“Bit of a sticky situation, that one,” he said. “Tommy was quite miffed that I’d taken the boy in. But what could I do? He was on my front porch with a little suitcase. Anyway, it was only for a weekend. Tommy and I had a rather bitter falling-out eventually-not over that. This was much later. Real estate deal went bad and we ended up losing pots of money. Anyway, that’s why me and this handsome young lad have never met. Didn’t even realize I had family in the country until I read the terrible news.”
The DCF checked Max’s background. He had been the first of the family to move to the States, settling into Manhattan years previously, where he ran a thriving theatrical supply business with a specialty in wigs. Since there were two countries involved, the paperwork took a considerable amount of time.
A bargain was worked out whereby Owen would stay with the Tunkles while he got to know Max better through more visits. Max drove up regularly from New York. At first they were supervised by Miss Prine-lunches at coffee shops and the like. But then Max was allowed to take Owen on day trips to the city: the Central Park zoo, the boat pond, the Museum of Natural History, the Staten Island Ferry.
When Miss Prine saw how well he and the boy got along, she became Max’s champion at the agency and in court. Eventually Owen was placed with him as a temporary ward, taking up residence in the extra bedroom of his Stuyvesant Town apartment. The initial adjustment period was rocky but brief, and soon the boy began to thrive. He got used to Max and Manhattan both, and he loved the long trips Max took him on, which, as far as he knew to this day, were crime free.
After two years Max asked him if he would like to make their arrangement permanent. “You and me against the world, lad. Taking on all comers. Thick and thin. You don’t have to call me Dad, you can call me Max, Uncle Max, Sir Max, Lord High Max, whatever variation strikes your fancy, what say you, sir?”
Owen replied with an unhesitating and resounding yes.
So here they are years later in Sir Slots-a-Lot Kitchen in Las Vegas, Nevada, Owen trying to explain that he isn’t ungrateful, he just wants something different for his life than robbing dinner parties. Something his mother and father would have been proud of.
“Ten years old, both parents dead-tragic, heartbreaking, positively Dickensian. You were headed for a series of foster homes, maybe a group home, maybe a locked facility, who knows? You’d’ve probably got molested and beaten and crushed and ruined and ended up a serial killer or next thing to, drooling away your final years on death row.”
“Well, look at me now,” Owen said, stirring the melted puddle of his sundae. “I’m a criminal.”
“Tush, boy.” Max leaned across the table and gave his best stage whisper. “You are a gentle criminal, a saintly criminal, a Saint Francis of the highway. You lead a completely non-violent existence. You harm no one, just as I taught you. Your life is good, I engineered it for you, and now you repay me by deciding to take up the sorry occupation that tore me up and spat me out.” Max sat back. The banquette wobbled ominously.
“Max, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You gave me a home-sort of.”
“Sort of! I know not sort of! I put a roof over your head, made sure you got a good education, taught you right from wrong. No, no, let’s have no sort-ofs. Why can’t you study something useful? Locksmithing. Martial arts. Computer security.”
“Max, you loved acting. You still love acting.”
“The skill, not the profession. If you try to do it for a living, it will break your heart. I don’t want to see that happen.”
Owen spoke softly. “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, or wondering where the next job is going to come from. And anyway, Max, I think it’s time for you to retire.”
Max shoved his dish forward and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.
“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Owen went on, “but this line of work, it isn’t for old-older guys. You’re getting tired, you’re forgetting things. Yesterday you forgot where you were, for Pete’s sake. Sooner or later you’re going to make some horrible mistake, and I don’t want to see you go back to jail. I don’t want to go to jail either.”
“Pah. Seven years of hell, that was, seven years of hell. I will never go back inside. Never, never, never, never, never.” Max gripped Owen’s forearm as if he were taking his blood pressure. “Who are you to tell me my powers are in decline? Where are these glaring lapses, these colossal blunders? You’re only trying to justify running off to Juilliard so you can become a waiter, a cab driver.”
“Max, you’re not listening to me. It’s not just you’re getting too old. This life is getting to you. You’re not sleeping anymore.”
“I sleep like a baby.”
“You’re forgetting things, you’re having nightmares, half the time you’re not even all there. You’re a threat to your own safety.”
“Rubbish.”
“Max, please don’t be hurt. It’s just that I-”
Owen was saved from further speech by the arrival of a man wearing baggy shorts and a blinding Hawaiian shirt, carrying a mug of beer in both hands as if it were some kind of isotope.
“Max, you old mofo,” the man said. “You have room at your table for a respectable working stiff?”
“Yes, and even for you,” Max said, patting the seat beside him. “Owen, allow me to introduce Charlie Zigler, known to all and sundry as Zig. Old acquaintance from Oxford.” Oxford was Max’s word for prison, in this case a certain locked institution in Ossining, New York.
Zig put down his beer glass to shake hands. He was a compact, nervy man who blinked a lot. It gave him a look that was both curious and startled, a raccoon rudely awakened.
“Who’s the kid?”
“I don’t even know this boy,” Max said. “Never seen him before in my life. He just came up and asked me for money.”
Owen introduced himself. “I’m his nephew.”
“Uh-oh,” Zig said with a wink. “You must have bruised your old uncle’s ego somehow. How you keeping, Max?”
“Couldn’t be better. And you? Last time I saw you, you had grandiose plans to usurp William H. Gates, third of that name, in the pantheon of computer gods.”
“Exactly right,” Zig said, blinking. “Took a ‘puter repair course at a community college. Paid for itself after two weeks. Ask me anything.”
“How do I replace the PRAM battery in my PowerBook?” Owen said.
“No idea,” Zig said, and let fly with a laugh that sent pressure waves slamming into Owen’s eardrums.
“Don’t even talk to him,” Max said to Zig. “You’ll give him the illusion he’s human.”
“Poor old Max. Say, you still pulling those lame-ass dinnertime gigs, or did you finally retire?”
“Suddenly the whole world is breathless for my resignation. I suppose you want me to carve my own coffin and lie down in it too, you hideous dwarf.”
“Maybe you should move into an honest trade like myself.”
“I’m a travelling salesman-a friend to the bald, the gay, the theatrical. What could be more honest? Anyway, what do you care what I do, where I live, or whether I retire?”
“There’s some badass dudes out there, my friend. I wouldn’t want to see the Subtractors get hold of you.”
“The Subtractors,” Owen said. “I always thought they were a myth.”
“They exist,” Zig said. “And believe me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of those guys.”
“Urban legend,” Max said. “No such creature.”
“Legend, huh?” Zig drank down half his beer. With each gulp his Adam’s apple bounced higher and higher up his gullet as if it might ring a bell and win a prize. “Lemme tell you about this urban legend, kid.” His face loomed forward across the table, blinking and foam-flecked. “The Subtractors is a group of individuals, a secret organization, call them. No one knows who they are, only what they do. And what they do is not pleasant. They prey upon thieves, see? They hear about a tasty job going down, they get their hands on one of the likely crew, and they, I don’t know how else to put it, they subtract parts of his body until he reveals where the score is tucked away. Bolt cutters are their tool of choice, although they have been known to use straight razors, exacto knives, whatever’s handy.”