The Father's Son
COPYRIGHT © PETER MCPHIE, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Peter McPhie.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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PUBLISHER: PETER MCPHIE
CONTACT: petermcphie.com
OR: petermcphie@hotmail.com
THE FATHER’S SON/Peter McPhie—1st edition
ISBN 978-0-9952877-4-7 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9952877-5-4 (e-book)
VISIT : https://petermcphie.com
FOR HELGA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
1961
It had been dark for hours, an October rain lightly falling, when Albert Macky hurried up the steps of the Hotel Continental, stopping under the entrance overhang to take a final drag. Macky was thirty-three, short and slight, and plain of face. He didn’t stand out in even a small crowd, which, in his line of work, was an asset. For he was a master pickpocket, a virtuoso of the bump, the buzz, the two-fingered lift, the palm dip, the thumb hitch.
But as talented as he was, he was on the lam. If he was ever arrested he’d be returned to Buffalo to prison, and he never wanted to do time again. More beatings would kill him.
With satisfaction he noted the expensive cars parked nose to tail all down the street, the rain lightly drumming the roofs, shiny under the streetlights. He tossed his cigarette and entered the hotel, crossed the chandeliered lobby and followed the long marble corridors to the Starlight Room, the hotel’s glitzy ballroom.
There was no name-check attendant, no watchful doorman. The room was low-lit, dusky. He could see it was a full house, five hundred of Philadelphia’s business elite in well-cut suits and stylish gowns. The staff was preoccupied in filling endless wine glasses, the servers circulating silver platters of smoked salmon. A small orchestra backed a soulful black woman who caressed the lyrics of Etta James’s latest song, ‘At Last’. The dance floor was crowded with couples swaying in close embrace.
Macky wore a black suit like everyone else so he blended. He was unremarkable, uninteresting. If any incident should occur, he wanted very much to be unremembered.
He scanned the crowd as he walked, a shrewd observer, careful to note the silent communications of the face, the eyes, the hands, reading attention level and mood. Now, with hours of food and drink behind, most were less than alert.
Near him a white-haired man and his wife were distressed by a sniping argument between a young couple they were with, the young wife protesting to her husband, her finger raised. Macky made his move, an imperceptible nudge faster than a blink, and the older man’s slim wallet slipped invisibly into Macky’s pocket. He removed the bills by feel as he moved on. He would discard the wallet once out of the room.
Thirty feet away in a black dress stood a tall, statuesque blonde, eyes bright, a diamond choker on her slim neck. She was deeply attracted to the man she was with, giving him delicious smiles, smoothly insinuating her body forward. The man was focused on her, his back to Macky, a lucrative opportunity.
Watching her, Macky moved to within four feet, standing behind him. The orchestra finished the song and the ambient sounds suddenly quieted. He caught the man’s voice clearly, uttering comment on the singer’s performance.
The man’s voice had a rich tone—distinctive, memorable—and disturbingly familiar.
Macky didn’t know anyone in Philadelphia, but a warning bell began to clang. He moved steps away and looked back. The woman put a sensuous finger to the man’s lips and in mock avoidance he turned his head.
A pang of fear drove through Macky and he looked away, his heart racing. The man’s bearing, his face, his eyes as they shifted past Macky, all struck a chord.
He chanced another look. They had moved, eclipsed by the crowd. As very uneasy as he was, a potent curiosity was building.
He threaded his way until he spotted them. Again the man presented a rear profile, shorter than the woman, but his wide shoulders expressed strength. That, too, seemed familiar. He worked his way closer, this time from the other side to see his face. The man was regarding the woman intensely, listening to her speak. He didn’t recognize him exactly, yet somehow he was insistently familiar, that face that communicated intelligence, or more precisely shrewdness and composure, a man used to wielding unquestioned authority.
Suddenly it all fit.
Like taking a blow to the stomach, Macky shuddered, struggling with disbelief. But there was no mistake; he had witnessed a terrible magic. The man had risen from the dead.
Macky saw him put his mouth to her ear for several moments then walk away, swallowed in the crowd. Macky felt himself absorbed by the shock and stood as if cemented to the floor, comprehending with a deepening fear that this was a man who, above all else, did not want to be recognized. Ever.
He watched the woman who now stood alone, a graceful air about her, her eyes casually taking in the room. A minute passed. She began to walk, somewhat in his direction, her face calm and beautiful. She passed by him, ten feet away, but then unaccountably stopped. Her back was to him. With deliberation she turned slowly, her eyes lighting directly onto his and staying, her gaze a laser.
The sickening realization flooded him—he’d been discovered, and now suckered.
His eyes darted about the room as he hurried for the exit. He rushed along the corridors and through the lobby, straight-arming one of the wide front doors and bounding down the wet front steps, glancing behind.
He hit the sidewalk in a sprint, ran a half block, turned into a narrow dark lane between tall buildings and ran to its end. He looked back, breathing hard, grimacing from the exertion, too many cigarettes.
The rain had subsided, a light patter now. He kept glancing behind as he trotted down a dimly-lit street, stately old houses with deep yards, big trees, thinking that if he were pursued he could find concealment in one of those yards. A car slowed and passed him, its tires sounding on the rain-slicked asphalt.
A block ahead a black Thunderbird turned onto the street in his direction, its lights bright. It traveled a quarter of the block then slowed and pulled to the curb, the engine running.
Watching the car warily, Macky crossed the street to the other sidewalk. The driver’s door opened and a tall man stepped out, lifting his coat collar against the spitting rain. The man crossed the street half way but stopped, calling back to the car, “What? Yes, it’s in the trunk.”
Macky relaxed a little, walking on as the man went back to the car and opened the trunk, retrieving a shoe box. Macky watched him close the trunk, watched him hurry across the street and suddenly look up at Macky as if just registering him coming along the sidewalk.
Macky glanced to the car. There was no one inside! The man was approaching quickly, the shoebox raised, pointed.
Macky turned and ran. Two quick shots came from a silenced pistol, the second shot catching him and he fell to the gutter, clutching his side. The man came up and held the shoebox close to Macky’s chest. Macky’s eyes widened with horror. “No.”
The guttural sound of a souped-up car suddenly erupted from two blocks down as it turned onto the street, its lights sweeping. The man glanced to it, then fired into Macky’s chest and his head slumped. The man pocketed the gun and grabbed Macky by the feet, dragging him toward his car as he watched the lights of the oncoming car, Macky’s h
ead bumping along the asphalt.
The car came quickly, its headlights lighting up the whole scene. It braked to a screeching sideways stop just twenty yards away. All four windows were down and teenagers gawked from each one. “Take a picture with the instamatic,” one yelled.
The man heard it and dropped Macky’s feet. A picture is harder to beat than an eyewitness. He leaped into his car and its engine roared, the tires squealing, the car fish-tailing a whole block, then gone.
Macky lay motionless in the running gutter, in and out of consciousness, sinking in a black pool from which he couldn’t surface. The sound of sirens now penetrated the pool, getting louder, stirring deep fears. Sirens had never meant anything to him but bad luck.
CHAPTER TWO
THE YELLOW SCHOOL bus slowed to a creaking halt on the empty country road and the front door swung open. The lone remaining passenger, seven-year-old Andrew Locke, came down the two steps and jumped off, his knapsack bouncing on his back. He watched the bus lurch away in a grinding of gears and lifting dust.
Surrounding him were vast fields, the October wind rustling the rows of empty corn stalks. The nearest neighbor, the one who farmed the land, was a half mile away.
He walked the long gravel lane leading to his small house and thought of the birdfeeder he and his father would make, the picture-book of instructions tucked in the knapsack. His teacher said the almanac predicted a hard winter so the winter birds were going to need help.
He heard a faraway throb of protesting engine and looked to the sky and watched an open-cockpit biplane struggling in the distance, its wings unsteady, its progress slow. He knew the biplane, a neighbor down the road who had a grass runway. His eyes followed it until it was swallowed in bulky clouds, but in his mind he still saw it, saw the brown leather helmet, the snug goggles, the determination in the pilot’s face.
The engine’s drone finally faded to silence.
He climbed the back porch steps and knew with confidence that one day he would be a pilot and fly with determination through clouds in a gray sky.
He took a key from his pocket. He had attached it to one of his belt loops with a string so no one could ever take it and make a wax impression like he had seen in a comic.
He was glad to be able to come home after school today and not go to the sitter’s. His father was home days because he was working nights. But he would still be asleep and so the door would be locked. He turned the key until he heard the bolt slide free and pushed the door open.
In the mud room he un-slung his knapsack and hung it on a hook. On another hook was his cowboy gun belt with a silver revolver in the holster. He lifted the gun belt and strapped it onto his waist.
He swaggered into the kitchen and walked toward the fridge.
He stopped dead in mid stride and spun around, the revolver leaping into his hand. He pointed it straight at the wall and his eyes narrowed. “So there’s two of you,” he said in his best drawl. A small smile crept on his lips. “Well there’s two of me, too. Behind those rocks is my dad. Maybe you’ve heard of him—Detective Paul Locke.” He nodded slowly, letting the point sink in. “That’s right. Best shot in the territory. So just lay down your guns and back away, real slow.”
With flair he holstered the revolver. He took a glass from the cupboard, opened the fridge, and poured a glass of milk. He stood in the middle of the kitchen taking a slow drink as he watched a narrow shaft of sunlight that reached almost to the floor. His father had called them sunbeams. He had seen them in the Cathedral in Philadelphia at his mother’s funeral stretching from the highest stained-glass windows down to the shiny marble aisle. He wondered if angels really did glide down sunbeams to take a mother when she died.
He took another sip.
He heard a sound, faint, then again, the pitch higher. It was the back door, the yaw of the hinges. Someone was opening the door but trying to be very quiet about it.
He stood perfectly still, straining to listen, staring toward the mudroom, the glass tight in his grip. His heart quickened. No one except his father and he ever came in by that door. His father would have given it a hearty push, but all he heard was a creeping slowness.
A different pitch now, ever so gentle. Someone was in the mudroom carefully closing the door. Anyone entering there had to pass through the kitchen. He found he couldn’t move, his legs numb and unconnected. He opened his mouth to call out but his throat was tight and no sound came.
Then he saw them.
He dropped the glass and it smashed on the wood floor.
Two men as big as bears, each with a black pistol in black-gloved hands. They walked into the kitchen looking at him, their eyes steady and cold.
He heard his father’s movements upstairs, heard his father’s voice, “Andrew?” He heard his father coming down the stairs, calling again, “Andrew, what was that?”
The men made no move, their faces showing not the least fear even though his father was coming. He couldn’t seem to utter a sound. His father was in the hall, but still he couldn’t move.
His father entered the kitchen and saw them. Andrew stumbled to him and grabbed him around the waist. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t seem to cry.
Neither of the gunmen took their eyes from his father. One spoke flatly. “Detective Paul Locke?”
He heard his father take a deep breath, a terrible sigh. His father nodded.
“Anyone else here?”
His father shook his head slowly. “No.”
“Anyone expected?”
He shook his head again.
The gunman assessed him a moment then nodded to the other gunman who went to the window and made an ‘all-clear’ sign. The first gunman stepped to the phone on the corner table and severed its cord with a quick knife stroke.
Shortly the back door opened. A man appeared dressed in a full length black coat, his head and face concealed in the frightening black hood of an executioner. Only his dark eyes could be seen looking out from the two holes in the black hood.
He was shorter than the gunmen and broad shouldered and walked with calm. He came close to his father and the eyes carefully examined him, deeply curious.
“Have them put the guns away,” his father said quietly. “They’re not necessary.”
“No, Mr. Locke. I live by caution. I take no unnecessary risk. More correctly, I eliminate risk.” The voice was relaxed, confident.
The hooded man walked down the hall and paused at the closed French doors to the living room. He pushed them open and signaled all to follow.
Andrew and his father entered the living room, the gunmen remaining in the hall. Andrew clutched his father and watched the hooded man who was studying a framed family portrait sitting on a cabinet, a picture taken at the county fair—his father, and Andrew age five, each in old homespun clothing, each smoking a corncob pipe. Seated between them was Andrew’s young mother in flowing period dress, a radiant beauty with long dark hair smiling at the camera.
The hooded man turned to his father. “I was vulnerable last night.” The man’s eyes searched his father’s. “We thought he was dead, two bullets up close. He lived a little too long. And now I’m put in this position.”
Andrew buried his face in his father’s waist. His father slowly knelt and hugged him closely.
Andrew whispered, “What are you going to do, Dad?” He could feel his father trembling as he hugged him. But he knew it was not fear because his father feared no one and no thing. It was the trembling he had felt when they hugged at his mother’s funeral.
“You’re a fine, fine son, Andrew,” his father whispered. “I love you so much.”
He felt the stroke of his father’s hand on his head.
He looked at his father and began to sob. “No, Dad. What are they going to do?” He squeezed his father tighter, never taking his eyes from his father’s.
His father stood and released the hug and held him at arm’s length. He locked his eyes on Andrew and spoke firmly, calmly. “You must go to your room. The sitter will come for you later. Do as I say, Andrew.”
Andrew’s tears streamed. He turned and looked at the hooded man’s eyes in the two holes in the hood, holding the man’s gaze until his father led him to the hall and released his hand. “Do as I say, son.”
Andrew could see from the intensity in his father’s face that he must do as he was told.