurant to see if anybody was listening. “You’re that freak, Jo-el, or whatever he calls himself.”

I was shocked. How could she recognize me so easily? What do I tell her now? I hated lying and telling my daughter an untruth was simply abhorrent to me.

I nodded, but kept my face straight.

Maggie sat back in her chair and emptied the cocktail, ungracefully. She searched for the waitress to order another.

“You’re different,” she said, “you look younger, leaner, more hair. How did you do that?”

I bowed my head. “I’m sorry, sweetie, truly I am. I wouldn’t wish on you and Sean what happened. They just wanted me. They weren’t going to hurt you.”

“They put us in a cage, Dad. Bars on every side, bars on the fucking ceiling for Christ-sake. It was like being Hannibal Lecter. I couldn’t believe it. The toilet was a hole in the ground, I had to go in front of Sean, it was disgusting.” I could see tears well up in her eyes. I reached out with my hand to touch her, but she pulled away.

“It was a mistake, Maggie. They were wrong about me, they’ve changed their minds, it won’t happen again. I’ll protect you.”

“Where were you, then, why didn’t you stop them if you’re so damn powerful?”

“It was too dangerous for you and Sean.” I left it at that.

Maggie’s second drink arrived and I ordered another. She had calmed down somewhat and was sipping her drink, now. She was examining me; she didn’t know if the man across the table from her was her father or a freak. The quiet interlude between us was healing the rift, I could see excitement come into her eyes. She was turning over various scenarios in her mind. Her father was Jo-el. Everybody on the planet wanted to meet him and here he was facing me. I was related to him, I had access to this weird being.

“How?” she asked.

“It’s a long story, Maggie.”

“Can you tell me?” She glanced around the crowded restaurant.

“It might be better if we were alone.”

Now she had changed, no more the father who had caused her so much fright and humiliation. Now the most famous individual of the moment. Her anticipation put a red glow on her cheeks, there was suddenly mischief in her mannerism. Her father was something special and she had him to herself. It was like meeting a pop superstar. Our waitress came and we ordered. I told her we could talk about it later.

“Have you spoken to Sean?” I asked.

“No, well, we did text a couple of times.”

“Is he okay?”

“Same as me, I guess, but I don’t think he suspects who you are.”

“Why not, you must have spoken on the way back?”

“Hardly, it was seeing you, Dad. You’re different.”

“I need to see him.”

She nodded.

“I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt.” She stopped eating and looked up.

“Why?”

“They trashed the house.”

“Damn! Right, I should have guessed. What are you doing?”

“Cleaning crew going in tomorrow. They even disassembled parts of my motorcycles.”

“Bet that pissed you off?”

“Bloody right.”

We made small talk, then walked over to the Hyatt and went up to my suite. Maggie was impressed.

“Splashing out, eh! Not like you, Dad?”

“Another story.”

She plonked herself down on the sofa where Sally had been, then looked at me expectantly. “Do the change thing! Just to prove it.”

I changed into Jo-el with the wings.

“Amazing,” her eyes were beaming, she’d forgotten all the unpleasantness of our first moments. “You can change your face, you can be anybody, how does that work?”

“It’s a hologram, just like the clothes, they’re not really there.”

She came over and touched my face, poking her finger at my cheek to see if her finger passed through the holographic image. But it was so thin, so she couldn’t see it.

“So, are you going to tell me, or what?”

“Maybe I should show you something else.”

“Whatever!”

“It’s hard to know where to start. Let’s go have some fun.”

Maggie was excited, like the little girl I remembered on her first trip to Disneyland. “Where would you like to go?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?”

It was like seeing a kid with a new toy, her face was alive. “You’re kidding?”

I shook my head and waited. “Oh, Europe is out, middle of the night there.”

“What? We’re going to fly somewhere?”

“Sort of.”

“Dad, tell me,” she begged.

“How about Hawaii? Waikiki Beach. It’s early evening there, we could have an ice-cream.”

“We’re going to fly three thousand miles for an ice-cream? How long will that take?”

I asked Sally what the temperature was in Hawaii, she said seventy-five degrees, perfect. “Take your sweater off, Maggie.” She did what I asked. I changed back to Dave Murphy in light slacks and a golf-shirt.

“Man, I’d love to be able to do that.” Maggie said.

“Hold my hand.”

“Bit weird, Dad?” Maggie was confused.

“Something I didn’t say on CNN earlier. I can travel anywhere in the world at almost the speed of light.”

Maggie yanked her hand from mine and stepped away. She stared at me incredulously. “You’re joking? No way.”

I nodded and reached to hold her hand again. “We need to be touching. You won’t feel anything, just maybe a little disorientation when we arrive.”

“You weren’t joking, were you? I don’t believe this.”

“Let me find a spot out of sight, okay. Ready?”

She bobbed her head once and I bounced us to a small park near Honolulu Zoo. The air was warm and the sun bright, a light breeze blew in from the sea. Maggie help my hand and stood still, with her mouth gapping wide open.

“Oh my God! I don’t believe it.” She looked around, there were local Hawaiian people along a pathway and towards the zoo.

“Come on, let’s get an ice-cream.” I pulled her out of her trance. We walked along Waikiki beach, watching the giant waves break on the sand, the surfers skimming the clear blue ocean. Maggie kept spouting expletives. I was taking my daughter on a trip and she was in awe. Every father’s dream. I’d jumped back in time to a period, long gone, that I had truly adored, when my children looked up to me and held my hand tightly. When an ice-cream or a new toy was enough for me to be the best dad in the world. My heart beat strongly and I savored this moment, I was as happy as I’d been for a long, long time.

We bought Ice-cream and sat on a wall watching the sun slowly set on the western horizon. I told Maggie the whole story, up to the pending disaster. I fought with myself if I should go that far. She believed me, everything. She said, how could she not believe me, we were in Hawaii, we traveled there in one second. Then I could see a frown appear on her forehead.

“Why Dad? If these aliens have been watching us for so long, why now?”

“The last thing I haven’t told you yet. I haven’t told anyone else, either. You would be the first to know. I was keeping it until I thought the people of the world could accept it and believe me.”

I had her complete attention. “What, Dad? What could be anymore nuts than all the stuff you’ve said?”

“Jo-el,” Sally voice blared in my ear. “That Russian billionaire has just found out about Pippa.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He has a crew in DC, he just instructed them to abduct her.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, max.”

“Okay.”

“Dad, what’s up?”

“Small problem, we need to go.”

“What about the last thing you were going to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you later, really. Come-on, we have to find somewhere out of sight.”

I almost dragged Maggie away from the beach to a hotel close by. We found an empty corridor, I grabbed her arm and we bounced back to my hotel suite in San Francisco.

“You better go home now, sweetie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, I’ve got to go, life on the line.”

“Jo-el, I can take care of it.”

Of course, I’m not thinking. Maggie was looking at me, she was about to say something, but I raised my hand.

“You’re just going to kill them!” I asked.

“Yes!” Of course, that’s what I do.

I had panicked. “Okay, Sally, sure, do it.” I said it out loud.

Maggie was confused. “Who were you talking to?”

“My computer, I call it Sally.”

“Why?”

“Hang-on!” I said to Maggie, she saw I was absorbed. I pulled out the disc-monitor and threw it in the air. “Put it on the monitor, Sally.”

A Three-D image of three men exiting a car in darkness appeared. It was raining, the men were wearing heavy overcoats, their faces hidden by baseball caps. Two of the men had their right hands tucked deep in side-pockets, the other had his hand tucked under his overcoat. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to understand what they were carrying. The street in view was empty, nothing moved. I recognized Pippa’s building. Maggie stood by me watching.

“What the hell is happening, Dad? They’re carrying!”

“Wait Maggie, just watch.”

The first man reached the front door and hit it hard with his right foot, it crashed open. They rushed in. “Sally, do it!” I shouted. But nothing happened. Then the Three-D video flickered and came back on, I’d never seen that before. The men were taking the back-stairs, Pippa’s apartment was on the third floor. “Sally!” I shouted. The video went off. Shit!

“Sally, what the hell is going on?” I started pacing around the room. But Sally didn’t answer. Shit! I was blind, I felt naked, I was sweating. I imagined the scene, then I calmed down, even if they got her I could find them. Maggie had returned to the sofa. She sat with her hands in her lap leaning forward, watching her father stress out.

Then the video came on again. The men were lying haphazardly in the emergency stairwell of the apartment building. They weren’t moving.

“Is it done?” I asked the air.

“Yes, Jo-el. They are all dead.”

I breathed easier, I thought of Pippa and Billy. “We need to inform the authorities.” I said.

“I’ll do it.”

“What went wrong, Sally?”

“What’s going on?” Maggie asked.

“Maybe we should talk when Maggie leaves?” I heard Sally in my ear.

“You killed those guys, Dad! How did you do that? You can’t do that. I’m a police officer.”

I looked at her, my mind all over the place. My little girl. I’d just bought you ice-cream in Hawaii, on the beach, we held hands. My daughter the police officer, trained to uphold the law.

I sat on the sofa next to her and took her hands in mine. “I’ve told you about what happened to me, Maggie. You know my plan is to eliminate evil around the world as best as I can, to crush the criminal class. I’ll tell you why in a minute.” I bowed my head and told her about Yerchenkov and his billionaire friend. “Sally, informed me that Yerchenkov‘s friend had a team of thugs in DC, they were planning to abduct Pippa Moran, she’s a CIA agent who I met a few days ago. She knows a lot about me. She knows I’m Dave Murphy. Somehow they must have found out and they planned to use her to get to me.”

“So you killed them. Dad, damn, you can’t do that? That’s so illegal, I don’t know where to start. There’s a thing called due process in the States. You can’t take the law into your own hands just because you want to.”

Then I saw her face contort, wrinkles line her brow, her mouth drop open. She stood up and stepped away from me. I knew what she’d just figured out, what I didn’t know was how she would react.

She was at the window, as far from me as she could get in the suite. She turned and stared at me, the daughterly love had vanished, she had fear written across her face. “I’m at risk, aren’t I? If you try eliminating all the criminals around the world, they’ll come after me. And Sean, too. You must tell him. I’m not safe. Oh my God! They’ll do anything to get you and there’s people who know who you really are. Every criminal in the world will be your enemy and there are some nasty people out there. They have to kill you. They will band together to find you. Oh, my God!” she paused, then said. “My life is over.”

I went over to hold her in my arms.

“Don’t touch me,” she shook her arm as if I had a disease and moved away from me.

“I can protect you, Maggie.” But that wasn’t where her head was at. It was the fear, always looking over your shoulder, how could she continue to live the life she’d chosen with Adam? “Maggie, you need to hear why? Let me explain. But she wasn’t listening, she was close to the door. She didn’t look at me as she left.”

I poured myself a drink and sat alone staring at the far wall, seeing nothing. Around and around my mind wandered, over and over the same crazy issue. I couldn’t shake it away. Maggie and Sean. How small our worlds are in the scheme of the things? How petty our problems? Yet to each of us our problems are like the tallest mountains to climb. To us, insurmountable.