They Call Me...Montey Greene

Chapter Twenty-Eight

STUNNED. STUCK.

But stupid, Montey Greene was not.

"Life as he knew it no longer existed?" The words rung in Montey's ears like a tuning fork as his brain scrambled to find the right notes to play.

What the hell did the man Alejandra referred to as Papa mean by that?

Montey could only wonder as he sweated in that back seat. Is that why he got the answering machine yesterday when he finally called his soon to be ex-wife Patricia, as he liked to say, to finally let her know that he arrived in Italy safely. The plane he traveled on may have hit the tarmac in one piece, but when he hit the asphalt he was anything but. And if the man sitting next to him holding out that envelope didn't have the means to intervene such as he did when he was laid out by the side of the road leading to Lake Como bleeding profusely from four holes in his back, he might not have been in the position to leave a message on an answering machine at all.

And now this same man, in a sense, was forcing him to protect his daughter while threating the wellbeing of his own?

Was Juan Carlos Lasprilla so powerful and his tentacles so long that they could reach across the Atlantic and kidnap Montey's family, in turn, forcing Montey to do his bidding? Montey's mind was now a maze of questions with no immediate answers, rendering that Alitalia Airways flight he was so intent on catching a distant memory.

He would do well to just get himself out of this car in one piece and the only way to do that he quickly surmised was by taking Juan Carlos up on his offer, or at least pretending to take him up on it.

Montey took the envelope and opened it.

There were five neatly wrapped stacks of one-hundred dollar bills inside, each stack held together by a money band with $10,000 stamped on it. It was the most money he'd seen at once in a long-long time.

"Fifty stacks?" Montey asked.

"I assume you mean fifty thousand dollars. Yes. Per week. In U.S. currency of course. Electronically transferred to your bank account."

"A week?" Montey repeated, not even trying to hide the astonishment in his voice.

"Is that not enough?"

Now Montey was speechless, and for a few seconds at least, felt like he was in the scene from the Godfather movie where Vito Corleone makes him an offer he can't refuse.

Montey Greene was his own man. He had never been coerced or punked into doing something he didn't want to do. But taking this job wouldn't be considered a punk move if it meant saving your family. In his heart of hearts he knew there was only one move to make. It was the same move Noi Juntasa would make.

In this case he heard her tell him to take the deal, if he wanted to get out the car in one piece. Take the deal and figure out the rest later.

His mind was all over the place as he nervously tapped the envelope in the palm of his hand. "When?" he finally asked.

Before Juan Carlos could answer he was interrupted by his cellphone ringing. It was Alejandra. Her semi-muted frantic voice filled the cabin of the car the moment Juan Carlos answered it.

"Alejandra, calm down, calm down, I'm on my way. Everything will be alright," Juan Carlos said to his daughter in Spanish.

Juan Carlos turned his attention back to Montey, "When do you start?" he asked rhetorically. "Now! You start now," he said in a voice suddenly filled with anxiety as he rolled the window down. "Get over to the boutique," he said to Paolo. "And Emanuel you ride with him," he instructed one of the men in black playing security. "Francisco ride with me," he told the man in black's fashion twin.

Montey started to get out when Francisco opened the door.

"I said you start now!" Juan Carlos barked.

He said it in such a manner it sent chills through Montey's spine that triggered back spasms.