The next day Alan went to visit his dad. It was just as it had always been. A plexiglass window between them. An ancient Bakelite phone on a metal cord to connect them. Some kids played catch. Alan talked to his dad on the prison phone.
“Lookie there, I must be somebody special. Everybody wants to see me today. I thought you were my lawyer,” said his dad, disappointed to see him.
“Jimmy, I’m looking for a guy,” said Alan.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Son, although that would make you very popular in here.”
“Fuck you, Dad. You want to help me or not? Based on our track record, I’d go with no, but I thought I might give you a chance to get a few checks out of the shitheel column.”
“Is that any way to greet your father?”
“You want me to hug this plexiglass? Kiss the phone? You know the deal, old man.”
Jimmy, his dodge and bravado spent, slumped in weariness and looked like the caged animal he was. He asked, “OK, flash, what the fuck can I do for you in here?”
“I got a job of work. And I need a very specialized contractor.”
A look of disappointment and sadness crossed the older man’s face. “No, Al, you don’t want to go into that line.”
“Oh, really, Jimmy? What would your advice be? Plastics? Maybe I should sell tires? Those things sure worked out for you.”
“I made mistakes.”
“Son…I…”
“Stop with that bullshit. That son bullshit. You know what a father does? A father is there. You, you were never there.” Alan paused, held the phone away from his mouth, and wrestled with his emotions. He hated to show weakness in front of his father.
On the other side of the thick plastic, marred by the scratches and deformed by the curve in the material, Jimmy waited.
“I was trying to be cool about this,” continued Alan, after a time, “but that’s not working. Are you gonna help me or not?”
Jimmy sighed and asked, “You’re gonna do this anyway?”
“I need a guy to put it together and run it. I’ll probably just sell the whole thing to him. But it’s big. It needs the best. Just gimme a name. A phone number. I’ll cut you in.”
Jimmy shook his head violently. “I don’t want a cut. Not from you. And it doesn’t work that way.”
“What? The guy doesn’t have a name? Doesn’t have a phone number?”
“No,” he said. Then he told his son how it worked. That is, if enough people who had been involved were still alive and working. “The guy you want was called Hobbs.”
“Is he dead?”
“Or in prison. But if he’s not, he probably doesn’t use the same name anymore.”
“What?”
“When you take things, people get angry.”
“Right, so how do I find him?”
“You go to a bar in Philly. You ask for him. If they think you’re right, they’ll get in contact with him.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Alan, “You been in here for a while. You know there’s this thing called e-mail, right? You know about e-mail?”
“They can’t catch a guy they can’t find a trace of.”
“Was that your mistake?” Alan asked.
Jimmy looked away and said, quietly, “I made a lotta mistakes.”
“How about you make up for one or two of them by giving me the name of that bar.”
“Call me Dad,” said Jimmy.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me with that shit,” said Alan.
“I’m sorry, Alan.”
“Well, that’s nice for you, what’s the name of the bar?”
“You say it.”
“What do you want?” asked Alan.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“No, what do you really want? You want a house in the country, with a white picket fence? Slippers and pipe? You want to be Dad, is that it?”
Feeling foolish, Jimmy nodded.
“Well, it ain’t gonna happen. You fucked it up. And nothing I can do can make it right.”
“We could try,” said Jimmy, “I mean, I don’t know how to do it, but we could try. Would you want to try? Would you, Al?”
“Sure, you could push me on the swing and throw the ball around and we’d go get ice cream,” said Alan, sticking the knife in and feeling around for Jimmy’s liver.
“Hey, I’m tryin’ here.”
“Sorry, old man, (a) you’re never getting out of this hole and (b) I ain’t got time for this father-son reunion bullshit.”
“I’m sorry. I’m tryin’ to better myself. I just don’t know how to do it. I know, I know…”
“I’ll tell you what I know, Jimmy. I’m pretty sure blackmailing your kid into calling you Dad isn’t a good start.”
Jimmy was quiet a long while. When he accepted defeat, he said, “Smeagles.”
“Sméagols?”
“Thank you.” Alan hung up the phone. His dad sat there and watched his son leave, staring at the wavy plexiglass until the guard told him it was time to go.