Harvey had lived a blessed life, or so he imagined. A sports superstar, academic Olympian (figuratively, he wasn’t into that nerd stuff), self-made through grit and determination. Just ask his proud papa the capital investor, trophy wife mother, all his tutors, the people paid to make him look good in school applications and the photo editing software they used to do it; he did it all on his own.
Growing up it was a hardscrabble life, Greta, the nanny, would wake him at 7am even though school didn’t start until 8. He had to eat his fruit and proteins even though there was still plenty of sugar cereal. It was torture! She was so cocky, that Greta, so sure of herself and her value. Why didn’t daddy get him a nanny from Mexico like his friends had? So nervous and beat down, they didn’t dare to tell Tommy, Billy or Joseph what to do. If they tried it with any of Harvey’s tight-knit coterie all it took was one word, “inmigración” and they’d clam right up.
Stupid Billy got to eat his favorite, frosted chocolate puffs, for breakfast, lunch and dinner because of that magic word. And he got a new $56,000 smile to correct all his dental issues. Here Harvey was, suffering with his cheap, old original adult teeth. Disgusting…
Still, somehow, in spite of this hardship, Harvey’d made it through. Senior, Harvey was a Junior, when he was around would preach sometimes about how easy Harvey had it. But c’mon! Sure, grandpa was a skinflint, he’d had to build his empire one brick at a time through shrewd investment and Senior was there to watch and learn how to build a financial empire but today was different. The 1960’s made it easy to pull yourself up by the bootstraps; the things were everywhere! Harvey hadn’t ever even seen a bootstrap. They were like hen’s teeth that way.
That was during the golden years of America, when any man with a dollar in his pocket could invest it and boom, in a year you’ve got yourself a mansion. Yeah, Senior had no idea how hard it was for Harvey to get in good with his social circles; connections that would make him the king of New York! “Just wait” he told them, “Manhattan socialites are gonna envy our family name. The Weirs are gonna own every borough.”
As the hardest worker at the University of Pennsylvania Harvey made it happen, and all between bong rips! Also butt-chugging kegs of Coors. He drew the line at the harder stuff, whiskey or whatever, although he did want to be cool so, while he never actually used the hard drugs he did try them. Crack made him vomit. The rest were all varying degrees of okay. When graduation rolled around Harvey had a rock-solid C average, hadn’t been on academic probation in almost a year so, yeah, suck it dad! Now who’s got it easy?
Now the drive home, that was a slog! He almost fell asleep four damned times, even though he’d had only three driving beers by the end. “Woof. Man just wasn’t meant to drive for almost two hours.” He told himself. It helped that, when traffic wasn’t bogging him down, he could gun the Lambo up to a nice, relaxing 120MPH. His phone told him it was gonna be two hours to begin with and he was like “wanna bet?” but the phone was right! Somehow it knew he’d be doing double the speed limit half the time and sitting still the other half. On the upside at least the cop that tried to pull him over gave up pretty quick. You don’t pull over a Lambo, officer. Go bother a poor or something. Sheesh.
Pulling up to the family house, a pitiful estate you could barely call a McMansion, Harvey drifted in as he loved to do, tearing up some grass. The groundskeepers loved this, he thought, because it gave them something to do. Don’t want bored groundskeepers, no sir. The only thing is that the cops who’d gathered outside the house were alarmed by this. Also the ambulance outside was a surprise. Looking around at the house he’d barely seen in the last 4 years, Harvey was confused by what he saw. It was mostly the same but who were all these people? A tap on the window got his attention.
Rolling down the window Harvey was surprised to see one of NYPD’s finest leering down at him. He had to think fast.
“Son, you can’t be here right n—”
“I was doing the speed limit! I swear! You can’t prove—
“What the hell? This is a crime scene. C’mon, you need to roll your fancy … whip on out of here, mac.”
“Crime scene?”
“That’s what I said. Nobody in or out until—”
“This is my house!”
“Gonna keep interrupting me aren’t you.”
“Oh shit. Oh shit, were we robbed!?” asked Harvey, opening the door into the officer, who scowled from behind his reflective sunglasses, mustache bristling with anger.
“This ain’t your house, boy. The owner is inside and—”
“Dad!” shouted Harvey, running past the cop who, suddenly catching on, let drop his scowl and followed as quick as he could.
Middle-aged couple, college-aged son, of course. “Dad? Fuck me. Hey! You don’t want to go in there, son! Kid!? Dammit, someone grab him!”
But nobody did. Harvey juked past cops and other public servants, outran others, vaulted a guardrail and straight up the stairs. “Dad!” Man, wait until dad saw these awesome moves, dodging all these cops, weird cops dressed like doctors and was that an EMT?
Whatever. He’d finally see that the coach was crazy for benching him on account of academics. He should’ve been the starting quarterback!
Rounding a corner, Harvey made it to his father’s study. Everyone around stood, shocked, this unexpected intruder barging in and disrupting what was clearly a forensic investigation. Chalk outlines, police tape everywhere, small tables smashed into scattered shards of glass, three wine bottles laying empty on the floor and a fourth smashed, still full, in a corner, the sweet red spread out to merge with a pool of blood. A pool that’d left a trail back to its source…
Standing, shocked, looking into the study Harvey saw a figure in a smoking jacket but lacking the top part of his head. The gore was such that the face was fully obscured. Still buzzing from the alcohol he’d imbibed during his drive, Harvey called out again. “Dad! Where are you? There’s some … some dead guy wearing your jacket!” His voice cracked and, hearing it from his own mouth, out loud, Harvey suddenly knew. “Dad?”
At just that moment the cop that had met him in the front yard caught up with him, grabbing him around the shoulders from behind. “Kid, kid c’mon, you don’t need to see this.” He said, pulling Harvey back. But he sounded impossibly distant and strange to Harvey who shuddered, hearing only the pounding of his own heart in his ears.
“Mom!?” he cried out, brushing the cop off with surprising ease, heading for his parents’ bedroom.
“No! Dammit, stop!” cried the police officer, shocked by the 20-something’s strength. “Am I the only one here!? C’mon! Don’t let that kid—” but it was too late.
Standing in the doorway Harvey looked in on a gorgeous blonde, wrists slashed, half-dressed in a slip and bathrobe. Behind her the words “she can have what’s left of him” were scrawled roughly in what looked to be her own blood. Chalk white, mascara streaming down her face and into her bodice, she lounged on her chaise, high-caliber pistol laying nearby on the sideboard, seemingly having been recently used. Surrounding her, all about the floor, more wine mingling with blood.
“Mom?” he asked, taking half a step forward, the world was growing dim, the floor impossibly distant. She heard nothing. Harvey’s knees shook as darkness closed in at the periphery of his vision. Staggering backwards he felt strong arms catch him up, multiple faces looking down at him and he realized he now looked at the ceiling. Feeling protected he let go. Black.
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He awoke a short time later, clearly still early in the very sunny day and both law enforcement and medical personnel still swarmed the premises. Harvey slowly realized he was still at home though, now, on a gurney, in an open ambulance, an oxygen mask on his face. “What? What happened?”
“Oh, liebchen, you’re awake. I was so worried.” It was Greta, his old nanny. Where had she been? “The officers, they had so many questions. I wish I’d known … that you’d arrive, so you’d hear it from me.” Choking on her words, Greta looked away, her eyes welling up. “Oh, what you’ve seen…”
“I … my … my sister?”
“Harvey, Lynn, she’s at the school. It’s barely past noon now … so much happened. I was shopping for the family…”
“Yeah. Yeah. What happened though?” His voice was oddly hoarse, his throat felt torn.
“How to say. I. It’s so horrible. Your mother, she was so angry last night. Drank so much wine. Old bottles, saved for impressing important people or as an investment. Nothing seemed to matter any longer. She was awake already when I woke to get Lynn ready for school.”
“’She can have… What’s left of him’? The words on the wall? What did they mean?” Harvey croaked and Greta’s eyes shot wide, wet with tears.
“Oh, oh Harvey, she was hysterical.”
“But the words meant something. Someone. Who?”
“Oh, Harvey, no…”
“Was it you?” His voice cracking, his own eyes welling up tears.
Trying to form words, Greta was only able to choke out a mad, tittering, shuddering sob. Turning away, she grabbed the side of the ambulance to steady herself.
“It was. But why—?”
“My son!”
“Huh?”
“My son … he’s your brother, Harvey.”
“Hans?” Greta’s son had been gone for awhile, at a finishing school, his education one of Greta’s employment benefits.
“So dad. And you? But … mom? Wait. Hans is ten, you started working here when I was twelve and I’m … I’m twenty-two now.”
“He didn’t tell me he was married! I, I don’t know, I was just a waitress working in Hamburg and he was so charming. So confident! He told me about you. That you needed someone to care for you. I … I didn’t even know it was a job and by the time I got to New York I was … I was already pregnant!”
“I have a little brother.” It was a statement, not a question. “You … you were pregnant when you came here. Yeah. How … how did I not notice? How did we not know?”
“Oh, liebchen, no, I, everyone knew. Beverly, she knew it before I came here. She said, said … she wanted me close. Like, maybe if I was here, he wouldn’t stray any further. She said she wanted to avoid scandal.”
“That doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.”
“I know. I … there is one other thing. Something I only just learned from the detective. Papers. Divorce papers.”
Every muscle in Harvey’s body tensed and something in his face began to thrum with a sound only he could hear. “What?”
“Please know. Please. I wasn’t involved, okay? He’d said for years, almost from the day I arrived, that he’d divorce your mother. I never believed it. Year on year nothing changed, nothing except … except his oldest child returning home today. I always told him don’t, don’t do it to your family, don’t do it for me.”
Mouthing the words back “oldest son returning home”, Harvey felt something wash over him; a coldness; a detachment. “I have to… I have to leave.”
“What?” Greta was clearly shocked by this assertion.
“Yeah. I own all this now, right? I’ll get custody of Lynn, right? Next of kin. I’m an adult. But you’ll keep raising her. Me … I have to go.”
“Go? Go where? Do what? You just got back!”
“Where? Far. I’ll … see the world. Asia. Yeah.”
“But why? What will your sister do? She’ll have no family, no one, Harvey. Did you even think of Lynn!?”
The question hung in the air for a moment. Harvey observed the scene as if it were some show and he was only a spectator. Emergency vehicles everywhere, a red sports car he knew was his but looked somehow unfamiliar, the woman who actually raised him instead of the loveless couple dead upstairs, nothing was real. Not really. “What about her? She was basically a baby when I went to college. Better … better she be raised by the only real mother she’s ever known, right?”
“I’m … I’m not her mother. You’re the only blood she has left, Harvey.”
“Not true.” He stated glibly. “You said it yourself; Hans is our half-brother. Move him in here, give him one of the guest bedrooms. No reason to send him off to school anymore. He’ll go to the same school as Lynn.”
Fading back, Greta couldn’t find the first word to say, so she sat down on the rear bumper of the ambulance to cry quietly. Harvey stared at the ceiling, in awe of the many tiny compartments, rows of lighting and two bars in the ceiling for medical personnel to hang onto when the ambulance was in motion.
“How is he?” asked a man’s voice. Harvey half sat up, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t strapped down. An EMT had returned to his vehicle, plain, nondescript, under six feet tall and unremarkable in every way.
“He’s … he’s gone. Doesn’t … care. About anything.”
“That’s, hey now, listen, that’s just shock. He’s been traumatized by—”
“Hey!” shouted Harvey, suddenly incensed. “Don’t talk like I’m not here!”
“Whoa, no, okay. You should probably lay back down, son.”
“Should I? My whole life they told me what to do. Stay on the straight-and-narrrow, listen to your teachers, listen to the tutors, extracurriculars, not enough, they make some up like I’m not good enough. Meanwhile my old man is nailing the help and mommy dearest is complicit!” Beat. “And don’t call me ‘son’.”
“Okay, I am so sorry, this is clearly a family matter—”
“Except she’s not family! Oh, but her kid is!”
Crashing into the EMT, Greta fell into a hysterical state. Inconsolable. Harvey, the cold pit inside him yawning wider and wider, consuming everything, rolled off the gurney and hopped to the ground.
“I gotta go. That’s all there is to it.” And he did. Hustling to his Lambo, Harvey started to feel some of his swagger return. Yeah, this could be good. A new beginning. Hopping into the car, he’d only just managed to get the engine turned over when a tap on the glass came. It was the first cop, the one manning the perimeter.
“Hey, kid, listen. Looks like you’re going … what, to think? Let off some steam?”
“Away. I’m going away.”
“I was afraid of that. Kid like you, dad’s a hedge fund manager, now that money’s yours, things look dark and you turn to … well, I won’t say.”
“There a point to this?”
The officer scoffed a little at this, gritting his teeth a little. “You’re at risk for some self-destructive behavior, kid. Look, if you need anything, just look me up at the precinct. We got resources. Therapists, psychiatrists, all sorts of stuff.”
“I’m kinda rich, Officer Friendly. Whatever you got I’m pretty sure I got ten of.”
“All I’m saying is you’re not alone. Things seem dark right now but just remember that. My name’s Robertson, okay? Hugo Robertson. 17th Precinct.”
Finally, wordlessly, Harvey turned to look at the officer. In response the mustached lawman took off his sunglasses and the two locked eyes for a moment. “Yeah. Uh … okay. If I need something I’ll come to you.”
“Good man. Now you drive safe, okay?” and, with a pat on the shoulder, the officer turned and departed.
Sitting there for a long moment Harvey thought about what that uniformed policeman had said. It felt manipulative. But what motive could he have? He probably heard at least parts of the conversation with Greta and, then, him yelling at the EMT. Harvey wasn’t stupid, strictly speaking, but, until this moment, he had no control over his life. He’d gone to Pennsylvania because his father’s Alma Mater, Yale, shut him out, even when dad had offered a decent bribe.
Further attempts at the ivy league yielded no fruit and so it had to be Pennsylvania. Birth through college, he’d been led by the nose, told he was better than these ‘lower classes’ and, now, he felt like he was looking up at them from the bottom of that deep, cold pit he had inside. So, after a brief moment of terrifying introspection, Harvey ran.
Beyond that Harvey would scarcely say though a private investigator had managed to put much of it together for the family. First, he hired a translator and headed to China. In Dengfeng he’d join the world famous Shaolin monks and learn from them combat and about himself; body and soul. The soul part did not come easily and, though Harvey was something of a prodigy in terms of fighting, his pig-headedness eventually led to his expulsion. He’d challenge himself in underground fighting exhibitions and tournaments for another year, proving to himself that he was the fighter he wanted to be. From there, it was time to finally head home. Finally time to face the music…