What Did His Father-In Law Say To Her Mother-In-Law-Nothing, Absolutely Nothing- Death To “In-Law” Jokes-Now!

By Steve Lucas, special guest commentary

I am sick unto death of “in-law” jokes, period. Moreover, sick unto death of being the butt of every “in-law” joke that has hit the Lucas-Levine family ever since my son Mark married Marie Levine some twenty-years ago under some very strange circumstances as even I must admit. But to have to every few years, as now, even in retirement, withstand the siege of the Levine devourer machine come family reunion time is beyond the pale, is something I might very well do something about this time. Maybe think something really devious up to ruffle some feathers. Especially, to keep that braggart-roaster Jerry, Jerry Levine, father to dear sweet Marie, and father-in-law to my son Mark even if it was a close thing, the becoming a father-in-law part off kilter.          

    

Let me tell the tale and even the most jaded taste, even the most “live and let live” aficionados will cry to the high heavens with me for vengeance. You might as well know at the beginning that Steve Lucas is not my real name, or at least you should not assume that it is because back about twenty years ago when Mark and Marie sprang the big news that they wanted to get married I was working, well, for the government in a very sensitive capacity. (I will not disclose which agency I worked for since I have something like a non-disclosure agreement with the agency involved some members of whom would be very happy to cut my throat for even mentioning the alphabet soup agency I actually worked for which was so hush-hush in those days only about ten, eleven people know the whole story, or what they think is the whole story.)

Everybody, my son, Jerry Levine, a couple of rogue associates who went free-lancing on their own when they saw a big payday coming up and no desire to share, sided with the bad guys and have yet to be heard from again, assumed it was the CIA and I did nothing to dissuade them from that “front.” The truth is that after the fiasco in Afghanistan, after CIA agents high and low fled like a gaggle of geese when they done supplying the mujahedeen against the Soviets and then dropped out to leave these cock-eyed Arabs or whatever they are to their own devises they have been nothing but jerkoffs and bunglers who I wouldn’t trust to go to the post office to mail a letter if there are any around anymore. They are like the Marines whose last great expedition was in Inchon in Korea around 1950 and they have been living off their respective high points ever since. The alphabet soup “deep state” although we never used that term of art agency I worked for would have had your average CIA operation done before noon with time for a nap before lunch.              

         

Since everything, all the important parts, about that caper has been exposed, been written about by I think Tom Clancy, has been made into a movie starring a guy named Mike Douglas I can fill in some of the information about what I was doing when my Mark laid that bombshell about getting married on me . That while I was on what I will call the Hotel Olga case, although it was not about any hotel (hotels were sites for various aspects of the caper however) but about some rogue ex-Soviet KGB agents grabbing a top of the line (then) Soviet submarine and preparing to sell to the highest bidder, either a state actor whose interests would not coincide with United States interests or a non-state actor who wanted to have the capacity to get, what did Johnny Rocco, the famous gangster out of 1930s Chicago call it, oh yeah, “more,” more dough and power with no heavy lifting.    

The reader does not need to know why I was in Moscow at the time, okay, although that same reader can guess that I was arranging a deal with the Russian guys, agents of the oil oligarchs as it turned out and that as part of the deal agreement was reached that it would be consummated in four days, a Sunday  (not my timetable, theirs, so I couldn’t tip my hand that I needed more time due to “personal” reasons). There is your international intrigue opener but see this mixed in with my having to be in Chicago, yeah, Johnny Rocco’s wide-open Chi town for a party that I was throwing for the young betrothed and to meet the future in-laws, or better fete them officially since I would actually meet them a day or two earlier.  

That “earlier” would set off a train of events which, as I said before I have not lived down to this day. My Mark would be considered a “catch” in today’s meat market, young, good-looking, a lawyer with great prospects and raised by a mother, my ex-wife Donna, who did a good job when I was “working” whatever caper the agency had me running around the world to do. This Marie, a doll, was also a great catch but here is where things broke down and continue to break down on the subject unto this day.  The father, this Jerry Levine, a doctor if you could call it that, a so-called cosmetic surgeon, you know giving well-heeled men and women a tuck here a pull there with no heavy lifting and no particular reason for doing it (except to hear Jerry tell it even today in his own retirement you would think his was the greatest service to build self-esteem since Freud, and cheaper). This guy, a Jewish guy, had about every phobia known to mankind, maybe more, fear of flying, heights, claustrophobia, small spaces, big spaces, guns, or any sense of adventure beyond the usual Saturday country club bullshit that has been going on at least since John O’Hara exposed the whole thing many years ago in an endless series of novels about the vacuous lives of that set. But Jerry had also worked himself up into this fetish for giving his daughter, his Marie, a big wedding, a big sent off and that is how I got bushwhacked, yes, bushwhacked is exactly right into showing up in Chi town when I really needed to be in Paris that weekend to close the deal with the third party I was acting as the middle man for the oligarchs for.     

I might as well tell you since you will find out anyway, or maybe know already if you read the Clancy book or saw the movie, that I was in such deep cover with such a crooked trail of exploits, some even true, known by a bunch of domestic intelligence agencies that during the entire Hotel Olga caper, start to finish, the “feds” were on my ass. (Again, although I have no non-disclosure agreement with this agency everybody assumed it was the FBI, and I let it go as that. Although the FBI probably hasn’t done anything except hassle some has-been Reds since J. Edgar catch John Dellinger with his pants down in some whorehouse in Kansas City and never got over it.) Wouldn’t you know that the “feds” crashed the little pre-wedding reception I had set up in the exclusive Hotel Lennox for Mark and Marie. I was too deep into the case, was too close to wrapping up a serious threat to our national security to let them get to me. So, with their guns drawn, I threw Jerry in front of me to make my escape (and I hear their leader Special Agent Pride is still scratching his head over how I was able to flee, unarmed, with a civilian stiff against his coterie of fifteen gunslingers. Keep scratching.)       

That little silly hostage incident I guess you could call it that meant nothing to me (or history when the deal went down) is really the start of the in-law hassles, the insults. See I had to take Jerry to Paris with me, despite his fear of flying, to see this guy, this hard-ass international gangster, Pierre, not his real name but what the hell, who wanted that freaking submarine to run his dope, his women, his hot cargo, and his guns without hassles via the high tech gadgetry that would be almost undetectable. Like Johnny Rocco Pierre was a “more” guy. A “more” guy with a funny twist though although I had dealt with Pierre several times before on big dope deals and money transfers when Uncle Sam needed some plausible deniability since he was a “fairy,” light on his feet, you know, a homosexual, a gay guy I guess you would call him today. He made a big play for Jerry and I encouraged it although I couldn’t really see good-looking Pierre with an overweight anxious high-end Revlon salesman. In any case nothing big came of it since Jerry was as hetero as you could get but the diversion helped since I got access to Pierre’s computer codes and his money laundering operations.           

A lot of stuff in the spook, spy business and it is usually good for business, good for cover is to have a lot of bullshit out there about how you did this, didn’t do that and so Jerry turned out to be a free ad for me when I had him, fear of heights and all, free-float with me off the tallest building in Chi town. Had him hanging around with “feds” giving them all kinds of wrong information that I had been feeding him all along. And whatever else he is throwing out to his “public” unto this day when my name and how we “met” comes up. Naturally I cleaned up the Pierre case, wrapped it up solo (it is pure bull that Jerry was “with me every step of the way” as he tells the story not in my hearing in capturing Pierre, grabbing some serious dough, 170 mil not bad, and bonking that freaking high-tech submarine to the briny deep and saving a the world from another million stone cold junkies, grifters, sifters, and midnight drifters). Naturally too around the family hearth with the old ladies and gents bored silly and looking for some goose Jerry can pull out the heart-rendering story of how he saved the wedding of Mark and his daughter Marie from a stumblebum derelict like me. A mere in-law. Enough said.