Even when Melanie opened the door to her own apartment and saw those familiar arrangements in the living room, she still felt that everything was not real enough.
She took off her high heels and walked to Tommy Hawk's half-open bedroom. As she peered inside, Tommy Hawk, the true owner of the keen and meticulous mind praised by Andy Nelson, was hunched over his desk, greedily flipping through books and fluidly taking notes, obviously not noticing the sound of her entering.
"How did you manage to do it?" Melanie leaned on the door frame, quietly watching Tommy's back for a long while until he straightened up to grab a cigarette to relax, only then did she speak and startle him.
Tommy Hawk turned his head to look at Melanie, his expression seemingly richer than before. He smiled and said, "Dennis, that guy, has already told me the result. I didn't think you'd come back so late, so I had dinner by myself."
"I came into contact with ninety prescription pills, not enough to trigger the 'Controlled Substances Act.' Dennis bought a hundred and fifty pills but gave away only twenty-five, and being a minor, he didn't trigger any mechanism either. Three people handled those drugs, but only one person is accountable for the crime. Did you calculate all this? Even the Saint Cross High School Parent Committee is part of your calculation?" Melanie asked Tommy Hawk straightforwardly.
"Dennis said he knew the students at Saint Cross High School, so I just let him take care of it. I trust him. Playing the bad student is not my forte, but Dennis naturally looks the part of a bad student." Tommy Hawk thought for a moment and carefully chose his words, "If Dennis hadn't said he knew students at Saint Cross High School, I would have used his seventeen-year-old girlfriend to start with chatting up Hugh Spade, but that's another story with a roughly similar outcome."
With a hint of wistfulness in her tone, Melanie reflected, "Do you know? I've never seen Hugh Spade show a side as weak and helpless as a vagrant. In my memory, he was smart, strong, enthusiastic, ferocious... Has he changed, or was he never as strong as I remembered? Seeing him in that lost and pathetic state, my first thought was that I actually liked such a pitiful man."
When Melanie saw the police take Hugh Spade to the station once again, when they came with a search warrant to scour the apartment, finding all the negatives and photographs promising to store them securely for trial without leakage, when the lawyer disdainfully told Hugh Spade to be prepared to face everything, when the guy couldn't even afford bail and had to borrow from his ex-girlfriend, a single mother who lent it to him for the sake of their child, her image of the strong, evil Hugh Spade completely collapsed.
"You know? The guidance book given to me happened to state that money and violence are humanity's most primitive poor natures. No matter how the world progresses or technology advances, these two basic human desires remain unchanged. Dealing with opponents is simple, just skillfully exploit these two basic desires. Hugh Spade used violence to awaken your inner cowardice, so you succumbed to him out of fear. On the contrary, I used money to awaken his inner greed, so he will eventually perish because of money. He is indeed a strong man, but only within a certain scope. When a stronger opponent selects him to be in the money's octagon, he is powerless," Tommy Hawk stood up, holding his coffee cup as he passed by Melanie and headed to the living room to make coffee, commenting,
"His powerlessness has nothing to do with his strength or intelligence. It's because of his poverty."
"So, do you want to know... why I came back so late?" Melanie turned around, looked at Tommy Hawk as he put the coffee grounds and hot water together, and with a smile, she changed the subject.
The words just spoken by the young man were too mature, mature to a point that she found it hard to accept and didn't know how to respond. However, the feeling of having a family member close by, ready to offer protection, made her feel incredibly warm.
Tommy Hawk looked at Melanie somewhat puzzled and asked uncertainly, "Do I need to know?"
"Of course," Melanie said affirmatively, then took a bank appointment slip out of her purse: "I went to the bank and made an appointment for the mortgage procedure tomorrow."
"But I haven't told you what business I want to do, you... phew~~~" Tommy Hawk looked at the appointment slip with a surprised expression, then turned to Melanie, exhaling a breath of air, "Thank you for your trust, Aunt Melanie."
"So, what business is it?" Melanie walked up to Tommy Hawk, picked up a coffee cup, and stirred with a teaspoon.
"Cigarette business. Right now, two hundred nautical miles from us, there's a tobacco processing ship operating day and night." Tommy glanced at the coffee cup that Melanie had taken away and had to turn around to make another cup for himself. He also recounted to Melanie the news he had heard from Will Kendrick.
Hearing Tommy was going to spend money to buy cigarettes, the relaxed expression on Melanie's face tightened again: "I remember you telling me that you wouldn't do anything that violates any American laws. Since when has smuggling cigarettes become legal in the United States?"
"That's a very good question to discuss." Tommy Hawk sipped his coffee and said to Melanie, "As long as we don't sell these cigarettes in the United States, we won't be breaking any laws. Just like that tobacco processing ship, as long as we make the sale in international waters, it's legal. At least we're not breaking any American laws."
With a coffee cup in hand, Melanie looked steadily at Tommy Hawk, "So you think those cigarette traders will come buy your marked-up goods while their processing ship is moored in international waters?"
"No, without the power of a tobacco company, it's best not to provoke the United States government. Although the United States government does not recognize transactions in international waters as illegal, we're not a big tobacco company with a strong foundation. The correct choice should be to conduct the transaction in a spineless country that would not dare complain about the United States. The best choice, of course, is Canada. So, the right move is to buy the goods, head north to Canada, and complete the transaction with the buyer in the international waters near Canada. I've looked into it these past few days. Since the United States hasn't fully abolished the death penalty, there's a problem with the extradition treaty between Canada and the United States, which means, even if we conduct a transaction with cigarette traffickers using our real names—of course, that's not possible, this is just a hypothetical—if the buyers know our identity and Canada later captures the traffickers and learns that we live in Warwick, Rhode Island, they would be powerless because the United States government wouldn't heed their complaints."
"But... Canadian law... Strictly speaking, your actions may violate Canadian law," Melanie opened her mouth, but then realized there wasn't much to say. Indeed, just as Tommy said, he had already looked into everything. What American tobacco ships can do to smuggle into the United States, he, as an American, can emulate, and swap the counterpart for Canada, which surely wouldn't dare upset the United States.
"It's a possibility with the United States government," Tommy Hawk continued while holding his coffee cup. "The United States government may have violated many countries' laws, but no country dares to wage war against the United States. This world is survival of the fittest. Right now, I am an American citizen. If I haven't violated American laws, the United States government has to provide me the protection I deserve. You know, Aunt Melanie, what we should be worried about is not Canada but another issue—the money earned from smuggling has to be taxed by the United States government."
"How we should go about paying taxes and avoid trouble from the tax department, that's the most powerful institution in America and the world," said Tommy Hawk as he walked into his own bedroom.