LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 21: The Takedown

It was evident that the SUV had taken note of its tail, judging from the driver's sudden and rapid increase in speed. Left with no choice but to abandon his plans to wait for his Dad's backup, Tony floored it, sparring for sufficient space to pass the vehicle, then hitting his brakes, therein forcing the driver to reflexively slam down on his own.

"Do you want your gun, darling?" Amanda politely offered, reaching for the glove compartment as her husband executed a skidding, sideways halt behind the SUV, landing on an angle that precluded the driver from backing down the road, should he insanely decide to even attempt it with a federal agent now on either side of the vehicle, revolvers cocked and sights trained on the man's temples.

"I doubt I'll be needing it," Jim Almeida answered in reference to his son now barking out his federal credentials and sternly ordering the driver to keep his hands visible. "You hold onto it," Jim added as he bounded from the driver's seat, "and…"

"... yes, stay in the car," Amanda beat him to it. "Be careful, darling. That's the jacket Olivia gave you for your birthday," she called out a reminder, watching her husband sprint to their son's side with the agility and speed of a twenty-year-old.

In truth, Amanda wasn't the least bit concerned about his being careful. She knew he was more than capable of handling himself, plus ten other men, if need be. Her confidence was quickly confirmed as she watched her son yank the SUV's door open, followed by her husband ripping the driver from his seat and smoothly securing him face-down in the dirt, twisting the perp's arm into a locked position behind his back.

Amanda also couldn't help but stare in awe and admiration of her future daughter-in-law, who had come around from the vehicle's passenger side and was now issuing a firm, threatening reminder to the perp of how foolish he would be to even so much as contemplate moving an inch. Amanda was struck by the stark contrast of Michelle's soft, flowy, feminine Armani knock-off, juxtaposed with her surprisingly loud, clear voice and command of the situation. It certainly wasn't the first time she had seen Michelle wield a hunk of cold steel, her own experience of staring down the woman's barrel still fresh in her mind. This time, however, Amanda was able to witness a show of Michelle's highly impressive level of skill, intensity, and professionalism from a safe and comfortable distance, which made all the difference in the world. It was as though she were watching a television show, like "Police Story," starring Angie Dickenson in the role of Sergeant Pepper Anderson. Amanda remembered it well: a groundbreaking, pro-feminism hit crime drama, which every woman in her exclusive circle of Bev-and-Bel housewives had been all abuzz about back in the 70's.

While her son studied the driver's license in the inside flap of the man's wallet, her husband caught the pair of cuffs Michelle had tossed him and securely clamped them into place before removing his knee from the man's back and frisking him for weapons.

Shifting focus back to her action-packed future-daughter-in-law, so adroitly covering the men with her petite firearm clenched firmly in her hands, Amanda allowed herself to fantasize for the briefest of moments, imagining herself and Miriam with their very own private detective agency. It would be unique, Amanda knew, as she was certain that Beverly Hills had never had an all-fem agency of socialite sleuths. Between her and the girls' collective, impressive, worldwide friends, acquaintances, associates, and other assorted connections, and their natural-born networking skills, and the informative gossip grapevine to which they religiously subscribed and contributed on a daily basis, no other group of women alive was better suited to handle sensitive snooping assignments of a clandestine nature.

Plus, as a bonus, she and the girls would get to carry guns, like those lovely, compact, streamlined ones that the models had been shooting off on the runway in Milan last season, nearly killing the lighting director during rehearsals for Gimmo Etro's Fall/Winter debut, featuring an inspired reintroduction of transparent "mod" outerwear, circa Mrs. Emma Peele. Amanda couldn't recall offhand if the dainty pistols — replete with interchangeable grips in a variety of contemporary fashion colors — allowed for personalized engraving, but even if not, she knew that the girls would love them just the same; especially since each would be able to have their own, individual signature color.

"Why have you been following me!" she heard her son gruffly demand of the man moaning into the dirt. "Who are you working for..."

"I no follow you! I follow the lady!" the terrified prisoner pleaded, his heavy Asian accent landing like a full-force punch to Amanda's exquisitely sculpted abs.

"You've been following me and my family for two damned days!" Tony barked, handing the man's wallet off to his Dad before crouching down and roughly flipping the tightly cuffed, middle-aged man flat onto his back. "Check the vehicle," he instructed Michelle over his shoulder, who passed her 25-caliber Beretta to her future father-in-law before dutifully heading back toward the wide-open door of the SUV.

"I no follow you, mister! I hire to follow the lady... The lady!" the petrified perp repeated.

"Olivia? My daughter?" Jim Almeida threateningly seethed in full protective-parental mode, reflexively grabbing the man's throat as if wholly prepared to choke him to death, depending upon the answer he received.

"No! No!" the man gasped with fear saturating his every atom, already feeling his oxygen supply compromised by fingertips perfectly poised to crack his windpipe with but one smooth, efficient black-ops squeeze.

As Michelle headed back to the men, fiddling with the metal closure on the manilla envelope she had recovered from the floor of the SUV, a low moan could be heard wafting through the airwaves; oddly, not from the man on the ground this time, but from the direction of the Ferrari.

"Oh, dear," Amanda breathlessly muttered, scurrying from the passenger's seat and moving several feet closer to the group before stopping abruptly in her tracks, in compliance with the wishes of her husband's eyebrow.

Instantly recognizing Amanda's guilty expression and nervous tone, both men paused from manhandling their petrified prey to exchange wary glances before slowly rising to their feet.

"Oh, dear, umm... That envelope, darling... Might it, umm... Might it be addressed to me, by any chance?" Amanda cautiously inquired with all eyes upon her, looking a little pale as she watched Michelle pass custody of the envelope to her husband, who lifted its flap. "He's, umm... I'm afraid he might be... well..."

"Go on," Jim Almeida spoke with an easy, controlled voice, in stark contrast to the frown digging increasingly deeper into his brow as he shuffled through the first few papers at the top of the heap.

Amanda's eyes darted rapidly back and forth between her son and her husband, then down at the man lying handcuffed in a heap at Michelle's feet. "Mr. Kobayashi, I presume?" she politely inquired.

"You know this guy, Ma?" Tony asked in complete confusion, glancing over at Michelle, who appeared equally as bewildered and clueless as he. "Ma?" he repeated with a firmer edge in his tone this time, after a few seconds of watching her nervously hemming, hawing, and clenching her hands together, as if about to lead the congregation in prayer. He quickly looked to his Dad, hoping to glean some kind of hint as to what was going on, but Jim Almeida's poker face had already locked itself firmly into position.

"He's, umm... He's a private detective, darling," Amanda sheepishly revealed, though addressing her response to her husband, who'd already figured out that much from the papers he was sliding back inside the envelope.

"Private detective…" Jim softly echoed his wife's words, his tone and demeanor as unruffled and unfazed as always. "Am I having an affair that someone forgot to tell me about?" he deadpanned, clamping the envelope lengthwise between two fingers and neatly tucking it into an interior pocket of his sports jacket.

"Of course not, darling... No, I, umm... What I meant to say was, he's Miriam's private detective," Amanda quickly explained, well within the bounds of technical accuracy. "Isn't that right, Mr. Kobayashi," she looked to the ground, her eyes begging the P.I. for backup.

"Then why is Miriam's P.I. lying fifty yards from my driveway instead of her own?" Jim patiently inquired, his eyebrow slowly and steadily ticking upward, like the sweep on a stopwatch, with every second his wife stalled on the details.

"He's, umm... He was a gift, of sorts," Amanda explained.

Tony stared in total confusion.

"They're giving each other private detectives as gifts now?" he turned and roared to his father, with naked alarm radiating from his bulging eyes.

"First I've heard of it," Jim Almeida murmured, eyes still firmly fixed on his wife. "You were saying...?" he prompted her onward with a ring of strong disapproval now evident in his tone.

Another low moan sounded, only not from Amanda, but upward from the ground where the man lied prostrate, straining against the handcuffs digging painfully into his wrists and cutting off his circulation.

"Well, umm..." Amanda began again, mentally scrambling for a way to ease Michelle's impending horror while still conveying the technical truth to her husband, and all in a way that wouldn't inspire her son to go ballistic. A trifecta-decepta: Amanda knew she could do it. "Well, you see, darling, I... umm..."

As his wife's intoxicating, translucently soft brown eyes launched into another round of darting, Jim Almeida made visual contact with the China Doll, whose crimson face and timid expression conveyed her mortification at finding herself at the center of yet another controversy.

"Missus Myer. She call me. She hire me," Mr. Kobayashi finally confirmed from the ground, wincing in pain, but still not daring to move a muscle until the two men had stooped down to free him of his shackles and help him back on his feet. "She hire me... Missus Myer... She call me... She say..."

"Yes, thank you, darling," Amanda nervously cut the detective off before he could have a chance to reveal any of the finer, more delicate details. "You must be simply reeling from the trauma of this perfectly horrid misunderstanding… Darling, write Mr. Kobayashi a check for his pain and suffering, won't you?" she meekly suggested.

"Wait! I have bill!" the little man announced, as long as the subject of money had already been placed on the table. "I have bill for Missus Almeida," he elaborated, motioning toward the envelope buried inside Jim's jacket.

"It would appear your friend Miriam is billing for her gifts now, sweetheart," Jim said, dryly, as Amanda winced at the mental vision of her Hermés credit card being snipped in half.

"You hired a P.I. to investigate Michelle?" Tony finally found the voice and wherewithal to seethe, his eyes on the verge of crisscrossing with rage.

"I...Well, darling, as I was saying..." Amanda sputtered, her mind racing to construct both a palatable and legalistic response, wishing she had a martini glass to give her hands something other to do other than wring themselves half off her wrists. "I didn't actually hire him, darling. Miriam did, you see... out of empathy, I would imagine, being a mother herself, and, umm… Well, every mother can empathize with the frustration of knowing their son is seeing someone, though stubbornly refusing to introduce her... even to his own mother..."

"I'd been seeing Michelle for less than a day at that point, Ma!" Tony roared in seismic frustration, struggling mightily, though none too successfully, to control his fury.

"Please, dear," Michelle's voice quietly crept forward, soft and low, from the rear of the tightly huddled crowd, reminding him of her earlier request from the other evening: that he exercise a little more patience, restraint, and respect when addressing his mother.

Much to Jim Almeida's amazement, his son's mouth promptly ceased and desisted, his hands robotically parking themselves on his hips as he took a few frustrated, circular steps, laboring to pull himself together — resentfully, but making an effort, nevertheless, obviously for Michelle's sake.

Jim Almeida broke his disbelieving stare long enough to focus on the China Doll, genuinely impressed by her unique ability to calm and quiet his volatile son, and with such subtly and grace. He had never seen another woman exhibit that ability or control before; in fact, the opposite would generally occur whenever one of his son's former love interests had sought to calm him down. He would invariably react with an even louder explosion, demanding to know why he should "calm down" in the face of whatever caper his mother had just been caught red-handed at. A few gentle words from the China Doll, however...

Impressive. Impressive indeed, Jim Almeida thought to himself, also duly noting her quiet self-control, and the patience she exercised, overall, with regard to his irascible wife. He couldn't remember whom the China Doll reminded him of at first, taking a moment before he realized that it was himself.

"Miriam was, umm... She was supposed to have terminated the investigation, you see," Amanda continued somewhat truthfully. Miriam would, in fact, have called Mr. Kobayashi off, had Amanda herself remembered to pick up a phone and request it.

Tony angrily muttered to the ground, making another wide circle, then staring up at his Dad in search of a few timely words of wisdom. But it was Jim Almeida's eyes that stepped up to speak, as usual, reminding his son of the advice he'd suggested the other evening: that he change the subject and ask his mother something about herself; that the option of blowing a gasket was always open to him, should he still feel the need to explode on her.

"What do you remember about Nalda?" Tony turned and roared, like a rabid animal, directly into his mother's face, at a volume that made Amanda involuntarily jerk back half a step in shock and horror.

"Wh… what?" she responded, slightly stunned and clearly confused.

"Nalda! Tell me what you remember about Nalda!" Tony roared again, sounding more like he was interrogating the location of a ticking time bomb out of a suspect terrorist in a CTU holding cell than seeking to learn more about his family history.

Jim Almeida dropped his head to his chest and rubbed his eyes for a quick moment, then turned to the China Doll, who was standing as solidly frozen in her tracks as the last time he'd checked, with the same heavy expression of self-consciousness and timidity seared into her delicate porcelain features.

"Take a walk with me, hmm?" Jim gently suggested, stepping up and offering his arm to her.

Tony's fury put itself on hold for a beat, just long enough to absorb the vision of Michelle meekly accepting his Dad's invitation with a small, bashful smile, taking his arm and falling into step with his easy stride. She appeared so tiny alongside his Dad, he warmly thought to himself. Though his Dad stood an inch or two shorter than he, the man's stature always came across as monolithic, just given the confidence and ease with which he carried and comported himself. Tony had never known another man to display such inner calm while simultaneously radiating an aura of raw power and steady, unflappable strength, on par with a General charged with commanding the Supreme Allied Forces of a world war. The dichotomy never failed to intrigue and arrest him.

"He needs to work on his finesse, wouldn't you say?" Jim Almeida quietly opined with a dry smile, once safely outside his son's earshot.

Michelle giggled beneath a closed grin, gazing down to the ground and nodding in agreement as the fireworks resumed behind them.

"You handled yourself quite nicely back there, young lady," Jim Almeida commented after a moment, in reference to Michelle's part in succumbing Mr. Kobayashi. He gently patted her hand before reaching for the fresh, glass-encased cigar that he always kept stashed inside his breast pocket. "If you ever decide to go into the private sector, I would hope you'd allow me first shot at bringing you aboard my security team."

"Oh, umm... thank you," Michelle responded bashfully, surprised by the unexpected compliment and invitation. "I'm pretty happy at CTU, actually," she reported, almost apologetically.

"Would you mind?" Jim Almeida begged the China Doll's indulgence, smoothly glancing over his shoulder to assure that Amanda was still sufficiently occupied with fruitlessly defending herself before removing his secret stash from its case.

"Oh course not," Michelle replied in all sincerity. She'd never had any problem with a person enjoying an occasional cigarette or cigar in her company, just as long as they didn't smoke like a chimney; plus, she loved the thick, sweet aroma of an expensive cigar. It also charmed and entertained her, in this particular case, to see a man so powerful and in control as Jim Almeida sneaking a cigar behind his wife's back. There was something as sweet as amusing about it, she thought, pinching her lips to keep from grinning too broadly at his expense.

Jim broke into a grin, himself, midway through holding the small flame of his withering lighter to the tip of his cigar, fully cognizant of the humorous side of his taboo habit, which he preferred to think of as more of a hobby. A moment later he grinned again, this time in response to the muffled sound of his son's voice booming in the distance, threatening to transfer to CTU, Brazil, if his mother didn't stay out of his love life.

"So much for Nalda," he good-naturedly commented. "Patience is a virtue he's yet to completely master, I'm afraid… Please tell me he doesn't sound like that at work..."

Michelle laughed.

"He has his moments, but on the average, I'd say he conducts himself pretty professionally," she replied with a reassuring smile. "He's especially polite when he speaks to the president," she decided to add, figuring that a father would probably enjoy such a reminder.

She was right. Jim Almeida beamed proudly, taking an extra long drag on his hand-rolled, custom-blended, obscenely priced Davidoff, spending a moment trying to count the number of other fathers he knew whose offspring had clearance to interact directly with the president of the United States, ultimately coming up with a estimate of approximately none.

After a few more moments of leisurely strolling and listening to the conversation that his son might as well be having with a brick wall, Jim Almeida removed the revolver he'd tucked into the back of his belt after it had become apparent that the chances of having to defend himself with a firearm against the diminutive, terrified Mr. Kobayashi, roughly half his weight, were negligible, at best.

"I think this is yours," he said, checking the safety before passing the small Beretta to her, then reaching inside his jacket for the envelope he had earlier filed. "This, too, of course," he added, watching with a stab to his heart as the China Doll's cheeks instantly assumed a pinkish glow.

"Thank you," she said with a small voice in a way that both pained and warmed his heart.

"I believe I'm the one who owes the thanks, for the tolerance and graciousness you've shown my dear wife, under the circumstances," he replied in all sincerity.

Michelle smiled warmly, though it was clear that her mind was far more focused on the envelope's contents than his compliments. He watched from the corner of his eye as she quickly and gingerly peeked at the first few pages, which she knew he had already seen. Her cheeks promptly turned a slightly deeper shade upon finding the notorious newspaper report of her Hom Ec bombing, with the humiliating picture of herself as a pudgy sixteen-year-old. The article seemed to have a mind and agenda all its own, hell-bent on haunting her throughout her entire life. It might as well have been authored by Stephen King, the way it always seemed to surface at the worst possible time, under the worst possible circumstances, like that creepy tractor trailer with no driver.

After taking a final soul-satisfying toke, Jim stooped down to give his beloved Davidoff a proper burial. He reiterated his gratitude, though not with words, but with one of the two wildflowers he plucked from the side of the road, which seemed to surprise and cheer her up considerably.

"I, umm… I love taking walks, by the way," Michelle mentioned as they u-turned and slowly headed back, "so anytime you feel the urge to, umm… take a stroll..." she diplomatically inserted in place of "sneak a cigar."

"I'll take you up on that, young lady," Jim Almeida chuckled, patting her hand again as he redirected his attention down the hill, grinning warmly at the sight of his pride and joy, still in the midst of his rant, though getting nowhere with his mother, who appeared much more interested in the contents of his car's back seat than the content of his words.

"Oh... oh, I hope everything's all right," Michelle gasped in a sudden panic upon noticing just how intently and intensely her future mother-in-law was staring through the window, obviously at Fluff-Fluff's cat carrier.

"Excuse me... Excuse me," she breathlessly apologized, releasing her hold on Jim Almeida's arm and breaking into a semi-frantic dash down the hill.

"Why... it couldn't possibly be," she heard her future mother-in-law intone, with mouth agape and curiosity creasing her forehead, stupefied by the sight her eyes beheld.

"He's fine, honey. He just busted outta the cage," Tony was quick to set Michelle's mind at ease as she made her approach with the speed of a formula racecar driver, minus the racecar.

"Why, that's not... No… No, of course not. What am I thinking? It couldn't be. He's far too young," Amanda continued conversing with herself in a gaspy voice, agog over the cat lying resplendently atop his carrier, magisterially viewing the people show on the other side of the glass. "But the resemblance is simply startling… He's the spitting image of Catzmeow Royal Sultan Fluff-Fluff…"

"That's his son!" Michelle gasped in shock, her eyes tripling in size and bursting with pride, astounded by her future mother-in-law's active, pinpoint knowledge of Fluff-Fluff's esteemed bloodline.

As Amanda reeled back in one of her more perfectly executed Bette-Davis-reeling-back-in-amazement moves, Tony closed his eyes and dropped his head in mental pain. How did she do it. How did the woman always manage to land on her feet; to wiggle off the hook, like a thirty-foot Great White on the end of a spool of mere sewing thread; to shift the gears of the conversation, like James Bond behind the wheel of his Aston Martin, drag racing a geek in a Gremlin hatchback; to not only move the hot spotlight off her face, but to reposition it, and herself, center stage, in front of an audience of her victims, all tossing roses at her feet instead of the rotten eggs and tomatoes they deserved to be throwing at her head.

"No!" Amanda gasped in equal disbelief. "But... but of course he would have to be. The resemblance is uncanny... Darling?" she said, quickly turning to her husband. "You remember Grand Champion Catzmeow Royal Sultan Fluff-Fluff, don't you? The Persian, darling, who won Best-of-Breed the year we were there with the Averys... He won two years in a row, in fact!"

"You remember?" Michelle gasped again as Tony ambled up to her side, figuring he ought to be there to catch her in the event she keeled over in a dead faint.

"Remember!" Amanda scoffed. "Why, we were right there in the third row... Isn't that right, darling?" she looked to her husband for confirmation, leaning in to kiss his cheek for the lovely wildflower he handed her. "They mixed up the tickets and those dreadful hillbillies ended up in our front-row seats. You recall, don't you, darling?"

"How could I possibly forget an experience as traumatic as that," Jim deadpanned, his eyes slowly drifting over to his son, who was struggling hard not burst into full-blown laughter at the thought of his Dad getting snagged into attending a cat show. He was usually much shrewder than that, always ensuring that his secretary booked him for a meeting somewhere on the other side of the planet whenever an event rolled around that he desperately wanted to miss.

Michelle nearly choked on her deep inhalation of breath, overwhelmed by the recognition her pumpkin chop was suddenly, and so deservedly, receiving.

"Or perhaps you really don't remember, darling," Amanda said, on second thought, turning her attention back to Michelle. "He was terribly tired that evening, poor dear. If I hadn't kept nudging him awake all night, he might've slept through the entire show!"

After watching a tear of laughter leap the moat and roll for its life down his son's cheek, Jim Almeida's eyebrow invited him to make a rough guesstimate of just how high the China Doll was likely to jump for joy upon opening an Overnight FedEx, sent to her with deep regards from an anonymous fellow feline enthusiast, containing premiere, front-row cat show tickets — for two.

"My wife... She big cat lover," the all-but-forgotten Mr. Kobayashi volunteered from a few ginger steps behind the men, sporting an expression that begged to be paid and released from custody so that he might finally get home to his wife, who tended to worry whenever he was out gumshoeing a case.

"What do ya say we move this party up to the house, " Jim Almeida mumbled to his son, inviting Mr. Kobayashi to join him for a scotch and a check. He then began the arduous process of shepherding his chatty wife away from the never-ending cat conversation and toward the car.

"I still can't believe you were actually there!" Michelle called back to her future mother-in-law as Tony tugged and shuffled her along, her eyes darting up at him, checking to see if he was having just as much trouble believing it as she.

"Why, I'm certain I still have the pictures, darling," Amanda matter-of-factly injected over her shoulder, her casual announcement nearly knocking Michelle off her feet.

"Got a minute for a quick drink?'" Jim Almeida turned back to his son and inquired.

"Uhh.. We should really be getting back on the road, Dad," Tony replied with a man-to-man look that outlined his afternoon itinerary with an efficiency that words could never match.

"But your mother has pictures," Michelle pleaded in a panicky yellsper, her doe eyes so wide and filled with the fear of possibly having to wait to see them at a later date that it instantly melted his heart down to a pool of useless, spineless goop.

"Indulge your old man, chief," his Dad amiably nudged. "I've got something up at the house that I wanna give you, too."

Tony was sure that whatever it was, it could definitely wait; especially since it was likely yet another folder filled with Wall Street Journal clippings on the subject of retirement investing, which his Dad was forever accumulating for him, always handing over a new, fully loaded folder well before he'd finally finished weeding through the last. He still had two of them, in fact, stacked in the corner of the kitchen counter, which he hadn't even begun to glance at yet.

"Sure, Dad," he nevertheless complied, sending Michelle's heart soaring with excitement.

As he reached for the handle on the passenger door, he fortunately remembered that the gay blade was loose and lying low somewhere inside. Hoping to avoid an afternoon of scouring the woods of Bel Air this time, he eeked the door open just enough for Michelle to insert her slender arm and fish around the floor for him.

With the fur ball securely locked in its cage, and Michelle securely locked in her seatbelt, Tony fired up the engine and fell in line with the convoy, sighing as he calculated the dismal odds of his ever having Michelle all to himself again.