Family Matters

Part II: Say Hello to Liam Harrison

          Liam Harrison was born to trouble. Some days he even felt he was born for trouble. Like Lyndsay Grant, he too avoided problems, but somehow, one way or another it managed to find him just the same.
          At one point in high school, lost in maelstrom of emotions after the death of his father to that remorseless enemy cancer, he had begun acting out, getting into fights and generally making the wrong choices about everything. He'd spent more time with his mom's relatives in that year and had even begun a career in petty theft—not because he'd needed the cash, but because he could. He'd been up for a challenge, and the Campbells had gladly provided one. Then, his mother had enrolled him in a jiujitsu class, and he'd gotten his aggression out, learned some discipline, met some mentors, gained confidence and changed paths. He managed to graduate, took a few manual labor jobs, worked on the engines at Campbell Trucking, and found his calling. He'd even managed to resist multiple overtures from his kin regarding the business.
          By twenty-five, he thought he'd managed to escape trouble entirely. Just long enough to complete a vocational education program in mechanics and start his own auto body shop. Just long enough to begin specializing in foreign imports and upgrade his shop to a better building in a better area. It had been a blissful five years of routine and calm. His confidence had built, and he felt sure he'd be able to resist the pull of the family business and their affinity for obscure interpretations of the word "legal."
          He didn't wonder if he'd made the right choice to avoid his large clan of a family. He knew he had. But he didn't turn his back on them entirely. Once his cousins Jamie and Robbie were released from the pen after a three year stint for armed robbery, he was certain they were ready to try their hands at some honest work. He gave them positions at his shop on the condition that they remain on the straight and narrow. So far, his belief in them had paid off, and they were now normal, law-abiding citizens, so far as he knew. 
          Even if they weren't model employees—coming in late, missing work more than was strictly acceptable, and generally being lazy—they were at least doing honest work.  If he could influence the rest of his family in the same way, he was sure 'trouble' would be a thing of the past.  
          To Liam, all seemed to be going well. The business was making profit at an increase of between fifteen and twenty percent per year—Jamie and Robbie's slouching notwithstanding. He no longer had to spend all of his time under cars. His cousins were toeing the line. Even his uncles seemed to be laying low for once.  Hell, he'd even been able to purchase a nice piece of property out in Marin, and no one in his family knew about it.  Life finally seemed to be looking up for Liam Harrison.
          And then he'd made the mistake of responding to his sister's frantic texts about their grandfather's heart attack. 
          "He's going to die!" He imagined her fingers tapping frantically on the phone screen.
          "You never  call or visit anymore!" she'd accused.
The last time he'd spoken with his grandfather was the day he'd come back to pay the debt he'd owed the family business when he'd taken out a loan to start his auto shop. His grandfather had refused the offer of repayment and instead offered him a lucrative part in the family trucking business, which he'd declined, knowing the deal would only further ensnare him in his family's miasma of sketchy ethics.  The old man had declared him outcast, and Liam had shrugged, having already accepted the possibility of being shunned for refusing to turn to larceny and grift.
          But family was family, and one didn't turn one's back on an ailing patriarch just because of money. So, Liam had gone back and found himself sucked into the world he had been trying to avoid since his birth.
          As it turned out, Jamie and Robbie hadn't been entirely forthcoming about why they'd been late and absent from the shop. Of course they had been grateful for Liam's faith in their ability to change, and they had stayed as legal as they could for ex-cons from a shady family; they never brought their side hustles into contact with Harrison's Auto Body & Custom Import Repair. They didn't tell him about their various small jobs—they liked to call them jewel heists—from the wealthy homes in Ashbury Heights, and they certainly hadn't told him about their semi-regular visits to Mexico as coyotes, taking thousands in cash from those who needed it most and dumping them in the merciless desert outside of Palmdale. And even if he had managed to figure that part out, they would never have revealed they'd used their grandfather's fleet trucks to do it. They knew Liam's affection for his grandfather was strong despite the current rift between them. However, what Jamie and Robbie planned to keep from Liam and what came out in the living room of their grandfather's modest ranch style home in Santa Rosa amounted to the same thing: federal charges against Campbell Trucking for breaking the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, sections a1a and a2.
          Apparently, the hapless victims of Jamie and Robbie's callous actions had managed to find help from authorities. The twelve ragged migrants from their last haul had been found wandering on the outskirts of town. They were then picked up in the wee hours of the morning and taken to the local police station where from under blankets and around mouthfuls of warm soup they described the distinctive swath of Campbell tartan painted boldly behind a wild boar's head, encircled by a black belt as the company logo on the side of the truck that dumped them in the desert. The only thing they didn't understand was the family motto from ancient times etched around the belt: ne obliviscaris—never forget. Having followed that motto unerringly, the migrants made the authorities' jobs easier, and the Northern California based company was identified quickly. The only question left was who would take the fall for the crimes.
          Unfortunately, Liam was still in the dark about all of this when he finally went to visit his grandfather, and he ended up participating in a somewhat impromptu family meeting about Robbie and Jamie--neither were present, as "laying low" seemed to be more prudent at the moment. Besides, the clan was circling the proverbial wagons, and they didn't need wailing protestations of disingenuous remorse muddying the waters.
          As it happened, Callum Campbell was resting in a recliner with his three sons around him, and their myriad children spread throughout the house—Liam's Aunt Maggie was cooking as though in preparation for a wake. His cousin, Isla, was leaning on the doorframe to the living room, the smoke of her cigarette creating a thin haze over the various heads of her brothers and uncles, while it seemed virtual hordes of the younger generation roved through the back and front yards of the house.
          On the hearth before the fireplace stood John MacIntosh, the family lawyer. 'Mac', as the older family members called him, had worked for the trucking company for years and had bailed more Campbells out of jail and managed to get more sentences commuted or reduced than the family could count. He was practically a Campbell himself, having dated Aunt Maggie in their youths.
          Just then he was addressing the patriarchy of the Campbell clan:
          "The long and the short of it is this. Robbie and Jamie are looking at 12 to 15 years each, and they're likely to get the book thrown at them with all their priors."
          There was a rush of indrawn breath, a fumbling for packs of cigarettes, and Liam turned to look out the window at Jamie and Robbie's wives and children, who were blissfully unaware of the danger to their family unit as they played tag in the front yard. Both his cousins had already missed time with them, and going back in the system was unthinkable. Twelve years was a long time. The boys would miss out on experiences of a lifetime, on the impact of the guiding hands of loving fathers—even hands like Robbie and Jamie's. The boys were little now. They'd be strangers when they got out.
          "No. The trucks used were mine. I'll go." The reedy voice wheezed from the recliner. Callum was a family man, willing to sacrifice much for his progeny. 
          Liam looked at his grandfather's limp white hair and his graying face. The man wouldn't survive a week in the pen, much less twelve years.
          He glanced at Mac, and their eyes locked. Mac lifted a neatly trimmed eyebrow. It wasn't difficult to suss out what the man was thinking.
          They needed a patsy with a clean record, someone who had no adult priors, so the sentence would be reduced. Someone who wouldn't leave behind a shattered family. Someone who had no one to care about his absence...and there was still the matter of payment for that debt his grandfather had not accepted.
          Would doing this finally be enough?
          The discussion of family members began in earnest. There was debate. There was arguing. Jamie and Robbie's fathers, embarrassed at their sons' lack of common sense had to be physically separated, their fingers pried from each other's throats. Callum had to struggle to be heard over the heated exchanges, but one low, firm voice was finally heard above the din.
          "I'll do it."
          And so it was that Liam Harrison made arrangements to pay restitution to the victims, as well as a ten thousand dollar fine, and gave up eight months of his life to a federal prison. It was also, as it turned out, how he found himself ensnared in a new web of intrigue with the FBI.