Grant

Grant

“I never thought a double cheese burger and small fries would start WWIII,” 

Jen Larsen

Before Grant there stood a concrete wall.  To each his left and right there stood concrete walls.  The concrete wall behind him was interrupted by a cast-iron, pale-green door on one end.  There was a double paned window on it that the guards would look through sometimes but usually didn’t.  There was no handle on his side of the door.  Sometimes a bug crawled from under the door and that could be an exciting time. At first he would capture them as to corral them with hands in a prison of his own making.  The bugs would last one or two days and the spider he caught lasted almost a week.  But all would die or disappear.  All would leave him and so he soon stopped. 

Seamus Grant ex-Ambassador was sent to Spain to determine his country’s stance on a recent murder.  The case had been open-and-shut; the killer was a greedy bodyguard of the victim who fled and is still at large.  Grant was certain it wasn’t a malicious, deliberate killing by the increasingly aggressive fast food chains.  Controversy could run into ruin even McDonalds. “God, this is such a farce,” Jen Larsen said about the case.  He had given her the details via a Skype video call and she had agreed with his findings.  “It’s full of holes and lacks any conclusive details.  But certain facts are there that we cannot deny. More importantly we won’t be held accountable just as long as these facts are right.” The facts she referred to were: that the body guard had fled and that he made money off of the death of Senator Baxton’s. “Right now I’m looking at the report by the Spanish Police’s of Marcelli as a missing person, so you know about that. And Marcelli’s financial records suggest he was putting his money on his favorite horse.  It was a horse that would run fast if Baxton backed off of Burger King.  No doubt we’ll be freezing that account,” she finished. 

“And if Baxton backs out then BK moves into Spain and stocks go up for Marcelli.” Grant had concluded eagerly.

“I never thought a double cheese burger and small fries would start WWIII,” Jen complained.

“Yea,” Grant said without missing a step, “When was the last time you cooked for yourself,” Grant said.

“Good point, Seamus. But still...”She ended gloomily.

While in the cell that he now sat in he thought of a key witness from that case.  She was bright and resilient considering the terms they met on.  He asked her to dinner after questioning her but she said not until the case was over. So when he closed the laptop he looked up at Nancy Hope Rodriguez-Sabotcka and said, “Done. Now lets go get Burger King.” She shook her head stiffly, “McDonalds?”

“This isn’t funny,” she said through a shadow of a smile, “someone died.”

“Yea but he was a sleaze-bag who slept around more than any man should. You said so yourself, you worked for him.”

“It’s still sad,” she said without disagreeing. “So are you going to ask me to dinner or what?” That night she said they shouldn’t go any further than dinner and he agreed.  They stayed up until four hundred hours and decided they should.

It hadn’t been until the third date she told him he had been wrong.  “Baxtion wasn’t actually murdered by his body guard,” she said reaching for a folder and sliding it across a dimly lit table. “Baxtion was a liar and a sleaze-bag but ironically politics was never his thing.  He moved money.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” Grant asked as angry as he was confused.

“Seamus, I have passwords to his old things no one else has.  I didn’t think because I didn’t know, I just didn’t think, you never asked for it babe!”

“How could I know to ask, I didn’t know you helped him move money,” he grabbed the folder from the table to glance through it.  A whine from down the hall brought him back to his prison cell.  The sour guilt he felt still lingered.

“It’s so much money,” she had persisted through his blind, cool rage. And it was. More money had gone through poor old Baxton’s account than a senator makes in a year.  And it was even more than a seriously corrupt senator could make.  And it all meant for nothing if no one knew. And no one knew because it was on a flash drive that was confiscated from him after his arrest in Crete.

He heard the Cretan International Prison was enormous.  But now all he knew was the cell.  He had been in it for two weeks which was a peaceful respite from guns and blood and falling on floors.  The long nights and secluded days would have been almost a vacation had he not been worrying about Hope.  She probably knew he was in prison by now but didn’t know why.  He didn’t know either but was certain it had to do with Baxton’s records on that flash drive.

He thought of his mom too, wondering if she recognized his face on TV.  She was still very sharp when he last saw her even though she had called him Tony.  Her fingers had been frail and shaking.  Her smile warmed him still as its power kept him hoping for home.

And he thought of his younger brother Tony.  Tony’s bitterness about Grant’s independence and ambition had lessened in the waning months before the trial.  Tony even had gone as far as to e-mail, “Good luck-T,” when the controversy happened.  Grant had gotten drunk at a famous realtors wedding and was caught on tape slamming Newtopia on its neutrality and recent regulations on emigration.

“They’re cowards and it’s shameful,” was the quote that hurt Grant far deeper and much longer than the hangover. 

Tony used to stare straight at you right before he laughed, Grant remembered.  The stoic persistence of that stare during the trail as he prosecuted Grant was unusual and unnerving.  Every time Tony objected or shook papers in Grant’s or Judge Raymond’s direction Grant thought, you finally did it bro.  Most of his little brother’s attempts to become anything more than a liberal jacket prosecuting domestic cases in southern Italy had been snuffed. Until now, my trial might have been his big break, Grant thought bitterly.  Tony’s sudden proficiency at international law was more than enough to convict Seamus with the evidence presented.  He had hoped his brother would leave out an eye witness testimony or forged document.  But the young prosecutor utilized each with exact and brutal measures.  And eventually got what he always seemed to have wanted, a guilty verdict.

A centipede timidly crossed under the green, iron, handless door.  The speedy little bug thought better of it and left the way it came.