The 99: Penny's Angel

The Last Dinner

Jeremy Lane sat at a head table with his wife Paula, watching his employees eat dinner. Paula was exquisitely dressed in a black sequin skirt while Jeremy wore an expensive made-to-measure white suit.

"Look at them gulping down their free food," Jeremy whispered to his wife. "Wouldn't surprise me if they stuffed their pockets on the way out."

"If you say so dear," Paula muttered.

"Yes I say so, and don't give me that condescending tone or I'll put you on a bus to your pathetic mother. Watch Higgins over there...big fork full of pasta. He can hardly fit it into his fat face. Eat you lowlife, for every one dollar I give you, you give me twenty."

"Father," Penny interrupted.

Jeremy paid no attention. He was still glaring at Higgins with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

"His wife is just as bad. How did she fit into that dress?" He chuckled loudly. "It must have taken three people to zip her up."

"Father?" Penny asked again.

This time Jeremy turned towards his son with an annoyed stare. "What is it Pennington? I'm talking with your mother."

Penny pointed towards the table where Michael and Angel were seated with their parents.

"That boy sitting over there hit me this afternoon. Can you fire his father?"

"Did you hit him back?"

"No, he's bigger than I am," the young boy whispered.

Jeremy sighed loudly. "He's bigger than you, is that what I'm hearing? What are you...a fairy? Do you expect me to fire someone because you're a little girl?"

"Jeremy, don't talk to your son like that!" Paula blurted, taking offence to her husbands attack on their son.

"I'll talk to him any way I damn well please. This is your fault anyway, pampering him like a china doll. The boy should be in self-defence classes developing strong fighting instincts and learning to be a man. He's almost eight years old and he's already depending on me to fight his battles, against a Paki no less."

"Raj is East Indian; he's not from Pakistan not that it matters..." Paula began.

"Are you speaking?" He said glaring at his wife. Jeremy turned back towards his son.

"As I was saying, I was taking on kids twice my age when I was eight so stop being such a wimp; I'm sick of it. Starting Monday I'm putting you in boxing classes. Now eat your dinner and leave us alone. I don't want to hear another peep out of you."

Penny looked down at his plate and picked at his food. It was the last time he would speak to his father for many years to come.

The three security guards went down quick. Barry, the twenty-year old valet, was the first to feel the crushing blow of a baseball bat against the back of his head. He woke up in a hospital the next morning with a severe concussion. Old Johnny, the sixty-year-old security guard, was tied up and dumped behind the tall shrubs next to the street entrance. He didn't put up much of a fight and before they taped his mouth he asked the assailant to put his glasses in a safe spot. Donny, the thirty-year old veteran of these company parties, was not as passive and put up a good fight but in the end, lay bloodied in the trunk of a 1972 grey Camaro.

Five men dressed in beige overcoats and carrying small leather bags ran towards the mansion. Each had a walkies-talky attached to their pant belts. They addressed each other as famous author. The ringleader, Orwell, was a heavy built mountain of a man with sandy hair and ice blue eyes. He waited two minutes for a signal from Twain who had already muscled his way into the kitchen. Old Molly and three of the waiters remained silent as soon as they saw the rifle pointed at them. They lay on the floor as instructed and never looked up from that point on.