I didn’t stress about it too much, however, because my mom seemed to relish the role of hands-on grandma. All I had to do was look at what she’d done when the flu had gone through the daycare. She watched all of them for a week and didn’t break. If she survived that, I expected she could survive just about anything. Then again, I dreaded their becoming surly teenagers. Especially when one of them was my little princess. What did you do with girls at that age? Lock them in a closet?
“If you decide you need a break from home, let me know. I’ll be traveling all over for the Bond movie. Most likely I won’t have much time to hang out, but I bet you’d figure out what to do and act like a tourist. I can send you a plane ticket to come join me,” I suggested.
From what Lexi had passed on about the shoot schedule, I was going to be a busy boy. It usually took upwards of eight months to shoot a James Bond movie. I would only be on set for three of those months before I had to fly to New Zealand and film the
“I would enjoy that. Thank you, David.”
My phone told me I had another call. Lisa Felton.
“Hey, I gotta go. New girlfriend calling.”
“At some point, we need to talk about that,” Tami said.
“Can’t wait,” I said and hung up to her laughter.
She knew I would rather go to the vet and get fixed than to have that conversation.
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Chapter 21 – So It Begins Thursday February 23
When Paddy got into town last night, we arranged to meet at my house first thing this morning to talk. Paddy wasn’t too excited about the early meeting because of the time difference. For him, it was five in the morning.
Fritz, Paul, and Cassidy showed up a few minutes early.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Fritz asked.
“That was my question last night,” Mom chimed in.
The gate-call buzzed, and Paul went to let Paddy in. When Paddy walked in the back door, my parents glanced at each other and then at me. Paddy looked like the movie version of mob muscle in a thousand-dollar suit. He had a beard and shoulder-length hair and wore a white button-up shirt without a tie. Instead of business casual, he had pulled off classy hitman casual.
“Mr. O’Malley, I would like to introduce my parents, Rob and Carol. Of course, you’ve met my head of security, Fritz, and these are two of his people, Cassidy and Paul.”
“Morning,” he said back.
“Can we get you something? Coffee? Some breakfast?” Mom asked.
“No. I’m good,” Paddy said. “I would like to talk about what we’re dealing with.”
I had Fritz run the video of when Aaron knocked down Coby and then kicked Duke. It also showed my avenging angel, Cassidy, come in and all but snap his arm off. Dad handed Paddy the contract Aaron had signed. I was surprised when he read the whole document before he looked up.
“You say he’s trying to sue you?”
“Mr. Fox, his lawyer, is the problem. He tried to have me served yesterday, which started all this. It’s my guess he’s trying to shake me down,” I explained.
Then my mom launched into everything she knew about our dealings with Thomas Fox and her low opinion of him. I’d been right yesterday that if someone broke his legs, she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I think that overnight, she’d come to grips with how I planned to approach this.
“You don’t plan violence, do you?” Dad asked.
“I doubt it will come to that,” Paddy said.
The room became silent. Dad and I had fallen into the Dawson silence routine. I think everyone else just tried to wrap their heads around me hiring a fixer.
“Fritz told me he knows how to take care of a dead hooker if they turn up in my trunk, so if …” was all I got out.
“David Allen Dawson!” Mom snapped.
Wow, I’d gotten the full-name treatment two days in a row. I hadn’t done that since middle school.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Paddy said, and then left.
We all looked at each other. Paddy seemed dead serious when he responded to my offer of Fritz helping dispose of the bodies. I vowed this would be the last time I did something like this. If I’d given myself a day to think about it, I would never have called in the big guns for Thomas Fox.
For some reason, I was put in charge of making breakfast. While I did that, everyone else speculated about what Paddy O’Malley would do to get Thomas Fox and Aaron to agree to back down. I’d also asked that Paddy see about convincing Mr. Fox to stop his nonsense. Everyone expected he would be successful.
Fritz took me aside and suggested I never mention his name and dead hookers around my mom again. I’d already come to that conclusion due to her reaction this morning. My excuse was that when I got nervous, I tried to joke around. Like Wolf, I was hit or miss.
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