Chapter 13

Chicago Tribune: A mosque that was vandalized and sprayed with graffiti last week is now under the nightly surveillance of a new neighborhood watch. A local ministerium of churches, synagogues, Hindu temples, and the mosque organized their parishioners to share the duties of watching over the facility. Said one minister of a local Lutheran church who did not wish to be identified by name, "We are all the children of one God."

What Brendan wanted was for Jacinta to run over and embrace him, to tell him that everything was going to be alright. Instead, she and her aunt discussed what to cook for lunch and went to the kitchen to begin preparations.

The people in Boston were singing the chorus of a popular pop song, twisting its treaclely sweet words into an anthem of everything that was wrong. Brendan's first idea was that the crowd was massacring the song, but then decided that was the wrong word at the wrong moment.

Cars were now burning in Chicago. Gangs were carjacking innocent drivers and launching cars into the lobbies of buildings and storefronts. A white man with a large cross around his neck was shown swinging from a street light on a Chicago street. The cops were trying to cut the rope but were forced to retreat from the rocks, bottles, and other objects that were hurtled at them.

Brendan sat in his own private hell. Had Jacinta lied to him? he wondered. Had her plan been to seduce him and get him to her uncle's home? Who was this man, anyways, and what was La Revolution? Brendan could be executed for his crimes. He had vowed to keep his mouth shut but then he had told these people whom he really didn't know every jot and tittle of his Friday. And what did she mean about using guns and bombs?

A senator from Georgia was calling for the use of teargas to disperse the protest in Washington while his colleague from Arkansas was insisting that the law enforcement agencies use everything in their arsenals to break up the mob. Brendan barely listened.

As he stewed in his bleak thoughts, Jacinta came back into the family room and walked behind the chair where he was sitting. She draped her arms over the back and onto his shoulders, kissing him on top of his head as she leaned over.

"I'm proud of you," she said and then sat down in her uncle's chair. "I'd sit in your lap but Aunt Delores is a little old fashioned, if you know what I mean."

"You, little girl, should not go around telling lies," Aunt Dolores said as she walked in the room and swatted her niece with the dishtowel that had been on her shoulder. "You show proper respect for your elders and leave all of your childish groping for a private time."

Aunt Delores stared at the television for a moment and then turned to her nephew. "Are you really going to listen to your uncle and keep your eyes glued to the TV? Not in my home you don't. Hugo, you go get the leaves for the table, and you two, grope-sters, can get out the dishes and set the table for fourteen."

"Fourteen?" Brendan asked.

"Before all of this brouhaha blew up on the screen, we invited over all the near family to meet Jacinta's new boyfriend. She didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't tell me," Brendan said.

Hugo snorted. "Too bad for you, Danny. Welcome to Rios Sunday lunch hell."

Hugo ducked the shot of the dishtowel as it swung at him. "For that, Mister, you volunteer to do the dishes," his aunt said.

Brendan stood up to protest. "We only had one date."

"You slept with her," Aunt Delores said.

"Is there no privacy in this world?" Brendan said.

The only reply was Hugo chortling as he reached into a closet to pull out the table extensions. The aunt was giving Brendan a look with her arms crossed. She was posing, as far and Brendan could determine, like a mother hen protecting her chicks. He amended that to a mother lioness with claws guarding her cubs.

"It was a set up," Brendan mumbled under his breath to himself. He let the pieces of the puzzle as he saw them fall into place. Jacinta wasn't a tool for the uncle. Quite the contrary she was using her uncle to get what she wanted, a boyfriend or even a husband.

Maybe a political convict was a sexy target for a daughter of La Revolution, Brendan concluded. She was definitely not turned off by the gruesome turn of events on Friday. Eww, maybe she gets turned on by that kind of violence.

Brendan helped Hugo open the table and matched the pegs of the leaves to the holes in the table. With a grunt they pushed the two halves of the table back together. Felt backed pads were placed on top followed by a blue tablecloth.

"Are you sure fourteen people can fit around this table?" Brendan asked.

"Maybe my sister will sit in your lap for lunch. The family would love that," Hugo said.

"Hey, I like your sister, Hugo, but no one gets in the way of my lunch."

"Spoken like a true man who knows what is important in this life," a deep voice behind him said. Brendan turned to face a smiling Uncle Rodrigo.

Brendan felt his muscles tense.

"So I passed the smell test?"

Uncle Rodrigo nodded. "Your story doesn't reek. I still don't know who this Oscar from Venezuela is, but the Pressman story seems to check out in some ways. The weapon wasn't found and the police cannot seem to find the truck that delivered furniture that afternoon. This Worthington character was a managing director at the NBC offices in Manhattan and treasurer for Senator Pressman's election campaign."

"We knew that Pressman referred Worthington to Oscar for furniture repair. Now we know how they were connected," Brendan said. "When Oscar finds out that Worthington probably wasn't going to pay either, he is going to be doubly pissed."

"Why is that," Jacinta, who had been listening in, asked.

"The check isn't in the mail and Oscar can't go and pressure either widow for payment," Brendan said.

"He gets revenge. That counts for something," Jacinta said.

"Revenge doesn't pay the bills or put food on your children's plates, little girl," her uncle said.

"You are both wrong," Aunt Dolores said, butting in with oven mitts on her hands. "This Oscar was forced into vigilante justice for a crime against him that these two corrupt men committed. He delivered his services, honest work and good materials. Who knows how many others they have stolen from? They thought they were untouchable. That is vigilante justice."

"How far we have fallen," Brendan said only to receive a look of disgust from his girlfriend. "No, seriously. In previous administrations, senators and congressmen were arrested for taking bribes worth millions or accepting illegal campaign donations worth hundreds of thousands. These guys were petty crooks, willing to screw someone of a few thousand dollars."

"Petty thieves, small minds," Aunt Dolores said. "Be thankful they weren't smart enough to hide everything they did. Now hurry up and set the table. Everyone should be arriving in a few minutes."