Brewster's Brood - Part 28

Part Twenty-Eight

Max Brewster – 3/10/2017 – Saturday – 10:42 am

It was remarkable how much better Max felt after a long night’s sleep. He hadn’t realized how happy he was when it started raining the night before, forcing them to close up shop long before they normally would, but the last several days had been so overwhelming that getting a good night’s rest was just too important to underestimate.

When he’d gone to bed, he’d turned his cell phone completely off, put on the stereo, closed the blinds and passed out entirely. He’d slept almost twelve hours, and finally felt a bit more like himself than he had all week. Which, of course, meant that the chaos was all going to start right back up again, he thought to himself.

Something very weird was afoot, Max had realized, but he still couldn’t put his finger on it. At first, he’d thought it was the whole Ironwood thing, but the more he’d been thinking about it, the more he’d come to the conclusion that Ironwood was a symptom, not a root cause of whatever was going on, because women were still basically throwing themselves at him outside of the club.

The idea of sitting back and enjoying it, as Danny had suggested, was something he was going to do, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be shrewd and observant while all that happened, and the more attention he paid, the more he might figure out what the fuck was causing all of this, because nobody just woke up and suddenly was attractive to everybody. He needed to start being quietly observant to what was happening to him, see where and how the boundaries were, figure out if there were rules or invisible forces manipulating people to get them into place around him. There was an invisible hand at work, Max was starting to think, and he needed to figure out why.

When he turned on his phone again, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see half a dozen messages, all from Frankie, asking why they hadn’t gotten started yet and if Max was just not going to take the truck out today. Despite the number of messages, none of them had much urgency behind them. His best friend sounded remarkably understanding about Max’s state of mind, which meant maybe Max had been a little harsher than he’d intended to be the night before. He tried not to yell at Frankie too much – his friend was conflict adverse under the best of circumstances – but last night, Max had just needed to take a break from everything and everyone, and Frankie’s insistence that they go out yet again had simply been a bridge too far.

Max sent Frankie a text, saying that they’d already missed getting set up for the lunch rush, so they were just going to take the day off. No fuss, no muss, no big deal, just a day of them not manning the truck at the spot they had paid for.

-Are you serious? You? Mister ‘we don’t do days off’ Brewster? You’re calling it a wash?- The message had come back almost immediately, as if Frankie had his phone on and practically in his hand, waiting for Max to send him something.

-Yeah yeah, I know, I know. I’m a normally a hardass about these kinds of things but sleeping in today felt too damn good for me to interrupt it. And if the world’s going to be weird, I’m going to be weird right back at it. But don’t think we’re skipping tomorrow. One day’s a blip; two days is a pattern. So take the day, have some fun or whatever, and be back at the truck tomorrow morning in order to get the brunch crowd. All the supplies’ll keep until tomorrow.-

Frankie started to type something back, but Max just put his phone back into his pocket. He’d take a look at it later. He thought about calling an Uber to get over to the Hernandez house to pick up his motorcycle, but for the time being, he wanted to get out and have a little walk, so he just got dressed, gathered up his things and walked out of his apartment, locking it up behind him.

The weather hadn’t entirely cleared up overnight, but it wasn’t pouring rain still, so Max considered that progress enough. He sort of liked the drizzle and mist that was filling the air, a spattering of cool rain meaning it was chill enough that he was glad he’d grabbed his jacket, but not so cold that he felt like he needed a hat or anything. It felt like the kind of weather he could just disappear into for a couple of hours.

Normally, walking the streets around his neighborhood wasn’t exactly the most comforting of experiences. Frankie’s house wasn’t exactly in the best neighborhood, although it wasn’t so bad that their place was regularly broken into either. Still, walking on the streets could sometimes result in being near a shooting or a robbery or a carjacking. The last thing Max wanted was to get robbed while he was out walking, but he’d found that nobody seemed to take a look at him, maybe because of how he was dressed, or the fact that he had so many tattoos that he looked like he couldn’t be worth the time to mug. They probably weren’t wrong – he didn’t carry much in the way of cash on him, and he was the kind of guy who would immediately cancel any credit cards or have his phone turned off before anyone could get much from them.

As much as the streets felt busy and active, nobody was paying him much mind, which was a nice change of pace. The last thing he needed was people swarming him on a day that he’d decided to take off. Within an hour, he was outside of the Hernandez brothers’ house, and when he walked around to the back, he found the brothers had courteously thrown the tarp over his bike to protect it from the rain. The two were generally good guys and were always willing to do their part to try and make Max’s business have the best chance of success, knowing he’d bring them both up with him whenever he lucked into success.

Max pulled the tarp off the top of the bike, shaking it off before balling it up and stashing it into the compartment along the back of the seat. As he was doing so, he couldn’t help but feel like there were plenty of eyes watching him, although no matter which way he looked, he couldn’t spot anyone in any direction. He tugged his helmet on and strapped it tightly.

He slid the key into the ignition as he hopped onto the bike, bringing the motorcycle to life before zipping it onto the road, heading towards the highway. Before he knew it, he was passing through the FastPass checkpoint and driving up onto the Bay Bridge. The wind was picking up and Max had to lean into it much more than he normally would even as he made his way into San Francisco.

He wasn’t entirely sure where he was heading, but he decided he was just going to keep on driving, not stopping in San Francisco, but continuing to move forward through the city. There was a good amount of traffic, probably a Giants game going on Max thought, but the advantage of being on a motorcycle was that he could weave in between cars and keep moving forward without too much effort, and before he knew it, he was switching from 80 to 101 and then from 101 to 280 and then from 280 over to Highway 1.

Getting through San Francisco wasn’t anywhere near as hard as it would’ve been in a car, but it was still a bit of a journey. But the trip still didn’t take too long and he found himself pulling off the road in Pacifica. On the beach, there was a Taco Bell that had a great overlook of the ocean, and so Max pulled his bike into the parking lot there, parked, stowed his helmet away and then headed into the Taco Bell. It certainly wasn’t his first choice of Mexican food, considering he lived in California, but there was something comforting about being able to get a cheap, mass-produced taco, and then taking just a dozen or so steps to be standing where the ocean could blow water across his feet.

Danny Garney – 3/10/2017 – Saturday – 12:22 pm

“No, Mrs. Churchill, I do not have any idea why the hell he’s at a Taco Bell in Pacifica, completely off your radar, entirely outside of our camera zones, but that’s where he is right now,” Danny said into his cell phone. “I followed him out here as best as I could, but I relied on the tracker in his bike for a bit of the way, just so he couldn’t spot me. But he pulled into the Taco Bell like twenty minutes ago, placed an order, then went and sat on the patio while he ate it. It looks like he’s just finished up and is going walking on the beach.”

“Taco Bell, Daniel?” Mrs. Churchill said to him over the phone. “In Pacifica? What the ever-loving fuck is he doing out there?”

“I repeat, Mrs. Churchill, I have no idea what he’s doing here. He walked over to the brothers’ house, picked up his motorcycle and just started driving,” Danny replied. “There’s a Giants pre-season game going on at the stadium, and I thought maybe he was going to that at first, but no, no sign of him even slowing down in San Francisco. He just kept on going until he was past all the mess.”

“Does he know anyone in Pacifica?”

“Not that we’re aware of.”

“That’s not a no, Danny.”

Danny sighed, shrugging even though Mrs. Churchill couldn’t see it. “Look, we did as much due diligence about this guy as we could in advance, boss, but there was no way we were going to learn everything there is to know about him, considering we couldn’t even talk to him. We did months’ worth of pregame screening, research and background, but this is a human being with a lifetime of experience that we’re not going to be able to learn everything about in advance.”

“I don’t like us being in the dark on our boy, Danny.”

“I don’t either, Mrs. Churchill, but at some point, we can’t smother the guy, otherwise he’s gonna spot our hand on the wheel. Okay, it looks like he’s walking back to his bike now.”

“Do we think he’s heading back towards Oakland?”

“I think we don’t have any idea what the hell he’s doing, boss.” Danny adjusted the binoculars to get a better view, watching as Max moved to the back of his bike and stowed his wallet and phone. “He’s putting his stuff into the compartment on his bike, boss. Ah shit, I think he’s going to go for a goddamn swim.”

“What, just strip down a few layers and jump in?”

“Maybe not even strip down,” Danny sighed. “And if he just hops in, he’s going to blow the tracker/mic in his belt and I’m only going to have to plant a new one.”

“You think of any way to stop him?”

“Without being insanely suspicious? Not off the top of my head. I think we just have to roll with this one. You knew we weren’t going to be able to have a perfect plan for this guy, boss, so it’s time to start getting used to going through some road bumps.” Danny kept watching through the binoculars. “Yep, looks like he’s going to go and have himself a swim. Aaaaaannnnnnd… there goes our tracker and our microphone. I’ll have to sneak in tonight and replace them, but until then, if he’s not got his jacket on, we don’t have ears on him.”

“What are the odds are you’re going to have to go jump into the ocean to prevent him from being pulled under by the undertow?”

“Not all that high,” Danny said. “Max is a good swimmer and he’s going to be fine. He’s not even going out all that deep, really. He’s probably just going to let it wash over him a bit and then drive home or something.”

“Well, it’s your job as his body man to make sure he isn’t getting himself into trouble we can’t handle.”

“I know my job, boss. I’ll make sure he’s okay. He’s diving into the ocean now, but it looks like he’s just taking a swim. Hell, he’s still wearing his pants and boxers. Hold on a minute. What the hell is this?”

“Be my eyes, Danny. I’m blind without you right now. What are you seeing?”

“Is Kevin Pendleton one of the people who has a subscription to the video feeds?”

“You know I can’t answer that question, Danny.”

“Because it looks like he’s walking up to talk to Max.” He could practically hear Mrs. Churchill doing a spit take on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, that weaselly little fucker is one of the people who’ve paid into this, and if he says a single word to our boy, I want to know what the hell it is.”

“Let me see if I can hear anything on the parabolic mic.” Danny carried around a small dish microphone that he could use to listen from a distance, but there was so much ambient noise that he couldn’t pick out any of the conversation between the two men. It didn’t look like they talked long with one another, only spending two or three minutes standing next to each other at best. It also didn’t seem like it had much of an impact on Max, who was wringing out his shirt out on the beach before pulling it back on. Danny had scrambled to get the parabolic microphone to pick up something, anything, but all he could catch was the sound of the waves just behind them before they stopped talking. He tucked the microphone back into his saddlebag compartment on his motorcycle. “Couldn’t get a damn thing. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal,” Danny said to Mrs. Churchill on the phone. “Max looks just like he did beforehand.”

“But why the hell was he there, Danny?”

“I wish I could tell you, Mrs. Churchill, but barring going up and straight asking one of the two of them, I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“Oh, I intend to ask Pendleton exactly what the fuck he was thinking, interacting with the primary, especially while the game is on, but it’ll have to wait until we’re able to squeeze some answers from him when he’s away from Max,” Mrs. Churchill sighed. “Keep on him and make sure he doesn’t get into too much more trouble. And see if we can get some of the girls in front of him again. Not to be crude, but it’s been almost twenty-four hours since our boy had his dick in someone, and that just will not stand. He’s had his break. Let’s get him back on the rollercoaster again.”

Danny chuckled a little bit, shaking his head. “May not have to worry about that too much, boss. One of the girls from Echo Group seems to be here.”

“Oh? Which one? Jaybird?”

“Negative, big boss. It’s Svetlana, if you can believe it.”

“The gangster?” Mrs. Churchill let out an appreciative whistle. “Well, if there’s somebody who won’t take no for an answer, I’ll bet it’s her. Does it look like she’s coming on strong?”

“She’s in a bikini top and jean shorts, boss, and she looks like she’s coming in hot, so I think whatever break our boy had, it’s about to be over.”

Svetlana Miersk – 3/10/2017 – Saturday – 1:06 pm

This game they were being put through was silly, Svetlana thought to herself, but the money she would get along with the child would be a useful asset. That was how she tended to think about everything, in terms of gains and losses. She recalled when she had first come across the ad, finding it a ludicrous suggestion on its face, but when she dug deeper into it, she found that in fact she was not being pranked.

Svetlana had been through a tough couple of years. Two years ago, her father, Oli Miersk, had been killed at the home of his mistress, along with her, and when he died, her father’s right-hand man, Gregor, had come to her presenting two options, neither of which was particularly pleasant.

The first option was that she could leave the country and walk away from her father’s line of work, which was being one of the most powerful and influential gangsters in all of Russian. She would likely be able to take some of the money and assets with her, but none of that was guaranteed, and it was entirely possible the assets would freeze up as soon as she tried to move them, which made the option significantly less appealing.

It wasn’t as though Svetlana hadn’t known what her father did for a living – the opulent lifestyle she’d been afforded hadn’t come without some strings attached, and her father had made sure that she always had bodyguards wherever she traveled. She didn’t know all the day-to-day details of her father’s work, but he had often described it as ‘glorified bookkeeping,’ and that most of what he did was simply ensure that the systems continued to keep on flowing – money towards him, support towards those who gave him money. It was all about just making sure what was already happening didn’t stop happening.

That left the second option, which would be to take over her father’s empire and step into his shoes, continue on without business missing a single step. Gregor advised her against it, but stressed that her father had always somewhat expected she might eventually move into control of his none-too-meager assets. But sexism was heavily ingrained in the Russian mafioso culture, and many of them didn’t think she was capable of taking over her father’s crown upon his demise.

So she’d taken the second option and her first action after taking over was to have the rival who’d had her father killed eliminated. And not just him, but his mistress, his wife and both of his sons. She’d even made sure to have it done publicly. There had been some blowback about it, but nothing that Svetlana couldn’t handle, and she’d enjoyed the message from the people higher up the food chain saying it was a perfectly acceptable retribution, but to maybe keep the visibility a bit lower going forward. It hadn’t mattered. The message had been sent.

Part of the reason people had been so quick to overlook Svetlana was because of her looks. She knew that she had the beauty of a fashion model and an appearance that seemed more in line with Instagram influencer than crimelord. She’d even overlooked when people asked her if her tits were natural, which they were, simply because they were so full and lush. The style, though, that was intentional on her part, in an effort to keep people’s eyes focused anywhere except her face or hands, so she could look wherever she wanted, and she could have a weapon out before anyone even thought to get worried.

That, of course, was back in Russia. Here, she had no bodyguard, no security, no goons or thugs just a few feet away. They could reach her by phone, of course, but they’d been instructed to communicate via email or dead drop messageboard if it was important. No, out here, she was just innocent little Svetlana, the big-titted Russian tourist girl looking to have a bit of fun here and there.

She’d put on the airs of it before, that of a giggly, ditzy blonde who didn’t have a heavy thought in her head. She was doing it again because she wanted this, wanted a child with no strings attached, no father looking to coax their child into taking steps against her. She wanted a young mind she could mold entirely on her own, someone she could craft to be her heir, so that when she passed, they could avenge her death.

The whole competition had an air of implausibility to it, but Svetlana had done her homework, and the money churning behind the machine wasn’t just real, it was obscene. It was the sort of wealth that every man, woman and child on the planet dreamed of having. It wasn’t private island money; it was private island chain money. It was overthrow governments money. It was fuck you, anybody who looks like you and anybody even named the same as you money. With that much cash in the game, if she could get the child she wanted anyway, she would have a secondary cash income stream that she could use if she ran into problems with her burgeoning criminal empire.

All she needed was to get pregnant by the man she was approaching, Max Brand. He wasn’t anything remarkable or special to look at, certainly older than she preferred her men, but she’d been watching all the camera footage like almost all the other girls involved in the game, and she was going to do whatever she had to do to make sure Max gave her the time of day.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a surfboard if you’re going out in the ocean?” she asked him with a laugh as she walked up towards him. “Or, at the very least, a swimsuit?” She tugged on one piece of her bikini top to make it pull from her flesh a little, drawing it from her skin before letting it snap back. Her voice had some of that Russian accent to it, but not as much most people from the country, as she had worked very hard to bury as much of it as she could.

“Yeah, well, I just felt like getting some ocean water on me and didn’t feel like grabbing a swimsuit or a board,” he told her with a big grin. “Sometimes you just need to get away from everyone and everything for a little while.”

“Let me guess,” she said, gesturing towards his keys sticking out of his motorcycle, which had the obvious Ironwood Estates keychain attached to it. “You’re a new member and you’re finding it all a little overwhelming.”

He cocked his head then he laughed, nodding. “You got me there. I just got invited in earlier this week, and it seemed like after years of nobody wanting to fuck me, everybody wanted to fuck me.”

“Da,” she said. “It’s a big rush for your first three or four months, and it seems like everywhere you go there’s someone new eager and willing to have sex with you. Would you like a free piece of advice about this?”

“Sure?”

“Try not to say no to anyone,” she said with a playful laugh, trying to give her voice as much husky charm as she could. “I know that it can get overwhelming with so many people, but there’s a wonderful kind of joy in getting out of a drought by rushing into a flood. After a year or so, it slows down a lot and you find yourself missing what you once had. If I could give it all back to get that first years’ experience again, I would. There’s so much fun to be had just having new and wild encounters without having to stop and think about what you’re doing.”

The man laughed and gave her a quick glance over, because of course he would. She’d put the bait on the hook, and she wanted him to see her sexually. “I always stop and think what I’m doing.”

“Maybe that’s what you’re doing wrong, then,” she said with a lick of her lips. “You’re stopping and thinking too much instead of just taking an opportunity when it’s offered to you.”

“Are… are you offering me an opportunity?” Oh, the sweet man almost looked caught off guard, as if her sheer directness was too much for him to take in.

“I’m saying there’s a public bathroom right over there, and I’ve got ten minutes to kill,” she purred at him. “And wouldn’t that be a lot of fun?”

She saw him glance over to the small concrete building with the public bathrooms in it before looking back at her, and she wondered if she was losing her touch, because the man actually hesitated half a second before he smiled acceptingly. “Well, it wouldn’t be polite of me to turn down an offer like that, I guess.”

“Good,” she said, reaching over to grab his bum with her hand, pulling him to move close to her as she started walking over to the bathrooms. “Let’s get right down to it.”

The public bathrooms could barely be called that, more like concrete structures that had funnels to piss and shit in, really, but it would be more than enough for what she needed. Once they were inside of one of the units, she reached behind him and flipped the lock into place, turning the little wheel to say occupied.

One of her hands reached down to fish out his cock while the other pulled her bikini top up and off to expose those massive breasts of hers that had captivated so many of her father’s goons over the years. They would never get the sight of them uncovered, but this man would, and she could feel his shaft thickening to her touch as she brought his hand up to cup one, letting him ply at that mound of soft flesh.

His cock was hard almost immediately, and she did everything she could to get her jean shorts unzipped and down to her ankles, revealing she hadn’t put on anything beneath. She didn’t want to get down on her knees, but she also didn’t want him to have to sit down on the filthy seat either, so she simply spun around and bent at the waist, rubbing her ass back against him, letting him groan while she rubbed the tip of his cock along her slick snatch.

It was an easy quick motion for her to get the man’s member buried inside of her, and his hands went onto her hips. She arched her back as much as she could, but found the more she was bent forward, the easier it was for him to set a bouncing rhythm, bucking his dick in and out of her with sloppy wet squishes, their quiet fucking lost beneath the sounds of the waves crashing upon the beach just outside of the structure.

She’d seen the man do quite well at lasting long, but she wanted to make sure he was good and deep when he popped off, because he’d had time to recuperate, which meant she was going to get a heavy load of spunk up inside of her, and she knew that the longer she took, the more likely some of the other women were to show up, so she thrust back hard and fast, making him barrel inside of her until she could feel him tense up. When he hit his peak and began to spew cream within her walls, she found to her surprise that the warm sensation of it set off an orgasm for her as well, as she shook and whimpered in tiny surprise.

Just as quickly as they’d begun, she pulled off of him and stood back in her shorts, tugging them up, buttoning them up and finally pulling her bikini top back into place before leaning up to give the man a soft, thankful kiss. “See? Much more fun, don’t you think? I’ll see you at the club, hopefully,” she said as she let herself out of the bathroom, leaving the man still panting for breath behind her.

She hadn’t lost anywhere near as many steps as she feared she had.

The man hadn’t even thought to ask her name,