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 “To say my story is off to a bad start is putting it mildly. My name is Alice, I’m 20 years old, I’ve never had a father, my mother died last month and today I was released from jail – 8 months in the joint for stealing four or five cars. Nice, powerful cars, the kind that make you feel free and give you the long thrill of speed that ends up in a six-by-ten cell. There are lighter things to have in your bag when you’re starting out in life.
Speaking of bags, guess what I found in the one my mother left me? A small tape with her voice on it, telling me the real story, the one she never told me to my face. The fact is I never knew my father because I had one too many. Twenty years ago, mom was in love with two men and one of them made me. He never found out, naturally, because mom never told him. She left the fun of surprising them to me. So who’s the luck papa? No idea?
Take a look at the title, it’s a clue. You got it? They each have HALF A CHANCE.
Meeting your dad for the first time at my age is always a little embarrassing, but when you have two of them in front of you, I swear it really freezes you up. Especially these two. He-men, both of them, not at all the sugar-daddy types, more like bears, I’d say. Bears with very sore heads when they find out they shared the same woman. Strange to say, they never met before I introduced them, but when they did meet they took an instant dislike to one another. So, to set the record straight about our family connections, we all agreed to put our faith in genetic science, get some blood tests done and let a lab nurse decide who’s who. The trouble was, we didn’t have time to do it.
To be absolutely honest, it was my fault that our family can of worms quickly grew into a deadly nest of snakes. Given my habit of stealing cars, I was bound to pick the wrong one eventually, and I did. This one had a suitcase in the trunk. The suitcase itself was no problem. The problem was inside:
$50 million.
You can see where this is heading. But when I tell you the mega stash belonged to one of the most brutal thugs in the Russian mafia, and what’s more, I stupidly got the suitcase stolen off me before I even set eyes on it, I think you’ll start seriously fearing for my health. Except that you haven’t really met my two daddies yet.
You see, they both supposedly retired from business and to look at them, you’d think they couldn’t hurt a fly. But there’s more to some old fogies than meets the eye. Did you ever try treading on a lion’s tail? How about two lions? Even if you’re a Russian gangster, as mean as a killer wasp, armed to the teeth and there are ten, fifty or a hundred of you, I’d still suggest you watch your step.
As everybody knows, parents are supposed to pass on their knowledge to their kids and I have to admit my fathers were patient teachers. Right now, I could dynamite any office building, yacht or city block you care to mention, reassemble a Magnum 357 with my eyes shut and land a mortar shell precisely on the target of your choice. That reminds me, you may have heard recently about the surprise demolition of various casinos and villas on the Riviera and a certain slowdown in the Russian mafia’s migration to the south of France. That’s the problem with language barriers: sometimes you have to make a lot of noise to get your message through.
But what really worries me is that one day, inevitably, we’re going to get around to having those damn blood tests done. HALF A CHANCE each, remember? I have a sneaky feeling I’m going to go out and misbehave again. Maybe that way we’ll go on being one real happy family.”
- Source: “Half a Chance” press guide
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