Howard Polk and Rafo’s father-son relationship

Howard Polk and Rafo’s father-son relationship is introduced through the distance between a remembered child and an absent son. Howard says he misses Rafo, but the reunion he seeks is bound up from the outset with a plan to use the boy as leverage against his mother. The relationship therefore begins in a double register: personal loss is plainly stated, while Howard’s proposed remedy makes the child part of a financial strategy.

Identity and Separation

Howard introduces Rafo through a photograph rather than through a present encounter. He asks Mike Milo to look at the picture, which shows Rafo at preschool age, perhaps older: a handsome, dark, Latin boy, well dressed and well fed, whose twinkling face seems to hold a private mischief. The snapshot offers a carefully bounded image of the son Howard has not seen in years; it cannot show what Rafo has become or how he feels about his father.

Howard identifies the child as his son and gives two measures of the separation. Rafo was six when the photograph was taken and is now about eleven; Howard has not seen him for five years. The numbers make the absence concrete: the pictured child belongs to an earlier stretch of Rafo’s life, while most of his years since then have passed beyond Howard’s direct presence. Howard’s statement, “I miss him,” is brief and unqualified. Mike responds with the practical observation that five years is a long time, but the exchange does not establish whether Rafo shares, rejects, or even knows the same longing.

Marriage and Material Conflict

Howard’s account connects the separation to the history of his marriage and investments. He says he met his Mexican wife in Texas while she was visiting, and that they married, had a son, and lived first in Dallas and later in New York. During that period, he made large investments in Mexico City. As Howard explains it, restrictions on Americans owning property in Mexico led him to put the investments in his wife’s name. He recalls that choice as one made while in love and expecting the marriage to last, then contrasts its end with the survival of the business arrangements.

The marriage contract, in his account, ended, but the real estate, mining company, and other investments remained. Howard says he wants to reopen negotiations with his former wife, yet acknowledges that he has nothing she wants. This account places the father-son relationship inside an unresolved conflict over property and bargaining power. The evidence is Howard’s own explanation to Mike; it establishes how Howard presents the dispute, not an independent account of the marriage, the division of assets, or the mother’s position.

Attachment and Instrumental Leverage

The sharpest turn comes when Howard states what he wants Mike to do: “I want you to kidnap him.” He delivers the request calmly and watches Mike’s response. Mike immediately asks whether Howard means taking Rafo from his mother. Howard’s answer makes the proposed abduction’s purpose explicit: if he took Rafo away, he believes his former wife would return to the bargaining table. He does not describe the plan as a custody arrangement or say that Rafo himself has agreed to go.

Howard also puts a price and a history of failed negotiation beside the proposal. He says he has spent more than two hundred thousand dollars on lawyers’ fees and suggests that having Rafo would cost him much less. He then asks Mike whether he would do it for fifty thousand dollars. The contrast is stark: Howard’s stated missing of his son sits beside a calculation of legal expenses, bargaining advantage, and payment to the person he wants to carry out the taking. His affection may be genuine, but the proposed action treats Rafo as a means to influence his mother rather than as a participant whose wishes have been heard.

Narrative Significance and Limits

The relationship’s introduction is shaped as a revelation to Mike. Howard begins with the picture and the fact of separation, then discloses the proposed kidnapping and its connection to the marital and financial dispute. The sequence changes the meaning of the photograph: it first presents an absent child as the object of paternal memory, then becomes the prelude to an attempt to use that child in negotiations. Mike’s restrained responses leave the tension visible without resolving it.

At this point, the account establishes Howard’s longing, his explanation for the investment arrangement, his substantial legal expenditure, and his willingness to make Rafo’s removal a bargaining instrument. It does not reveal Rafo’s view of his father, the mother’s response to Howard’s plan, or whether Howard’s proposal succeeds. That absence matters: the relationship is presented through the father’s memory and intentions, while the son remains represented by a childhood image and by the role Howard assigns him in a dispute with his mother.