CHAPTER 26

Marcus learned that Allen and Loren had two children. Allen described Charlie as the typical rebellious seventeen-year-old and their daughter, Amy, as well on her way to becoming a fully-fledged drama queen.

Upon hearing the situation, Charlie shook his head in disgust. “What are you talking about, Dad? It’s almost midnight and you wake us for some crazy conspiracy theory. You’ve been listening to that Coast to Coast show too much. You think everything’s a conspiracy.”

Allen seemed to regard his son with annoyance for his naivety and lack of imagination and said, “That’s because everything is. No time to discuss this as a committee. I’m the dad, and if I say that we’re all getting up in the middle of the night to go dig up Jimmy Hoffa, then by God that’s what we’re going to do. And as long as you live under my roof, you had damn well better be there next to me with a shovel and rubber boots.”

“Fine,” Charlie said as he stormed from the room, “We’ll do whatever you want—no matter how stupid it is.”

Allen rolled his eyes. “That’s the spirit, son.” Allen turned to Marcus and said, “He’ll be a great man someday…if I don’t kill him first.”

Marcus smiled. He liked Allen more every minute he was around him. Allen didn’t pull his punches, and he respected that.

“It’s a tough age,” he said. “Looking back, I caused my aunt a lot of unnecessary grief for no other reason than to prove that I was a man. Now, I realize that nothing I did was very manly. Worst of all, I don’t think I ever really apologized for any of it.”

Allen patted him on the arm. “Trust me, son, you didn’t have to. She knew the man that you’d become, and it made it all worthwhile. I know the same thing with Charlie. It’s all just part of growing up. I guess it just gets those primal instincts in me going, and I don’t like anyone threatening my alpha dog status. Anyway, do we have any kind of plan here?”

“To be perfectly honest, all I’ve been doing is rolling with the punches. Beyond escaping with my life, I don’t have much of a plan. For someone to operate like this without any repercussions for such a long period of time, it means that the Sheriff is well connected somewhere. And there’s no telling how high this might go. I’m pretty confident that the President isn’t involved, but I don’t think he gives appointments to ex-cops and retired English teachers.”

“You never know. Maybe he could squeeze us in for a luncheon between the Prime Minister of England and the Ambassador of Kazakhstan?”

Loren walked into the room, frowning. “You could be a little more respectful to your son, old man. After all, he only acts that way because he inherited your bad attitude.”

Allen’s mouth hung open in shock. “He started it…old woman. But don’t worry about that, he’ll get over it. We’ve got more important things to discuss, and you’re interrupting. Marcus and I were just trying to determine what we’re going to do…”

“Why don’t we just go to the FBI office in San Antonio and get their help?” Loren said.

Marcus nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking that I go to the FBI, and you guys check into a hotel and wait for a call from me that everything’s okay. If you don’t hear from me after a certain amount of time, then you go to the papers or the TV news—or both. But if I go into the FBI building in broad daylight and make sure that I’m seen and as many people as possible hear my story, it’s gonna make it hard for anybody to cover it up—even if there are people there playing for the other team.”

Allen took a deep breath. “That’s about the only choice that we have, but never underestimate people’s capacity to look the other way. We live in a society governed by the Church of the Almighty Dollar, built upon the foundations of man’s greed and his never-ceasing bloodlust for power. It is a dark age in which we find ourselves; a time where doing what’s popular has become what’s right and doing what’s right has become very unpopular. I sometimes envy the days of Genghis Khan and Napoleon. At least their wars for power were fought out in the open. Now, we face a quiet war, and as you said Marcus, we ‘roll with the punches.’ That’s all any of us seem to do these days.”

Allen shook his head while wringing his hands together. “We destroy without remorse. We kill without mercy. And in this age of progress, the ideas of justice, compassion, and goodwill toward men have become outdated and forgotten concepts. Worst of all, fewer and fewer people are asking questions…about life, purpose, everything. We have become complacent and apathetic, and we all see the problems, but no one tries to do anything about them. We just keep our heads down and roll with the punches.”

Marcus nodded, turned toward Loren, and said, “He’s one of those glass is half empty kind of guys, isn’t he?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve listened to this for the past thirty years. I keep telling him that, if things are so bad, he should run for President and do something about it. But does he do anything? No, he just sits on his fat ass, bitching.”

“I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,” Allen said.

“Quoting Shakespeare to me, huh. Couldn’t even formulate an original comeback. And isn’t it ironic that you would quote a line from a play entitled Much Ado About Nothing?'

“What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” Allen said, quoting another line from Shakespeare.

“There you go again, letting someone else write your material.”

Marcus just sat there and smiled at the exchange. Despite the hardships he had endured, there wasn’t anything in the world that could keep him from smiling at Allen and Loren.

“Like usual, you’re wasting time when there is no time to waste. We need to get in motion, and we can’t afford to sit here and listen to you ramble on,” Allen said.

Loren sat dumbfounded, speechless. “ME?” was the only response she could manage.

Before Loren could regain her composure and mount any retaliation, Charlie ran in from the living room. “Dad, two cars are coming up the lane. They’re cop cars!”