Steele’s introduction:

                      When I left O. P. D. and went out into the streets of Orlando to fight Crime and Criminals by my lone self, as a modern-day Paladin I had visions of a Knight in shining armor, who would arrive 'just in the nick of time’ and save the beautiful Damsel from the fire breathing dragon.

                        "Now, don't get me wrong! I wasn’t completely fooled by the vision, I knew that sometimes the Knight would be late, and sometimes the Damsel would be ugly. And! Sometimes it would be the dragon that needed saving. But I put on the Breast plate, grabbed the sword, and climbed aboard the steed willingly.

"What I didn’t realize was that after he saved the Damsel and rode off into the sunset the Knight would have a Full- time job, just finding a Part- time job to pay for the castle’s upkeep while he fought crime, and rescued Damsels. It never entered my mind that the Knight would have to work for a living.

                       Over the years in my full-time job, I’ve ridden out of the wealth of Camelot into the State of Penury so many times without a backward glance at the road behind me their boarder- lines have faded, and now, sometimes they appear to be joined together.

As this galloping steed takes me from one case to another, in the blink of an eye I’ve gone from wealth, and enchantment to poverty, and disillusion, but I stay in the saddle because I’m a Paladin of a Detective crusading in the old Don Quixote tradition where honor is more valuable than wealth, and a large Bank account.

                       And! Because I’m a working Detective the steed I ride is not an expensive, fiery, red Corvette like the one Magnum P.I. has. I drive a vintage Dodge Valiant with nothing on the dash or hidden under the hood that didn’t come with it. I solve a case without computers, and technological research by a man named Q. I use common old- fashion Brain- power when I can, and a little muscle when I can’t.

                    Like I said before Mike! Being a modern-day Paladin isn’t easy, sometimes it can be down- right dangerous and painful. And the rewards aren’t always beneficial, either.”

                      Come ride and laugh along with Teflon Steele as he travels the backroads and Highways of Central Florida chasing the 'Bad boys' and naughty girls in the cases his clients bring to him.

Cases in Teflon's files:

 LOST?  HE Never Was (now in print)

Bayou Voo Doo 

Pandora's Box

Misled

The Prankster

  The Vampire Hunter

  The first 20 pages of each case can be found on my website:  authorjimLdrumwright.com

Please visit it.

  Manuscripts   waiting for publication.

                                                    FICTION

                                                                                        

THE WAZARISTAN SOLUTION

 

  A SILENT DRUMMER

  COMEDY

NOT YOU MICKEY MOUSE!

 ELIGIOUS FICTIOIN                                         

 THE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE SOLDIER IN THE ARMY OF SALVATION 

   THE LETTERS OFONE SOLDIER:

Letter # 1 ONE SOLDIER" BIO 

 

                                               psychotic Fiction 

           A SILENT DRUMMER

     

                                                     CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

 

               A LETTER FROM OUTSIDE TO LIGHTS WITHIN THE DARKNESS

                           I testify that these are words taken from the Spirit within the soul of a fellow servant who loves Jesus, and wishes to see you in heaven worshiping our savior with me.

            Just as our brothers Saul, who was known as Paul, and our brother John, the ' Revelator, not the Baptist, wrote to the beginning Christian communities of their times, I write to those churches of today that have survived the ravishes of Satan and Time, and are still faithful to Christ, Jesus.

And, just as their message gave a warning and offered hope and inspiration to fellow Believers, so does mine.

The Christian communities of the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, the Colossians and all the other ancient churches were at the beginning of our Religion’s time.

We live in the End- Times of John’s Prophesy, and also of our world. Our brothers Paul and John knew back then that the new Christians had to be prepared for the changes that Christ would bring to their lives, and to the world they lived in.

I know that we Christians today must be prepared for the conflicts that the End- Time, and the Prophesy will bring about in the lives of those of us who are truly trying to follow in Christ’s foot- steps while living in this world of deception.

             As Christians on our way out of this world and headed into God’s Kingdom which lies on the other side of our journey, we must be aware of the pitfalls, and constantly on guard, looking for the stumbling blocks that Satan will place in our path.  But not only must we be aware of Satan and his stumbling blocks, but we must also know the tools he has at his disposal.

                                                              THE LAST NIGHT                       

             The End- Time Prophesies say that the Almighty, the Christ will come again, and the Prophets who wrote them say that HIS coming will be in our time. They say that this era we live in is the 'Condemnation' & 'Sorrows', a period of time that encompasses the 'Indignation' of God’s wraith against the Jewish nation. The Prophesies of the Gospel and of the Kingdom are but a few of the many mysteries the Prophets gave that lead from the beginning to the end of this world.

                The Prophet Moses said that In the Beginning God created the world, and everything in it, including Man, and he says that when Adam, the first man, ate from the tree in the center of the Garden he knew that God had forbidden him to eat from that particular tree.

                 Since that first venture into Sin Mankind waited on the first coming of Christ, and now wait on HIS return with HIS Kingdom that will be a return to the Eden that was Adam's first home.

                                                               THE RAYS OF A LIGHT

            Two images are given of Christ in the Holy Bible; one image is loved by the world, and preached in Christian Churches, while the other is shunned by the world, and seldom mentioned in those same Churches.

           The loved image is that of a timid, humble, mild-mannered man that went about the country-side preaching Love and causing no problems for anyone he met.

           The shunned, and seldom mentioned image of Christ is that of a Righteous, bold God, a Christ that came to His world as a man who said upon entering the world. “Think not that I am come to bring peace upon the earth, I come, not to bring peace, but a sword!”

           That Christ sought to change the world, and Christians following Him will seek to change it too! This book is about that Christ, and those Christians!

                                                             THE ESSENCE OF Light

           In these End- time days Light is desperately needed by those living here during this period where darkness is given reign over the world, but there is no light to be found here, and neither does the sunshine for those lost in this soul searing darkness.

           Here and there, there are small candles flickering in the darkness, and one day those candles will become Lights that won’t flicker or fade before the turbulent winds of deception swirling around them in these Satan inspired shadows.

           One day they will become strong, and they will be a flame that won’t flutter or flicker as it burns.

Together those individual small candles will one day become one large raging fire that will cast a light that can be seen by all those people who are lost and walking in the darkness with blind eyes; blind eyes that don’t see the deception, and dull minds that can’t comprehend or understand the magnitude of the time they are living in.

           That Light will shout to an unhearing world the horror that these are the End - times, the final days of Man’s world, but they will whisper to anyone that listens that although these days precede the beginning of God’s world most of those who live in it, and walk in the darkness don’t know this.

The fires burning today in those Lights of the future will tell the blind that their world is lost, and they stumble and fall because they don’t see.

           They don’t know that they are walking through a darkness that is generated by ignorance about God, and not knowing that HIS Truth is the light they seek, they stumble.

           They stumble through this world in darkness because they don’t know there is a path that will lead them through it to a place where deception and deceit do not exist, but the Light does.

           They stumble and they fall because they don’t realize that they have only their ignorance to rely on, and the deception found in the darkness to guide them.

                                                                   ONE SOLDIER'S JOURNAL

          This Journal of letters addresses some of what is obviously wrong in the world Christians live in today that's predicted in Biblical records. The Journal is written to 'Churche' the name he gives friends in the Churches ‘Back- Home’ behind the Front Lines. These people are the Living Body of Christ in this End- Time world of darkness that John said would eventually try to hide the Light (Christ).

          In his letters One soldier speaks to ‘Churche’ through Scriptures that cover different subjects that are concerns of Christians and Christianity.

In the trenches, fighting the Satanic forces working to bring about that total darkness, with open eyes a soldier sees firsthand what others fail to see as he watches the Prophesies unfold.

  Letter #2 ANGELS   Letter # 3 THE GOD WE SERVE   Letter # 4 THE END- TIMES   Letter # 5 OUR MISSION   Letter #6 THE WAR AND THE COST.    Letter #7 THE HOLY GHOST    Letter # 8 MYSERY Letter # 9 MAKE A STRAIGHT PATH    Letter # 10 CHILDREN: CASUALTIES OF WAR   Letter # 11 Homosexuality   Letter # 12 THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD   Letter # 13 PEARLS    Letter # 14 THE CHURCH    Letter # 15 A KINGDOM DIVIDED    Letter # 16 THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB   Letter # 17 THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION    Letter # 18 FAITH   Letter # 19 SATAN

                                                THE CONFLICT IN THE END TIME PROPHESY  

                   Now is a time 'near Harvest', and there are Tares in the field that must be separated from the good seed before the world can move forward. This is the End- Time, and it's a time of pain, and sorrow for all who live in it. This End- Time period says that like the Devil, Terrorism, and terrorist are here with us, and they will be here until that final day, when Christ’s kingdom arrives.

                   Christ, and His Kingdom hasn't come yet. That Could be because John’s Prediction about a Church must first be fulfilled before the end comes. The End- Time Prophesy says that this world is given over to Satan, and that he, and his servants are the cause of the darkness that fills it. It says that as long as they are allowed to hide the Truth of God’s LIGHT with ignorance about HIM, the world will grows darker. Scriptures say that only Love can conquer Hate, and that's the truth, just as wars are not the solution to the world’s problems, but maybe war will lead to those solutions, that's also the truth. Scriptures Say that Satan, and his army can be overcome only by the blood of the Lamb, and by the words of your testimony against him.

            The End- Time Prophesy says to you, and to the Terrorist, here on earth that frighten you “Beware of these days!”

              ‘Churche’, the Harvest is the end of this world, and the Reapers in it are the Angels. As the Tares are gathered, and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son- of- Man shall send forth HIS Angels, and they shall gather out of HIS Churches all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire burning outside the Church doors. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, then shall the Righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

               And! ‘Church’ there is no Heavenly group of Angels that the Son- of- Man will send down here to cast out the Tares in HIS field, no mystical creatures with wings growing out of their back and a halo circling their heads.

               Down here on Earth there is only you! When God sent HIS angels to rescue Lot and his family from Sodom the Angels, HE sent were men.                                                                 

                                                                                   THE STOLEN  CONFLICT

               In the book of Revelations, the Apostle John started an Expose' that will one day rock the foundation of the world's second largest religious population. John said he had a vision that was inspired by an angel that allowed him to look so far into the future he could see the end of his world, and the beginning of God's world.

              Seeing two worlds at opposite ends of their existence was a spectacular sight, but what was more dramatic than seeing that sight was hearing what the angel told him about a Church in his world that he was familiar with.

               Looking into the future and watching the scenes in the vision as they unfolded, John saw no light there, and darkness covered the entire world. The angel told him about a woman that had betrayed her husband, and because of her fornications with the Rulers of the world she was now a Widow.

               Hearing the voice, and seeing the scenes unfolding before his eyes, John watched, and as his world was being covered in darkness a woman dressed in scarlet, purple, and pristine white garments came into view.

               today, in a time before Christ returns, there's a mental darkness that's caused by falling away from God's LIGHT that covers this world.

And, like the darkness John saw was perpetual, this mental darkness is also perpetual.

Although the Sun shines for the people in that Church because they are blind, they walk in that mental darkness.

 

                                                                                          THE COMING CONFLICT: THE END TIME PROHPESY

                                    

                                                                                            MY BIOGRAPHY

 COMING UP ON THE BLACK SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN

           I am a published Author but I'm not famous, or well known to the reading public. In fact my only claim to fame is a Disclaimer.' I was sentenced to Death for a Rape that I didn’t commit’.

            This is my Biography, but it doesn't end on Death Row, and because it's not my story alone it goes further than that. It’s America's story also!

             It's our story, mine and Americas’, as seen through the eyes of a boy growing up in segregated Florida's Negro Quarters during the '50's & '60's.

       On its pages you’ll see Dr. Martin Luther King, as he marched through the streets of a segregated White America’, while on the other side of those same streets there was Elijah Mohammad and Malcom X, and the Black Muslim Party they endorsed, and marched with.

       Where Martin sought equality for the Black race through Integration Mohammad said only through Segregation could the Black race find equality in a white society.

        And! Since we're talking about Race and Leaders, no account of America’s history would be complete without mentioning 'Masser Jim Crow', and the white sheet Brotherhood that marched behind him, and followed his lead.

       In the 50's and 60's they were all there, and they all contributed to making me, and America, who, and what we are today.

 

 

                                                                                                   BAYOU VOODOO

                                                                                                              by

                                                                                                  JimL. Drumwright 

 

                                                                                                        CHAPTER one

 

          When she walked into my office that morning, after looking at the expensive clothes she wore my first thought was wealthy, middle- aged wife with a cheating husband, looking for evidence to fuel a settlement in a Divorce case.

          The grayish blond hair on her head was cut short and parted on the left side above an ear lobe with three ear- rings sparkling in it.

          From the tanned surface of that pierced ear, and a small blue diamond embedded in the lobe my eyes went to the up- curved pink colored lips smiling across my desk at me.

          I smiled back at them, then stood up, and extended my right hand, which she patted instead of shaking.

          For a long moment before she spoke her blue eyes searched my face, then as the smile broadened, she said. “Mr. Stele, you don’t know me, but I have no doubt that you will have heard my name when I tell it to you.”

          My eyes dropped from her tanned face, and considered the dark blue pin striped suit she wore, and the white Penny loafers sticking out beneath the helm of the ankle length skirt, and what I saw seemed to reaffirm my first guess.

          Fed- up wife. Cheating husband. Divorce case.

Don’t get me wrong, I work Divorce cases, but I don’t like them. I don’t like them because even though I’m not a contestant I always end up looking and feeling like the Bad guy in the contest.

          I’d done one a few months ago with two kids caught up in the middle that turned out nasty. I was still trying to forgive myself for my role in that one.

Looking up from the white shoes I didn’t think I was ready for another one, and I was about to say so when it dawned on me that next week the rent had to be paid.

And! Along with the rent, all my life I’d had this eating habit that I couldn’t seem to get rid of.

          I looked at the Pin striped suit, and the Penny loafers again, and this time, as her voice drifted into my thoughts, I didn’t see a Divorce case, I saw the rent money.

          “Mr. Stele, my name is Elvira Mc Danials, and no doubt during the last week, if not earlier, you have come across it in the Newspapers.”

          While she removed a brown envelope from her purse my mind did a quick search of the Sentinel’s Social section. My last client’s name had appeared in it regularly, and most of what she needed for her Divorce she could have found there.

          I turned a mental page, and just before she spoke the name Elvira Mc Danials registered.

          “No doubt from the papers you’ve read you have formed an opinion about me, and the type of work I do, but I would like to ask you to put that opinion, and the Papers aside, and hear me out before you make a decision about taking my case.”

 Handing the brown envelope to me, she smiled, and said. “You don’t look like the type of man that would need my services. So, if you have any knowledge of my business, it would probably be from the Newspapers.”

Accepting the envelope, and opening it, I took that last statement as a compliment, and smiled back at her.

She was wrong! Not about a man like me not needing her services, but about me having heard her name through the Media.

About six years ago while I was working at O P D as a Street Crimes Cop, I came across her name often, and almost came across her.

Pimps and Prostitutes were people whose names I knew well back then, and since at that time she was a little of both her name was one I was very familiar with.

“Contrary to Media report.” Her words drifted into my thoughts interrupting the scene playing in my mind of that night.

“I am not a rich woman! And, like all small businesses mine has expenses too. My girls need clothes, and certain female item associated with the work they do. And, along with the usual overhead like rent, and food there's the money for protection that I must pay.

"You see Mr. Steele. For my girls to do their work they have to be protected from both the Street elements they encounter every day, like Thugs and Rapist, but also from the Police, who they try not to encounter.”

On the night I was remembering, Mike Swinsen, my partner, and myself, dressed in the uniform of the police they were trying to avoid, she and two other girls almost had an encounter with us.

          On O B T things were jumping at the Pussy Kat Club, and like every Friday night the Orlando Police Department was out there jumping with it.

There’d been a rash of robberies and shake down by the Sideline Hustlers that lived off the Girl trade.

Their Johns were getting robbed, and Blackmailed with the threat of exposure, while the Girls, themselves were being beaten, and forced off the streets by competing Pimps.

          Like most Strip Joints on Orange Blossom Trail the Pussy Kat Club had the emperor’s rooms in the building, and the tin sheds out back.

          Of course, Prostitution was illegal, and Management said none of their girls prostituted. They danced to the pole, and on the lap, but that’s as far as they went.

That’s what they said until a robbery went wrong, and a Dancer, and her John got killed lying on a bed in one of the sheds, in a very incriminating position.

          For a week the Club was closed, while Management signed papers, and made promises Downtown.

When it re-opened the next week Mike, and I were parked across the street in the lot of a McDonald’s Restaurant.

Sweet William’, a long time Street hustler and a fast-rising Pimp was the reason we were there that night.

          Shortly after his birth he was given the name William Sweet, but later in his life, after a three-year trip up north to the State Prison he came back home as ‘Sweet William’.

          It seemed that while he was up there in prison his life got turned around, and upon leaving there he decided to turn his name around too.

          ‘Sweet William’ had a small stable of Strawberry Whores. Girls who were addicted to Crack Cocaine.

          They weren’t the best-looking girls on the streets, but they were willing to do almost anything for few dollars less.

          ‘Sweet William’ was harassing Elvira Mc Danials, and her girls along with the other competition by shaking down their Johns.

          Six years ago, when I first came across her Elmira didn’t have the house in Balwin Park, and the more than twenty girls they say she has now. Back then, what she had was a head full of ash-blond hair, ambition, and a body any girl would be proud of, and most men wanted.

          The Bouncer was standing in the door when we drove up in the UN- marked car. ‘Sweet William’ was standing in the shadows on the corner of the building next to the Pussy Kat Club.

          As long as the girls stayed in sight of the Bouncer, they were safe, but when they caught a Trick, and moved into the shadows, away from the door, William would strike.

          A few minutes after we arrived one of the girls waived to Elvira and walked off with a man.

Mike got out, and walked down the street ahead of them, I followed behind trailing ‘Sweet William.’

          That was some time ago, and Word on the Streets today is that Elvira has eight girls working on the streets, and another twelve that work out of motels, and her house in Balwin Park.

          Looking up from the white shoes my brown eyes found the blue eyes in the tanned face, and, as memory of that night played itself out in my mind the smile on my lips seemed to amuse her.

Pointing at the envelope in my hand she said. “Mr. Steele, I have a problem that I can’t go the Police with, and I need someone who will help me solve it. I am hoping that you are that someone.”

          Opening the envelope, I asked her what that problem might be?

          “I have been robbed twice, and my girls are being harassed, and beaten by my competition. Some people might say that a person in my business doesn’t need compassion, and that I should find my protection on the streets where I make my money. And, in other circumstances they may be right, but in this case, they are wrong! You see Mr. Steele, it’s a Policeman that’s harassing, and beating my girls. And I need protection from him, and the person who hired him.” 

          How many times have we heard that one Mike? I can see me sitting in the Stands at that first William Sweet trial listening to his Lawyer asking me why I chose to beat up, and falsely accuse his client?

Who in his right mind would believe that William would attack me, a Policeman, and a person almost twice his size?

          Certainly not that Jury! They set him free. And, three weeks later I can see you sitting in the same chair facing another Lawyer with a client, this time one of William’s Whores who said you were harassing her. This jury didn’t buy her story, but a lot of them did.

Whenever a criminal found himself sitting in a Courtroom ‘crooked Cop’ was the first thing out of his mouth.

It was a Catch phrase back then, and Police Brutality was running a close second behind it.

          The envelope held five thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. I laid it, and the money on the desk, and pushed them toward Elvira.

          She pushed the money back toward me and said. “You may not have personal knowledge of me, but I know you know William Sweet. I heard you arrested him once for assaulting you, and he got off. Well! Here’s your chance to get him.”

          Looking away from me she said in a soft voice. “William wants my girls. He can’t take them away from me, so he hired this crooked Cop to put pressure on them, and my operation. First, William started by harassing, and robbing their Johns, then running the girls off the street.”

          She opened her purse and handed me the photograph of a man dressed in faded Blue Jean and a red, and black plaid shirt.

          “This is the Cop!” She said pointing at the man in the picture. “He started with harassing my girls because they wouldn’t pay him for protection, then one day last week he showed up at my house, and threaten to have Code Enforcement, or some other agency Fine me, or put sanctions on my house. I called my Lawyer that same day and showed him the photo. He said he’d have Internal Affairs at the Police Department investigate it, but they must not have, because yesterday he was at my house again.”

          You know Mike! I wouldn’t swear to it, but when I looked at that photograph the first time, I saw a horned Demon standing behind the man in the picture.

I saw him, Mike! But if you asked me what a Demon looked like I couldn’t tell you. The image faded so fast, that except for the three horns, and the blue face I almost didn’t notice it.

          The face on the man in the photo was that off- white color that was just a shade above a brownish tan, and the hair was that dark blond color that appeared almost brown in the shadows.

          I tried guessing his nationality, but I couldn’t. There was a hint of Spain, or France. And, maybe a little Mexican, or Indian mixed in there too.

          Turning the picture side- ways and looking at it that way, and I almost thought Negro, but I didn’t.

          Looking up from the picture I asked her. “So, exactly what do you want me to do Ms. Mc Danials? I know you want William Sweet to stop harassing and bullying your girls. And, like you said this may be my chance to get him.”

          As my mind replayed that trial, and I thought of the Jury looking at William Sweet’s size, and then at mine I could see why they would think that a man his size would have to be crazy to assault me, a man twice his size.

          But William Sweet was crazy. He was one of those unrealistic- contrary people that believed size didn’t matter. To his way of thinking ‘The bigger they were, the harder they fell.’

          On the night that led to the Trial he was drunk on whiskey, and High on drugs, and because of them he was a lot crazier than usual.

Earlier that Friday night he’d beaten one of his girls almost to death. When she named her attacker, and we got the call she was in the hospital with a broken jaw, and multiple fractures.

          It was around 2: O’clock that Saturday morning when we found him. ‘Sweet’ was weaving out the door of the Kit Kat Klub.

Friday night had ended two hours earlier, and since the Eagle flew late that afternoon pockets were filled with that green paper that made it possible for some people to become foolish.

          Walking up to him I could tell by the way he looked at my uniform that William Sweet was one of those people.

          Behind me I heard the door close as Mike got out of the patrol car and started walking slowly toward us.

          Following ‘Sweet’s eyes I saw the Billy Club hanging on the loop around Mike’s right wrist.

          Just before he swung my eyes turned back from the club to his face, and in that moment, just before his fist passed in front of my face, he looked me up, and down, and as his eyes considered me, I saw that craziness in them that said my size didn’t matter, he could take me.

          Putting that night back into the memory jar where it had lain for six years along with the memory of the trial I said to Elvira. “You probably want this crooked Cop to stop bothering you, and them, but if he is a Policeman harassing you will be seen by most people as part of his job.”

          She picked up the money, handed it to me, and said. “I don’t care what most people think! Any man wearing a Police uniform is either a Cop, or a Crook. He can’t be both! And, knowing your reputation Mr. Steele, I think you feel the same way.”

 

                                                            I

 

         

          The next day Benjamin Carter closed the door to Patrol car # 426 and drove slowly out of the Sheriff’s fleet yard onto Colonial Drive.

Orange Blossom Trail was only a few blocks away, and it would take him to Orlando Police Headquarters.

Ten minutes later, turning into the parking lot at O P D he thought of his up- coming.

meeting with Captain Mike Swinsin.

The meeting wasn’t until 10:30, but he’d wanted to get here early, and see what the gossip going around the Station was, and maybe learn why he was called down here this morning.

He’d been on the force for over three years now and didn’t have one Disciplinary.

Report, or any reprimands on his Rap Sheet.

Caressing the gris-gris charm bag in his pocket, as he walked through the silent halls in the Station, he knew that the resguardos in the bag would protect him, and his secrets during his meeting with the captain.

The gris-gris charms were three stones from a Cemetery, the left claw of a black cat, and a dead man’s tooth.

He liked working as a Detective in the Robbery Squad because it gave him the

latitude, and the leisure to expand his knowledge of the Street criminal’s mind, while he branched out into other areas of Criminal behavior.

He liked the men he worked with, although some of them didn’t like him. He was.

a yellow haired Creole, a little on the brown side, and it might sound trite to some, but he was proud of it.

His veins were filled with a dark red blood that flowed like the murky waters of a Louisiana Bayou, and his heart pulsated with the wild wails of Delta Blues, and Voodoo magic.

In the beginning, when he talked of the Zombies, and Spiritual Guides that inhabited the swamps of his native home they laughed at him, but after three years of talking about Spirits that guided him, then solving cases they said were dead, and would never be solved, he, if not Voodoo, had finally earned their respect.

His first year at O P D was mostly uneventful, but in his second year he met 'Sweet' William,

and things changed. He got his first big break, and payoff after doing ‘Sweet’ a small favor.

William Sweet was a small time Pimp, who was known on the streets as ‘Sweet William’.

His name wasn’t big on the Streets back then, but he had a few girls in his stable, most of them drug addicts.

One Saturday night at the corner of Parramore Ave., and Gore St. where one of them worked, the girl let her drug Jones get out of hand.

When her Trick changed his mind about her, and decided to go off with another girl who wasn’t a Drug addict, her habit caused her to pull out her knife, and rob him.

Unbeknownst to her the John was an out- of- state Contractor with lots of money in his pocket, and lots of influence Downtown.

Because the call came in as a Robbery Carter responded to it. He was two blocks away from the scene of the crime when he found the girl standing in the shadows with her Pimp.

          She was wearing the red Tank top, and yellow mini- skirt that was given as a description of the Perp’s attire.

          When Carter parked the unmarked car, and started walking toward her she met him. She had a smile on her face, and a wiggle in her hips, but she didn’t have the money.

          The Contractor was standing across the street threatening physical violence, while yelling insults at the two of them.

          After placing the girl in the car Carter went over to where the guy with her was standing.

          The Pimp, William Sweet, alias ‘a friend’, followed him across the street, and stood at a discrete distance while he, and the Contractor talked.

          Carter was a Robbery Detective, and as usual he was dressed in plain clothes, and after showing him his badge he asked the agitated man. “What happened?” 

          “Bitch robbed me.” The man answered pointing at the unmarked car across the street, then turning to face the man in the shadows behind them he pointed again and said. “And, that A-hole, back there is her Pimp. He’s got my money.”

          Carter’s eyes followed the pointing finger to the man who had been introduced to him by the woman in the car as a ‘friend of hers.’

          The man was wearing short white pants, a green T- shirt. Standing on the street corner behind them, he looked like anything but a Pimp.

          Putting the badge away Carter said. “Their story is that you spent a measly twenty dollars on the girl, and then tried to pick her up. When she rejected you, you got mad, and made up the robbery story.”

          That’s a damn lie.” The Contractor shouted shaking his fist at man, and the girl behind them.

          “Calm down!”  Carter whispered moving between them. “Let me go over there and have a little talk with him. Why don’t you go stand by the car. Maybe you can talk the girl into giving some of the money back.”

          Pushing him in the direction of the car, Carter turned, and faced the man in the shadows.

          Moving slow the Contractor walked off in the direction of the unmarked car on the other side of the street.

          Walking up to the man in short pants Carter said. “O Kay Dude! Let’s hear that story again, and this time make it sound convincing.”

          William Sweet’s story this time was. “Let’s do our selves a favor and scratch each other’s backs. I know, and you know too! That guy over there doesn’t have a case. He spent a few bucks and got taken by a Whore. He may have had a lot of money on him, but we won’t ever know, now, will we?”

          “Well! We may, and then we may not!” Carter answered, looking at the Contractor talking to the girl in the car. “But, once I get that girl Downtown, and tell her that you said Whores will be Whores, and some of them steal. And, that you said you met her tonight on the Streets, and you don’t know her from Adam. And, then I tell her that she’s facing a robbery charge, and fifteen years in prison, she may have something to say that’s different from that first story. What do you think?”

          “Ain’t been no robbery.” ‘Sweet William’ said trying to smile. “But, like I said ‘Let’s do ourselves a favor, and let me talk to her. Maybe I can talk her into telling me what happened to that money.’

          Carter called the Contractor, and while ‘Sweet’ walked over to the car he explained the situation to him.

          “She may have robbed you, but he, and she are both willing to swear in Court that you spent the money on her and got mad when she wouldn’t leave with you. Unless you got a witness you don’t have a case.”

          Shaking his head in anger, and pointing a quivering finger at the car, and the shadow sitting in it the Contractor hissed. “Well, fuck it! I knew I wouldn’t get the money back, but I wanted to see that Bitch arrested for stealing it.”

          “I’m afraid you’re right, you won’t get the money back, and as for seeing her arrested; well, that’s not going to happen either.”

          Looking at the shadow in the car Carter said. “You can charge her with Prostitution, but as her customer you’ll go to jail with her.”

          Turning, and walking away the Contractor said over his shoulder. “Good night, Officer. Well! At least my wife won’t find out about this.

          Taking the keys from his pocket Carter went back across the street to the unmarked car, then walking back to ‘Sweet William’ he said. “Scratch my back.”

          For the next year, and a half William Sweet scratched Carter’s back, he was Carter’s eyes, and ears, and through them Carter saw, and heard what was happening on the Streets of Orlando.

          He heard the gossip, and the rumors floating around in the Bars, and the Crack houses. And, listening to them he learned what was about to happen in Orlando, as well as what had already happened.

          In William Sweet’s voice the Spirits whispered to him, and like Zombies in a Voodoo movie the living dead in Orlando’s Drug world were paraded before his eyes.

          With ‘Sweet’s’ help he discovered, and toured the City’s under belly, and met the ghosts who inhabited the shadowy world down there.

          Following ‘Sweet’s’ directions he found the Pimps, and Whores hustling a savage living on Paramore Ave., and Orange Blossom Trail. And, through his direction Carter found Elvira Mc Danials living ‘High – on – the- hog in Balwin Park from the proceeds she made milking that under belly.

          Two years before he joined the Orlando Police Department a murder had been committed on O B T.

          A Black Working girl, and her White Trick were found shot to death in a shed behind the Kit Kat Club.

          The Orlando Police Department assigned two Officers to investigate the Murders, but after three months, and no clues they were taken off the case, and it was placed on the ‘Back burner’.

          Crimes where the Victim, and the Victimize r were breaking the law were usually hard to solve, and like this one most of them ended up in a file cabinet listed as a Dead- end case.

          Through a tip from ‘Sweet’ Carter found the Drug addict who sold the gun to the Trick’s wife, and he was also a witness to the murder.

          Case solved.

          Midway into the fourth year of his association with William Sweet he was told by ‘Sweet’to put pressure on all the girls working the streets that weren’t ‘Sweet’s’ girls.

Being a Robbery Cop he couldn’t arrest many of them without raising eyes, and question Down town, so he’d flash the badge, slap them around a time or two, give them a warning, and watch them run.

          Mc Danials was something different. On the Streets she was a Whore, and a Pimp, but in the Business community she was a respected Businesswoman who ran a Catering Service out of her home in Balwin Park, which was a respectable Middle-Class neighborhood.

          Being a respected Entrepreneur, he couldn’t slap her around, then give her a warning, and watch her run.

          For about a day, and a half she had him stalemated, then, while investigating a Murder-Robbery at a gambling house on Parramore he discovered Code Enforcement.

          The gambling house was in the back room of a Soul Food Restaurant named Mama’s Kitchen.

          The Kitchen wasn’t as clean as the room in the back was, but the kitchen wasn’t where the money was being made.

          Code Enforcement visited Mama on Monday, and by Wednesday a week later they had shut her down.

          The murder was being investigated, but since it happened in a Gambling house on Parramore opinion at the Station was that it wouldn’t ever be solved, and eventually it would be filed away as a Dead case.

          A month after Mama’s Kitchen was closed one of ‘Sweet William’s’ girls who went by the name Jesse met a John who was also a Crack addict.

          In a motel room conversation between ‘hits’ on the pipe she discovered that he paid for his dope by robbing out- of- town Drug dealers.

          When she mentioned him, and it to ‘Sweet’ he got an idea, and even though thinking wasn’t something he was good at ‘Sweet’ realized almost instantly that money could be made with that idea.

          He gave it a little more thought and discovered that there was a lot of money to be made from that idea.

          Being in the business he was in ‘Sweet William’ was naturally ‘A man about town’.

          And being such a man, he knew what the other ‘Men about Town’ were doing to pay for the wardrobe, the jewelry, and the expensive cars that made Life- on- the- Town possible.

          Dope Dealers weren’t the only people making money. And why go all the way out of town when there were people, and places right here in Orlando where large sums of money were kept. Places with little, or no security.

          Once he got to thinking, ‘Sweet William’ discovered that if you put your mind into it, thinking wasn’t really that hard.

In no time at all he’d come up with ten, or twelve people, and places that could be robbed, and the cops wouldn’t be notified.

And sitting right at the top of his list was that Bitch Elvira Mc Danials! He’d never admit it, but that Bitch had a better Stable than his, and she was a better Pimp than he was too.

          Over the years, he had managed to steal a girl, or two that was clean from her, and that kind of thieving was a part of the Pimp Game. It was a warning to other Pimps that said to them ‘Beware of my Rap!

          Elvira had never stolen a girl from him, and that would have been something for a Pimp to brag about, except she said she didn’t want one of his girls, and she wouldn’t take her if he gave her away.

          While ‘Sweet William’ was developing his list of people, and places that could be

robbed, one of Elvira’s girls developed a Crack habit, and through her fortune smiled on ‘Sweet William’.

          This one, like the others, who went the drug route Elvira put out onto the Streets. Toni was her name, and like the others she danced at a Strip joint for a while.

          And, like the others, she found that Lap dancing, and shaking her butt while wrapped around a pole didn’t quite pay the Bills and support the  she ended up back on the streets, and got arrested. Then! Like the others, she fell into ‘Sweet William’s’ out- stretched hands, which held the fifty dollars that was her Bail money.

          Toni had a grudge against Elvira, and ‘Sweet William’ had a way to satisfy it while putting a dollar, or two in both of their pockets.

          Elvira was a Country girl from Winter Garden, and like many Country girls she didn’t trust Banks, as much as she trusted the mattress on her bed.

          Toni didn’t know how much was in that mattress, but she knew that each one of Elvira’s twenty girls paid her two hundred dollars a day, which came to around four thousand dollars a day, give or take a bad day for a girl, or two.

          Two weeks after that revelation Elvira got a visit in the middle of the afternoon from a John that wasn’t a John at all. He was a Trick with a trick up his sleeve, and the gun in his hand was no joke.

When he stepped into the room the gun was pressed onto one of her House girls’ backs.

And, while he and she stood beside the closed-door Elvira was forced to first strip her bed, and then cut the mattress open.

          Less than thirty minutes after he entered the room, he was gone, and almost all her money went with him.

          ‘Sweet William’ got twenty thou, the Whores Toni, and Jesse, and Robber John got the rest.

          As, expected the robbery went unreported.

                                                                                                         CHAPTER 2

Toni looked up from the floor where she was sitting when the door opened late that afternoon, she recognized the man as he walked into the room behind ‘Sweet William’.

He was heavier now, but still, she knew him. He was the same cop that assaulted her when she was with Elvira.

‘Sweet’ was leading him to the couch when she spoke. “I hope you know that’s a cop behind you. He ran me off the Streets when I was over at Elvira’s.”

Standing next to the man who was now sitting on the couch ‘Sweet William’ said to him. “Well! I guess I can take that as proof that I’m not throwing my money away on you.”

          He winked at the girl and said. “Good looking out Toni, but we don’t have to fear this one, he’s tamed.”

          Taking a roll of bills out of his pocket he turned away from her and said. “Leave us alone now.”

          When she was gone, he handed to money to the man, and took a seat beside him on the couch.

          “My girl’s John’s got another robbery planned for tomorrow, and this will be the third one in two weeks.”

          Shaking his heads regretfully, he said. “I need the money, but he won’t last long at the rate he’s traveling, so we might as well cash him in before he gets caught by someone else and cause us a problem.”

          Taking a note pad from the table beside him he wrote a name, and handed the sheet to the Cop.

          “You probably won’t recognize the name Tom Redick, but he’s the owner of that infamous gambling house on Parramore Ave.

          His name is a very respected one in the Orlando Business community, and like a lot of other rich respected Businessmen he lives out in Waterford Lakes. That’s where the robbery will take place at his house, around Lunch time tomorrow.”

 The smile broadened on ‘Sweet William’s’ lips, and nodding toward the door where Toni had just disappeared he said laughing. “Yep! Tom Redick is a nice respectable, old, White man that just can’t keep his hands off young Black Whores. Talks too much too! if you ask me.”

          The Cop handed the sheet of paper back to ‘Sweet William’, and placing the roll of bills into his pocket, he asked. “So! I bust the Robber, and do what?”

          “You don’t bust him. You kill him! And you take the money.” Sweet William said tearing the sheet of paper into strips.

          “His car will be parked on Alafayer Trail. After the robbery he will run to it. You be waiting. Shoot him. Stash the money, then call it in.”

          “How much money we are talking about?” The Cop asked, looking at the strips of shredded paper lying on the floor at ‘Sweet Williams’s’ feet.

          “About that much, or more in thousands.” ‘Sweet William’ said kicking the pile over and standing up.

          “The gun he’ll have will match the bullet taken out of the mattress at that ole’ Whore Elvira’s house. So! You get to solve that Robbery, too.”

          “Sounds like a plan to me.” Officer Benjamin Carter said standing up and walking to the door.

 

  

                                                                    I

 

          It was Friday night, and Orange Blossom Trail was its usual naughty self. Looking like a string of shining pearls Street lights ran a luminous chain down both sides of it attached to each other by invisible cords.

          And, as cars, and trucks rolled between the string of pearls, the pulsating sound of loud music filled the cars sitting in the parking lot of the Strip Club I was parked in.

          The Motel across the street, and the Shanty sheds out back were doing volume business.

          And, as another line of anxious men slammed their car doors and hurried through the bright lighted oval up front that led to the lounge of the small building, I was parked beside, I watched them rush through it.

          Looking out the window of the Dodge at the two girls leaning against the wall of the Pussy Cat Club ‘the Razor’ said to me. “You know Teflon! Some things never change. Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls. And, boys, and girls will always do the things to each other that boys and girls do. It was that way when I was your age, and it will be the same way when you’re an old man like me.

          Along the way, as you grow older, and one day become another old man, some things may change, but that one won’t!”

          Outside the window a man approached one of the girls. I didn’t hear what he said, but I heard her giggling response.

          He reached for her breast, and she slapped his hand away. But, when he reached into his pocket, and handed her a bill the giggling got louder, and she allowed him to touch the breast.

          Yea! Something won’t ever change; I thought watching the two of them walking away from the Club.

          I’d taken Elvira’s picture of the man she said was a Bad Cop to Mike, and he recognized him instantly, but he didn’t know him.

A few minutes later, after looking through his Records he said. “From the reports in that jacket, he’s a Good Cop.”

          Now! Nobody likes a good mystery more than me. Well! Maybe Mike does! But, other than him, I’m the mystery Lover in this ‘Neck- of- the- woods. That is if you can look beyond the paved streets, and tall building that make up Orlando, and see the woods in it.

          From the Records, and comments by other Officers, Officer Benjamin Carter was turning out to be something of a Wiz.

When Mike passed it to me, I looked at the Record sheet, but what I saw on it wasn’t the words on the paper, but that same Demon that was standing in the background in his picture when Elvira first showed it to me.

Remembering that event, I turned the page sideways, and looked at it that way. Looking at me with an odd expression on his face and smiling suspiciously Mike asked. “You Cock- eyed now?”

“No.” I answered, turning the sheet around. “I was just reading this part on Carters’ Religion, and remembering something I saw when Elvira showed me a picture of him.”

“And?” Mike asked me after taking the sheet of paper out of my hand, and turning it upside down, then looking at both sides.

“ And! This guy practices Voodoo.” I said pointing to the Religion listed on the sheet. “What kind of Religion is that for a sane Police officer to be practicing?”

“It’s the kind this sane Police officer practices.” Mike said putting the Report back into the cabinet. “I’ll get him down here and ask him about it if you want me too. Mean-while, you see what you can find out using skills you learned in that P.I. profession you’re working in now.”

 

 

                                                              II

 

Using those P.I. skills Mike was referring to led me to the Down- town Public Library, and once in it to a book on Louisiana Voodoo.

In that book, some guy by the name of Javier Houlonon, who the book said was a tour guide in Benin, and a lifelong Voodoo practitioner said that Voodoo was older than the world.

Practitioners say. “Voodoo is like the marks, or the lines, which are in our hands. We are born with them! Voodoo are in the leaves, in the earth. Voodoo is everywhere!"

Fanning through the pages, looking at pictures of Voodoo Gods, then looking through the library bookshelves, I searched for the face of the Demon I saw in Carter’s picture.

I didn’t find him in the library, but since they say that Voodoo is everywhere, I’m almost certain that he was in there.

On the pages of another book, I learned that the individual Deities of Voodoo have all the characteristics of the gods of ancient Greece. Some are capricious, some seductive, some full of wrath.

In Cove, Benin, the Voodoo faithful gather to dance, and thank the god Sakpata, a powerful Divinity of the Earth for recent rains. Sakpata can bring life-giving rain, but the god is responsible for dreaded diseases, too.

Another key element of the Religion is veneration of the spirits of ancestors. Among Voodoo worshipers, during the dance of hooded Egunguns the dead are thought to walk among the living, and it is believed touching the dancer during the trance could kill you. Such is the power of the dead brought to life again!

After I left the Library, I drove out to Balwin Park, and circled the block where Elvira Mc Daniels lived.

I don’t know what I was looking for, as I cruised slowly down the quiet tree shaded street she lived on, but it was certainly not what I found.

I had just passed the house beyond hers when a green Toyota careened out of her yard, and sped away up the street behind me.

Instincts took over, and the Cop in me caused me to turn around and pursue the car speeding away from her house.

The Toyota took a left at the next corner, then a right at the one after that, which was a mistake, because that street led to a Dead end.

When I turned into it, the car ahead of me had just reached the end of the street, and the driver was attempting to turn around.

He must have seen my car racing down the street toward him, because he stopped the Toyota half in a drive way, jumped out, then scaled the block fence crossing the road.

I stopped at the Toyota, jumped out of the Dodge, and ran to the fence. I got there just in time to see a man wearing a brown shirt above blue jeans dart between two houses.

Running back to the Dodge, I turned it around, raced to the next block, and drove to the houses.

He wasn’t there, or across the street. I raced to the end of that block and drove down the street behind it.

The thought that he could be anywhere, hiding behind a house, or walking between two more of them on another block didn’t enter my mind. 

Today must have been one of my Dumb- days, because I drove to the next block, and circled it before I thought of the Toyota.

When I got back to the Dead-end Street it was gone. I knocked on a door, or two, but nobody saw the guy that was driving the Toyota.

 

 

I arrived back at Elvira’s house just in time to see two Squad cars turn into her driveway.

I drove in, parked behind the second car, then followed the Officers to the door, and waited as one of them rang the bell.

I recognized the girl who answered the ring, and so did one of the Officers. Walking through the door he said to her. “Not on the Streets any more Mary? You a House Lady now, uh!”

“Everybody can’t be lucky enough to work the Streets Officer Wilcox.” Mary said calling him by name.

Looking up at him, she said. “Come on in. We just had a robbery attempt.”

Stepping into the house, and waiving me away, Officer Wilcox said. “Is that so? What stopped it?”

Before she could answer Elvira Mc Daniel walked into the room followed by a heavy-set Black man wearing a shoulder holster with a pearl handle 45. in it.

“He stopped it.” Elvira said pointing to the man behind her. “He stopped it, and would have shot that Bastard if Janice hadn’t got in the way.”

 Spotting me standing outside the door with Officer Wilcox’s hand in my chest she said to him. “That’s my Private Detective, Mr. Steele. You can let him come in Officer.” 

“Come on in Teflon.” Wilcox said moving the hand from my chest to my shoulder.

I knew Wilcox too!

Stepping into the house, I said to Elvira. “I just chased a green Toyota that sped out of your driveway a few minutes ago, but I lost it, and the driver a few blocks up the street.”

“Don’t matter.” Elvira said pulling a photo from her purse. “After he robbed me the first time, I had cameras installed throughout the house. That’s how I happened to have that picture of the man I showed you, Mr. Steele.”

“You got a picture of the Suspect?” Wilcox asked her, as the other Cop walked up to the door.

Turning to him Wilcox said. “You ain’t gonna believe this, but she has a photo of the Suspect, and Teflon chased the green Toyota he was driving.”

“So! Where is the Suspect?” Bell asked.

Yea! I knew him, too. I’d met Bell almost three years before I met Wilcox. At the time I met Bell, I was still working at OPD, and trying to blend in.

Actually! I wasn’t trying to blend in, I was trying to hide, and be invisible. But, because I was such a bad actor, and failing so miserably in the part, the Brass saw me.

I’m sort of a maverick! And I was never much of a Team player. Mike tried to save me, but in doing so, he was dragging his self-down to my level.

When I took it, the door to the world outside of OPD saved us both.

You could say I met Wilcox at that Intersection, he was coming in the door, as I was going out of it.

Bell was another story. At the time I met him, he was working Street Crimes, like Mike, and me. He was a good Cop back then, and as Mike said, he was a better one now.

“And, you just happened to be driving by, uh Teflon?” Wilcox asked stepping pass me into the house, while looking at the large 45 hanging on the Black Guy’s shoulder.

“Nice gun.” He said winking at the ceiling and smiling at the guy. “I hope you got a Permit for that thing.”

“Sure, he’s got a Permit for it Officer.” Elvira answered for him. “This is Ralph, my Bodyguard. But what’s more important than that permit is the man who robbed me once before, and just tried to rob me again. Y’all should be out some where trying to catch him in- stead of standing around in my front door Jaw- Jacking.”

 “You’re right, Ms. Elvira.” Bell turned to Wilcox. “There’s nothing more we need here. We’ve got a photo of the Suspect, and a description of the car. That’s all we need! Come on, Wilcox, let’s go get him.”

When they were in their Patrol cars and turning into the street Elvira said to me. “All I need now is for that Crooked Cop to show up.”

I said he wouldn’t, but the Demon must have been listening, because, in a strange way he did.

                                                                                                CHAPTER 3

          The white Tudor mini- mansion he was looking for sat far back off the street, and was surrounded by palm trees, and flowering shrubbery.

It was midway of the second street after he turned off Alafayer Trail. The Driveway leading up to it was lined with cars.

When the green Toyota drove pass the house for a second time and turned back onto Alafayer Trail his watch said 12:45.

Backing a short distance into the trees lining the Trail, he parked the car facing the road, and got out.

          After pulling the Baseball cap down as far as it would go on his head, he started the short walk back to the house.

It was a lazy, slow walk, and five minutes later he was standing on the poach ringing the doorbell.

When the Maid opened the door, he stepped passed her. He could hear the sound of voices coming from the people in the room.

He was closing the door behind him when she said. “I’m sorry Sir, but if you’re the Plumber, you’ll have to come back some other time, Mr. Reddick is having guests for Lunch, and today the house is closed until after 3‘O clock.”

She was re- opening the door when he pulled the gun and pressed the barrel into her back.

“Be calm.” He whispered into her ear turning her toward the noise coming from the room behind them.

“If you do exactly what I say, no one will get hurt.” The threat was whispered a little louder. “Otherwise, this could be a Blood bath, starting with your blood.”

Once they were in the Dining room, he marched the wife, kids, and the guest behind Reddick, into the library.

While Reddick opened the safe, and got the money, he thought of robbing the guest, but after he saw the size of the bag when Reddick finished filling it, he changed his mind.

Twenty minutes after walking into the door, he was walking out of it. He’d snapped the wires on the house phones, but he knew there must have been at least a dozen Cell Phones in there.

Didn’t matter! Reddick wouldn’t call, and if he did, by the time the Police got there he’d be long gone.

After a fast walk, and three short minutes he was entering the woods, and running to the Toyota.

He never saw the shooter or felt the bullet that killed him.

Carter stepped around the tree he was hiding behind and picked up the pillow- case.

He took a hand full of bill out of it, and as he threw them into the air, he noticed they were mostly hundred-dollar bills.

The female loa Aida- Weddo waived her hand in a fast circle stirring the wind she swam in.

Responding to the motion of her hand the wind took the bills to the four corners of the forest dropping some here, and some there on the floor, as fertilizer for her husband Damballa, the racine Loa, known as ‘The Rainbow snake.’

Removing the gun from the stiffing fingers of the dead man, then taking off the blue police jacket, and matching pants Carter dropped them onto the ground behind him, and raising his face to Lisa, the mid- day sun he smiled.

As Aida- Weddo moved silently through the trees, she smiled back caressing him with the warmth of her breath.

Even as Petite Pierre, a gluttonous, and quarrelsome spirit tried to pick a fight with the spirits watching them Carter un- buttoned the white shirt, and white pants he wore beneath the uniform, and three times whispered the name into the silence. “ Damballah, Damballah, Damballah.

Pulling the shirt, and pants off, he dropped them to the ground, and with raised arms stood naked before his Gods.

Picking up the gun he fired it twise, then whispered. “Damballah, I know that it is you that carries the ancestors on your back to Ginen, the Spiritual home of the loa, and the Afterlife. Take the owner of this gun as yours, and use him to serve you, and me."

Walking away from the body, then kneeling beside a tree he whispered.  “Sobo Kessou your bravery is well known, and your strength makes you a very powerful loa, and warrior. Protect me against the wild Spirits, and them that don’t know you, as I do."

Standing up, he threw the last handful of bills into the air, and as the last bill fell fluttering to the ground, he turned, and walked a hundred yards deeper into the trees where he hid the sack in the branches of a tall oak, then dropping an egg on a mound of flour at the base of the tree he turned and walked back to the unmarked Patrol car.

Leaning against the car he prayed silently for ten minutes to the loa before making the call to OPD.

Five minutes after the last prayer he saw the first Squad car coming down Alafayer Trail, and stepped into the road, flagging it down.

          The car slowed, then came to a stop beside him. “What you got here Carter?” The Officer inside asked him to roll down the window.

          Walking around to the driver’s side Carter said. “I answered a Domestic violence call that turned out to be false and ran into a Robber.”

Pointing to the green Toyota on the other side of the street Carter told him. “Step out and follow me.”

          Before the Ambulance, and two other Squad cars arrived they had crossed the street, and were headed into the woods where the Toyota, and the dead man was.

          The first Paramedic out of the Ambulance stepped on a hundred-dollar bill, then stumbled reaching behind him for another one fluttering in the grass.

          In the excitement of finding hundred dollar bills scattered around on the forest floor, for a moment,the dead man was forgotten.

          Carter smiled when he was loaded into the Ambulance, and taken to the morgue  only after the last bill was found.

 

 

                                 I

 

          Elvira Mc Daniel’s visit to my Office seemed to have stirred up a hornet’s nest, and the week after I agreed to help her, they started swarming all over Orlando, especially down on Paramore, which was only a stone’s throw away from Downtown.

          My office is located on Magnolia Ave in Downtown Orlando, and I was staying close to it hoping I wouldn’t get stung by one of them.

The large sign out front says Al bright, Cobb and Smith, Realtor; my sign is a smaller one inside the building towards the back, and that sign said T. Steele, Private Investigations.

Up front it was Al bright, Cobs and Smith who ran the Show, but behind that sign was my domain, and I ran that!

I didn’t own the building, but I owned a couch, a desk, and since last year a computer, and a Fax machine.

All of them were used, and well-worn by the people who owned them before me when I got them.

          I rented Phone service for the Fax machine, and the computer from Bell South, and when I heard about the death of Elvira’s Robber, I was on the phone talking with Mike.

          After hearing the ‘Official’ Report about the Robbery he had just committed and listening to the reports on the others in his past, my first thought was ‘Busy person.’

But, as I considered the small- time hold- ups in the dead man's record, whose name turned out to be James Taylor, and then thought of this one, I said talking to my former partner. “Now, Mike! You know I’m a Country boy. But I’ve seen a big City, or two. And, beside the sight of too many people living too close to each other, neither one of them Cities impressed me much.

          “I wont say that I ‘ve been around the block, like some Big City fellows can say, but I have stepped out of the yard a few times, and I know a fairy tale when I hear one, and in this tale, I can almost see the Fairies.”

          Mike was silent for a moment, then blew into the phone, and said. “Yea! Does sound kind of 'opportunistic' him getting a false Domestic Violence call to that area at that time. I checked with Dispatch, and the call did come in.”

          Like I said. " I haven’t been around the block but becoming a skeptic after stepping out of the yard a few times, I learned a thing or two.

One: I learned to not believe in Fairy tales, or the person telling them. Two: To look beyond the person talking and find the Fairy.

          It took me a few minutes of listening to Mike talk about the Dispatcher, the Record of the call, and the Record of the dead James Taylor, who Mike said was the man wearing the brown shirt, and blue jeans that I chased from Elvira’s house before I asked where the call came from.

          Mike said. “Obviously! Waterford Lakes, or somewhere near Alafayer Trail. Somewhere out that way, if Carter was out there responding to it.”

          “Don’t ask!” Mike said reading my mind and guessing my next question. “I’ll make the call.”

          When he came back to the phone, he sighed first, then moaned. “You did it again Teflon! You just ruined my opinion of another man, I thought was a good Cop.”

          “Don’t tell me.” I said laughing. “The call didn’t come from a home in Waterford Lakes area, did it?”

          “ No!"   Mike said laughing back at me. “It came from a phone booth on Paramore Avenue.”     

“Paramore Avenue?” I said, asking myself the question out loud. “Now, who do I know that lives on Paramore Avenue?”

“ I don’t know!” Mike said with a smile in his voice. “But I’m sure, given time you’ll figure it out without help from me.”

                                                                                             II

          As, he paced across the front room in his house in the Parramore area for the second time in five minutes. ‘Sweet William’ told Toni. “Make the call.”

Toni reached for the phone, but he said again. “No! Wait! Let’s give him five more minutes, then make the call. This time for sure.”

Three of those five minutes had passed before Carter knocked on the door, then stepped into the room.

“What the hell took you so long, man?” ‘Sweet William’ shouted, reaching for the pillowcase swinging in Carter’s hand. “I almost had a fit waiting on you, didn’t I Toni?”

After dumping the contents of the pillowcase on the floor before the couch, ‘Sweet William’ dropped to his knees, and started counting.

As, Toni crawled over to the pile, and started counting along with ‘Sweet William’ Carter took a seat in a chair at the kitchen table.

“You bring it all.” ‘Sweet’ asked, looking up from the bills in his hand. “ I know you didn’t hold out on me, did you?”

“No! I didn’t hold out on you, you greedy Bastard.” Carter said laughing. “If I was going to hold out on you, I would have taken the whole thing, and walked away with it. What could you do? Tell the Cops you arranged a robbery, and a Cop walked off with the money! All in hundred-, and thousand-dollar bills.”

Ignoring the question ‘Sweet' said.  “Old Reddick must have been keeping close to half a million dollars in that safe out there.”

Looking up from the pile of bills and smiling at Carter he observed. “Fool couldn’t report it to the Government and was afraid to put it in the Bank. Your share should make you a pretty rich man Officer Benjamin Carter. What you gon do with all dat money? Ain’t like you can come right out, and start spending it?”

          Looking at the two piles of bills on the floor Carter said. “First, I’m going to take it back to Louisiana, then I’m going to work a few more years at OPD while staying clear of Creeps, and Scum bags like you. And, then I’m going to retire.”

          “Oh, Boy! Now, you a rich man, I’m a Scum bag. They say money changes people, but damn it, Officer Carter. That was fast!”

Rising from the floor, he placed one pile back into the pillowcase, and the other into a brown paper bag.

Looking at Carter ‘Sweet William’ said. “Both piles are about the same, give, or take a few thousand, due to fast counting. You choose. Take either one of them partner.

“I trust you."

          "I’ll go with the pile in the paper bag.” Carter said taking the bag out of ‘Sweet William’s hand, and walking out the door.

          Two blocks away, behind his unmarked car the new ‘Home of the Magic’ was being constructed.

The Sky rise Event Center that was to be their home, and the Venues going up around it were guaranteed by the City Fathers to revitalize and rejuvenate the Parramore Area.

          Looking at the boarded-up windows and weed- covered lots along that street Carter didn’t place much faith in the City Fathers’ guarantee.

          There were some things a new pair of shoes, and a different set of clothes could.

change, but a persistent headache wasn’t one of them, and Parramore had a headache that was persistent.

          Looking from the Addicts, and the Whores he saw standing on the corners to the

Merchants waiting in the buildings behind closed doors, to Carter they all appeared to have throbbing heads.

          A sore back could be rubbed, an itch in the Butt could be scratched, but Carter knew a Migraine headache took medicine, and on Parramore that meant Dope.

          Sure! The new Event Center would give a second chance at life to a dying area of the City Beautiful, and in time the new money coming into their businesses would ease the Merchant’s headache, but for the Addicts, the Whores, and the Street Hustles that depended on them, the headache would still be there, and they would still need medication.

 

                                                                                              III

 

          The book in the library said the loa Adjasou is characterized by protruding eyes, and a bad sense of humor.

          I’m not a Voodoo Deity, and to my knowledge I bare no relationship to Adjasou, but looking in the mirror when I woke up this morning, that was an adequate description of me, except Adjasou was a female, and I’m the other one of the sexes.

          I spent most of yesterday at the Downtown Library reading about Marie.

Laveau, ‘The Voodoo Queen of 19th century New Orleans’.

          The book I was reading said she was born in the 1790's, and that details of her exact parentage, and origin were uncertain, but she moved to New Orleans in her youth, and was raised a devout Catholic.

          At the age of twenty-five she joined a local freeman Jacques Paris in what was by

all accounts a happy marriage, and later, after his disappearance, and presumed death, she lived with Cristophe Glapion.

Between the two men, Marie bore fifteen children, including her daughter Marie,

who bore a striking resemblance to her mother, and eventually became a Voodoo Priestess, as well.

At the top of the page the picture of Marie bore a striking resemblance to Benjamin Carter.

So striking was the resemblance it caused me to wonder about his ancestry, and then go down to OPD, and ask Mike to take a look at his Application, which proved to be a very interesting document.

His Great Grandfather Benjamin Carter was the third son of Elizabeth Laveau, and our Benjamin Carter was the third son of her cousin Jacques Paris, a Creole who was named after his grandfather, Jacques Paris was also a third son.

Carter was born March 3, in 1947 in Bayou St John, Louisiana, and was raised a Catholic, but on the application his listed religious preference was Vodun, and he said he held the position of Obeah in that Religion.

The application listed his hobbies as raising Exotic animals, and the study of Magic and Mysticism.

With nothing better to do with my time, I went back to the library to study the meaning of the unfamiliar words, Vodun and Obeah, in the hope that they would help me to better understand the man they described.

The book I read said the Vodun cosmology was centered around the Vodun, which were Spirits, and other elements of divine essence, which govern the Earth.

I read it! But I can’t say I understood what I read, or that it was relevant until I read about Marie’s snake Zombi, and remembered a conversation from almost three years ago, when he joined the Force.

At the time Carter joined OPD, he had a large Boar Constrictor, and after a similar snake was stolen from a pet store, he brought it to work, and showed it to the guys in the Robbery Squad.

I don’t know what kind of snake Marie Laveau had, but it was a large female snake named Zombie, and the book said sometimes Marie would dance with the snake wrapped around her waist.

          I couldn’t imagine Carter dancing with a snake, but before I went on the Internet, and started checking names, and his ancestry, I couldn’t believe that intelligent people visited Cemeteries to talk with the dead and kept black cats for good Luck.

With Carter, and his ancestors, both of those practices were family traditions that went back for at least four generations. That was as far back, as I could go.

I found his parents through his Social Security number, which I got from his application. And, from them I found his Grandparents, then, through them I went to Jacque and Marie.

          Marie was High yellow, French Creole, but Jacque was a free Negro, dark, and as hansom as a Black man could be.

          Looking from her picture to Carter's picture in the application, I would say that Officer Carter’s complexion was somewhere in between those two extremes.

          He was lighter than brown, but not quite yellow. He was that almost golden tan color people spent hours on the beach trying to get.

          I couldn’t guess their heights, and weight, but Carter wasn’t a tall man, and he wasn’t a short one either. I’d say he was average, about 5’9” tall, and weighing around 210 lbs.

          What was different about him was his hair. He wore it in long Dred-locks with little white beads at their ends, and in the picture, Elvira gave me the blond hair was so dark it looked almost brown.

 

                                                                                                         CHAPTER 4

 

 

          When he walked into the room Bell said to Carter. “I sent the gun your robber had to forensic, and it turned out to be the same gun that fired the bullet into that chair at Elvira Mc Daniel’s house. Looks like you did it again Carter! Two birds with one stone.”

          Tapping him on the back, as he took his seat Bell went on. “That Toyota was a real treasure of crime solutions. He had stuff in that car that went all the way back to nickel and dime robberies on OBT two years ago. There was a wallet with William Smith’s I D in it, and a bracelet that had Tonya Simpson’s name on it. They were tourist, and both of their crimes were committed two years ago, and until now considered unsolvable. I guess you’ll get credit for solving them too! Some guys have all the Luck!”

          Opening the top drawer of his desk, Carter said over his shoulder. “I keep telling you guys it’s not luck, it’s the Spirits, and the Loa. They talk to me. They talk to you too, but I listen, and you don’t.”

          “I hear you, Carter!” Wilcox said from his desk at the back of the room. “They may be talking, but I don’t hear no Spirits, or that other thing you mentioned. What language do they speak?”

          Walking into the room a tall, thin blond Officer said. “They speak Creole, and some other Bayou crap that only swamp people from Louisiana can understand, ain’t that right Carter?”

          “If you say so McAllister.” Carter said standing up and closing his desk drawer.

“But, whatever language it is, I speak it. And I keep telling you fellows that the loa in Voodoo work for me. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. They work for me because I’m the third son of a third son, and my Birthday is the third day of the third month of the year 1947. Add the numbers of the year together and you get 66. Add my birth month and birthday and you get 6, add 3 and3 and you get another 6. Their total is what I am!”

          Raising three fingers on each hand he told the room. “I am two of the three 6s that are the mark of the Beast, and according to the Mojo Mambo that’s as close to the Beast anyone can get and still remain human.”

          “What Beast we are talking about here Carter?” McAllister asked, sitting down on the other side of the cluttered desk top Carter was vacating.

After popping a peanut into his mouth from the open Planters jar with his left hand, his right hand hovered over a blank sheet of paper with a poised pen.

Chewing slowly on the peanut, while staring at Carter he asked the room.  “Are we talking about the Devil? Satan worship? Or something else like that?”

When Carter didn’t speak, he dropped another peanut into his mouth, and as the pen drew three X’s on the paper, and circled them, he began to chew.

McAllister ate so many peanuts, in the Robbery Squad he was known as Planter Mac.

After swallowing with an exaggerated grunt, he dropped another peanut into his mouth, and asked Carter. “You say you are the ‘what’, of a ‘what’, of a ‘what’. Boy? Run that pass me again, I think I missed something important. There had to be something important in all of them what’s, wasn’t there?”

 

Feeling the touch of a loa that came from a new nation of spirits that were forged with the cold steel of Iron restraints, the shearing bite of a raw hide whip, and the shed blood of slavery Carter turned, and faced him.

The loa reflected all the rage, the violence, and delirium that had thrown off the shackles of slavery, and in Carter’s mind’s eye the pounding drums, the dancing bodies, and their pulsating rhythm were offbeat, and out of sync.

They were unforgiving, and like the crack of that rawhide whip, they touched, and stung him to the core.

The Bizango was an extreme form of the Petro, and it was sometimes described as the wild Petro.

Bizango usually occurs by night, in the darkness that is the province of the djab, the Devil.

But, looking at the hand dropping another peanut into McAllister’s mouth, it took Carter in broad daylight.

The desire to strike was so strong, he almost screamed, but looking away from the chewing jaw, he managed to control himself.

He knew McAllister’s time would come, and walking through the door he didn’t answer, or look back when McAllister shouted. “Mojo Mambo? What kind of shit is that Carter?”

When Carter didn’t answer, and continued walking down the hall McAllister stood up, then pointing a finger at Carter’s receding back started shouting. “What kind of shit is that? Answer me Man! What kind of shit is that?”

          Carter left the building and went directly to the Greyhound Bus station where he had rented a locker.

The money from the robbery was in that locker, but he didn’t plan to drive to Louisiana with the money, driving was too risky, he was going to take the Bus.

          It would be an all-day trip, but he had two weeks of vacation time coming, and he planned to go home during them.

 

                                                                                                  I

 

You know Mike! Ever since Elvira showed me that picture of

Carter, and I saw that Demon standing behind him in it, I’ve been wanting to talk to somebody about this Voo Doo- Doo doo, and since you’re here, I guess it’s you I must talk to.

Elvira said what I saw must have been the shadow of her Momin tree, but I never saw a mombin, or any other tree that was blue with a horn in the center of its head. Have you?

Now! Don’t get me wrong Mike! I know that manure isn’t an appropriate subject.

for two grown men to talk about. And there are probably a million other smelly things that I could be talking to you about, other than it. But bear with me here because some time ‘Shit does happen’. And, for once, this time. I want to talk about it!

When I looked at that picture, Mike, I saw a Demon, you looked at it, and you didn’t see him.

Now! Why is it that I’m the only one who saw him then, and why isn’t he in the

picture anymore?

I just looked at the picture, and he’s gone.

I need answers Mike! And, if I have to confront every Demon, and Loa in

Louisiana, I’m gonna find them answers!

Looking out my office window and talking to myself wasn’t getting me any.

answers, so Wednesday morning found me, not in Louisiana, but downtown at OPD talking with Mike, this time in person.

He was a Captain now, but he could still find a minute, or two in his busy schedule for a friend, and former partner.

All day Tuesday, I kept thinking about a dead Robber, over at the morgue, and seeing a Pimp that use to stand on a corner on Parramore but didn’t stand there anymore.

          Mike said the call that got the Robber killed came from a phone booth on Parramore, and being a skeptic, I didn’t put much faith in co-incidence.

          Looking up from the file in his hand Mike told me. “Reddick said he kept his money in a small Wall safe in his Bedroom. He said at the time of the robbery he had about, maybe fifteen thousand dollars in it, which he put in a pillowcase for the robber.”

Looking at his fingers, Mike said. “That’s about how much the Officers searching the woods found, give or take the few hundred dollars that people in the area found in their yards, and what went unreported.”

“So?” Seeing the question in his eyes, I asked. “Why are you looking like you lost something?” 

“Because I did.” Mike said walking to the window and looking at the cars in the parking lot.

          After a minute of silent car watching, he turned back to me, and spoke. “I lost that pillowcase Reddick said the robber left with the money in. Nobody found it in the first search, and I sent two men out there yesterday to look for it. They didn’t find it either.”

          “Well!” I said standing up. “I probably won’t find your missing pillowcase, but I think I’ll find the person who made that call. Elvira said he was paying Carter to force her out of business. Maybe he was paying Carter to do other things too.”

          When I left Mike’s office at OPD Downtown was dusty, the day was hot, and windy, and dirt from the new Event Center’s construction site filled the streets.

          I washed the Dodge yesterday, and already it was back to looking like the dirty, old car it was.

The color was the same old green it came from the factory with, but the paint was new.

Driving along I was thinking to myself. ‘You know Mike. Being a modern-day Paladin I don’t make much money, and the little I do make is usually spent before I get it, but a few years ago people started calling my Dodge old. And I was starting to be a little ashamed to be seen riding in it, so I broke down, and got it painted.

Lately, since that paint- job, they been saying it was an antique, and I am starting to feel proud to own this old car.

I do the best I can. But, you know, sometime saving the world ain’t worth the effort, especially when its itself that you are trying to save the world from.

          My hero Don Quixote once said. "A man has to do what a man has to do." Well, actually, in reality he didn’t say that, but it sounds like something he would have said if he had thought of it.

           But, one day Mike ‘the Don’ did say to his partner, and faithful sidekick Sancho Panzo. "I have always heard Sancho, that being nice to those base fellows is like throwing water into the sea."

           The Don actually did say that to Mike! And, I said it to say this. “Trying to save the world from itself is like being nice to those base fellows. It’s like throwing water into the sea.”       

          As, I turned the Dodge onto Parramore my thoughts went from the Don to the damsel I was trying to rescue, and the Dragon that held her captive.

          I couldn’t honestly say that one was a better person than the other, but it was the damsel’s money that was paying the rent, and that was in her favor.

          As, for the dragon, he wasn’t on his corner today, but his girls were skimpily dressed, and standing on theirs. Looking at the fancy cars picking them up, as I drove by I started thinking to myself that some guys did, really have all the luck.

          You see Mike! I didn’t have the time, or the money for playing passionate with Working Girls, and because I didn’t know a Higgins, I couldn’t drive a red Corvette like Magnum P.I. drives.

          James Bond had Q, but I had only ‘You know who. Me, Myself, and I’. And, at thart moment neither one of us was doing too well.

          There were a lot of places in Orlando where I could go and waste the little gas, I had in going there, but I chose Kaye’s house.For some dumb reason, that usually smart Lady had chosen to marry me, and try to make a life on my salary.

          I’m not complaining Mike, I chose the life I live, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I put on the armor, and I climbed up on the steed voluntarily. And, as I ride from one case to another, and one dollar to the next, I know it’s me making the decision, and that’s exactly how I want it.

          Come Hell, or High water. Preferably High water, but I’ll take the Hell along with the ride when it comes. And I'll save that damsel, even if sometimes she's ugly, and it’s the dragon that needs saving.

          By late Afternoon, it was turning out to not be a high-water day for me. My gas was short, and Kaye wasn’t home. Elvira wasn’t home either.

 My gas needle read empty, but the Dodge got me back to the office, where my Piggy Bank gave me seven dollars’ worth of gas to start tomorrow with.

          Looking at the lumpy couch in my office, and then crawling onto it, I was thinking nobody promised me a Rose Garden, but, then I couldn't sleep in one anyway. I felt like the thorn that came with it would keep me awake.

        Turning out the light, and rolling over, somewhere between the lumps I found sleep.

          It was early, and the sun had just climbed into the sky when Carter arrived at the Station, he looked into the room, and seeing it was empty he walked hurriedly to his desk.

         After dropping the gris gris power into the Planter peanut jar he left OPD and went straight back to his apartment. After walking into his room and locking the door behind him he removed the Police uniform, then the white pants, and shirt he always wore under them, and stood naked before the Gods.

         There were two main groups of them. 'The rada', which were mild, and helping. And, then there were 'the petro', which were dangerous, and harmful.

        In traditional Voodoo, which was his Religion, there were two sorts of Priests. ' The Houngan, or Mambo, who confined his activities to "white" magic, like bringing good fortune, and healing.

        Then there was the Bokor, or Caplata, who performs evil spells, and black magic, sometimes called ‘left-handed Vodun’.

Carter was a Mambo Priest, but as he whispered the name McAlister three times, he called on Congo Savanne, a malevolent, fierce petro loa,.

Congo Savanne was malevolent, fierce, and strong. He ate people, grinding them up as he would grind up corn. He was a white loa, and, as such he was a loa not to be messed with.
          Raising the blond-haired doll over his head Carter said. “Legba, give him, the zombie, to me.”

         He whispered the phrase three times, then spat on the floor before calling again on the Old Man, who guarded the crossroads.

Legba was the origin of life, and it is he that must be saluted each time a service, or any other activity with the loa begins.

        It is the Old Man that controls the crossing over from one world to the other, and it is he that is the contact between the worlds of Spirit, and of flesh. He can deliver messages of gods in human language and interpret their will.

        Legba is the god of destiny, and he is also the intermediary between human beings, and divine gods.

In Haitian voodoo ‘the Old Man’ is one of the most important loa. He is the first loa to be called in a service, so that he can open the gates to the Spirit world and let them communicate with other loa. No loa dares show itself without Legba's permission, and whoever has offended him finds.

himself unable to address his loa and is deprived of their protection.

        Rising from the floor Carter walked to the window and shouted through the parted curtain. “Nzambi! Nzambi! Nzambi! Rise now and walk where I send you. Do as I tell you to. You are mine to control!”

         He’d wrapped the fetish in a napkin that McAlister had wiped his face with and thrown into the trash at work yesterday.

        This morning he’d taken it back to the Precinct before McAlister arrived, and put it into McAlister’s desk, as he sprinkled the gris gris on the peanuts.

        Later, when McAllister arrived at the Station, he spent the morning at his desk eating peanuts, and doing paperwork At Lunch, he left OPD intending to swing by a Restaurant, grab a Sandwich, and return to the Station, but for some reason coming back from Lunch, he turned onto South Street.

       As, he made the turn he couldn’t understand why he chose to turn off onto that street, or why he was going in a direction that was away from O.P.D.

        South Street was crowded, and traffic on it was moving slow, but at the Intersection of South St. and Parramore Ave., with the Squad car stopped in the middle of the street he opened the door and got out.

        Leaving the car running where it was, he walked the two blocks to the wood frame, single story house the screaming voices in his head led him to, then opening the unlocked door, he stepped into the room.

        His steps were jerky when he walked through the door, and his face carried a vacant look, as if there was nothing behind it. Not only was his face expressionless, the drooping jaws, and limp lids above his eyes looked incapable of expression.

       As his green eyes stared at William Sweet with a vacant look that said no thinking mind was in the head behind them, they turned blood red

when he staggered through the door toward him ‘Sweet’ was thinking to himself. ‘What, the hell, kind of drug is this guy on? His eyes are like the eyes of a dead man, they’re staring at me, but they’re unfocused.

        The gun in his left hand pointed first at Toni, then moved slowly to William Sweet, and paused, wavering undecided, aimed somewhere between his head, and his chest.

        The supreme god bon dieu, and a host of other spirits were now in control of McAllister, and following Carter’s direction they all sang one phrase to him. “Kill William Sweet! Kill William Sweet! Kill William Sweet! Then kill yourself! Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”

        He pulled the trigger, and as the sound of the first shot echoed through the house Toni screamed and ran out the open door.

        When the second shot was fired, it was too late for ‘Sweet William’ to run, he was already dead.

The first bullet hit him in the head, the second found his chest just before McAllister put a peanut into his mouth and raised the gun to his own head pulling the trigger for the third time.

        Carter was two blocks away from ‘Sweet William’s house waiting for the call about  a shooting at that address. He planned on being the first Officer On- the- Scene, but a Street Crimes unit patrolling Paramore responded to Toni’s call, and they arrived three minutes after the call came in.

        The floor of the front room was covered with blood when the Officers walked through the door, McAllister was lying in the middle of the floor still bleeding, the gun that took his life still clutched in his left hand.

        William Sweet was sitting on the sofa with two wounds from the same gun: one in his head, the other in his chest. Shortly after the Officers began searching the house, they found a pillowcase with several thousand dollars in hundred- and thousand-dollar bills in the attic over the Master bedroom.

        Carter was approaching the house when the pillowcase and the money were reported. Driving pass the house he knew that this time when he was called to Capitan Mikes’ office it wouldn’t be to receive a ‘Good Job done’ report and a pat on the back. This time it would be to receive a prison sentence, or something worse.

        When the Paramedics arrived five minutes later Toni was still standing outside on the porch refusing to enter the room. She knew the money was somewhere in the house, but she didn’t know where, and after the shooting she was too afraid to go search for it.

        Her first thought was to call the police, and it was only after they arrived that she thought of the money in the pillowcase. Carter knew where they were, and the money and the pillowcase were what had him waiting two blocks away for the call to come in.

        The money would be nice to have, but it was the pillowcase that he wanted. Ever since ‘Sweet William offered him the money on the floor or the money in the sack he had regretted not choosing the sack.

        If he was lucky that pillowcase would get him a lengthy prison sentence, but if he wasn’t, the Death Sentence.

        The next morning when Wilcox found the fetish doll in McAllister’s desk Carter was packing his things and loading them into his car.

McAllister’s death was now listed as a suicide, but the Voodoo fetish in his desk and the peanuts, if they were checked would raise questions, questions about his suicide that would point to him.

                                                                                    PANDORA’ S BOX

                                                                                By

                                                                   Jim L. Drumwright

 

                                                                                   CHAPTER one

         John Duval walked quickly through the Entrance of the Washington, DC Am- track station, he carried a large duffle bag that hung from a strap across his right shoulder, and a little cloth tote bag that swung back and forth in his left hand, they were all he carried, and they contained all that he valued.

        After sixty- two years of living two pieces of luggage were enough to hold all that was left of his worldly possessions.

Everything that was his was in the duffle bag on his back and in the tote in his hand, they along with his life, and a desire to keep on living were everything he possessed, and at 3:20 am. on a stormy morning they pushed him through the meandering crowds in the Mimi-lighted station with a purpose that was unrelenting, and unconditional.

Ten minutes later, with a ticket in his hand they shoved him back outside into the falling rain, and once outside they propelled him without pause, or a backward glance to the chugging sound of the train waiting for him on the railed tracks, then with a persistence that was undeniable they rushed him into the train that would take him away from Washington, D.C.

Stepping up into the dry, lighted interior he glanced once over his shoulder into the misty wind-swept water falling from the sky.

Other than the two bags, and the throbbing ache in his shaven head, all that remained of a life lived in luxury and splendor out there was a cursed knowledge of where three bodies, certain property titles, and a few bank accounts were hidden.

That knowledge, and the three hundred thousand dollars he had hurriedly stuffed into the duffle bag after discovering that in the Nation’s capital his life wasn’t safe was the total worth of his sixty years,

              And, when put together, that life, and the three hundred thousand dollars in the duffle bag were three hundred thousand reasons that made his life unsafe, and they added up to one good reason to be boarding Am Track Speed Liner # 303 at this ungodly hour in the morning, in this un- Godly weather.

Up until yesterday John Duval had lived a charmed life in a world of comfort and

Luxury that was sheltered from the harsher aspects of life in America. His every day was met with a happy smile on his lips, and, as the days added up to years, during those years the smile broadened.

He existed in a realm that was as charmed as the money he carried was cursed,

and for every one of those years, he had lived in that world without a single worry, or a fear in his heart.

And, it could have gone on forever, but last year he had failed to pay the Federal Government three hundred thousand dollars of its rightful share of his income, and all that changed.

Now, for some reason everything was suddenly different; the charmed life was gone, and overnight he had major problems in its place.

The Fed was pissed off about that small Tax oversight, and threatening to confiscate some of his worldly possessions, but the three- hundred thousand dollars in the duffle bag would have taken care of them.

It wasn’t the Federal Government he feared, it was the anger of the money ’s rightful owner, and his getting pissed off about him taking it that John Duval was afraid of.

That anger, and the fact that he couldn’t be taken care of with the return of the three hundred thousand dollars, was what pushed him relentlessly through the falling rain, and onto the train. 

His Attorney had reminded him for the second time at lunch a few weeks ago that Tax evasion was a crime, and being a Lawyer himself he knew the humiliating procedures of Federal Income Tax collections, and the penalties the Government would exact for failure to pay them their share of his earned Income.

The Death Sentence wasn’t among those penalties, but, as the former Attorney of one of his clients had mentioned at that same luncheon, his knowledge of where two of that client’s illegal bank accounts were, and his possessing the code numbers to those accounts made him a candidate for a crime that, in his client’s eyes, was punishable by death.

Funny, but up until then, he’d never thought of it that way, he’d known all his life that crime didn’t pay, and right after he became a Lawyer, he found out that criminals did, and when they paid, they paid big time.

Go figure, and then ask yourself, who would have ever guessed that borrowing from Peter to pay Paul could cost a man his life?

You wouldn’t think it, but it could.

In one unthinking moment two days ago, he'd taken money out of one of those accounts, intending to pay the Feds, and then replace the money in the next week, or two, but yesterday Tony ‘the Tattoo’ came by the office with another bag of cash to be deposited, and as usual he wanted a Bank receipt of the deposit, but this time, he wanted it the next day.

When John Duvall first decided to become a Syndicate Attorney his hair was blond, and he knew that the money for representing them would come in bundles, just as he knew those bundles would be wrapped, and tied with the dangers inherent in his client’s lifestyles, and their business dealings, but as time passed and his hair turned white, and being a Wise man himself, after taking certain precautions to insure his own protection he’d taken the risk.

He knew that just as you couldn’t protect your family against crime in the streets, you couldn’t protect yourself from the Syndicate bosses sitting behind large desks in corporate offices.

But, just as there were ways you could shield your family from Street thugs, there were ways you could shield yourself from their bosses while you bought time to negotiate an equitable solution to whatever problem you had with them.

He had a niece in Florida, and the day after he shaved his head he’d sent a package containing all the information he had concerning those clients, and their businesses to her Lawyer, who was a former Paralegal of his with instructions about what to do if something happened to him, then at a meeting with his client he’d let it slip that neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor… Well, you get the picture.

The American Postal Service would deliver the mail to wherever and to whom ever it was directed, and it would do it without failure, or delay.

And, since there were some things that a Wise man wouldn’t want known by certain people, a wise man wouldn’t do anything that was rash, or foolish.

Two weeks later he was feeling secure in the knowledge that his client had gotten the message he'd delivered at that meeting, and that in another week, or two he would replace the missing money, or if necessary, explain its absence.

Life went on, and thinking along those lines, so did John. He’d left the office one afternoon, and as usual he stopped for a paper at the Stand around the corner.

The first page of the Post’s late edition carried an article that caught his attention, and while it stripped him immediately of any feelings of security he had, at the same time it took away all thoughts of finding an equitable agreement with his client.

Staring helplessly at words written in bold print on the Front- page Editorial he saw Former D C Attorney shot to death in Florida.

The instant he picked up the paper his heart had skipped a beat, and even as the printed words screamed up at his eyes about a Lawyer’s death in Florida, his mind read between the lines ‘No reachable solution with Tony ‘the Tattoo.’

Looking at the wavering print on the page through blurred vision the article told him that after visiting a client who suffered a minor heart attack in his office, Attorney James Evans, Esquire was killed in Orlando Florida at the Hospital’s Outpatient clinic.

The Post went on to inform him that police were now re- investigating a recent Break- in at Evan’s office in the belief that the two crimes were related.

John Duvall’s hand trembled spasmodically when it dropped the Post , and as he turned, and walked away from the Stand to hurry up the street he didn’t pause, or look back at the paper fluttering on the ground.

A block away from the Stand he hailed a taxi that took him back to the office he’d just left, then to a bank where he made two transactions that completely depleted his client’s accounts there.

From the bank the taxi took him home where he emptied his own safe and filled the duffle bag.

Twenty- five minutes after he arrived at home the Taxi took him back through the falling rain to the Am- track station and the waiting train.

Thirty minutes after he walked through the door of the station the train rolled out of the yard and chugged its way south into the flurry of racing winds and the dark clouds of a Thunderstorm that was coming from that way.

Mile after mile, as its speed increased the train ran deeper into a murky darkness of cascading rain.

Overhead dark water filled clouds flashed finger streaks of lightning that occasionally illuminated the train’s interior.

Rolling from side to side it followed a steel path that led it over tall mountains, across open plains, and through long stretches of mist shrouded forest.

And as it went from lighted cities and dark country towns to small villages it swayed and rocked in a back-and-forth motion that carried it over the miles to its own licitly- clack rhythm.

Looking into the pouring deluge of wind-swept water outside the window, John Duval counted every minute and every mile of his long journey.

Three hours after its departure from the Am Track station in Washington DC the train made its first stop in Arlington, Virginia, and Stuart, the Conductor made his first count.

He took the stubs out of his shirt pocket and started counting them while matching each stub with a passenger, and at the end of his count there was a ticket stub that represented each passenger on the train.

Twenty minutes later when the train rolled out of Arlington station to the rumbling sounds of distant thunder a brilliant streak of lightning flashed a jagged path across the misty sky.

Stuart walked slowly through the Lounge cars to the Dining car, and on through them to the Sleeper cars where he entered room number 17-C and closed the door behind him.

When the train stopped the second time Stuart stretched and yawned, then got up and went back to the first coach.

He gained two passengers, and, as their stubs joined the other stubs in his pocket, he made his count.

The two stops in South Carolina gained him three more passengers, but when he reached Atlanta, Georgia his count was one passenger short.

He recounted the stubs and did a mental review of the people in the cars. The young man in the college sweater, and the blond girl beside him must have come aboard at Winston- Salem, where the old man in the tattered gray Business suit got off.

He couldn’t remember, but he was certain that the three men with the music instruments came on at his last stop, which brought his count to eighty-four people, and eighty- five stubs.  He made a second, and a third count, and went through every Lounge and Sleeper car on the train, but still came up minus one passenger.

He was about to re- walk the train and count again when he caught the lady sneaking out of the Mail- car.

              “No one is allowed back here, Lady. ” He told her and reached for her arm when she tried to run past him, but she kicked him in the left shin, and twisted away from the hand, then ducked past him.

              “How’d you get in here anyway?” He asked, looking from her fleeing back to the key in his hand that he’d just used to open the locked door.

              She didn’t answer as she raced to the rear of the Mail- car and slid the door open, then darted through it to run across the connecting platform to the next car, which was also a Mail car.

She tried to hide behind the baggage filling that dim lighted interior, but Stuart could see her, and he didn’t bother going over there.

He leaned against the wall outside his car and waited. There was nowhere for her to go at the other end except outside, and with the train traveling at sixty miles an hour through a Thunderstorm, outside wasn’t a good place to go.

              He didn’t have to wait long before her face peered around the door, and as thunder rumbled behind him her foot slid out of the darkness behind the door.

              ´Come on over.” He invited. “There’s no place to go, but outside, and it’s raining cats and dogs out there.”

When she hesitated and ducked back behind the door Stuart said with mild irritation. “Come on now Lady, I don’t have all day, and you don’t have any place to go to.”

              She peeped cautiously around the corner one more time, and then walked hurriedly through the falling rain to duck into the first Mail- car.

Stuart waited patiently as she slipped into the car, but when she didn’t come over to where he stood watching the moving shadow of her figure at the other end of the long car, he asked her again. “How did you get in here?” 

              She said something that he didn’t hear, and as lightening flashed outside illuminating the shadows in the bag crowded car he called out. “I can’t hear you, come over here.”

Thunder rolled in the background across his voice, and he yelled louder. “Come over here, so we don’t have to yell back and forth at each other. Come on, now!”

At first, she didn’t move, and remained only a shadow at the other end of the car, but when she finally started to walk toward him through the twilight in the unlighted car his eyes recorded the scuffed white tennis shoes, and the faded blue jean beneath the sweater with the large red letters that spelled Winston- Salem University.

His mind wanted to say, 'College student', but there was a practiced sensuality in the way she walked, with her hips trussed out to the sides, and her up turned breast that he’d seen too many times, late at night, in train stations that said something else.

              As her pouting voice came to him out of the shadows between flashes of lightning, he looked from the obviously dyed blond hair to the red painted lips smiling at him above the pointed breast.

              “Do I have to come up there?” She said pushing a mailbag over and flopping down on it. “Why can’t you come back here where I am?”

              For a moment he started to decline the offer, then looking at the extra ticket stub in his hand he changed his mind and decided to let her pay for the ride in her own way.

              When lightning flashed and thunder roared outside, and a misty visage of wind-swept trees flew past the window of the speeding car he shook his head and put the stub in his pocket then walked into the shadows where she was sitting.

              “That’s more like it Baby.” She said when he sat down on the mailbag beside her. “Listen close now honey.” She whispered leaning her head against his shoulder while rubbing her hand across his spine in tight little circles. “Cause I got a proposition for you that will change your life.”

              Stuart had heard propositions before that came from ladies in her profession and so far, none of them had managed to change his life, but as he settled onto the mailbag beside her, he said. “Change my life, honey. I’m waiting.”

              “Okay.” She said jumping up and turning the bag behind them over and peering close at the address label taped on it.

              Stuart watched in amazement as she turned the bag behind it over, then the next one and inspected both address labels.

              “One of these bags in this car has two and a half million dollars in it. The man I work for is willing to give me the five hundred thousand if I bring him the two million.”

              Stuart yawned out loud and his top lip turned downward. He’d heard this one before; it was the old ‘Search the Mail- car’ routine.

Supposedly you were looking for the money someone had accidentally placed in the mail and any money that was found during the search instantly became that lost money and its owner suddenly became a loser.

‘Search the Mail- car’ was another name for that old game of ‘Losers were weepers and Finders were keepers.

He waited until she turned the next bag over before he rose from his seat and said into the twilight where she was bending over another bag.  “Okay, honey that’s enough, I don’t see any life changing circumstances in rolling all these mailbags around. Now, there may be a muscle or two to be gained hidden in the weight of moving them, but ain’t no money back here baby.”

              “But that’s where you are wrong.” Her voice came to him out of the shadows just before she materialized.

“It’s in here somewhere, I know because I followed him onto the train with it and he ducked in here, changed clothes and came out without the duffle bag.”

              She disappeared back into the shadows as the sound of another bag on the floor being rolled over came to him.

“He ducked in here with a little white tote bag in his hand and a big green navy duffle bag hanging from his shoulder on a strap. The tote bag held an old suit he changed into and wore off the train, but the duffle bag never came out of this car, I know because I followed him to this door and put a small rubber ball in the hole so the door wouldn’t lock after he went into the car.”

She rolled another bag over and inspected the address label before continuing. “When he came out, I slipped in here and started looking for the duffle bag.”

While she was talking Stuart recalled the tall nervous acting bald gentleman who materialized out of the deluge of rain in Washington DC and rushed onto the train. He was carrying a little tote bag in his hand, and he had a bulky duffle bag on his shoulder.

He thought for another minute and remembered that during the last review of tickets and passengers he didn’t have a tall bald man with a duffle bag, but he did remember a bald old man in a tattered gray Business suit who got off at Winston- Salem.

While he watched the girl’s shadow roll another bag onto the floor and push it over to inspect the address label on it he mentally recounted his ticket stubs and matched them with his passengers.

When the tally was finished, he was still one passenger short, and a second later when he heard himself whisper the question it almost sounded like a statement. “Two and a half million dollars was in that duffle bag?”

He turned and shouted the question at the shadow. “Two and a half million dollars, you sure?”

When her answer floated out of the darkness at the other end of the Mail- car he was already headed that way and he was turning bags over as he went.

                                                                                                CHAPTER two

              You know Mike, I find myself talking to you more and more often now, and I don’t just mean in our phone conversations, or on the few occasions like Holidays when we manage to get together.

No! Not those times, or the times when we do Lunch and reminisce about old times at OPD and shoot the Bull with each other about all the Street nonsense we ran into back then.

I mean, Mike, I talk to you sometimes when you aren’t even there, like now. I just open my mouth and imagine you standing here and start to talk.

              Some people would say I’m crazy when I say that you answer back, but you do. You see Mike, I know you so well I know what your answer will be to almost anything I ask you and that makes it seem just like you are here when I ask.

Does that sound crazy to you Mike?

              No, huh. Well, here’s something that might sound a bit absurd to you, if not crazy. I know it did to me the first time I heard it, but later, the more I thought about it the more sense it started to make.

You know Mike, they say that opposites attract, and that really doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Why would anyone want to be attracted to someone who is nothing like him or her?

Now, when I first heard it I thought that was crazy, but after I did a background search on my client’s parents, now I say the same thing.

Oh! And yea Mike, I really do believe that opposites do attract, and you know what else, that don’t sound the least bit crazy to me anymore when I say it.

A case in point is while Matthew and Pauline Duvall were struggling to raise three sons to adulthood in the affluent Waterford Lakes subdivision in Southeast Orange County while giving them what they thought were the right values to become successful adults in today’s world Theodophus and Ruby Anderson went through a different, but similar struggle in Bithlo, which is a little further Southeast than Waterford Lakes and a lot less affluent.

They raised three sons and one daughter, and although they tried to give them some values, they thought they could use it in today’s world. It was yesterday’s world that they lived in and it was yesterday’s values that they lived by.

In any case, they passed their values on, and it may have been those same values that prevented their children from joining mainstream society and becoming successful adults.

Matthew and Pauline Duvall raised a College Professor, a Lawyer, and an Entertainer.

Three boys who grew up and made a name for them self, and in their own little way placed their mark on Central Florida.

Theodophus and Ruby Anderson raised three sons and one daughter, Oscar their oldest boy died in the Vietnam War, and Edward who was second is now languishing in the Florida State Prison system.

Cleo, their youngest son has been up there twice and will probably someday be going back up there again.

Cynthia was their only daughter, and she was also their pride and joy. She joined mainstream society and became a Teller at a bank downtown.

And as unlikely as it would seem to us that Cynthia, a poor little country girl from Bithlo would meet Matthew, a hansom City- boy from Waterford Lakes who was an Entertainer on a Cruise ship, and that after a stormy courtship that was objected to by both families, and fifteen years of a rocky marriage, they would manage to produce one daughter themselves and name her Sally, but it happened Mike.

Sally’s mother Cynthia went to Heaven when she was nine and for the next twelve years her father along with her uncles on both sides of the family tree together with a succession of hired Nannies and the occasional Aunts who were brought home for the weekend by daddy raised Sally. 

Despite all that Mike, Sally turned out all right. I met her when she came to my office wanting me to look for her father who had turned up missing from his job one day and failed to show back up at the ship’s next port of call, which was unlike him.

It wasn’t his turning up missing from his job after making the acquaintance of some attractive female passenger; that was a common occurrence with him.

It was his failing to end the romance and be back at work the following morning ready to make the next acquaintance that night that was different. That was something new.

Matthew Duvall was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a cute little angel smile plastered on a face that women found charming, and as he grew up he found that because of them most things came easy for him.

Wine, women, and songs were no exception, and they came to Matthew with an ease that in the beginning had astonished him, but the longer he lived the more he took his good looks for granted, and the more women he met the less surprised he became at the effect he had on them.

The Fair- sex had discovered early in his life that his face and body were attractive, but now amid the pulsating sensuality of swirling throb lights and the hinted propositions of romance that flickered half hidden in the glitter of sparkling chandeliers they found that as his body attracted them his voice seduce them.

With a crooned Latin ballad or a promise of passionate love that was whispered in a dark place he charmed them, and in the dazzle of the overcrowded Ballroom where the pulsating body motions and the sensual rhythms of Salsa, Rumba and Reggae reigned, he was captivating. He was that blond, baby faced, curly haired crooner that middle-aged women dreamed of.

In the Ballroom they found him totally irresistible, and on the dance floor of the Caribbean Princess he was every lady’s prince, and while they were on board the Luxury liner where he worked Matthew Duvall was their Ballroom Beau.

When the Princess said Good- bye to the cheering Islanders and parted the azure waters of Nassau Bay to churn majestically out of the Bahamas straits on the last leg of an enchanted voyage that had lasted seven days and taken her passengers on a royal tour through captivating isles of Romance and Passion, her deck chairs held the sun tanned bodies of 650 satisfied members of temporary Royalty who were now returning to their former lives as what the Captain and ship’s crew referred to as ‘Common Land lubbers’.

As they rested and reflected on the voyage the ship’s Social Director walked between the chairs offering sad farewells and glad tidings of a hoped-for reunion on some other voyage.

The ship’s Steward and the Captain along with the Program Directors all came out to say Goodbye, but the Ballroom Beau wasn’t with them.

Three hours before the Farewell Ball, it was discovered by the Ladies Dance Coordinator that the prince of the ship wasn’t onboard the ship.

A frantic call went out over the Paging system and when it was unanswered a hasty search of the entire ship was conducted.

For over two hours the Princess was stripped and searched from stem to stern, and during that all- inclusive, intrusive search several bedrooms including the prince’s bedroom were explored more times than once.

When the two hours were over and the Princess had been stripped and inspected from her tall stalk to her broad trunk, and the prince remained not found, calls were made to several island homes whose doors were known to be open to him.

The next day when the ship docked in Miami and Matthew Duvall still hadn’t turned up a call was made to his closest relative, and after she was informed of his absence a call was made to the police and they were notified that he was missing. 

 

                                                                   I

 

The trip out to Bithlo was a short one, and as I bounced over the rutted dirt roads that meandered through the scattered rural neighborhoods where Sally and her brothers were raised I pondered her father’s absence from work, and as I thought about his absence from work I noticed that most things out there in Bithlo, including some of the traffic lights didn’t come to work on rainy days either.

On the other side of this un- working traffic light where I was stopped, and right across the street from the house with the large Rebel flag fluttering in the wind, I could see a hand painted sign that said Bithlo: A community steeped in Southern culture and traditional White values.

Reading the sign, I realized that Time and Progress had also stopped working out here in Bithlo.

As I turned the corner and peered up the street through the beginning drizzle I wondered if Jim Crow had personally written that sign after he figured out that words like Southern culture and White values gave a ring of class to his old practice, and that they sounded a lot better than just saying steeped in racism.

Later, after I left Bithlo, I drove through falling rain headed west toward Waterford Lakes, and as drove I reasoned that for Jim Crow and people like him Southern culture and White values were just another high faulting way to express Barefoot, Back- country ignorance, which was something that had never stopped working in Bithlo.

Twenty miles down the road and a life- time away was the Waterford Lakes subdivision, and where Bithlo was wooded and embedded in counter cultures with a populace that harbored secret societies like the Klan and Neo- Nazi Skin- heads, Waterford Lakes was mainstream society with nothing counter cultured or secret about the upward mobile attitude of its residents.

Out here in Waterford Lakes there was an 18-hole Golf Course along with a Clubhouse and Olympic size swimming pools filled with clean blue water.

There were three fenced tennis courts, and of course there were all those mini- mansions sitting on large, landscaped lawns that people living out there called home.

It was a storybook sitting Mike, a place where life held no surprises except the good ones, and everybody grew up and lived happily ever after.

While I drove through the water-soaked streets peering at lush green lawns that were sprinkled with rain drops and tropical plants surrounding split level houses I was looking through the windshield wipers and thinking of another storybook setting that didn’t have waiving shrubs covered in multicolored blossoms.

Out here in Waterford Lakes, each planned section of this sprawling subdivision had a Stop sign on the corner, and every major intersection had a traffic light that was working.

Everything in Waterford Lakes was thought over and well planned, but in the story, I saw between the swish swash motion of the windshield wipers that place was unlike, but still just like Bithlo and Waterford Lakes.

Mike, that story took place a long time ago in a place where everything and nothing was thought out or planned, and in that story, everybody didn’t grow up, get married and live happily ever after. In fact, nobody grew up Mike, and life there was full of surprises.

There was this cute little girl in that story who lived in this small town that was given a strange looking oblong container.

That beautiful little box had walls draped in soft velvet cloth on the inside that was decorated with intricate works of art, but outside Mike, the white sandal- wood was covered with carved pictures of mysterious looking demons and scary phantoms.

It had hairy people- looking creatures with bulging shocked eyes and large circular Os for mouths who were standing around a similar box.

For a long time, the box sat untouched and unopened as it decorated the mantle above the Fire- place where she placed it.

You see Mike, she had nothing herself to put into it when she got it and since it felt empty when she lifted it and put it on the mantle, she forgot about it.

One day while she was cleaning the mantle, she decided to give that box away, just to get rid of it.  She took it down, and after she gave it away, she discovered that it wasn’t empty, it was full.

When it was opened it had devious, weird, and frightening things inside that would jump out at you and go boo.

That beautiful old box was filled with all kinds of surprises, and Mike, because of that old box she grew up to be a naughty/ nice little girl that just loved to play tricks on unsuspecting people.

Every chance she got she gave that beautiful container to someone, and boy would they be surprised when they opened it.

              Well Mike! I told you all that to say this. I met an old man recently who was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and he had a mind that was just like that container. It too was full of surprises.

He was a very educated man, Mike, a world traveler who was a Philosophy teacher among other things.

And along with all the big educational artworks like diplomas and degrees that he’d acquired from Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale, his mind also contained numerous little scrolls and endless pages of irreverent information that he’d picked up here and there, and sometimes something on one of those pages would jump out at you and go boo.

              He was a nice old man Mike, and unlike that little girl he didn’t like to surprise people, but every now and then when he opened that mind of his someone would get surprised by something unexpected that was hiding in there mixed in with all the knowledge and all the information that came along with the diplomas and the degrees, something that had been in there for days, or for years, just waiting to jump out and go boo.

              The first time I visited him and stood there looking at the emancipated body lying on the bed, I didn’t see anything frightening in that container, I saw what appeared to be an old man whose body looked to me like it was more hungry than sick.

His large head was sprinkled with hair that had once been a dark red but was now almost pink.

The top was going bald and the pale scalp beneath the remaining strains of gray hair was patched with small brown freckles that turned into large patches where the hair was beginning to thin on the sides.

When I entered the room and came to the bedside his blue eyes watched me with a mild curiosity, and while I introduced myself, they looked me up and down with only a passing interest before they dismissed me and concentrated on the white clouds floating by outside the window.

When I told him that Sally had asked me to come by the hospital and talk with

him his blue eyes came back to my face, and for the first time they showed some interest in me.

She came by and visited him on Tuesday last week after she’d walked calmly into

My office hired me to find her missing father the week before.

When I asked him if he remembered Sally the question seemed silly to me, and I almost smiled after asking it.

Sally was his niece, an only child of his brother who was like a daughter to him, and it was she who told me to ask it by way of introduction.

              Yes, he remembered Sally. The growing smile tugging at his thin lips and the sparkling gleam of pride that danced in his blue eyes told me that the memory was a fond one.

So, I took the question to the next level and asked him when was the last time he saw Sally? For a moment his face was blank in reflection while his eyes rolled upward and his brow contracted in concentration, then as his head rocked from one side to the other on the white pillow beneath it, he said. “Yes, I remember when that was, and I’m positive about it.”

He said, “I’m positive.’ again, but this time more to himself than to me, and he said it with an almost uncertain sounding lack of conviction.

A moment later, and after more reflection, he said. “No, wait a minute.” He paused as his eyes rolled upward again before he said. “I think.”

The blue eyes looked closely at me while the quivering voice supposed. “Yes, no, wait, maybe. Let me see now.”

I waited.

His voice broke once just before he stopped talking and raised a trembling hand to his face and inspected the fingers on it before looking back up at me.

“That was on a Monday, not a Tuesday because exactly one week before that on Tuesday, I went to Doctor Johnson.”

He nodded at me and looked back at the fingers on his hand again and apologized. “No, wait a minute, it was Doctor Payne.”

His head shook in uncertainty, and he reconsidered. “No. Dr. Payne was on a Friday, so that had to be on a Friday.”

I waited some more, but when he started to chatter back and forth with himself about the days and appeared to be lost in the dialogue, I backed slowly to the door and stepped out of the room then closed it quietly behind me.

The feeble voice was still arguing with itself as it followed me down the hall, and for a while as I listened it seemed to be lost somewhere between a vague sense of indecision and a timid certainty about Tuesday being the day in question.

Two doors away from the room it shouted at me with conviction. “Yes, I’m certain now, and I’m positive too. It was Tuesday because that’s the day Sally came to see me, and I told her about the man with the gun who ran out of the parking lot behind the Clinic.

The mention of a man running with a gun caught my attention and turned me around.

When he said clinic, I walked back past the two rooms and reentered room 720. Frank Duval was sitting up on the side of the bed now with his skinny arms poking out of the sleeves of the hospital gown he wore. The hand on the right arm was searching frantically under the pillows beside him.

He said looking up at me as I re-entered the room. “I knew I’d forget that, so I wrote it down when she left. A man running away from the parking lot next to a hospital clinic with a gun is important to remember, and I write important things down because I forget a lot now.”

He smiled up at me triumphantly when his right hand brought forth a green, spiral note pad and a plastic baggie stuffed with pens and pencils.

“It’s all here.” He gushed triumphantly waiving the note pad at me and tapping it with his left hand.

I gave him an uncertain nod, and when he began to open it, I smiled encouragement.

After turning the first few pages he stopped suddenly, and as his head jerked up his eyes looked at me with suspicion then he asked. “Who are you?”

Before I could answer him, he answered himself. “Oh! Yes, you are.” He started then stopped before questioning me again. “Who are you?”

Walking to bed, I said to him. “I am a friend of Sally’s Mr. Duval, she asked me to come by and talk with you about her father, your brother.”

When the hand was offered, I took it. “My name is Steele, Teflon Steele, I’m a Private Investigator. I was talking with you a moment ago about Sally.”

When he nodded his remembrance and smiled up at me, I went on. “She’s trying to find her father and she thought you might have an idea where he might be.”

“Her father is my brother, Matthew.” Frank Duval said with conviction. “Sure, I know where he is, he’s at my house where he called me yesterday. No, wait a minute, that wasn’t yesterday. I wasn’t here yesterday. Yesterday was Monday.”

His hand went to his brow, and as his eyes rolled upward and started searching the ceiling, I thought for a moment that he was about to get lost in the days again, but he didn’t, he changed the subject.

Looking back at me he asked. “Don’t you want to see the paper I wrote about the man with the gun?”

When I nodded yes, he pushed the note pad toward me and smiled proudly. “It’s all right there.”

I took the pad out of his hand and opened it to the first page where in large flowing letters he had written.

‘To be or not to be’ is a question that Mr. Shakespeare proposed to Mr. Macbeth a few years ago.

Why? That is the question that I am proposing to you today. Why be, or not be, anything? Why be a Doctor, a Lawyer, or an Indian Chief?

Why is it that humans can’t just be Bob or Lewis, Joe, or John? Why do we also have to be defined by some profession or some job title?

Pages two and three were a continuation of questions along the same philosophical line, so I flipped to the middle of the pad and glanced through the hand printed lines on several pages there and found they contained similar philosophical material.

When I handed the book back to him without comment he snatched it out of my hand and gave the first page a quick glance, then he looked up at me and laughed.

“Sorry.” He said apologetically. “Wrong note pad, but don’t go away Mr. Steele, I’m certain that I have that note in one of these pads.”

His hand disappeared under the pillow again and a moment later it reappeared with another notepad, this one was red.

“No.” He whispered to himself shaking his head after he saw the pads’ bright color. “Not the red book, I don’t put messages in the red book.”

Looking up at me he nodded knowingly and said. “I defiantly don’t put messages in the red book. Red means stop, look, and listen. That book is for appointments only.”

Next the searching hand brought out another green pad, and as his eyes moved skeptically from it to the one, I had just given back to him his voice held a possible questioned when he said. “Green, uh, no, not green, but uh?”

He smiled when I looked out the window, then attempting to make it clear to both of us he said. “I keep my class schedules and study material in green.”

His eyes sought and found mine and he explained. “I always keep them in green note pads because green mean go.”

As the hand disappeared under the pillow again, I got the message and started going.

While the hand searched around under the pillow I was moving cautiously back toward the door.

When it emerged this time with a blue note pad, I was at the door reaching for the knob behind my back.

“Good afternoon Mr. Duval.” The white suited nurse sang as she walked into the room pushing the door and me in front of her.

“How are we doing this morning? I…” When she saw me dancing away from the advancing door she paused and backed up.

After walking into the room, she looked at me and said. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“I was just leaving, Nurse.” I said stepping aside as I turned to Frank Duval and said to him. “I’ll say hi to Sally for you Frank, and I’ll be sure to tell her that we had a nice long talk.”

“But what about the note pad?” Frank Duval asked my back as I eased past the nurse and stepped out the door.

“Don’t you want to see? Uh.” His voice wavered and paused just before he asked. “What was it you wanted to see, something in the blue pad, right?”

         

                                                                                              II

              At five feet two inches tall Cleo Anderson was an almost big man, and on a perfectly balanced scale he weighed eight ounces more than ninety- eight pounds.

On the scale in his bathroom, which was not perfectly balanced, he weighed ninety- nine pounds and eight ounces.

The thick chocolate in the Milky Way candy bar he was eating now along with the two he had forced down before it should have pushed him over the hundred-pound mark, but the perfectly balanced scale he was standing on said they hadn’t.

He took a deep breath and gave a raucous sounding sigh around the bloated feeling in his stomach that had failed to produce the four ounces he needed.

Like all his other ambitions, bringing his weight up to one hundred pounds was proving to be realizable.

Like his desire for wealth and power, his weight gain seemed to dance seductively within his reach while it remained just beyond his grasp.

When he jumped off the scale and kicked it the gray-haired lady behind the counter shook her finger and said. “Naughty, naughty.”

At the sound of her voice Cleo looked up.

She smiled, shook her head, and pointed the accusing finger at him, then waived him away from the scale like he was some misbehaving kid who was wandering around the Department store trailing behind his parents, which was a common misconception, and one he counted on in his line of work.

Walking away from the scale Cleo looked at the face of Mickey Mouse smiling up at him from the wristwatch on his right wrist.

The white glove on Mickey’s short arm pointed to the nine while the glove on the long arm pointed to the same number.

Mickey Mouse was telling him that in fifteen minutes the store would be closing and soon after that it would be time for him to go to work.

He walked swiftly away from the scale and turned down an aisle where the shelves were lined with luggage. Cloth Carry- on bags and wheeled travel gear lined the shelves of this isle along with large and small metal trunks.

Midway down the aisle Cleo stopped before a set of cloth travel bags on wheels that sat facing a small white metal Samsonite trunk.

He had inspected this trunk earlier and after removing the keys and breaking one of them off in the lock he punctured two small holes in the bottom.

When the store lights began to dim, and a voice came on the P. A. system asking everyone to ‘Please leave the store’ the clerks started urging people toward the doors.

As the lights went out Cleo pulled the door open and crawled into the trunk. A few minutes later when he heard the hurried footsteps of the clerk running down the Luggage Isle past the trunk, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Mickey vibrated and woke him up at 3: 30 and he eased the trunk door open and peered into the silence of the darkened store before he pointed a small flashlight up and down the aisle.

The tiny lance of its blue light pierced the darkness and found two infra- red lights, one crossing each end of the long dark isle.

In the Si-mi darkness of the store the three lines of ultra violate rays running across the aisle between them were invisible to the naked eye, but the blue light of the tiny flash found them too and made them all visible to Cleo.

He avoided them when he stepped out of the trunk by leaving the floor and climbing to the top shelf of the rack beside him and then crawling along it to the Customer Service Center where he dropped back to the floor and crawled to the Safe.

Twenty minutes later after using a doctor’s stethoscope he had the door open and the steel box inside emptied of money and jewelry.

He smiled when he re-closed the thick metal door then climbed back up to the top shelf of the Luggage rack.

This time he changed shelves and instead of returning to the Luggage section he went to the Pizza Parlor at the back of the store where he climbed into the Restroom attic and waited.

The K-mart’s manager opened the store for business at 9 am. that morning, but when the Restaurant’s manager opened the rear door at 8:20 and took last night’s garbage outside to the dumpster Cleo dropped from the Restroom attic and walked out the door behind him.

When the Restaurant’s manager walked away from the dumpster and re-entered the store Cleo ducked into the alley beside the dumpster.

As he stepped out of the dark alley into the misty sunlight of the street in front of the K-mart his Backpack was a reassuring weight on his shoulders.

He brushed a film of gray dust and spider webs off the short denim pants that had the Lone Ranger riding Silver on one thigh and Tonto riding Scout on the other then he patted the Backpack with the cloth.

He hadn’t done a complete count of last night’s take in the Restroom attic, but he estimated that the jewelry alone should come to around thirty, forty thousand dollars. Add that to the thirty thousand in cash the safe contained and he expected last night would prove to be a worthwhile piece of work.  

Another job and another twenty thousand dollars or so and he’d be able to square himself with ‘the Tattoo’ and go back to California and pick up his career as a Child- actor.

Three years ago, after getting involved with ‘the Tattoo’ he’d been forced to drop it and go into another line of work.

He told himself for the thousandth time as he juggled the backpack and felt the assurance of the weight within it. ‘Theft was a profitable business, but a man couldn’t expect to make a lifetime occupation out of it.’

He’d need something to fall back on after he repaid ‘the Tattoo’ and got his career restarted, but because the world was full of Department stores that wasn’t a worry now.

Slapping the spider webs on the blue tee shirt a time or two he walked slowly down the street without glancing back at this K-mart.

After his first trip upstate when he lost everything, he had in American Banks John had taught him about Offshore Bank accounts and pointed to a Bank in the Bahamas and then to another one in the Cayman Islands for him to try.

Matthew was a trusted Currier who for three years now had made regular deposits in them, and tomorrow when the Caribbean Princess docked in Miami, he planned to have another deposit ready for him to take when the Princess sailed out again.

Lightening flashed somewhere behind him, and thunder rattled the windows in the buildings along the street.

He glanced skyward just in time to see another bolt run a jagged path across the dark sky before its pointed finger dove to earth.

The misty sky above him was covered with masses of gray clouds that hid the morning sun as they rolled hurriedly across Central Florida heading north.

Cleo swung the Backpack to his shoulder and patted the wooden door of a building as he walked past it.

He wasn’t superstitious, but with the weather looking like it did if he was going to fly to Miami, he needed all the luck he could get.

And, even if they didn’t help, little things like knocking on wood didn’t hurt his chances of arriving there safely either.

He flagged a passing taxi, and as thunder crashed again and brought on a deluge of rain he jumped into the cab and directed the driver to Orlando International Airport. 

       

                                                                                              III

On the morning after I visited Frank Duval I was sitting on the side of the couch in my Office / home stretching my aching muscles.

Over the years I’d realized that much as I would have liked too, I couldn’t honestly attribute the stiff back and tired shoulders to old age.

Fifty years, along with some other years added to them put me long past Spring- Chicken. And over those fifty odd years various parts of me have been broken, or otherwise damaged. Some of them more times than once.

              The pug nose along with the scars above and below the brown eyes that watched me in the mirror every morning when I shaved were a testimony to the random violence, I've been known to get myself into.

              There is a two- inch scar just far enough beneath my chin to be hidden beneath what once had been a handsome face; that scar was a gift from a client’s wife who blamed me for her husband divorcing her.

That’s a piece of random violence someone else got me into, which is also a common occurrence in my line of work.

In the mirror two large brown eyes watched me beneath the diminishing strands of what use to be a large mop of unruly black wire that was hair I hated when I had it, but now that it was almost gone, I cherished what’s left of it.

The eyes watched me, and they accused me of my cowardice when my shaking hand slowly brought the razor to my face.

After my first tentative stroke with the razor, they blinked in shame and looked away when the old scar tissue started to bleed.

It always did when the sharp razor passed over it. I waited and a second later when I looked back into the mirror the old scar was now that bloody crescent I saw every time I shaved. Once again it reminded me of the razor that almost ended the shaving ritual forever.

That bleeding half circle on my throat was one unwanted souvenir that I knew I would carry mentally as well as physically for as long as I lived.

One would think that after so many years and so many shaves that the trauma would be gone, but one would be wrong.

              I patted After- shave across the scar, winched at the burn and then smiled at the face in the mirror before putting the shaving kit away.

Usually, I have breakfast at a little place up the street where grits, eggs, bacon and three pieces of toast cost me $2.99.

It was my kind of breakfast with a price that I could afford, but this morning I rummaged through the shelves in the closet and chose cereal. Corn flakes.

I eat them a lot now, along with oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, soft foods for a stomach going soft on the inside behind the tight muscles outside.

I stand 6'1 and with a full stomach my weight can go all the way up to 300lbs. Back in High school my height didn’t recommend me for Basketball because I was carrying almost 300 lbs back then too, but there was a sparkle in the eyes of the wrestling team’s coach when he looked at me, and that look told me I was a welcomed candidate for his team, so I wrestled my way through high school.

Vietnam and the Marine Corp followed by twelve years on the Orlando Police force gave me a body that some men eat the right foods and work hard trying to acquire. I don’t eat right, and I try not to work hard.

The cornflakes I eat are not Kellogg, I eat the ones that come in the plastic bag without the expensive box.

And I confess. I do use Brand X products. Not only that, but in the past, I have paid for inferior services too.

And yes! While we are talking about me, my name is Steele, and if you look, you’ll find that name listed among the names of customers who patronize those “Other Guys.”

              Once I get past the shave and breakfast, I usually run in the morning, and most of the time I run down Maguire to Rosalind Ave. and then on to Lake Eola Park.

Lake Eola is a shallow body of water encased in cement with a walkway that meanders around it for almost a mile before it retouches itself and starts the journey again.

At 5:30 am. On an average morning the park is usually empty, and since today was an average morning, it was empty.

I ran around the lake twice before returning to the confines of my small office on Magnolia Ave. where the large sign out front said Albright, Cobbs and Smith, Realtor, but there was a smaller one inside towards the back of the building that said T. Steele, Private Investigations.

Behind that sign was my domain, and I owned a couch and a desk, both were used and well-worn by the people who owned them before me when I got them.

After Sally Duval’s first visit to my office when she hired me to find her father Matthew Duvall who had turned up missing during a Caribbean cruise, I called the Cruise line and was told by them that he was probably somewhere on or near the island Jamaica and would likely turn up by himself.

Except for that call and my subsequent first visit to her uncle Frank’s room at the hospital last week, I hadn’t made any progress at all in locating her father. After walking in the door, I had just sat down and opened the morning paper when she walked into my office again and this time, she wanted me to find her uncle John who had suddenly vanished from the nation’s capital.

              The first time she came to my office, she walked calmly through the door, sat down and rationally explained why she needed my services, but this time she wasn’t calm or rational and she didn’t sit down. 

Right after the door slammed shut behind her, she walked over to stand beside my desk pacing from one foot to the other.

I should have known then that this time she was going to be irrational, but I didn’t, and when I did realized it, I had just enough time to look up from the article about the Burglary at K-mart last night and glance across the Headline beneath it about a rash of recent Break-ins and burglaries in the Orlando metro area before she reached across the clutter on the desktop to hand me a white envelope.

“I got this letter from my Lawyer last week Mr. Steele.” She said without preamble and destroyed my concentration.

As I took the envelope out of her hand, she told me. “The address on this envelope is my uncles’ on campus messaging service at the University of Central Florida where he taught Philosophy and received his mail and phone messages until he was hospitalized.”

Looking at the address before turning the envelope over I nodded, then looking back up at her standing beside the desk as she said.

“The Cleo Anderson below my uncle Frank’s name is my mother’s brother, he and my uncle Frank who is my father’s brother were never friends, but every once in a while, they communicated with each other, especially during the times when uncle Cleo was in prison.”

She giggled and looked away when I shook the single sheet of paper out of the envelope and glanced at the hand printed heading that said: To whom it may concern.

After I looked up and smiled, she added. “At best their relationship could be called distant, or nonexistent.”

When I nodded and said I had a few relatives with relationships like that myself, she smiled shyly and continued.

Taking her left hand from behind her back she said as she handed me a large shoe box, which I took and jiggled feeling the heavy weight of its contents before I turned it upside down and dumped them onto the desktop. “This came yesterday.”

I expected paper to fall out of the box and I wasn’t disappointed, but my eyes and my gaping mouths must have shown my surprise when the tightly tied bundles of green stuff started building a pile on my desktop.

I stared in amazement while the pile grew as one bundle after another bundle joined the rising stack.

When I looked up at Sally, she was standing in front of my desk with her hands running circles around each other in tight little loops.

Her eyes evaded mine and went to a wall painting of some obscure little, unknown building that I bought at a Yard sale a few years ago, and my eyes went back to the bundles of cash on my desktop.

Every bill in every bundle had a big one in the corners that was followed by three little zeros that were dancing and wobbling around in the background.

“My Lawyer James Evans was shot to death a few weeks ago and his office was ransacked the day before he was killed.”

The sound of her voice drifted into my thoughts, and I looked up at her. “ What’s stranger than me getting this letter from Mr. Evans three days after his death telling me to ask my Uncle Cleo about an inheritance my mother left me that is already spent is that this box filled with money came from the Cayman Islands to my uncle Frank’s mail box at the university with a return address for my uncle Cleo in Christmas, Florida, and it’s in my Uncle John’s hand writing. ”

I turned the empty box over and looked at the return address plastered in the corner opposite the green postage mark that said Cayman Islands.

In precise little hand printed letters, it gave the name Cleo Anderson and listed a return P.O. Box number in Bangor, Maine.

Walking over to a chair and taking a seat, Sally said. “I haven’t seen or heard from Uncle Cleo since he quit working in the circus and started acting five years ago. None of my mother’s people are tall, but Uncle Cleo is shorter than everybody else. In fact, he’s almost a midget. He played child characters in several movies when he got out of prison and went out to Hollywood that first time, but when he got out the last time, he stopped writing or calling and just disappeared. I think he may be back in jail.”

She got up and walked over to the desk and pointed to the address on the box. “That’s my Uncle John’s writing and the address is not real. Uncle John is the Lawyer who represented Uncle Cleo at his trials, and he used to joke Uncle Cleo about moving to Bangor, Maine or Christmas, Florida. He said he could always find work in either one of those places because Santa Claus always needed another dwarf.”

I reached into the pile and picked up a bundle and counted the bills in it. There were exactly one hundred of them. The next two bundles held the same number of bills, and I started counting the bundles that remained in the pile.

“It comes to two million and five hundred thousand dollars.” Sally said just before I reached the twenty- fifth bundle.

My mind wanted to ask her was it real, but since my eyes had already answered that question and told me that the bills weren’t counterfeit my mouth asked her. “Is your uncle John or your uncle Cleo rich?”

She shook her head slowly in negation and giggled softly, but when I continued with ‘I know your uncle Frank isn’t’ she started shaking her head faster, this time in the opposite direction.

Looking at the mischievous little smile dancing on her lips and hearing the slight rise in the giggles coming across them, I stopped talking and reconsidered what I knew about Frank Duvall.

From what I had gathered so far, Frank Duvall wasn’t a rich man, but he wasn’t a poor man either. I guess a good term to use in describing his financial situation would probably be wealthy, which brought my mind to the philosophical questions of how many dollars did it take to separate a wealthy man from a rich man, or more simply put, how many monkeys did it take to stop one show and get the other one started.

“You are wrong about Uncle Frank.” Sally’s voice cut into a mental picture of zeros dancing in looping circles on a green paper background where a group of clowning monkeys took elaborate bows before a laughing audience.

“Mother left me a considerable amount of money, but except for what uncle Frank invested for me, in one way or another it vanished.”

When I looked up in surprise she laughed and her pretty little blond head bobbed

up and down, then smiling down at me she said. “You don’t know it, but my uncle Frank is a recorded genius. He didn’t always have Alzheimer disease. You must understand Mr. Steele, behind the mental lapses he suffers with now, he has a very astute brain that is capable of comprehending things that you and I couldn’t even begin to grasp. And on top of that he has a memory that is almost photographic.”

 

                                                                   CHAPTER three

You know Mike, they also say that some things are better left unsaid, and I remembered them saying that just in time to leave what I was about to say unsaid.

For some reason Mike, when I visited Frank Duval, no matter how hard I tried to I just didn’t see a genius sitting on that hospital bed.

I agreed with her when she said that he was a smart man, and I couldn’t begin to argue with his credential, or question the institutions that gave them to him, but standing there listening to the ‘I’m positive’ and the ‘I’m certain’, ‘but wait a minute’ routine really threw me.

And then there was that ‘Mental fog’ explanation his doctors gave me about a mind that fades in and remembers things one moment, and then fades out and forgets them the next that comes with Alzheimer.

Looking and listening I just didn’t know what to think. I understood that with Frank Duval point A didn’t always lead to point B, and sometimes it led to point C. And some other time it might lead to point D, or even to point F.

And I also realized that with Frank Duvall, sometime point A didn’t lead anywhere but back to point A.

I know that! And I can buy all that! But Mike, I couldn’t honestly say I bought that photographic memory line at all.

As soon as Sally left the office, I picked up the phone and called the Bar Association in Washington, DC and got her uncle’s phone number and his office address from them.

I knew that finding her daddy on a rocky little Island in the Caribbean wouldn’t be easy, but finding her uncle in the vast political wasteland of Washington DC should be a piece of cake.

At least that’s what I told myself after I dialed the office number and sat listening to the phone ringing.

After three minutes of listening to the persistent ring I had just about given up and was ready to put my phone back into the cradle when a surly male voice growled at me. “Yea, what can I do for you, and what you want?”

              “May I speak to Attorney John Duvall, please?” I answered not certain that I wanted him to do anything for me.

“Who is this?” the voice asked, losing the growl, and suddenly trying to sound friendly as it hummed the question at me.

I hung up and called Duvall’s home number. The machine there said he was away, ‘please leave a number and a short message.’

Doctors know Doctors Mike, and Lawyer know Lawyer, so I called a Lawyer, one who had an address in the same building as John Duvall, but on another floor.

A friendly female voice with a slight Latin accent purred at me on the second ring. “Peacock, Willis and Johnson, how may I direct your call?”

“Is Mr. Peacock in, and may I speak to him, please?” I asked hoping that he wasn’t in because it was her that I wanted to talk to.

Secretaries know Secretaries, and Secretaries sometimes gossip about what their bosses were, or weren’t doing.

“Mr. Peacock is in Court today; may I take a message for him?” She asked.

“No.” I answered. “Actually, Attorney John Duvall recommended this firm to me, and he mentioned Mr. Peacock’s name in passing. I just need to know when a good time would be to come by, and to whom should I speak to about retaining legal counsel in a financial matter?”

“Mr. Johnson would be the person to speak to concerning financial matters.” She said and gave me a list of his credentials, both legal and educational.

“I’ve been out of town for the past month, and I tried calling John’s office, but some rude person answered the phone.”

“That would probably be the IRS auditor who has been down there in the office for almost a week now. You say he was rude?” she asked sounding doubtful, but curious. 

I asked the question she was waiting for and waited for her reply. “Is the Internal Revenue Service auditing John Duvall?”

After a short pause she answered. “I don’t know for sure, but it appeared to be that way. I heard something about a mistake in his last years tax return, but then it could be something else.”

“And John.” I said laughing across her beginning comments about what else it could be. “What about him, and where is he now?”

Another short pause and I chuckled into the silence. “You leave Washington for a week, and while you are gone, they elect a whole new government.”

She laughed and it must have been contagious because I laughed too when she said. “That’s the question everybody’s been asking, but no one has an answer to it. One day he just walked out the door and the next day he disappeared.”

We were silent for a minute as we thought about John Duvall walking out of his office into oblivion.

“I’m sure everything is going to turn out alright.” She said returning to her professional voice.  “Mr. Johnson will be glad to see you Mr., uh? I’ m sorry, but I didn’t get your name.” She laughed self-consciously.

I let the question hang and laughed too while I debated whether I would need to visit them in the future, then after deciding that I wouldn’t I said Johnson and sat the phone down.

It rang almost as soon as it touched the cradle. I picked it back up and said in my most professional voice. “Steele Detective Agency, Teflon Steele speaking.”

Whoever called me hung up without speaking, but even if the Caller ID on my phone couldn’t tell me who made the call it told me where the call came from.

It said Attorney John Duvall and gave the same number I had dialed earlier. I redialed the number and waited.

I wasn’t surprised when the same voice that growled at me a few minutes ago purred my name this time.

“Teflon Steele.” The voice said, oozing with humor. “Detective Agency. You a Private Dick, huh? Well, won’t wonders won’t ever cease. Ole John was bright in some ways, but I have to give it to him Steele, he was also pretty damn dumb in some other very obvious ones.”

“Now that you know me.” I said cutting across the banter. “Why don’t you give me the same pleasure and tell me who you are, friend.”

His reply was given in that same cheerful voice, and it purred with Good- nature d humor when it came. “Sure pal, no problemo. My name is Tony Masconni, and up here in Washington they call me ‘the Tattoo’. Maybe they call me that because I seem to get under people’s skin and stay there.”

He found something funny in saying that he got under people’s skin and laughed. Through laughter he asked me. “Why don’t we meet and talk about our mutual pal John, Teflon? Maybe you can be of service to me while you serve ole John too.”

When I didn’t reply, the voice chuckled and asked. “Why don’t we do that, Teflon Steele, Private Eye?”

I didn’t know him personally, but I had seen the name in the Newspapers, and I knew of his reputation. The papers said he was a small time Loan Shark with mob connections. His reputation said he was dangerous.

I thanked him for the offer, said no thanks and hung up the phone.

The next call came from John’s home phone and for a moment that call mystified me since no one was there when I called it a few minutes ago.

I picked up the receiver. And this time I asked in a very professional sounding voice without giving my name. “How I can I help you?”

Tony the Tattoo had called me from John Duvall’s office, and I thought that maybe some of his pals who were waiting for John at the house were making this one, but I was wrong. This time it was the FBI.

After I picked up the phone a male with a friendly voice introduced himself. “This is agent Larry Smith with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Is this the Steele Detective Agency?”

As I reluctantly said. “Yes”. My mind went back to the two and a half million dollars locked away in my small safe, and I wondered just how much money ‘ole John’ owed Uncle Sam in Taxes.

When the silence began to build, and I didn’t identify myself, the voice asked. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to? Is this Teflon Steele?”

This time, as my mind left the contents of my safe, my ears picked up the background noises in the room on the other side of the line.

Listening closely, I could hear several people moving around behind his voice and a squeaky door closing.

There was a loud bang of metal slapping metal and then someone yelled. “Grab that box in the corner and don’t forget the file cabinet in the closet.”

“Is this Teflon Steele on the phone?” Agent Larry Smith asked sounding impatient as the door banged shut again.

“Yes! This is Teflon Steele. What can I do for you Agent Smith?” I said as something heavy on squeaking wheels rolled noisily across his voice.

“Glad I could reach you Steele, I’m trying to find Attorney John Duvall who appears to have disappeared in the last day or two after running afoul of some very dangerous people up here in Washington.”

He laughed nervously when I didn’t say anything, and as I waited for him to ask the question he really wanted to ask, the door banged loudly again, and he asked it.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find him at, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” I said visualizing the scene of busy agents stacking cardboard boxes in the room around him, while previously stacked boxes were being moved and carted away along with the file cabinet.

“I was going to ask you that same question, but since you asked me that one, I’ll ask you another one. Why is the FBI looking for John Duval?”

There was a pause as the squeaking wheels rolled by in the background, and then a grunt that followed a loud thud as something heavy fell to the floor.   

“That it?” Larry Smith asked.

“Yea.” Someone in the background answered breathing hard.

“O kay, Steele.” Smith said, turning back to me. “What’s your real question? You know why we are here and why we are investigating John Duvall.”

“I heard that it was something to do with a discrepancy in his Income Tax Return.” I answered not believing that a tax discrepancy had anything to do with why Smith was boxing up John’s possessions.

I thought of Tony ‘the Tattoo’s comment about how smart ‘ole John’ was in some ways, and how dumb he was in some other ones.

And thinking of that comment I asked him. “Would a small-time hoodlum named Tony ‘the Tattoo have anything to do with why John would suddenly disappear?”

“In what reference book did John Duvall find you, Steele? You are all the way down here in Florida, and you know about Tony Masconni from up here already.”

He paused, and when I didn’t fill the gap, he asked. “So, what’s up with that?” Which was my question, or a variation of the question I had wanted to ask someone ever since I talked with Tony ‘the Tattoo’ earlier.

“What is up with what?” I asked him, playing dumb and throwing the question right back at him.

“Other than a Client/Attorney relationship I’m guessing.”  Then with a smile in his voice he asked me. “I was hoping that you could tell me what other connection your client had with that mobster and the mob?”

There were two assumptions being made here, and I knew the first one of them wasn’t true, but since I wasn’t aware of that second assumption, and I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at whether it was true or false I told him the truth.

I said being honest. “First of all, agent Smith, John Duvall isn’t my client, and as for his connection to Tony ‘the Tattoo’ and the Mob, I don’t have the slightest idea if there is one. Or what that connection might be.  I was hired to find him by his niece who lives here in Florida.”

He gave me an unenthusiastic Um Hum and half- halfheartedly asked me a few other inconsequential questions, but after that first exchange the conversation went downhill, and eventually it sort of petered out.

When Smith convinced himself that I didn’t know anything he wanted to know, and I persuaded myself that he wasn’t going to tell me anything he knew that I wanted to know we said ‘Goodbye’ and hung up on each other.

 

                                                                   I

 

People often remark that things come and go. All kinds of things, they come today and like magic they go tomorrow.

Money, it comes, and it goes. Cars, they come, and they go. Big- legged women, they come, and they go.

But what most people hate to mention or be reminded of is that memory and minds come and go, too. They fade in and out of existence like money, cars, and yes! Like big-legged women.

When I met him in his hospital room Frank Duvall’s memory was fading off and on. I could keep it simple and just say that like magic they were both gone, and that would be an acceptable explanation.

I could make this simpler and say that in one way or another all of Sally’s family were magicians when it came to fading in and out of life and being gone.

Her uncle Oscar was dead, and he was gone forever. Edward had disappeared into the Florida penal system when she was ten.

Her uncle Cleo had vanished a few years ago after returning from up there. That left her father and her uncles on his side of the family; Uncle Frank who had Alzheimer, and her uncle John Duval, the one she wanted me to find now, who had pulled a Houdini and vanished from Washington, D C.

That was a good trick Mike, but her father Matthew Duvall had a vanishing act also, and it was even better than that one.

Matthew Duvall’s act was second to none and it barred nothing. When he disappeared Mike, it was like he stepped off the ship, walked away on water, and then just vanished.

Uncle John was like Alzheimer disease, only in human form. In fact, the only difference between John Duvall and Alzheimer disease was where no one wanted Alzheimer everybody wanted John Duval.

And I mean everybody!

After Agent Smith hung up his phone I was on my way to the door when my phone rang again. I thought it would be Tony ‘the Tattoo’ with a stronger proposition for me. Maybe this time, one I couldn’t refuse.

May be even a threat or two to help me decide to serve him while I served ‘Ole John too, but it wasn’t him, it was John Duvall’s Secretary.

She’d called his house and spoken to agent Smith who gave her my number and invited her to call it.

She wanted her boss. Well, actually she wanted her paycheck more than she wanted John Duval, and I couldn’t blame her for that, but I couldn’t help her either. I didn’t know where her boss, or her paycheck was.

We talked and commiserated with each other for a while, and although in the end, I couldn’t help her, just before we hung up, she said something that did help me.

She said that a certified letter arrived at the office that morning from a former client of his who used to live in Bangor, Maine.

She said the letter was marked urgent and it was Post- marked in Christmas, Florida.

The client was John Duvall’s brother- in- law, a Black sheep in the family who he had represented twice before, and she knew he would want to get that letter as soon as possible since his brother was probably back in trouble again. 

I agreed with her, and I had just placed my phone back into the cradle when the words Bangor, Maine followed by Christmas, Florida rang a bell in my head and I remembered a Black sheep who was told to move to either one of those places, but he went to California instead.

I reached over and snatched the phone off the cradle, but I was too late, the secretary was gone

when I brought the phone to my ear.

When the dial tone and an empty line greeted me, I just sat there looking at the phone in my hand. I didn’t even remember her name, but I knew that Secretaries knew Secretaries. And as I dialed the number, I smiled at the thought of this one before she answered.

“Peacock, Willis, and Johnson. How may I direct your call?”

 

                                                                   CHAPTER four

 

When Speed liner # 303 arrived at the rain drenched station in Jacksonville, Florida the dark clouds that led it out of Washington, DC had passed through town and were already in the Caribbean circling a tropical depression.

The small transistor radio in Stuart’s hand said that the Hurricane Tracking Center in South Florida had named that depression Dora, and according to the Tracking Center Dora was predicted to gain a wind velocity of around 140 mph in the next couple of hours, which would make it a top- level category-3 hurricane.

Dora was now headed on a course that would take it across Jamaica and two days after leaving that Island the Tracking Center predicted it would hit Cuba with winds gusts estimated to be around 190 mph.

The tracking chart said after leaving Cuba it would come barreling across Key West and then go up the Gulf coast along the Florida peninsular into Louisiana.

Stuart sighed and sat the radio on a wall shelf and looked at Cindy, who was turning another mailbag over.

That was the woman’s name. He’d found that out while they searched the first Mail- car after she told him about some Mob guy called ‘the Tattoo’ whose Lawyer had cleaned out his Bank accounts and then split town leaving him holding his dick with a hard- on and nothing else.

This mob guy had commissioned her pimp to get the money back and the pimp had pointed the Lawyer out to her and gave her the job of getting into his pants while getting the money out of his pocket.

Lucky for her that her pickup point was at the Am- track Train station because before she got a chance to seduce him at the house where he lived, the Lawyer turned up at the train station and went straight to the ticket window.

She said she recognized him when he walked past her and when she heard him buy a ticket for Miami, Florida she bought a ticket herself and then followed him onto the train.

When he came out of the Mail- car without the duffle bag she knew it was inside the car, so she sneaked in and started hunting.

They’d found the duffle bag in the second Mail- car they searched, and after finding a case of vintage wines, in a frantic effort to break the ice and get acquainted in a hurry, they searched for each other.

Stuart pulled a bag off the pile, rolled it over, and as thunder roared outside and the train rocked and swayed gently with the sound of the crash Cindy straddled it.

When the wine bottle was empty and the acquaintance was finalized, they discovered that the duffle bag the Lawyer had brought into the Mail- car had been emptied, filled with mail and a postal delivery tag glued onto it.

Cindy grimaced, and her nose turned up when she bent down and peered into the shadows where it lay next to the uncomfortable Love- nest they had just vacated.

She took a deep breath and held it while she read the address on the bag, she had just un- straddled.

It didn’t smell that good, in fact it smelled kind of ripe, but despite smelling like old sweat mixed with the funky odor of recent sex that radiated from it, she knew the bag would go to a Post Office, and the mail inside would get delivered.

During the next eighteen hours they searched all three Mail- cars, and as the train raced through that many states, they managed to finish the case of wine and get reacquainted.

They searched each car again, but they still didn’t find one bag or a box that was addressed to John or to Sally Duvall, who were the other persons Cindy said the Lawyer could have shipped to money to beside himself.

Lightening flashed and a pale luminous glow lit up the dark corner where Cindy stood naked bending over the bag that was their former Love- nest.

She dropped to one knee and peered closer into the shadows as her eyes strained to see the small oblong tag.

She yelled into the roar of rumbling thunder that followed behind the bright flash. “Where the Devil is Christmas, Florida? It’s too early for mail to be going to the North Pole, but I guess with a name like Christmas, this one must be going to Santa too.

Peering at the address she said. “And I guess this Cleo Anderson person must be an elf because everything in it is going to him.”

She kicked the heavy bag and snatched another one down from the stack behind it before yelling across the next crash of thunder. “I know he must hate this time of the year, getting all this mail.”

              “Yea.” Stuart answered in a voice filled with disinterest. “I would have thought that there would be at least something going to somebody named Duvall, but I haven’t seen anything mailed to a Duvall anywhere in all three cars.”

When the next flash of lightning came, looking at his watch he said. “I better get up front. You stay put, I’ll be right back.”  

The stop at Jacksonville, Florida gained him six new wet passengers, but he lost twelve there.

He recounted his stubs, reviewed his riders, and his tally still came up one passenger short.

As the train rolled out of the station slowly gaining speed he walked to a window and threw an apprehensive look into the thick torrents of water inundating the wind-swept world outside.

Lightening flashed a jagged pattern that ended in a pointed finger that stabbed into the wildly waving branches of a group of trees.

A second later when thunder roared and brought a new flood of water, the persistent push of Dora’s wind had the branches almost on the ground.

In the distance thunder roared again, and as the train rocked and vibrated with another ferocious gust of wind Stuart turned away from the wildly waving branches and headed back to the mystery waiting for him in the Mail- car.

                                                                                              I

 

John Duvall’s secretary’s name was Debra, and Debra was kind enough to pass his niece her uncle Cleo’s Mail- box number in Christmas, Florida through me.

She was even willing to read the certified letter and the number on it to me so that I could let the niece know that her uncle Cleo was fine and that a package was waiting at the Post Office in Christmas for him to pick up.

Like I said Mike, along the way I’ve learned the basics of this P I trade, and lying convincingly is a fundamental part of those basics.

Time has taught me that it’s best for us Paladins to keep the lies simple whenever we can, so as I listened to Debra I didn’t say anything much, I just mumbled a ‘ Uh hum, Yea that’s right’ every now and then and listened, but I wanted to say that someone had to be pretty confused to send a Certified letter to John Duvall’s office in Washington, DC from a mail- box address that didn’t exist in Christmas, Florida about a package waiting to be picked up there by a Brother-in- Law who moved to California.

Pretty smart, uh!

Well, I thought so, and since Christmas was right down the road, and my curiosity springs eternal, I figured I’d ride out that way and do my good deed for the day and set someone straight while I did it.

Namely: me.

No use in having a Good- hand Mike, if you can’t lend it out every now and then to someone who might be in need of one.

When I left my office and turned the Dodge eastward Colonial Drive, or Highway 50 as it is called while it traveled East and West through Orlando was a major through- fare that was crowned with slow moving traffic plowing through ankle deep water.

Christmas was about a thirty minutes’ drive down it is heading toward the East Coast and the Atlantic Ocean.

It was out past Bithlo, and during the colder part of the year the Post Office in Christmas enjoyed a modicum of fame with tourist who drove all the way out there just to get postage stamps that said Christmas, Florida.

And while he was on his way out there and back to Orlando, after leaving the Post Office, a visiting tourist would pass the old roadside statue of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer who lived out there in Christmas, too.

Over the years Rudolph has gotten chipped in a few places, but his head is still raised in pride as he stands poised at the side of the road looking toward the clear, blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and away from the community that was a few miles down the road behind his tail.

              Today, as I pass by him Rudolph was clean, and thanks to Dora who according to the weather forecaster was heading straight towards him his chips went unnoticed.

After I reached the Post Office and turned into the small parking lot, I shut off the engine, then sat in the car contemplating the possibility of my running between the raindrops and reaching the door without getting wet.

When the car shook after a particularly loud blast of thunder and a heavy deluge of water fell from the sky, I decided that there was no possibility, and dry or not I’d better get myself inside that door.

Lightning flashed a jagged incentive across the tinted windows as I jumped out of the Dodge and made a Beeline for the building twenty yards away.

Being a tourist is easy in Florida because every other person here suspects every other person of being one.

When I moved down here from New England, I brought the accent and the pale color with me, and for a while back then I was a tourist, but in time I lost the accent, got tanned, browned out and became a Floridian.

I’m a native now, but in my trade, I’ve learned to pick up the old Boston accent when I needed to, and over the years I have added a few others to it that I pick up from time to time, too.

So, when I walked up to the counter and smiled a cheerful ‘Good day lovely Lady’ to the little old lady behind it and mentioned how different and refreshing Southern hospitality was, Mike, she mistook me for a tourist.

The curls in her pink hair danced a jig and the painted red lips curved upward. The smile widened as she gave me that warm welcome to Central Florida grin that every tourist knows.

And while I stood there basking in the warmth of its friendly glow, Mike, I forgot to correct her about me not being a tourist.

I just scratched my head and smiled back at her acting like I just couldn’t wait for her to ask me how she could help me.

When she did, I gave her the name Cleo Anderson and said I got a Certified letter saying that I had a package waiting to be picked up out here in Christmas.

The smile widened as I stepped up to the counter, but before she could give me the package, she said she wanted to see the letter and some ID, which I didn’t have.

What I had was some lame excuse about ‘back at the hotel’, which I gave her then asked, ‘should I have brought the letter?’ When she nodded, I moved away from the counter.

Southerners may be naive Mike, but they aren’t dumb. I found that out in my first year down here, right after I learned that some of them are pretty darn smart.

Outside the door, the downpour had abated, but dark clouds were still rolling across the sky overhead, and lightning flashed a jagged line across the sky as I drove the Dodge away from the Post Office and headed back up 50.

The LIFE AIN'T FUNNY Comedy club sat midway of the block behind the Emporium in Church Street Station.

The Comedy club was one of Mike's hangouts and I decided to stop in there before I went back home to my lonely office.

As I turned the engine off my mind went back to the first time, he brought me here so many years ago.

Since that first time I’ve managed to drop in every now and then to drink a beer and catch a Show on my way home.

I stepped out of the car into a puddle of water and ran a splashing trail crossed the street.

Behind the mirrored front door of the club there’s a noisy little lounge where a Jukebox blared popular Country & Western songs that were being helped along the way by the patrons who sang, clapped, and pantomimed playing guitars while they performed an informal Karaoke for each other.

On the other side of the lounge there is a thick wooden door that separated the nosy lounge from the Comedy club and the rear of the building where the stage was located.

The club’s owner, ‘The Razor’, was originally a friend of Mikes, but now he’s a friend of mine too, and I found him sitting in the small office that he’d built next to the club’s entrance.

There isn't as much dap or swagger in his walk now as there used to be, but the long strides and synchronized arm and leg movements are still there, and so are the suits.

Those pin stripe Suits with Double Breasted coats and matching Italian suede loafers are as much a signature of ‘the Razor’s’ as the Pirelli razor blades packages that are his Calling cards.

He looked older and a bit thinner than he looked when I saw him the last time, I came a few months ago and let him tell me his story again, for the umpteenth time.

              In a voice filled with reminiscence he had said back then. "I must have been about sixteen when I made a startling discovery, Teflon.

“I can't remember now just how it came to me, whether between the pages of some book or magazine, or maybe even across someone's lips in a forgotten conversation, but somehow, I discovered that the world was over populated, and mostly with fools.

“Later, I was given to understand that one of them was born every thirty seconds. Hell, you didn't have to be a Rocket Scientist to figure that one out.”

His gray eyes winked at me and ‘the Razor’ chuckled. “If half of each minute’s births were fools then at least half of the world’s population wasn't wrapped right, and I'd place bets that a large percentage of the other half was standing on shaky ground.”

He looked at me and smiling over the chuckle he added. “And right on the heels of that little revelation, I found out that like most other people a fool could manage to get his hands on a little money, but unlike most other people, a fool was soon separated from his money.”

The right eye winked. “That’s a little piece of wisdom Solomon came across 'way back when’ and being born to the brighter side of the minute, it didn't take me long to realize that fools, like everyone else were put here for a reason.”

I smiled as the right eye winked again and ‘the Razor’ said grinning slyly. “Now who would have thought that my fortune would rest in the hands of a fool?

“Hell, all I had to do was be the one to separate the fool from his money.” He paused and looked around the room then corrected himself. “That is to say, to separate him from my money."

              I’d heard his story many times before, and so had most people who knew ‘the Razor’. His life was a legend on Church Streets and every young Hustler knew it.

              ‘The Razor’ leaned back in the seat and sighed heavily. "Time has taught me many tricks Teflon, and in time I became a Fisher of men. I was at the pond every day, and my hook was always baited for a fool."

That old sly grin crossed his lips when he added in a flippant voice. "You know, I can say in all honesty Teflon, ‘they are biting out there’!"

 

         .

                                                                                                  PRANKSTER: The reign of Terror

                                                                                                                           By

                                                                                    JIM L. DRUMWRIGHT

He did it Mike, but then, somebody else did it too.

                                                                                               CHAPTER 1

 

When the Prankster came to town, I caught his first act; I was sitting in my Living room in a big, comfortable Lounge chair in front of a Big Screen television.

The television was watching me, but I couldn't have been very entertaining since I’d bored my own self to sleep hours ago.

When the phone rang, and crashed the dream the sexy blond I was romancing faded away into oblivion.

It was Mike Swinsen, an old buddy of mine who, since I left it, had come up in the ranks at O.P.D. He was a Captain now.

"How are your stomach and your curiosity doing tonight?" He asked after I yawned a tired Hello into the receiver and replied while yearning again. “Call me back when I wake up, and I'll be more than glad to answer both of those questions for you.”

I yawned again, and I did it louder this time, but he still didn’t get it. Mike was persistent like that.

An hour later, after he picked me up, and took me across town I understood why he asked me about my curiosity, and my stomach.

Looking back on that first case I remembered that my stomach, and my curiosity were barely up to it back then.

There never was anything amusing, or remotely entertaining about the Prankster, or his Show, but there never is when murder and Blackmail is the theme.

Even if the message printed on the wall of the small room was done in blood, and bold block letters it wasn’t the least bit cryptic, and reading it didn’t alter, or stop the smile that was pulling at my lips.

And, on top of the blood, and bad writing, the message did nothing for my stomach, neither did the red plastic Playing card with the smiling face of a Jester do anything for my curiosity.

The smile stayed on my lips, and looking again at the wall I still couldn’t make them look solemn, or serious.

The question here wasn't who did it, that was supposed to be evident by the Joker Card the victim held in his hand.

The person whose Trademark the card was had did it, the question here was ‘how did he did it’, since he was supposed to be locked away safely behind steel doors in the Florida State Penitentiary.

When he was outside the Press called him ‘the Prankster’, and back then for a while he was a Playmate of mine.

Our last game took place almost five years ago, and in reflection, because we both won something and we both lost something, I’d call that game a draw.

I won the $10,000 dollar reward that was offered by one of his victim's family, and he won the Life sentence that was offered by the State of Florida.

For me, the money was hardly worth the trouble I went through to get it, or the time I invested in trying to catch him.

And, for him, the Life Sentence he got was a bit more than he bargained for, since now he was Doing Time instead of just passing it.

Call it a bad draw, and leave it alone, that's what I did.

Who was it that said things are better the second time around, and what were they talking about?

For me, that first time around with the Prankster was better.

The ‘Reign of terror’, that's what the Orlando Sentinel called it in those first fearful days after the Prankster became known to Central Florida.

I looked at the victim again, shook my head, and brought myself back to the present.

He was not a pretty sight, his throat was cut from ear to ear, and three 3- penny nails had been driven into his head.

One nail in each eye and one nail in his right ear, the left ear didn't have a nail in it because it was cut off.

The zipper on his pants was cut off too, and that area of his pants was covered with a large puddle of blood, the missing left ear was floating in the center of the puddle.

Mike rolled him over with his left foot and looked at me.

There were two more 3- penny nails driven into the shirt in back, one in each shoulder so that it looked like the shirt was nailed onto the body.

"Well, what do you think Teflon?" Mike asked, stepping quickly away from the body trying to avoid the rush of red liquid spreading away from the back he had just exposed.

" Real or unreal, what do you say?"

I stepped up and took a closer look at the clothes Dummy lying on the floor, the blood looked real, and if this was the Prankster's work it would be real, not all of it would be human, but some of it would be.

You got the rest of the real blood when you got the real victim, and if the blood was inside him, or outside depended on whether you paid the ransom, or not.

What this Dummy looked like was what the victim would look like if you didn't pay.

The message on the wall said, ‘Don’t call me, I'll call you.’ It was signed in the name of the real victim, Jerome Tyler.

When I didn't answer his question about how the Crime Scene looked Mike began filling me in.

Looking at the name written on the wall he said. " Tyler came up missing three days ago, his wife called us about 6:30 yesterday evening, and said he never came home from work that day. The people at the Bank where he was a manager said he left as usual around 4:00. Seems like he just drove off and disappeared.

“This afternoon she got a call telling her he's here, so she came over, walked in the open door, and saw the Mannequin lying on the floor covered with blood. She screamed, and then passed out. The Lady next door heard her and called 911.”

He stepped away from me, and walked to the window, and stood there, looking out into the night he said. “This house has been vacant for about a year, ever since the owner moved over to Altamonte Springs."

“Are we supposed to believe that Frank Styr did this?” I asked Mike as I bent down and removed the Red Joker card from the plastic hand.

Frank Styer was the Prankster's real name. There was a number behind that name now, and they both, the number and the name were stamped on a gray cotton shirt that had a white stripe on each sleeve, the man wearing the shirt, name, and number was locked in his cell at the Maximum Security Prison in Starke, Florida, so said the warden of that Prison.

"Some body did it. " Mike answered taking the card from me, and pointing toward the open door as he turned the Card over in his hand, and looked at the bottom left-hand corner, just as I’d done before saying. "And it would kind of ruin my life if there really were two of those guys out there."

Three tiny pin- holes were punched into the corner forming a small V with one hole at the bottom and two at the top of the V.

The Joker cards with the pin- holes were never reported in the Newspapers, and only the Cops and The Prankster knew about them.

" I'll go for one real one, and a good Copy- Cat." That’s what I said after giving the Card back.

Replacing the card in the plastic hand Mike said. " I won’t even settle for a good Copy- Cat. And, why now? On the same date as his first one four years ago? Different M. O. this time, too. Store- front Mannequin, blood everywhere, message on the wall, abandoned building. I leave anything out?"

" Yea." I said. " He called me first back then, not the wife, or the family, and he chose me as his errand boy."

Mike scratched his head and took a long look at me. " May be now he realizes that was a mistake. I would think he wouldn't want you involved this time."

I said good- naturedly." That's all right with me, and if it's all right with you, I'm going home, I got a dream waiting for me back there."

I slapped Mike on the back, and started for the door, knowing him, he would stay until after this Crime scene was completely gone over by the Crime Unit.

The old Dodge Valiant wore a new paint job, and sported air-conditioning now.

It didn't matter that much to me that the heater still didn't work, it never really got cold in Florida, anyway.

Besides! I told myself again this year, like I did last year, ‘I'll get that heater fixed before next winter’.

The drive to Magnolia Ave., and my Office took about fifteen minutes, so

twenty minutes after leaving Mike I was searching for that Blond again, but she must have been flirting with somebody else in their dream, because I didn't find her again in mine.

Morning found me sprawled on the floor next to the couch, I didn't find the blond, but Frank Styr found me.

Seems he wanted to play, and already knowing the way into my dreams he chose me as his Playmate.

I didn't like it, but being asleep there wasn't much I could do except try to wake up, which I did! But, judging from the condition of the linen, and the pillows on my couch were in, he must have put up a good fight trying to stop me from doing that.

Since I was awake now, I guess I won.

During the morning Jog to Eola Park, I tried to remember the dream, or the nightmare, whichever one it was, but just like the ones I had four years ago it was gone.

I'd wake up tired, and nervous, sweat pouring off my face like I'd been in a Long-Distance Race.

Shadows would dance around in my mind behind the red eyes, but they would never crystallize, and become anything other than shadows.

The Dream, or whatever it was, had come, frightened me, and was now gone. Even in my Dreams the Prankster was a Tease.

He'd called me early one January morning back then and asked me if I wanted to play a game.

Not knowing who he was, but thinking he was some friend whose voice I didn't recognize, I said.

"Yea, what the Hell, you name it, we'll play it. "

The sniggering sound in the laughter coming back at me from the other side of the line told me that we were playing one game already.

That laughter, like the voice it belonged to was strange to me. I didn’t recognize either of them, and that laughter held a quality that the voice didn't. There was cruelty in that laughter, and more than that, the person laughing exalted that cruelty.

I waited for him to identify himself, and for a moment I got the Impression that he was waiting for me to ask who he was.

For a long time after I didn’t ask there was silence on his side of the line, and as I waited for him to say something, on the other side the phone was dropped into the cradle, and the dial tone replaced the silence.

Expecting him to call again, I hung up my phone, and went back to reading the Morning Paper, but he never did call back that day, nor did he call the next day, but when he did call, he told me where to find various parts of a Body, six parts to be exact: two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head.

In her kidnapping, which I didn't know anything about at the time he called me, he had wanted six hundred thousand dollars.

There was a note on each of the six parts his call led me to, and each note was composed of the number one with five zeros behind it.

The notes were all signed with a large V that had one 3- penny nail at the bottom and two nails at the top of the V.

The notes were nailed to the body parts, and in bold capital letters each note said YOURS TO CONSIDER.

It was with that second phone call that the nightmares, and the games began. The body was that of a wealthy Wendemere Socialite, Debra Louise Whymore was her name.

Her family was wealthy, and it consisted of her womanizing husband, Dr. Jacob Whymore, and her two spoiled grown children, who were out of the Country at the time of the kidnapping.

The day after he reported her missing to the Police Dr. Whymore received the Ransom call.

She had failed to return home from Luncheon on Saturday, and by Sunday morning he had found out that she never showed up for Luncheon.

First, he called her friends, then he called the Police. Monday morning the ransom call came to the Whymore residence, and the muffled voice on the phone instructed the Doctor to place $600,000 in a garbage dumpster behind the Winn Dixie on Central Blvd on Wednesday morning at 9:00 a. m.

The money was to be placed in one large brown backpack, and the backpack thrown into the dumpster.

Dr. Whymore told the Police that the callers' exact words were. ‘On Wednesday morning at 9:00 a. m. put $600,000 in a brown Leather Backpack, and throw it into the Garbage dumpster behind the Winn Dixie on Central Blvd. All the money must be in one large brown, leather backpack.’

The Doctor never took the money out of the Bank! He claimed that he thought the call was a prank.

And even after he was advised by the Police to follow the instructions, and do what the caller said the Doctor did nothing.

The children claimed that the Doctor, who was their mother's third husband after their father's death had intentionally ignored the call and withheld the money in the hope that what had happened, would happen.

One aspect of the murder that was noticed early in the investigation was the surgical precision with which the parts were removed from the body.

It was surmised that whoever committed the crime had some medical training, possibly up to the surgical level.

The Public finger of accusation pointed at the husband, and for him to verify his innocence in his wife’s murder he was compelled to provide evidence that proved him guilty of adultery.

His alibi was also his mistress, and at the time of the murder they were on International Drive locked away in a motel room.

When the kidnapping of Debra Whymore first hit the News that morning it made page eight, but the finding of her body that afternoon moved the story to page one.

The Social gossip about what her, and her husband were doing, and to who they were doing it with, ran on into the next week with rehashed speculation about the Doctor's possible involvement in her murder, and his affair with a woman who was a friend of his dead wife.

Before that kidnapping, and its gossip died out completely the Sports Star was reported missing, but in his case the million Dollar ransom was paid, and he was returned so fast his kidnapping almost went unreported.

A week went by, and nothing happened, then two weeks, three weeks, and a month. Cops in Orlando began to breathe easy once again.

The Kidnap Murderer, as the Sentinel was now calling him seemed to be satisfied with one murder to his credit, and one million dollars under his belt.

February brought another kidnapping, and another murder. The M. O. was the same, except I wasn't called this time, the victim's family was, and for some reason at this stage the Kidnapper decided to let me out of the Game, and never contacted me again.

The $500,000 dollar ransom demanded in the third kidnapping was paid a day late, and the victim was returned alive, but minus a right hand.

The hand had been surgically amputated, and it was not returned with the Victim.

The Newspapers went back to speculating on the involvement of a doctor.

Medical rumors, and Reader speculation about the degree of training needed to perform the amputation became Front Page material.

One paper went as far as saying that anyone with knowledge of where the joint was in the wrist could do the operation, it then went on to say that anyone with a hand possessed that knowledge.

The end of February brought another kidnap murder, this one came with a Ransom note.

The victim was a doctor, a surgeon at Florida Hospital, Winter Park. The note was sent to the Hospital and addressed ‘In Care Of’.

This kidnapping was suspicious in several ways; the most obvious was the demand for money in writing.

A ransom note, or instructions about money had never come to the victim's family, a phone call was always made.

When the phone call finally came to the Hospital, the caller said that 'Your Doctor has been kidnapped'. He made that single statement and hung up.

Two days later, when the body was found on the side of a dirt road in Ocoee, no Joker Card with 3- penny nail holes were found with it.

The Doctor had been tortured, and all of his teeth were pulled out before he was killed with a single gunshot to the heart.

Mike, and I were both baffled by this murder, like everyone else we wanted to cry Copy- cat, but something unfathomed in both of us screamed ‘No! This was something different, this was not the work of our boys from the other kidnappings.’

Everything here pointed away from them, and here, there was nothing about this murder that fitted their M.O. or said Copy- cat.

As I looked at the broken fingers, and the pulled teeth hanging by threads of flesh from that victim’s mouth, I remembered a laugh I heard on my phone one morning a month ago.

There was cruelty, and because of the cruelty in that laugh there was shame. It was like the person laughing knew there was Sickness there, but he tried to ignore it by pretending that it didn't exist.

There were two more kidnappings with ransoms paid before another unexplained murder occurred, and when it did, there were two of them, one right behind the other with only six days separating them.

The first victim's family was called, and told that he was kidnapped, but no ransom demand was ever made.

Two days after the call the body was found where it had been left on a deserted stretch of dirt road in Winter Garden.

Three days after that body was discovered the second victim's family got a call, and his body was found the next day in Apopka.

Both cases were similar in several ways. The victims were tortured first, and after their teeth were pulled, they were shot in the heart, and their bodies dumped on the side of a dirt road in a remote location.

Since I was contacted by the Kidnapper, and given directions to the first body, Mike insisted that I be an active member of the Investigation.

There were jokes running around O. P. D. that said my former partner Captain Mike Swenson had made me an honorary Police Officer.

The jokes said that I was promoted to the rank of New Tenant and given my own Office in the Lounge.

When the next note came it was signed in blood, and a sample was sent to the Crime Lab, they verified that it was the latest kidnap victim's blood type.

Bring $1,000,000 dollars to the destination marked on this map, and when the money is received ten pieces will be returned together, if the money is not received, ten pieces will be returned separated.

It was signed in the victim's name, and the Joker Card with three 3- penny nail holes punched into the corners of a V came with it.

The maps' destination was a phone booth on the corner of O.B.T., and Michigan St.

The name, and address on the letter that the map came in were mine, and right after I read the note I called Mike.

There was no mention in the note about not contacting the police, and at the time I didn't think about that omission. Contacting the Police was my first thought, contacting the victim's family was my second.

The victim this time was another well-known Sports figure, and the cost of his Mansion in Heathrow would pay the ransom several times over, and still leave money enough to buy a smaller Mansion in Windermere.

Mike talked to his wife, and she promised to have the money at the station before the Banks closed that day.

Since the letter had my name on it, and was delivered to my address, and no mention was made of the victim's family, in a very lose interpretation the note was telling me to bring the money.

We voted on it, and I won, or lost, depending on how you looked at it. The way I looked at it was, I lost.

When I arrived at the corner of Orange Blossom Trail, and Michigan St. the phone booth was easy to spot, it was the only one on that corner.

I was approaching the booth, and hoping it held further instructions when the phone rang.

I entered the booth, picked up the receiver, and a muffled voice whispered. " Leave the pack in the booth. Take the chain on the ground and fasten it around the door. Drive away, and don’t look back."

I dropped the Backpack to the floor of the booth and stepped back outside. The chain was there in the grass with an open Pad lock in the last two links.

I removed the lock, wrapped the chain around the phone booth, pulled it tight and locked it with a lock I brought with me, then I put the Pad lock that was in the chain in my pocket, got in my car, and drove away.

I didn’t look back, so I don’t know who followed me away from here, or who was looking at the money, and the phone booth, but I knew someone was doing both.

I also knew that there would be a Helicopter circling somewhere above me. Two blocks away, lost in traffic, and traveling unhurriedly down O.B.T. it dawned on me that if he wanted the door chained shut, he didn't plan to enter the booth from the outside, and he had to have some other way to get inside that booth.

I called Mike, and told him what I suspected, but he said, ' Don’t worry about it because he had the whole block under surveillance'.

We waited, and we watched that booth the whole morning, and although we saw no one that looked suspicious near the phone booth, I knew the money was gone.

The money had probably walked away right after I dropped the pack in the booth, and stepped out of it.

In fact, the victim was home before we found out for certain that the money wasn’t still in the booth.

Around Noon, Mike got a call from the excited wife saying that her husband had been left on their front Lawn, and he appeared to be asleep.

She called the family Physician before she called Mike, and he was looking at her husband as she talked.

The Doctor’s opinion was that he had been drugged, but he would recover.

When we arrived at the Phone booth on O.B.T., and Michigan the chain was still wrapped around the booth, but the pack was gone.

The back door to the building behind the booth was unlocked, and it stood wide open.

Inside the door we could see a hole in the ground that went from inside the empty room to the bottom of the phone booth outside. It appeared to me that the hold had been dug a few days ago.

When we checked it the Backpack with the money was gone from inside the booth.

He'd raked his tracks away from inside the building and then littered the floor with trash from a Garbage dumpster.

In searching through all that trash, we came up with about eighty sets of fingerprints, and twenty- five, or thirty different DNA samples.

He was Black, he was White, he was Chinese, Mexican, and he was also an Eskimo.

You name it, tall, short, skinny, or fat, we had DNA showing that he was it. He was even a she.

A canvass, and search of the neighborhood turned up nothing, and when the victim regained consciousness all he remembered was entering the shower after practice and waking up on his front Lawn.

The Prankster laughed all the way to the Bank.

The term Kidnap- Murderer took on a new meaning when the Newspapers learned that no ransom was demanded for some of the kidnapped victims who had turned up murdered.

The Police Department assigned two special teams to the Investigation. One team handled what was called the real kidnap cases; those were the ones where a ransom demand was made, the other team was assigned to what was called the fake kidnap cases, these were cases where torture appeared to be the real motive for the abduction.

Not being a Police Officer anymore, I was assigned to neither team, but since I was given the honorary title of Liaison by Mike, I got to work on both, and I got to work for Orange County's Taxpayers for free.

Of course, since I was not being paid, I kept Banker's hours, which is how I found the time to wonder about, and eventually find out where he got all that trash.

All that filthy trash we had to dig through in an otherwise empty building behind a lone phone booth, on a deserted corner where I was instructed to leave $1,000,000 dollars in ransom money.

Now an Eskimo is an American citizen, and, as such he is as free to come, and go about this Country as anyone else is, but be truthful now, how many of them have you ever seen?

And, what are the chances of finding an Eskimo, a Chinese, and a Mexican in the same area using the same dumpster?

No matter what the chances are in New York City, or Los Angeles, California, they certainly aren’t good on the corner of Orange Blossom Trail, and Michigan St. in Orlando, Florida.

So, to answer that puzzling question I took our DNA samples on the road, and went around town looking for that dumpster.

First, I started looking for the Eskimo, and I found one at the Best Value Convenience Store on Americana Blv., which was a few blocks farther up O.B.T. from Michigan.

The Chinese was Mr. Chu Yen; he worked at the Golden Dragon Restaurant across the street from the Convenience store.

Mr. Chu Yen laid claim to several of the items that DNA samples were taken from in the building, including a used condom that was found in another room upstairs.

The Mexican was found through his fingerprints, which were found on the plastic sun visor of the Red Socks Baseball cap the hair came from that provided his DNA sample.

Once Mike found out what I was doing, and the success I was having my little investigation grew into a major endeavor by the Orlando Police Department, and three weeks later we identified most of the prints found in the building behind the phone booth.

The DNA samples were more complicated, and matching them went slower, but once we had a name for a fingerprint, we sometimes got a DNA sample from that person, and we eliminated some of the DNA samples that way.

Later, we started to create profiles for the people we identified. Prints that belonged to people with criminal histories were easy to identify, and to profile, but those without a criminal past were a bit harder to identify, and almost impossible to profile.

After a month of watching people throwing trash into the dumpster and then collecting their trash when they left, we matched, and eliminated most of the unknown prints, and some of the remaining DNA samples.

In my search of the prints, I found one thing unusual. There was one set of prints that were not found in the building on O.B.T, and Michigan, but were found on several different items taken from the dumpster on Americana.

That set of prints showed up inside a pair of plastic surgical gloves that someone threw into the Americana dumpster.

I traced the gloves through their manufacturer to a local distributor, and he led me to Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital.

We searched their dumpster, and the trucks carrying dirty uniforms to the laundry, and in the DNA and print samples we collected from them we found a match for the prints in the plastic surgical glove.

We got a name from the tag on the uniform that a similar pair of gloves, the same size was found in.

Dr. Frank Styr.

Even though we had a suspect now because we couldn't connect him to either of the kidnappings, or the murders we couldn't move on him.

All we had was a name, and we discovered that the person the name belonged to was no stranger to Newsprint.

His name, and his reputation were well known to people living in the Orlando area.

Social News listed him as being one of the ten most eligible bachelors in Central Florida, and Medical News called him a Genius, who was rapidly changing the clinical approach to mental problems in children.

As, I did the profile study on Dr. Frank Styer two things became crystal clear to me:

One, he was our boy all right! And two, we were going to have a Hell of a time arresting him, and convicting him of Kidnap, and Murder.

Eventually, we did arrest, and convict him, but we did it only after a very heated trial that lasted more than six weeks.

And, even after all that time, and testimony, the verdict of guilty that we got was for only one of the three Kidnap counts he was charged with.

He was never charged with murder because there was no evidence presented that connected him to any murder case.

The fingerprint in the plastic glove taken from the laundry truck, and the fingerprint in the glove found in the dumpster on Americana was the closest we came to linking him to any of the Prankster crimes.

The Life sentence, and the heart felt promise of a recommendation that he never be paroled that the Judge gave seemed to satisfy the community, and the victim’s families.

Frank Styrs' conviction was touted as a victory for the Legal Community in Orange County.

The Newspapers had a field- day, but even the man on the street could see that Frank Styr was convicted more by fear, than by fact.

The hard evidence that was needed to get a conviction in any one of the Prankster crimes just wasn't there.

 

                                                                               CHAPTER 2

For the second time I picked myself up off the floor, and looked at the couch, it was a mess. I looked at it again, then shook my head, and shot it a Bird.

Yesterday, I 'd promised myself Breakfast at the little Cafe up the Street from my office.

4 Pancakes.

4 strips of bacon.

2 eggs

And all the coffee I could drink for $5.99.

         But now! After last night I was eating cold Cereal and drinking bad tasting Coffee that I made.

Chalk one more up to Frank Styr.

When Mike called, I was halfway through my second cup, and as soon as I picked the phone up, he said. " The wife got another call this morning, the caller wanted $200,000 dollars brought to Barnett Park behind the Fairgrounds on West Colonial Wednesday at 12:00 noon, exact."

"So." I said around a mouth full of soggy Corn Flakes. "What's that got to do with me, he left me out this time, remember? "

"Yea." Mike laughed. "I know it, but the wife didn't know it, and she put you back in, she asked for you by both name, and reputation."

His laughter turned into a low giggle. " she said, and I quote her. ‘Will that Teflon Steele person, who caught the Prankster be helping the Police this time?’

" When I said that you weren't a Police Officer, and that you were sort of requested for the Prankster case, she requested you for this one. She wants you to deliver the money at Barnett Park Wednesday. "

When I didn't say anything, he continued with. " I told her I would ask you personally. So, I'm asking."

" And, what's this guy, our kidnapper supposed to do when I show up with the money? Anybody thought of him? "

Mike said. " It ain't like you are going to meet the guy, Teflon. There's probably a phone out there, and you'll get a call telling you where to take the money from there. You know the routine; you won’t ever meet the guy."

Mike sounded so confident, and I did know the routine! And, I almost believed him, but not quite.

While I thought about it Mike said. " He will see you; you will never see him, you leave the money where he tells you, then go home, job done!"

It sounded good to me. In fact, it sounded so good I knew it wouldn't go that way. As the silence increased from my side of the line, I could hear Mike growing impatient on the other side.

Papers rustled, the phone was laid down a couple of times, and picked back up.

" So, we got a yes on this, or what Teflon? " He asked me after sighing deeply and giving in to the silence.

I took another two or three seconds before I answered. I really didn't want to get involved with the Prankster again, and since he was kind enough to leave me out of it this time, I felt it was only right that I did my part, and stayed out, but, on the other hand now, if the Prankster was in prison, who was this guy?

When that thought entered my mind the flicker of a remembered voice came behind it.

The voice was laughing at me, and in memory, it was laughing because I

didn't recognize it.

The person who owned the voice was finding pleasure in my bewilderment.

It was that laughing voice that caused me to say. " Yea, Mike, tell her I'll take the money to him."

This time the long pause came from his side of the line, and I waited knowing his mind was going back four years like my mind had just done

Four years ago, during the Reign of Terror there were two distinct MOs, and they led Mike, and me to believe that there were two different people doing the kidnappings.

One of them kidnapped for money, while the other kidnapped for a victim to torture.

We never convinced ourselves just which one of them Frank Styer was, but we did convince ourselves that he wasn't both. Maybe this was the other one.

Early Tuesday morning I went jogging in Barnett Park. People run for a lot of different reasons, but health is the one most often stated.

Physical health, or psychological health, both are given as reasons to run.

I run for psychological health. I run in a vain effort to get away from my past.

From the first day I started running, I knew that I would never be successful in doing that. I knew that my past would follow, and jog along behind me all the days of my life, but whenever I took the time, and really thought about it, that was all right with me.

I guess my thinking was that as long as it stayed behind me, and it never caught up I’d be all right.

Old Age didn't worry me, in my profession, if I lived to see it, it would be a welcomed blessing.

There were many people, and many things in my past, and in my line of work that have conspired to prevent me from living a long life.

I doubt I will ever see Old Age.

My third lap around the park was much slower than the first two laps, and instead of blaming age, I used the excuse of checking out the facilities to explain the slower pace to myself.

There's a Lake in the center of the park, and this morning the water in it was placid, and shrouded by a thick morning fog.

The lake came complete with Exit Ramps, and Boat Docks, but there was only one lone fisherman on it.

He was trolling for Bass, as his boat drifted slowly through the Lilly pads at the far side of the still water.

The Tennis, Basketball, and Badminton Courts were open, and well kept, but at this time of the morning they were all empty.

A solitary Phone booth stood by the wall at the entrance door to the Maintenance shed, but there was nowhere to sit down near it.

After looking around me at the open field, and the placid lake, I could guess why Barnett Park was chosen as a Drop site.

The Park was large, and it was secluded, there was one way into it, and one way out of it for both automobiles, and pedestrian traffic.

And, once you were in the park there was nowhere to hide.

All around me the green color of the mowed lawn stretched for what looked like miles.

Picnic tables, and Bar-B-Q grills dotted the lawn around the lake, and there were no tall shrubs, or buildings in the park to hide behind.

I could hear traffic noises coming from Colonial Drive, which was about 500 yards at the other end of the one- way road that brought me in and would take me out of the park.

On the backside of the park, and behind a small wood I could see a Housing Development, and I ran that way, and entered the trees.

The wooded perimeter stretched for about two hundred yards before turning into a manicured lawn border that separated the trees from the homes.

I ran to the end of it, turned, and reentered the wood, then headed back to the park.

When I finally found a place to sit, it was on one of several folding benches that were arranged to view the different courts.

I passed by them, entered the exit road, and followed it back to Colonial Drive.

The Dodge was parked about two blocks up the road from the park entrance, and I stopped running when I reached it.

Looking back along my Back- trail, I shook my head, got in the Dodge, and drove away.

As I entered traffic, I was thinking that covering the park, and watching the money would not be easy for us to do, in fact, I couldn't see how we could do it. We could watch the Entrance from outside, but there was no way we could enter that Park without being seen.

I thought about that, and decided that if we couldn't do it, he couldn't do it either, which gave some credence to Mike's idea that I would receive further instruction for another drop site once I was in the park with the money.

That meant I would have to position myself somewhere close to the phone, and because there were no seats anywhere near the phone at the maintenance building, this was going to be a Stand up job.

Mike wasn't surprised by my description of the park, or by my assessment of our chances of watching the money, or of us catching the kidnapper when he came to pick it up.

When I told him that, Mike said. " He won’t come into, or go out of the park through the Entrance, he'll come in some other way.

“You sure there are no roads, or car trails leading from that Development back there?"

I thought about it before I answered. There were places where a car could be driven from the homes into the park, but there were no trails where someone was already doing it.

I said it could be done, but I was thinking that because it was so obvious, he wouldn’t do that, and, if he did, where would he go afterwards?

Still trying to figure an angle on a pick- up at the Park Mike said." We'll put one guy in there Tuesday night, anyway."

‘ You see’, I told myself while I watched him concentrate. ‘That’s the problem with having a One- track mind like the one Mike has, it always goes back to the same place, and Point A to point B is as far as it goes, when it gets there.

‘ Now, I've got a One- track mind also, and my mind goes from point A to point B, but since point C, and point D are in the same vicinity, my track goes pass them too.’

" Put him in a tree, or in a hole in the ground, just in case our boy tries to get the money at the park, Okay?"

Mike mumbled to himself, still trying to reach point B, and for lack of something better to say, I said Okay.

Mike looked up, smiled, and said. " Hey, Friend of mine! Don't worry, we got him."

I watched Mike's face when he said don’t worry, and the look there didn't say we got him, what the question mark on his face said to me was that he had us, again.

" I'll place unmarked Units three, or four block away on every road leading into, or out of that Park, and I'll have a helicopter on standby waiting for a description of a person, or a vehicle. And, if he tries picking that money up in the Park, he's as good as caught already."

" Yea, Mike." I said, for lack of something better to say.

Wednesday 11:45 a.m. found me sitting in the stands near the Basketball Court, it was closer to the phone booth than the other Courts.

The Park was empty, and silent, and except for me, a couple of fishers in boats, and two elderly women walking laps around the walkway, nothing moved, but the wind in the trees.

There were no cars parked in the little parking lot, and none moved on the street leading into, and out of the Park.

A light breeze blew warm air out of the west from behind me disturbing the silence with its whisper.

The air moved with just enough force to move the branches on the trees, and as it came to me it brought a mild sweet fragrance to my nostrils with it.

At first, I thought the scent was coming from one of the flowering plants that were blooming in the Park, but after taking a deep breath I recognized the odor, it was the new air freshener hanging in the Dodge that was called Misty Miles.

It, and the pleasant scent it carried came on a red and white cardboard sheet that was shaped like a Rocket.

I bought it Monday, and since then I have fallen in love with the fragrance. I raised my arm and sniffed my shirtsleeve, and the odor was there.

I took another deep breath, and as I watched two large Bloodhounds chasing each other on the other side of the lake I wondered how it got on my shirt.

The dogs were both large Hounds, and judging by their identical black and tan color, their large mouth and jaws, and a few other shared characteristics, I suspected they were probably purebreds.

There was no one tending them, and as they chased each other across the Park, they bothered no one, but as they came around the lake, and headed toward me I watched them with apprehension.

They ran straight to the benches where I sat, and when the one in front reached a point directly in front of me, he stopped, and bayed twice.

I looked around me to see what he was baying at, and he raised his large head, looked directly at me, and bayed again.

After that second long moaning note, he turned, and ran straight toward the court, and the seat where I sat.

The dog behind him reached the same spot, and began to howl, he looked in my direction, then took off behind the first dog.

Straight as an arrow that leading dog ran to me, and as I watched him coming my heart started to pound erratically, but the dog ran up to the benches where I sat, and stopped at the bottom row with his tail wagging friendly. His large brown eyes watched me unwavering.

At first I didn't know what to do, and my hand paused undecided over my gun when the second dog arrived at the bleachers, and imitated the actions of the first dog, except he sat down.

His tail wagged friendly, and both of their eyes were focused directly on me.

I watched them as they both watched me, then my hand dropped to the bench, and for a while, as Time went by, we all just watched, and waited.

Then, just barely above a whisper I heard a voice, it was a very low voice, and I could barely hear it.

I looked around searching for its source and found it coming from a small tape recorder strapped on the lead dog's back.

The recording whispered. " Put the money in the saddle bags. Put the

money in the saddle bags."

As, I strained to hear, it repeated the same phrase over, and over again.

“Put the money in the saddle bags.”

I looked closely at the lead dog, and only then did I notice that the dark brown design across both dog’s back was clothe.

I must have been taking too long in my examination because the lead dog barked, then started moving around restlessly.

I got up, and walked down the five rows to the ground, and the lead dog came, and stopped right in front of me.

I put about half of the money in his bags, and off he went. The other dog did the same thing, and when he had half of the money, he ran off too, heading in the same direction.

I watched them disappear into the woods on the other side of the park, then I called Mike on the phone, and told him what had happened.

I couldn't see the look on his face, but I heard the explosion of a deep breath of air right before he exclaimed. " No, he didn't! He sent dogs to get the money!"

There was another deep breath, this one followed by a moan as Mike said. " tell me you are joking Teflon. No! Tell me that I am dreaming. Tell me he did not use dogs to pick up that money. Tell me it ain't so!"

I couldn't help it, I laughed. Mike sounded so pathetic. I commiserated with him by moaning once, or twice into the phone myself.

I knew all the preparation, and time he put into that Stake out, and I could imagine the sleepless nights he lay awake trying to find a way to secure that Park.

The dogs, of course, ran through the woods, through the homes, and through four more blocks before being picked up.

No one stopped them, or paid that much attention to them, and except for a little boy who was eleven years old, who told the Officers searching the woods that the reason he followed them and saw the blue van that picked them up was because he wanted a dog just like them.

The Police Officer Mike placed in the woods saw the dogs too, but he paid them no attention, and when he was asked to describe them, he couldn't.

Of all the things we expected, and you learn to expect anything when you deal with the criminal mind, dogs never entered in the picture.

I looked at Mike standing near the window in his small Office and standing over there by himself he looked so forlorn.

We both realized that from the beginning of this caper, for us, any foot, or automobile chase was out of the question, and for the Prankster, before it started they probably were the question.

The small Bell helicopter had circled once after receiving the call with a description of the two dogs, and then disappeared in the direction the dogs had gone in, but it never spotted them.

A green and white Patrol car was sent in that direction, and it ran into the Officer who had seen the dogs running through the woods, but when the car pulled up beside him, he told the driver. "You might as well go back in, the helicopter lost them before it even found them."

The blue van was found Friday morning, it had been washed inside, and out, and then vacuumed.

A DMV check showed that it was reported stolen more than a month ago, and the owner of the van didn't have dogs.

He told the Division of Motor Vehicles when they contacted him after the van was found that he was afraid of them.

The Officer who went out to his home, and talked with the owner reported that he was appalled at the thought of two of them riding in his van.

I spent most of March working on a Divorce case that was brought to me by one of the Realtors I shared my Office building with.

The large sign that was theirs’ stood outside on top of the little one story,

Wood- frame building we shared, and it gave their names and profession in large bold letters. ALBRIGHT, COBBS, SMITH, Realtors is what it said.

My sign was smaller, and it was located inside the building at the back, it said T. Steele, Private Investigations.

It was the Cobbs on the big sign that brought me the Divorce case. His Uncle had unthinkingly married a woman who was twenty- three years younger than he was, and now at seventy years old, he was learning that in bed he was not the man he once was.

It was a hard lesson for any man to learn, but at forty-seven years young, and in good physical health, his new wife was a patient teacher.

He, on the other hand, after stumbling through the lessons for more than three years wanted to drop out of school.

My job was to see that dropping out wouldn't be too expensive for him, and it wasn't a hard job.

He was failing so bad in the Bedroom classes she had recruited.

another student, this time a younger one, and his classes were held outside of Sanford in a Motel on SR 1792.

I followed her there the first time, and then followed him home when school turned out.

The trip up to Sanford, and back taught me two things: One, it taught me that he lived only four houses down the street from her, and my client. And two, that he was also married.

April came, and found me without a job, the divorce was in the works, and my client told me that it would be affordable.

I took a Part- time job working Night Security at a warehouse in Lake Mary. My partner's name was Jo Jo, and at first, I didn't think that we would get along, he had this habit of taking my snacks off the table and eating them.

And, besides that, I didn't like the way he smelled.

I told him the first time we met, right after the Night Shift Guard I was replacing introduced me to him.

I told him. “You stink Jo Jo.”

He heard me, but it didn't seem to bother him when I said it, fact is, he ignored me, scratching his back the whole time I talked.

Time went by, and he did his job, and I did mine, and things went along good for a while, then one night I brought a few pieces of Cornel’s chicken to work with me and left them on the table in the Break room.

When Break time came, I was hungry, but the chicken was gone. Jo Jo's mouth was greasy, and when I asked him about my chicken, he had this guilty look on his face. He didn't admit to anything, but I know he did it.

That pissed me, but what really upset me was I never could get even with Jo Jo.

You see, Jo Jo never brought food to work with him, and the few times someone brought something for him, if I even looked at it hard, he would growl at me.

The night the Part- time job at the warehouse ended, I brought another bag of chicken, and Jo Jo let me eat some of it.

The next week I applied for a job as a Prison Guard, the Prankster wasn't doing anything at all, and the case had reached an all-time low.

For almost three months now he hadn't even breathed hard, and Mike was taking it personally.

He had a chip on his shoulder and the Prankster wouldn't knock it off, so

Mike walked around the precinct hitting things and mumbling under his breath.

He’d say. "Come on, do something."

People at the station started to avoid him, and I can't really say that I blamed them, I was his best friend, and I was avoiding him too.

The night before I made a firm decision to apply for a Prison Guard Position, he called me.

Corrections Officer is what he called it, and he thought applying for that kind of job was a bad idea, and so did I, but he didn't have a better one and I didn't either.

We talked about Prankster, and I think at this point we both knew we were dealing with a very smart Copy- cat.

This new Prankster was in business strictly for the money, and other than that bloody mannequin and the threatening call to the Sport's figure's wife, this guy was dangerous like a Bill Collector, it was your pocketbook and your Bank Account that got hurt by him.

When we finished talking and hung up the phones, I think we both were trying very hard not to hope that another kidnapping would happen soon.

Per capita, Florida has the largest Prison population of all fifty-two States, and job security would certainly not be an issue if I worked in Corrections.

New prisons were being built in Florida almost as fast as new homes were being built.

Prisons, I found out at my Interview are the second largest source of Revenue in the State of Florida.

Through the broad smile he was wearing above his brown Prison Guard uniform, the tall muscular guy that conducted the Interview told me and the eight other hopefuls after that introduction. "Only Tourism contributes more money to our State's Economy than does its Prison population.

"Some of the better-known facilities in the State of Florida are." He counted them off with his large fingers.

" One. Florida State Prison, which is in Starke, Florida. FSP is a

Maximum Security Unit that also houses Florida's Death Row. Two, Raiford Medical and Reception Center is located right next door to it in Union County."

He stopped talking for a moment and looking expectantly at me he asked. " You have heard of ‘The Rock’, haven't you?"

The question was asked in a voice that matched his look, which said that I must have heard of ‘the Rock’.

" This Unit is called ‘The Rock’ by Inmates and Officers alike, ‘The Rock’ is Hard- time."

When he saw my look of pretended astonishment he smiled importantly and went on with the count.

" And three, Glades Correctional Institution. The Institution sits on Lake Okeechobee near the Florida Everglades."

The Interview lasted for an hour and during it we also learned, among other things that prisons are so economically productive in Florida that almost every county has at least one Correctional Facility in it, and it seemed to me that they were all hiring.

At the end of the lecture, we were assured that we would hear something about our applications within the next few days, and this time the toothy smile came with a hearty handshake, a pat on the back, and a ‘See you all doing Training.’

Walking out the door I felt like I had just been recruited for the Military again.

Over the next six weeks during my Corrections Officers training courses, I learned about Florida's Criminal Correction history. I learned about it's practicing Ideology on crime and criminals, and its position on punishment and rehabilitation.

I learned what Florida's responsibilities were to the prison population and what they were to the citizens of the State, as interpreted by the Division of Corrections.

One Idea floating around in the Division of Corrections that really surprised me was that Rehabilitation didn't work, and that the idea of correction was thrown out of the system years ago.

Today, prison policy was directed more at separation and isolation of the criminal element than it was at trying to change their unlawful behavior.

After two weeks of training, with a new attitude and a different way of thinking about the criminal members of Florida growing population I started working at the Reception and Medical Center located in Orlando.

ORMC was almost at my back door, and I had been working out there for three very extraordinary weeks when Mike pulled me back into the Prankster picture.

Life outside that picture was getting astonishing, prisons and prisoners can be pretty fascinating entities, and if you let your mind get caught up in them, they can almost be too entertaining.

As a prison Guard, my mind didn't really have much of a choice in the matter, and it got amused, willingly or not, eight hours every day.

The sight of Mike's Mustang sitting in the parking lot of the humble little

one story, wood- frame building that was my home and office wiped today's smile from my face, and even before he waved, I knew it was the Prankster that had brought him there.

Mike didn't get out of his car when I drove up, he just waived and signaled for me to follow him then he cranked the Mustang up and drove out of the Parking lot.

I followed him, not really keeping up, but after he headed west on Colonial I knew where he was going.

I was a block or two behind him when his car disappeared into the traffic ahead of me, but I turned off onto OBT when I reached it, and a few blocks later I made the turn at 33rd St.

Like the City of Orlando, the Orange County Jail complex was expanding and construction workers with heavy equipment were in motion or standing still everywhere.

Mike pulled into the parking lot behind the Jail, and I followed him into it and parked behind him.

After we walked to the Jail and were sitting in a private room, Mike took out a small Cassette Recorder, sat it on the table between us and pushed the Play button.

The recording was of a phone conversation that began with the sound of a dial tone then a husky male voice said.

" Bring the jewels to the vacant field Parking lot across the street from the Rescue Mission on Central st. Park next to the yellow van and wait, I will give you further directions when you get there."

When the machine played the tape for the third time I was listening closely to the recorded voice, but without the laugh, this voice was just another voice to me, I needed to hear that laugh before I could be certain this was the same person that called me.

I watched Mike as he rewound the small Recorder and looked hopefully at me.

Looking at me he said that to him it sounded like the voice in the other recordings, and that he had compared the words the caller used and the speech patterns.

The professional consensus was that we had three different voices and a note that didn't fit any of the speech patterns.

In other words, we had nothing that was old, and everything we had was something new.

" This time, he doesn't want money." Mike pointed out with disgust since this was something new, too.

Shaking his head in disapproval Mike said." He wants jewels, Opals and Diamonds to be exact.

“ One hundred thousand dollars’ worth of them, and he was specific about the karat and the cut of each jewel. His threat this time is that for every one of his instructions that’s not followed a body part will be forfeited."

The victim this time was the wife of a local Jewel merchant, and the merchant assured Mike that getting the items specified in the Ransom demand would be a bother, but no great problem.

Of the five days that he was given to complete the collection, three days were already gone, but not a minute of those days had been wasted by OPD.

The vacant lot across the street from the Rescue Mission was combed and canvassed to the square inch.

Every street leading to and from it was mapped out and a strategy devised for securing it.

Unmarked cars belonging to people who worked in the area were borrowed or commandeered, if necessary, and they were parked in their usual places on the day of the exchange with Police Officers sitting in them.

No Patrol cars were seen in the area for two days before the day of the exchange, and except for normal patrols at normal patrol times OP D’s presence in the area was invisible.

The little Bell Helicopter was again on standby alert, and everything had been done that could be done to apprehend a man or a dog.

Mike and I were watching the yellow van from the top floor of the Rescue Mission, and when the merchant pulled into the grass lot, we both trained cameras in that direction.

Mike watched and photographed the movements of the merchant while I captured anything and anybody else that came into, or near the lot.

As he was told to do, the merchant parked near the yellow van, and about three minutes after parking he was seen getting out of his car and entering the van through the back door.

Once inside the van he closed the door and was out of sight for about five minutes.

Both cameras panned the empty lot and the streets around it photographing anything that moved.

Behind the van, a wasted derelict of a drunk staggered haltingly along a back- street headed in the direction of the vacant lot and the Rescue Mission across from it.

As he came towards them staggering along, pushing a red plastic Shopping cart that was stuffed with old clothes and pieces of scrap metal both of our cameras recorded his progress as he turned into the vacant lot.

I watched him swaying and wobbling every couple of steps as he trudged along behind the cart going toward the yellow van.

One time he almost fell, but he still managed to stay erect and bring a brown paper bag to his lips then take a long drink before dropping the bag and walking out of the field.

When he was back on the sidewalk staggering away from the lot I heard the roar of a motorbike coming up the street behind him, and I swung the camera away from the bag on the ground and looked back there.

The big Harley raced around the corner in a blur, filling the camera’s lens and my vision with its motion.

It was carrying a Leather suited rider whose gray beard danced around his suntanned face.

As the bike roared toward the lot’s entrance the reflected light dancing in the visor on the red helmet that covered and hid his face caused me to rise from my seated position and flick the lens twice.

Watching the speeding bike come toward me I thought of all the routes in a city this bike could use that a car couldn’t.

I visualized the back- roads and side- street, the alleys running along behind businesses, and yes, even parking lots like this one that a cycle could turn into and cross running between the parked cars where a Patrol car couldn’t follow it.

When the cycle slowed as it reached the lot’s entrance I remembered and visualized the Railroad tracks leading out of town only a few blocks away.

As the Bike got closer my heart pumped faster and my mind became filled with anticipation.

He could take those tracks, and in a minute, he could be gone, and no car could follow him or prevent his get- away.

A cycle could ride those tracks and follow them, un- obstructed all the way across the state.

For a while it seemed so easy, but then I remembered the little Bell helicopter that nothing on the ground could run from or escape.

On the street the bike slowed as it passed the drunk, then a pair of black Leather gloves pumped the throttle and it raced on up the street where it turned off and the roar of its engine disappeared.

I watched the drunk for a while as he staggered up the street then swung the camera around the four corners of the lot.

There were a few people moving on the streets, but no one entered the lot, and once the drunk left the area nothing moved within it.

I was appraising two girls in shorts when the back door of the van suddenly flew open and one gray and white pigeon flew out.

When several more of them flew out the door I swung the camera from the lone bird back to the van.

For nearly three minutes I watched in amazement as the back door of the yellow van rained pigeons, and after the last pigeon flew off and the rain finally stopped the merchant stepped out of the van.

He was pointing at the sky and dancing around excitedly; I ran my camera’s lens down the length of his outstretched arm and swept the viewer in the direction he was pointing.

As I watched the sky at the end of the pointed finger, I was clicking the

Shutter, just in case the camera could pick up something that I was missing.

Standing beside me, Mike was in a clicking frenzy too, his camera followed the pointing finger then darted to the empty field around the yellow van.

I refocused my camera on the jewel merchant who was now outside the van thrashing around on the ground.

When we saw him on the ground flopping around Mike and I were out of the room in nothing flat, and after we reached the street below, I saw that Mike had drawn his Service Revolver.

I didn't have one to draw, so I hung back a few paces and cautiously entered the lot behind him.

The Jewel merchant either saw us, or heard us coming, I don't know which it was, but as we ran up to him he never looked up or said anything to us, he just stopped thrashing around and started laughing.

Mike either didn't hear him laughing or chose to ignore him, he ran straight to the back door of the yellow van and snatched it open.

A lone pigeon flew out.

" Oh, Shit!!" I heard Mike yell just before he started kicking the rear door of the yellow van.

" Oh, Shit!! " he said again.

" Oh, Shit!!" And again, " Oh, Shit!!"

I didn't have to go over there and ask him what had happened, I guess I figured it out while looking through my camera at what was at the end of the merchant's pointed finger: Pigeons.

I looked in that direction again and saw a dot here, a dot there, then just blue sky everywhere.

The large flock of pigeons he had released was gone and looking at the empty sky I thought of the Bell Helicopter on Standby again.

It was a few blocks away, sitting on top of the Orlando Utilities Commission building waiting for a call that wouldn't come.

I looked at Mike; he was still kicking the rear door of the van and yelling. " Oh Shit!"

The merchant seemed to have gotten it out of his system, he was sitting up now on the ground watching Mike.

When he saw me looking at him, he said in a timid little voice.

" There is a Walky- Talky in the van, can you call somebody on it, cause I'm ready to go home."

Looking at his sad face, I was thinking that the Walky- Talky wouldn't do us any good, because the person who had the other one wouldn’t answer.

I told him to give me a minute and then walked back over to the Mission and used their phone.

When the Patrol car came for him, I chose to walk the few blocks to where I had parked the Dodge.

The yellow van was filled with pigeon cages and pigeon droppings, and after watching Mike's attitude during the Dog episode I could imagine what it was going to be like after he came out of that van.

So, I left right after the merchant did. I guess you could say I thought Mike needed some time alone.

Homing Pigeons!

All the way back to the office, I couldn't get the thought out of my mind.

‘Homing Pigeons.’

Of all the insane things a rational mind could imagine, his had come up with Homing Pigeons, and before them, dogs.

I had the feeling that somewhere, sometime soon someone was going to yell ‘Time Out! I don't want to play with you anymore!’

I don’t know where the thought came from, but in the back of my mind I was certain that someone was going to be Mike, or Me.

Too many pranks and too much Prankster was getting to be just a little too much fun, I was almost ready to say stop right then, but three days after the pigeons flew off with the ransom I was back in the game.

         Mike and I decided to visit an old divorce case of mine that lived out in Winter Garden. I met him through his wife who wanted evidence of his Infidelity to use as a reason to divorce him.

He was cheating, and I got the evidence she needed, but she was cheating too, and to get evidence of her wrongdoings he had also hired a P.I.

          In the end they both got what they wanted, which was an Un-contested Divorce. She ended up with the house in the city, and he got the one in the country.

         She was raising the kids, two cute little girls, and he was raising, among other things, pigeons. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but during the investigation and the Divorce proceedings that followed he and I had become friends.

         There were several exotic breeds of pigeons out there that he sold through a Pet Shop in Winter Park, but I told him we were interested in a more common breed of pigeons called Homing Pigeons.

Mike and I figured that if we knew something about the birds, maybe we could get a handle on the person who had used them.

We also wondered where that person would have gone to purchase a large number of them.

We were thinking that if we had a store that recently sold a large number of birds we might have a start that would lead us to the Prankster, but almost before the thoughts were fully expressed my former case put an end to them.

When Mike asked him how hard it would be to get somewhere around 200 Homing pigeons he smiled at the question then looking at me he started laughing.

I explained that Mike and I figured that a person needing a large number of pigeons would probably have to order them or buy them from someone who raised them.

He looked back at Mike, and behind the laugh, and through the smile playing on his lips said.

" Best place I know to get pigeons is the I-4 Over- Pass downtown.

Hundreds of them nest under the Over- pass, and all you have to do is go down there late one night and grab them while they sleep.”

Hearing the mirth in his voice I almost didn’t believe him. I just knew it couldn’t be that easy, but it was.

It was so simple, and so easy the moment he heard it Mike started shaking his head and Cussing.

My friend looked at him and laughed again, but when he saw the startled, distressed look on my face he suggested.

" Why don’t you go down there and catch a few of them, then take them home and feed them regularly for a few weeks, then after a while turn them loose.

“In the beginning they'll come home every day around feeding time, but after a couple of them get born there they'll come and go as they want to, and they will always return home at the end of the day.”

He winked at Mike, and then nodding toward me he said. “Females might find a male and not come back, but then they might find a male and bring him home with them."

Late one night a week later the three of us visited the Over- Pass and robbed nests.

The birds were almost too easy to catch, and since we’d been told that colors really didn't matter, I caught an all-white one, just to make sure.

We took our catch back out to Winter Garden that same night and left them at the farm with my friend, who promised to feed them regularly.

Two weeks later Mike and I returned to the farm where eight various colored pigeons strutted around majestically in the cage, he had loaned us.

Each bird had a small pouch attached to his right leg, and three small rocks went into each pouch.

The birds were driven back to Orlando and taken to the vacant field across from the Mission.

When they were released, they took to the sky and after circling a couple of times headed west toward Winter Gardens.

I tried to figure out which one of the birds was the leader, but because of their homing instinct they probably didn't need one.

They all seemed to know where they were going, and after circling the block a few times they headed west.

I looked at the motorcycle parked next to my car, and then at the Officer who would ride it to track the birds, and from him I looked at the two bicycle Cops who would be patrolling the streets in this area looking for early bird Drop- outs wearing leg pouches.

The helicopter would be here soon, but as other pigeons in the area decided to join them and fly west the eight birds, we released were lost in a swarm of birds that soon numbered in the hundreds.

Even as I watched them circle the original body of eight birds flying together was increased or decreased by ones and twos when mew birds joined or left it.

I saw the flock when it vanished in the distance heading in every direction and I didn't know if the original eight were still flying with them, or if they had been among those birds that left the group earlier.

The Cops didn't know either, and they sat or stood looking their questions at Mike and me.

When the helicopter came and started hovering over us, I looked at Mike, and Mike, having no one to look at himself waived the chopper and the cops away then got into his car and went home.

I got into mine and did the same thing.

The next morning when we went back out to Winter Garden and looked in the Bird coup all eight of our rock bearing birds were there, and each one of them still had his leg bag with the three rocks in it.

What we learned from the Pigeon episode was that nothing we were doing was going to catch the Prankster.

It was finally dawning on us that traditional and routine Police procedures were not going to catch a nontraditional criminal that was anything except routine.

CHAPTER 3

One night a week later I was sitting in my office trying hard to do some original thinking of my own. I was concentrating hard, and doing my best to come up with something that wasn’t routine and might solve this case, but I was discovering that new thought- patterns didn't come easy when the subject was the Prankster.

I was starting to discover that where he was concerned my ability to think logically seemed to appear and disappear without rhyme or reason, just like he did.

What was confusing my thinking processes tonight was a thought and a question that I came up with while listening to a tape recording that Mike had played for me a few weeks ago.

It was a recording of Old- case Prankster voices and new case Prankster voices.

I was comparing them with each other trying to find a match, but after listening to the tapes several times I was starting to agree with the Professionals downtown.

They said that in this Prankster case, what we had was a lot of odds and ends, and no matches.

They were saying that the notes and the voice patterns we had now just didn't fit each other, and my mind was balking at what that suggested.

Four years ago, we were assured and given a guarantee by a Judge and the State of Florida's Department of Corrections that Frank Styr would be locked away in a cell for Life, and he would never pose a problem to society again.

Four years ago, even before we caught him, we had determined that he had a Copy- cat.

Now after listening to the tapes tonight, my mind was trying so hard to be original it was trying to tell me that now Frank Styr’s Copy- cat has a Copy- cat.

The idea of three Pranksters was frightening, but the real terror was in the question of which Prankster was Frank Styr?

Four years ago, was the man we caught and sent to prison the money- minded kidnapper, or was he the sadistic torture crazed killer?

Since the killings had stopped right after Frank Styr was locked up, our hope at the time was that he was the killer.

That left the money- minded kidnapper Still- at- Large, and now my mind was trying to tell me that he has a Copycat of his own.

If we were wrong back then, and this killer was Frank Stry's Copy- cat killer, we now had two killer Pranksters instead of one.

That thought was frightening, but even as the suggestion ran through my mind, I was pretty sure that this new guy wasn't the original killer, this guy appeared to be cleverer than both of the originals were, and neither one of them was a mental Push- Over.

With sporadic strokes, my mind tried to swim upstream through this line of thought, but soon it floundered, sank, and became submerged in endless streams of speculation.

If this was the original Copy- cat, and he was the killer back then, where had he been for the past four years, and if he wasn’t, then who was he, and where did he come from?

The questions flowed through my mind, but the only answer it found with certainty was that Frank Styr was caught only because I did the unthinkable, and wondered where garbage came from.

At that time, I had the time to find an answer to that senseless question, tonight I had questions that were much more serious, but no time to find answers to them.

Yawning, I turned the tape off and stood up, stretched my arms and legs, and shot the Prankster a Bird.

Now, generally speaking, this idea of living by the ‘Sweat of my brow’ didn't bother me much, but I really hated sweating as a Corrections Officer.

Speaking of which, when I looked at it my watch was telling me that it was almost time for me to start sweating.

A few minutes later when I walked out the door and locked it behind me, I tried to leave all thoughts of the Pranksters, past and present locked in the dark office.

The drive to the Reception and Medical Center was always a quiet one filled with Morning thoughts.

Prisoners say that the thing they liked most about prison was going to it, and coming back home from it.

They said that anything in between those two extremes, you could have, and as I drove into the Personnel Parking lot at ORMC and put on my toothy smile and started sweating, I was thinking that Prison Guards said the same thing too.

The smiles usually lasted for most of the morning, but somewhere around mid- afternoon they would turn into a frown.

Six hours of Convicts and confinement were about five hours more than the smile could handle.

I sweated through the other two hours, put the smile away and drove out of the parking lot.

When I got home there was a message on the machine from Mike that gave directions to a place he said he wanted me to see.

After I changed clothes and ate, I drove by it, and while I looked twice at the building sitting on the quiet little side- street that the directions led me too, the smile returned.

There was an old, derelict looking green and white Ford Pinto sitting at the side of the road in front of the condemned Rooming house on the lot behind it.

The old Ford Pinto had been parked there for over a year, and the Rooming house had been condemned almost that long.

The shaded residential street they sat on was named Jackson, and I drove past it on my way to work almost every day.

Jackson street was home to several other abandoned derelicts like the Pinto and this vacant Rooming house, but since there hadn't been any complaints about either of them, the city was dragging its feet about carrying the cars off, and tearing the buildings down.

I drove slowly past the Pinto, and at the end of the block turned the corner.

This was my second drive through the neighborhood, and I still hadn't seen anything in or near the Pinto that would separate it from any one of the other wrecks lining the street.

I didn’t see it, but the Prankster did, he had seen something in that Pinto, because for some unknown reason he had singled out that particular car as the recipient of two hundred thousand dollars.

Mike said in the phone call to the victim's family he had described the car and given the street address of the Rooming house it sat in front of.

He threatened to kill the victim if any unusual activities were centered around the car before the money was delivered.

That wasn’t unusual, but Mike said what was unusual, and unexpected was that he demanded that the money be dropped into the car by the victim's wife on a Friday night at 12: o' clock midnight.

He said she was to come alone, and drive up to the Pinto, put the money into it without getting out of her car, and then drive off.

He said if the Police were notified, or if they became involved her husband would be killed.

When the victim's wife called the police after the first call, the Dispatcher was smart enough to tell her to tape any other calls and stay by the Phone.

After giving her these instructions, the Dispatcher went and got a Detective to take the call.

The Detective told her to tape all future calls, which she did, but when the ransom call finally came, the voice was so disguised, and the words mumbled so bad the recording was useless.

At Police Headquarters, Mike Swensen was in about the same condition, one minute he wanted the Drop- site monitored, and the next minute he didn't.

Early that morning he told one Officer that since she wouldn't have to get out of the car he thought it would be best if a Policewoman posing as the wife made the drop, but later that afternoon when another Officer in the squad made the same suggestion he told that Officer it was a terrible idea.

When the question of securing the Drop area came up Mike told us to discuss it among ourselves then got up and left the room.

In unison, all heads turned to me, but I was looking for an answer on the floor, in the ceiling, in my open palms, or anywhere else, except in my mind, because even without thinking about it, I knew the answer wasn't in there.

A Rookie named George Cummins saved the day. With all the innocence of a beginner he asked the room.

" Why can't we put a dog near the car and have him attack whoever comes for the money, then when we hear the noise, we rush the car and make the arrest.”

Sparse laughter met the suggestion, and for a minute I laughed too, then a thought came to me.

This one was about dogs too, so I went to the door and call Mike, and when he came, I mentioned George's idea about using a dog.

I didn't say how George wanted him used, I danced around his suggestion and got to my own idea, which I made sound like it was George's idea.

"You see Mike. " I began feeling ridiculous as I said it. " I learned a little something about dogs from a partner I worked with by the name of Jo Jo."

I waited until the snickering quieted down before I continued. They knew the Jo Jo story.

" It’s something I learned about dogs with very sensitive noses. I found out that you can give them a scent to find, and then give them a reward when they find it, and what you got then is an instant Identity machine."

When I said ‘Identity Machine’ the snickering stopped completely, and George looked at me mystified.

This wasn't going where he intended for it to go when he made the dog suggestion.

Looking at the faces turned in my direction I said. "One scent that I like is called Misty Miles."

It took me a while, but I had finally figured out how he got those dogs to come directly to me in the Park.

"Yea." Mike said not showing much enthusiasm for the idea. " I like Diamonds by Liz Taylor, but what has that got to do with the cost of Rice in China?"

The giggling started again, and this time, when people started slapping each other on the back and pantomiming spraying perfume under their arms, it turned into open laughter.

I looked at George and noticed that he was taking the laughter personally and his feelings were getting hurt.

Being a Rookie and new at the Station he didn’t know Mike, and he couldn't phantom what Mike was doing with the sarcasm.

After the laughter died down a little Osccar Delvins said from the back of the room. " Using a dog on him isn't a bad idea, guys, remember he used a dog on us, and it worked."

There was a new spatter of laughter then from the front of the room someone threw in. " Two of the damn Things, to be exact."

I think after that comment every body in the room, including George, started to relax.

After the laughter subsided, going back to scents Mike suggested. “ But something better than Diamonds or Misty Miles would be a scent that is so vague the human nose wouldn’t pick it up easy, but a good dog nose would. We put that scent in the old Pinto and on the money.”

After introducing everybody to the idea of using the dog and the scent he ended with. " We know he's not going to drive the car away; he's playing with us there."

The snickering rose again, but it stopped when Mike said to the room. " I don't know how he's going to get away, but he'll get the money and get away, then he'll turn up somewhere else looking innocent."

A mumbled ‘Yea’ and a head shake or two came from different sections of the room, but Mike gave a big Machiavellian smile and winked at everybody, and as the real use of the dog became evident to us, we all smiled and winked back at him.

Turning serious Mike said. "But first, and before he gets away, we have to get him into the car with the scent. Now we don’t want him to get suspicious by smelling an air freshener in that old car, so we put the silent scent on the seat and on the money, then we put the money in the middle of the seat where he must slide across the seat to get to it.”

Mike smiled when he said. “Then when he gets away, but has our scent on him he’s caught, and it's just like he never got away.

“The dogs will point him out to us!" George yelled, jumping up, and beaming proudly at the crowd of cheering Officers he said. “It’ll work, I know it will.”

" When we left the station Mike asked me. " You know anybody that's got a good Bloodhound or two?”

"Yea.” I said without hesitation. " My employer, The State of Florida keeps a bunch of them up at Raiford."

After more thought I added. " Right across the street from where they keep Frank Styr."

Monday, when we talked to Norman Anderson, who was the warden at Orange Reception Center about the possibility of using State owned dogs in a Criminal Investigation, he was all for it, he assured Mike and me that there was no reason for us to go all the way up to Raiford, OPD could borrow a dog from the facility in Orange County.

When I mentioned the kind of work the dog would have to do, and the importance of his having a good tracking nose, he called the name of one dog he knew.

He said. “ Catch 'em is the dog you want.”

Mike laughed at the name, and I smiled, but warden Anderson did neither, in a serious voice with a straight face he told us. " I tell you boys; this dog's nose is so good he can follow an imaginary scent through a bad dream and find the ghost that made it."

When we thought of ‘Ole Catch em’ chasing that imaginary ghost Mike and I laughed, but when we got to meet him the next day ‘Ole Catch em’ didn’t even break a smile, he gave my pants leg a quick perfunctory sniff, did the same for Mike then ignored us.

Tuesday morning a Public Works Street cleaner sprayed the scent all over the old Pinto, and at 12: o' clock midnight on Friday night, as directed, the wife threw the money into the back seat of the Pinto and drove away.

At 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning, just one hour after midnight, while the wife drove away, at the end of the street a Marching band started up.

Within minutes, out of the darkness, a large crowd of people appeared. With arms waving above their heads and their feet stepping high they followed the Band as it marched down the dark empty street.

Twenty minutes later small fires began to appear on each side of Jackson Street, which was now crowded.

In the abandoned houses lights started to come on, and soon trails of smoke and the pungent odor of cooking meat permeated the air throughout the neighborhood.

From an open window on the second floor of the condemned house behind the Pinto someone yelled. " It's Party Time!"

When the cry was picked up in the streets below the Marching Band stopped marching and started playing popular dance music.

Couples began running into the street dancing, and twenty minutes after 2 a.m. on Saturday morning there was a Block Party on Jackson Street.

From where we sat in the branches of a tall Oak tree two blocks away, Mike and I watched in amazement and disbelief as the crowd grew to more than a hundred people.

Even on streets two blocks away from the abandoned Pinto we could see shadowed people moving around.

Both of us wore Night Vision binoculars that were trained on the old Pinto and the crowd of people dancing around it.

When two mounted Police Officers rode past the car and stopped their horses behind it I watched them with mild interest.

They sat there quietly for about four minutes watching the dancing couples and the people coming and going around the fires along the street.

It was only after one of the horses shied away from a girl approaching it and the Officer slid out of the saddle did, I become suspicious.

I spotted the cracked door on the Pinto about the same time Mike did, and as the horse with the sliding rider pranced off dragging the Officer behind him, we started down the tree trunk.

When we reached the Pinto a few minutes later the horse and the Dummy Officer were being held by two real Officers.

Three minutes later the other horse was found a block away without a rider.

Right then, according to plan the area was sealed off in a three- block radius.

Nothing in and nothing out: that was the rehearsed plan. The Dog Handlers and the trucks with the dogs in it arrived within thirty minutes.

A hasty check of all the Exits was made, and when it was determined that no one had left the area a green and white Squad car drove through the streets in the cordoned area announcing on it's Loud Speaker where the Check Points were located.

It advised anyone desiring to leave the area to do so through a Police Check Point, and that anyone trying to leave by any other route would be arrested.

In the beginning the crowd became belligerent, loud and angry voices were heard calling for resistance and violence.

A few rocks were thrown, but when the Fire trucks and the Water-

wagons began to arrive, most of the crowd headed peacefully to the Check Points.

Soon only those people with reasons to avoid being checked remained in the isolated area, and by Sun up almost every one of them was gone.

Foot and Mounted patrols started moving through the quarantined area and everyone found in side it was brought past a dog.

When the area was empty of people, the Tracking dogs were taken to the Pinto and given the scent then released.

Mike and several other Officers on the Kidnapping detail sat on the porch.

of the condemned two-story building behind Pinto.

Me and a few other Officers were standing in the yard laughing at the attitude he had brought to this particular case.

He was taking it too personal, that was one Officer's opinion.

He said Mike acted like the Prankster was out to humiliate just him, and not the entire Orlando Police Dept.

Mike was putting together a reply when one of the Hound dogs howled on the street behind us.

His comment forgotten, Mike was off the porch and around the house before any of us realized what was happening.

The dog howled again, this time its cry was a long pitiful wailing sound that filled the darkness.

When we ran up to the tall old Oak tree that the dog was standing under, all heads turned up as eyes searched the branches and limbs.

There was a dark bag midway across one limb that was hanging by a rope, and as it sniffed loudly and gave out it's manful cry again the dog's noise pointed directly at that bag.

Mike's eyes dropped to the ground, and he began searching for something to throw.

He found a large rock and was drawing back to launch it when another Hound, on the street behind them cried out.

Soon its cry was joined by two others, and whatever they had found over there must have been better than the bag in this tree because the Hound under the bag stop howling and struck out for the street behind the tree.

Mike dropped the rock and struck out right behind the dog, and as I watched them run through the open field between the streets for a moment, I thought Mike might beat the dog there, but he tripped.

When Mike did get there, along with the rest of us we found that these dogs had treed what we were hoping was The Prankster.

He was far up in the branches near the top of the tree trying to hide in the shadows.

The dogs were rewarded and hurriedly put back into the trucks and taken back to ORMC.

We began trying to talk him down, and we were still pleading and cajoling with him when an Officer carrying a large black plastic bag raced over to Mike.

The bag was the one the first dog had been howling at in the other tree behind us.

Mike turned the bag up and emptied its contents on the ground. It was filled with hundred-dollar bills that were part of the Ransom money that was placed in the Pinto a few hours ago.

All heads turned and looked upward where a tall, thin man was slowly climbing down the tree trunk.

As he came down, he was yelling. " Don't let those dogs bite me. I'm scared of dogs, that's why I ran up this tree."

I heard Mike say, and he sounded angry. " If that's your defense, you better think of something better, or learn to like Jail."

The guy ignored Mike’s comment and continued to scoot slowly down the tree trunk.

When he was standing on the ground, he said to one of the Officers near him. " Man, am I glad those dogs are gone, I can't stand the Dog- gone things."

The Officer he was speaking to looked at him coldly and walked away without replying.

When we got him downtown and Booked, we found that we had apprehended one Martin Jacobsen.

Mr. Jacobsen was twenty- two years old and a student at UCF, and as more information came in on Mr. Jacobsen Mike and I both began to see our chances of closing this case with his arrest slip away.

Before Lunch that morning we knew that he was a third year Biology major at the University of Central Florida, an Honor student, a member of this Club, that Club, and he was one Well- liked kid.

On top of all that good stuff, his father was rich, and his mother was good looking.

And just like the old Sam Cooke song said, for him, it was Summer- time and the living was easy.

As Mike digested the information as it came in, I looked at him, and looking at the expression on his face I could see that right along with Mr. Martin Jacobsen his composure was sliding out the door.

Any minute now the infamous temper would be making an appearance, so I stood up and quietly pushed my chair under the Conference table and backed away from the seat.

I was at the door when Mike whispered under his breath. "Sit your Ass down, Teflon."

I pulled the chair back out from under the table, not being particular about the noise I made this time. In fact, this time I purposefully made more noise than was necessary.

When the chair was finally out and I was seated I stole a glance at Mike, he had the latest report on Jacobsen balled up in is right hand and his left hand was balling up the report received just before that one.

When I looked up from his hands, and glanced around the room I discovered that it was nearly empty.

Of the twelve Officers who came into the room earlier, only Mike, Taylor and I remained, and Taylor was reaching for the door- knob when I spotted him.

" You can sit your Ass down too, Taylor." Mike said to him just as he stepped out the door.

"On second thought. " Mike said when Taylor reentered the room. " While you are up, get everybody else who is supposed to be in here then sit your Ass down."

When the room was filled again with twelve sorrowful faces Mike asked us. " How many of you believe we have the wrong guy locked up downstairs?"

There were a few uncertain headshakes, both affirmative and negative shakes, but no one voiced an opinion.

Like a kid in Grade School, I raised my hand.

" Yes Teflon. " Mike said sounding like a displeased School Teacher. “What is it?”

Avoiding his eyes and looking at the room I said. " Well first, I think you guys have got the right one, but from where I sit you don't have anything to hold him on. There ain't no law against hanging out in a tree, or in being scared of dogs.

“Now that that is said, since I'm not a Cop Mike, and please guys, excuse that expression, can I go home and let you professionals do your work?"

I got a few laughs from the Peanut Gallery, but Mike didn't even look up from the report he was reading.

Looking directly at him I whispered. "Give some people a pair of Captain Bars and they start thinking they are important or something."

I said it to myself, and more quietly as I started walking out of the room I said. “Give ‘em a little authority and they start having temper tantrums and such.”

I don’t think Mike heard it, but a few of the others in the room did, and they laughed.

The next day when I got home from work there were three calls on my Message machine, one was from my fiancé Katherine Young, and one from Mike. The third call was from a perspective client.

I returned Mike's call after letting Kay talk me into taking her and some orphaned kids to a Kid Theater in town.

Mike was researching Jacobsen's movements on the days of the most recent Kidnappings, and he said because the kid didn't have alibis for most of those days things looked promising.

He said his next step was to go back through all the Kidnappings after Frank Styr was convicted.

Jacobsen was a Copy- cat, and we both agreed on that. Neither one of us could see him as the Torture- killer kidnapper, but while killing time we discussed the possibilities.

Just before he hung up Mike asked me. "But if Jacobsen is not the Torture kidnapper, and Frank Styr isn't either, then who is, and where is he now?"

Because of that question the Prankster invaded my dream that night for the second time.

Not even the fantasies I had about Kay that had brought me to slumber could prevent him from coming too.

As always, his face was hidden from me, but the laughing voice was always recognized instantly.

I woke up the next morning just before it was time to go to work, and hearing that laugh was the only thing I remembered from the dream.

 

CHAPTER 4

Dr. Eugene Swab walked angrily out of The Unique Emporium, and mumbled angrily to himself as he walked around the building.

"How dare that roach ridden piece of Puerto Rican trash try to tell me where my place is?"

He threw an angry glance across his shoulder at the closing door and muttered under his breath.

" And then, as if that wasn't insult enough, he had the unmitigated gall to suggest that I was trying to live above it. "

The tires on the little blue Mercedes Benz convertible screamed as it swung it out of the small parking lot onto busy Rodeo Drive.

He had been living out here in California for over three years now. In fact, every since he left Florida he had called one part of Southern California, or another part his home, but lately he was beginning to hate the move to Beverly Hills.

In California he had mostly given up the practice of Dentistry, pulling teeth for profit was nothing like pulling teeth for pleasure.

Lately he was starting to think thoughts that he knew he shouldn't think, thoughts that took him back over three thousand miles and placed him almost five years in the past.

Thoughts that took him to a past his very life depended on him not returning to.

The agitated sound of several car horns brought him out of his reverie, and he managed to slow the speeding Mercedes down just before it cut across the path of a long white Limousine that was turning off of the Drive.

He sped on past it and disappeared into traffic farther down the street leaving the small Island of confusion he'd just caused behind him.

Horns blew angrily back there, but he ignored them and twenty minutes later, after picking up his wife he pulled into the long driveway that led to the Tudor Mansion he called home.

Gail slammed the car door when she got out, and as she walked off headed away from him and their house she didn't speak.

Eugene watched her as she went through the gate and entered their neighbor's yard.

Six years ago, he had everything worked out, it was all so simple back then.

Get the money, get the woman, and get the Hell out of town, then live happy ever after.

That was the plan, and it was a good one, except it didn't work out that way.

He got the money, he got the woman, and then he got out of town, but woman wasn't happy, and she wouldn't let him be happy either.

More and more, it was thoughts of yesterday and the past, rather than thoughts of tomorrow and the future that were on his mind.

He drove the car into the garage, and when he got out of it, as it always did after he entered the large three- car garage, the plastic covered Reclining Patient chair in the corner caught his eye.

There should have been someone else with him, he thought sadly as he closed the car door and glanced that way.

Some one who was asleep and bounded, someone he could place in the chair and watch the panic as it spread slowly over their face and claimed its features when they woke up and saw him standing before them in his green surgical gown.

He needed the sweet release of tension that he found in that first moment when their fear filled eyes discovered his Dental Extractors on the table before him.

Damn!

He slapped the wall and almost screamed the thought out loud when he walked by the chair.

God, he couldn't do this, he shouldn't even think of doing it, but in his mind's eye he saw Gail slamming the car door and walking away from it, and he thought it any way.

After all he had done for her the sight of her walking away from him was so disappointing he went into the house and took a sedative then thinking again of Florida he crawled into his bed.

During the week following Jacobsen's arrest the police began searching his Apartment near the University, but after two days of careful and tedious probing they had found nothing incriminating there.

At the end of the second day they were about to give up and call it quits when a Delivery receipt addressed to Martin Jacobsen was found in a coat pocket.

The trashcans were filled with receipts of one kind or another, and all of them were addressed to this apartment, but the address on that receipt said it’s delivery was made in Apopka.

After a quick search of Real Estate records the Officers discovered that Jacobsen owned the house where the delivery was made.

They got a Search Warrant, and two Detectives went out to the house, which was a an old 3- Bed Room Split level, Block home that appeared to be vacant.

When they questioned the neighbors, they said students used the house on weekends and during Breaks in the University’s Class schedule.

The Detectives entered the house and observed that each of the three Bedrooms had recently been used. The beds were unmade and used condoms littered the floors.

A foul-smelling odor, like something rotting came from the kitchen, and throughout the entire house the putrid smell of unwashed bodies was heavy.

The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes and plastic or paper plates. Rotting food was on the counters and the stove- top.

The plastic trashcan sitting in a corner beneath two tied plastic garbage bags was filled with beer cans and empty liquor bottles, and when it was opened the Refrigerator proved to be the cleanest place in the entire house, it was also the emptiest place.

The Bathrooms were not as filthy as the kitchen, but they both had stopped up toilets.

They were both tipped through hurriedly and the search carried out somewhere else.

After completing their search of the house, the Officers were on their way out the Back door when one of them noticed that the Trap door leading to the attic was partially open.

He decided to look into the attic, and using a Kitchen chair to stand on he aimed his flashlight beam into the opening.

The light probed the darkness in the hole for a second before it was reflected by several large jars filled with liquid. When the jars were viewed closer it was discovered that they contain human body parts.

The Officer on the chair dropped to the floor, handed the flashlight to the Officer holding the chair then without saying anything pointed several times to the ceiling and raced out the door to the Patrol car.

Twenty minutes later when the Crime Unit's van arrived at the house he was waiting at the curb and waived it into the driveway.

When the green and white van turned off the street into the yard, he ran along beside the Drivers' door shouting excitedly at the shadow behind the tented glass.

"I think I found some of the victim's body parts. There are jars of them inside the house in the Attic. I found them, I’m the one who found them."

When the door opened, and the Driver stepped out he said the same thing again. "I think I found some of the victim's body parts in there. Jars of them in the Attic, and I found them.”

The Driver noticed that in his excitement he was practically jumping up and down, and he had completely given up on trying to contain his excitement.

The Crime Unit's driver and the excited Officer were walking into the house when the Black and Tan Mustang pulled into the yard and Mike jumped out. He ran to the door and entered it right behind the Crime Unit and the Officer.

The flashlight passed around and they all peered into the dark hole withheld breath.

Expectations were high when the first jar was brought down, but with it came a major disappointment, the label on the jar's cap said Specimen: Property of U.C.F.

Each of the jars brought down behind it had a label on its cap that said Specimen: Property of U.C.F.

A call was made to the University, and it verified that the jar’s contents were from the Biology Laboratory.

The house was closed and locked up, and everybody went back downtown.

A week after the search Martin Jacobsen was released for Lack of Evidence.

He claimed he got the scent from touching the Pinto as he danced around it before leaving the Block party.

He was placed under constant surveillance and every facet of his life, both past and present was scrutinized.

One interesting fact that turned up during this background search was that Martin Jacobsen owned a blue van that was like the one the two dogs were picked up in after they ran out of Barnett Park.

That and his expressed feelings towards dogs on the morning of his capture, which matched those of the van's owner as reported by the D.M.V. assured us that he was our man.

I

My job Interview with my perspective client came on the day after Jacobsen was released, and when I first saw my client that morning, I said to him a very self- conscious. "Good morning, Sir."

Mr. Mortimer Hilton-Harris was seated across from me in the dimly lit interior of his Penthouse Suite on the fourteenth floor of the Fla. Ritz Hotel.

The Hotel was in Downtown Disney and although it was hot outside, he was wrapped in a warm looking blanket and appeared cold.

He was seated in the center of the room in a motorized Wheelchair, and the gray hair on his large head was thin in places on the sides and completely bald across the top.

He looked to be somewhere in his eighties, but he could have been older than that.

He was lucid when he talked, and while he told me what he wanted from me he tried really hard to explain himself.

I listened and I heard him, however when he finished talking, I still needed clarification on a point or two.

"Let me get this straight. " I asked him hoping the question was the right one to ask.

" You want me to spy on your wife and get evidence of her indiscretions so that you can use them to keep her from divorcing you?"

I had heard him say it, but I still needed that point clarified.

" That is exactly right, Mr. Steele." My perspective client assured me and then went on to explain.

" You see, Sir. My Wife married me for my money, and there has never been any doubt on my part about that.

“Now she wants to divorce me and take her chances on the amount of Alimony she can get through the Courts."

I looked my question at him and waited for the Punch Line, when it didn't come, I started wondering was I supposed to take him seriously.

So trying not to sound as dumfounded as I was I asked him. "You are telling me you want to keep her, knowing what you know about why she married you; you still want to keep her?"

I asked the question again more for re-edification than anything else, and he answered right back sounding almost like he couldn't understand why I thought he didn't still want her, or like he didn't understand why I wondered why he was saying ‘Yes’ instead of saying ‘No’.

Looking directly at me he said. "Why Yes, Mr. Steele. I want to keep her."

I waited in anticipation as his frail right hand reached into the blanket and emerge with a photograph of a young woman who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties.

She was a blond with a cute childlike face and a body that a Stripper would be proud of.

Looking at that body, I could see why I would want her back, but my perspective client should have been long passed those kinds of wants.

His hand trembled when it reached toward me and beaconed for the photograph.

I gave it back to him and watched as he replaced it within the blanket in the shirt pocket over his heart.

When he looked back at me there was a look of intense pride on his face and a look of possessive joy in his eyes.

Why is it Mike, that there is no fool like an old fool?

Is it because with time a person gets more practice and with practice, they get better at being a Fool?

As if reading my mind, he said. " My wife is the only excitement in my life now Mr. Steele. Her youth and her energy give me reason to look forward to tomorrow.

“ I knew when I married her that physically I would be a failure to her.

She did too, but we each thought that mentally we were a match, and in time I guess I failed her mentally too."

He looked away from me after saying that, and while I sat watching him I was beginning to think that there was still some part of an active brain left in his inactive body, but then he said. " But that's no reason for her to want to leave me."

That single statement threw any further thoughts of his having an active brain straight out the window.

" Money is no object to me Mr. Steele, and I assume that you have already arrived at that conclusion, along with the belief that I am either crazy or senile, if not both, but whatever shape my mental condition is in my wife gives it rest and peace.

“What good is my money if it can't buy me that?" When he stopped and didn't go on talking, I realized that he expected an answer, and I looked at him again.

This time I didn’t see the thinning gray hair, or the blanket wrapped around the frail body of an old man, I saw a Consumer who had found a piece of merchandise that he wanted, and he had the money to buy it with.

How much does it really matter to that consumer if other people thought a particular style of pants didn't look good on him, or if they thought the color of a shirt didn’t match the pants he wanted?

I asked myself. ‘How much would it matter to me if I thought it did, and I wanted that shirt?’

In finding an answer to my question I answered his, and I meant every word when I said. "Mr. Hilton- Harris, what's important here is what you want, and if you think a certain kind of evidence will keep your wife with you I will get that evidence. My opinion, or the worlds’ opinion is not important in this matter, only your opinion is important."

The gray head bobbed twice as I shook the hand of my new client before walking out the door.

Mike's News had to wait until after I told him of my Interview with Mr. Hilton-Harris.

I described my client and his wife, who I said was the reason he was hiring me.

Mike was silent through the description, but when I told him what he expected me to do he laughed.

Next, I told him of my pending date with Kay at, of all places, a political Fund Raiser.

Mike’s News was not as interesting as mine, but since he said it was about the Prankster case I put the Hilton- Harrises and Kay out of my mind and listened to it with expectation.

His News was that at mid- term Martin Jacobsen was dropping all his classes at UCF.

Word on the campus was that he was transferring out of Florida to some other University, but no one out there knew where.

The move caught him off guard, but Mike said the question that was plaguing the State Attorney and the police was, ‘should he be allowed to leave the State, and if not, did they have enough evidence to keep him here?’

Going out the door I could have answered both of those questions, for both Mike and the State Attorney in one two letter word. ‘No’.

When Katherine and I arrived at the Peabody Hotel it was 8: p.m. sharp. If she was anything, Kay was punctual.

Persistent was another word that came to mind when describing her, and tonight it was the persistent part of her personality that was the reason I was attending this Fund Raiser with her at the Peabody.

I hadn't voted in the last four Gubernatorial Elections, and I probably wouldn't vote in this coming one either.

Lack of a choice was the reason I usually gave when asked why I didn't vote.

In their campaign speeches, as they tried to appeal to people in both parties Democrat and Republican candidates sounded so much alike, and in the beginning of their campaigns both Parties said yes to all the good stuff, and no to all the bad stuff, but in the end, after the election was over they became so vague on this issue and that issue that their views represented neither Party, and it seemed to me that the only person that benefited from their election was the elected.

Like everyone else I watched the process every year with hope and expectations, and like everyone else when it was over, I felt deceived by it and by them.

In reality, and in all honesty, I admit that I didn’t get too excited by all the glamour associated with the political process, and while I listened to televised debates that were filled with promises and long- winded speeches that sounded like they said something, but didn’t, I took it all in stride.

I listened to the descriptions and the accusations that didn't accurately explain to me what the fiction of the differences in their party’s philosophies was, but I didn’t see it.

Some people saw a difference, but I didn’t, I heard the words they said, and I saw the fingers that were pointed at their opponents, but being a pessimist, I learned years ago that politics and politicians was about money, and somewhere between being a poor Democrat and a rich Republican was the political middle- ground they all said they stood on.

To me, standing in the middle was like standing on a half- truth, which was the same as standing on half a lie.

Once I realized where most politicians were standing, I gave up on politics and promises. A few years later I gave up on the promises, the pledges, and the politicians.

The next year I gave up on the two Parties they represented, and I stopped voting.

The Third-Party candidate that this Fund Raiser was in benefit of was again, politically, somewhere in the middle, somewhere, in my opinion, between being a good Democrat and a bad Republican.

My understanding was that his views on most of the hot issues were a mixture of what the electorate approved of and what was acceptable to both Parties.

Shortly after we arrived and were seated, he was introduced, and when he stood up I noticed that he was not as tall in real life as he appeared on television.

The brown suit he wore did not look expensive, and his mannerisms were polite, almost to the point of being country.

He was labeled a ‘People's Candidate’ by the Press, which in my opinion meant, Poor- to- Middle Class people, but if economics was the deciding factor in who his people were, as pointed out in his campaign speeches, very few of them had showed up for this Fund Raiser.

Judging by the price of the Dinners, the Designer gowns and formal attire in evidence they probably couldn't afford to be here.

Most of them probably didn’t own formal clothes and didn’t have a $100.00 to throw away on a dinner.

At least that’s what I told myself after I walked into the room and took a peep at the affluent looking crowd in it.

I knew I couldn't afford the dinner or the suit, and Kay couldn't either, but she would never admit it.

When the candidate stood and gave his greeting from the middle of the Dining room floor, the brown suited contender looked like he couldn’t afford them either, but still he was greeted by thunderous applause from the people seated around him.

Looking out over the crowd he said. "I don't have to tell you people who I am, or that politics haven't been very good to the people of Florida, you know that already."

There was a matter of uncertain and tentative applause to this mildly ambiguous introduction, but nodding encouragement he went on.

" Florida’s Governors especially have failed you and the State of Florida. For the most part they seem to have served themselves and various big money Northern interests."

A loud round of applause rolled through the room, and with its passing it was followed by several shouts of ‘Ain’t that the truth!'

To further acknowledge the reality of that observation, a few people stood up and offered confirmation by waiving raised hands at the politician who was saying.

"Governor Claude Kirk was one of them. You all remember him, don’t you? During his time in Office, his Lieutenant Governor, Mr. George Wackenhut was called his faithful Side- kick, and was referred to as ‘The Loan Arranger’."

Laughter and nodding heads, along with some amenable shouts ran through the room, but raising a hand for silence he said. “Gov. Kirk rode onto the political scene in Florida a few terms ago, and as he loaned Florida into the Poorhouse his tenure in Office was cried through by some Floridians and laughed at by others.

Claude Kirk loaned money to everybody, and that was the legacy he left the people of Florida.

While he was in Office Kirk loaned money to everybody, but Homer Simpson, and Homer was probably denied because he was a cartoon character, he didn't have a verifiable residential address, and he couldn’t vote.

When he made the Homer Simpson statement I laughed out loud, and like some other people in the room, I hit the table.

Kate didn’t laugh, but she did hit me. She was shaking her head at me, and frowning, but even as she shook it and drew back to strike again, I laughed again, and remembering Claude Kirk and his time in office I hit the table.

When the room finally settled down and grew quiet, smiling at the couple sitting at the table beside him the candidate said.

" When his time in Office was up, like some others before him, Claude Kirk rode off into the sunset, never to be heard from again on the political scene, anywhere.

“ And now we have Governor Jeb Bush, ‘ the Bushwhacker’ is what I heard somebody call him the other day.

They said he gained his claim to political fame in Florida by assisting his brother to steal the Presidency, the highest political office in the Country. They said he did it through a faulty Balloting process in our state.

True of false, I don’t know, but in a few years, Mr. Bush will probably ride off into the sunset too, and like the others before him, in time he’ll be forgotten.

But all that’s history, and I could go on and on in this vein for the rest of the night, but we all know that Florida's political history is not what we want it to be.

I intend to change that, and with your help Florida's next Governor will be a true Floridian, born here, and raised here.”

He raised both hands above his head in a victory sign and started clapping.

Above the rising noise he said to the room. “I promise you, if I am elected, I will not ride off into the sunset and be forgotten."

The room picked up the motion of his clapping hands and soon every hand was clapping with his.

As the noise increased, he began walking among the tables shaking hands and socializing with the seated audience.

I was raising the fork to my mouth when I heard the laugh behind us, the fork dropped from my hand and bounced off the table to the chair, it went from the chair to the floor where it remained overlooked and ignored.

The candidate was three rows from our table, but at the sound of that remembered laugh he was forgotten, and I was thrown five years back into the past.

It was that same sarcastic, cynical laughter that had invaded my sleep periodically over all those years, and hearing it everything around me, including the candidate, disappeared.

My mind went back to the first time I heard that voice teasing me over the telephone after an unrecognized person asked me if I wanted to play a game.

The sound of that laugh had remained with me, half hidden, somewhere in the back of my mind for all those years.

It was the Pranksters' laugh, and I recognized it the moment I heard it. He's here; the thought jumped into my consciousness just before his laughter blended in with the room’s laughter and was swallowed by it and lost.

I turned and looked the question at the sea of strange faces sitting around me.

My eyes swept the room, searching for the owner of the laugh, but everywhere I looked there was a smile, or a laugh on each face I saw.

The candidate must have just said or done something that was funny, and while remembering the morning I first heard that laugh I had missed it.

I think at that moment my face was the only one in the entire room not smiling or laughing, and as I looked around me searching the faces of these optimistic voters, I thought my face was probably the only one that had a genuine reason to be smiling.

There was a Sign- In sheet in the Hotel's Lobby and somewhere on that Sheet was the Prankster's name.

When the candidate reached our table, I was all smiles and charm. Later, Kay said she was very pleased with my appearance and my attitude at that moment.

She said I really looked happy when I shook his hand and wished him Good Luck.

Getting a copy of the Sign- In sheet from the Peabody Hotel would be easy for Mike, but when I asked him, at first, he was skeptical about doing it.

He said I was going on nothing but the sound of a remembered laugh from five years ago, and I couldn’t be certain.

That was his reasoning; mine was that I’d heard that very laugh a few nights ago, and off and on, over that same five- year period I had heard it nightly. I'd heard that laugh so many times I knew I couldn't be mistaken.

Through a simple process of elimination, we narrowed the original list of 310 names down to 46.

Women went first, next went the elderly, the Infirm and those who were too young five years ago, they were followed by people who were not in Orlando at that time.

Another 22 people were eliminated because of Social or Political standing in, or around Orlando.

The Mayor, a few Councilmen, some News Columnists, and a popular Race Car Driver were in this category.

Of the 24 names left from the Sign- in Sheet seven were out of town during two or more of the Kidnappings, nine worked at night and were eliminated because most of the kidnapping occurred at night.

The sixteen remaining people were contacted and interviewed by Police Officers, and only one of them was without an alibi for most of the Kidnappings.

His name was Dr. Eugene Swab. All the kidnappings that Dr. Swab didn’t have an alibi for were Torture Killer kidnappings.

                                                                 

                                                                                                          MISLED

                                                                                  Sorry Mike, my bad, but I was misled about this one.

       

 Manuscripts in other Genres waiting to be published.

  ACTION FICTION

                                  

                                                                      THE WAZARISTIAN SOLUTION

                                                                                         By

                                                                          JimL. Drumwright

 

          BOOK ONE

                    And Jesus answered and said unto them. ‘ Take heed that no man lead you astray, for many shall come in my name saying I am the Christ, and you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you be not troubled, for these things must needs come to pass, but the end is not yet, for nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places, but all these things are the beginning of travail.’

                                                                      Matt 24:4-7

         

                                                                               

                                                                      CHAPTER One

         

                    On the morning of May 6, in the year of our Lord 2003 the president of what was then called the United States of America officially declared the war in the Persian Gulf called Iraqi Freedom to be over.

                    The short squirmiest between the military might of the United States and the obstinate will of the loyal flowers of Sadam Husein may have lasted less than three weeks, but in its short life it covered a desert area that was one country- wide and three countries long.

                    Supposedly, the freedom of the Iraqi People began when President George Bush announced America’s triumph in the Middle East.

         

         

                    He claimed that America’s victory was an achievement that would end forever the bloody Dictatorship of Sadam Hussein, and it did that, but while the rest of the world applauded and hailed America’s military for its quick liberation of the Iraqi People a greater war lay festering in a country that was much closer to the United States than Iraq, and if that war ever came into being, or was permitted to exist it would eventually not only enslave the Iraqi People, but ultimately it would destroy the very concept of freedom itself, and enslave the entire world.

                    Two years before his announcement, on the morning of May 6, 2001, that war was only a dream and a mental apparition that was a distant possibility that lay fermenting in the mind of a mad man who lived in the isolated mountains of Pakistan.

                    And although the reality of its birth was doubtful even to him its seed was carried in the wombs of the smothering fires and small flames flickering sporadically in little conflicts throughout South America.

                    Its gestation had begun as a vision in the mind of another man over thirty years before 2001, and through the years, as they sprang from one hot spot to another hot spot around the globe his mind had gauged and measured the heat contained in those little wars.

                    In time the dreamer and the dream left South America and took up residence in that vast, desolate desert that was three countries wide as it wandered through the barren rocky planes and hot sands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran; three places where nothing much had ever grown, except hatred, anger, and wars.

                    Yet, like the hot spots, and the cocaine farms in South America that gave it birth, the dream grew there, too.

                    It was nurtured in the fervent minds of Moslem tribesmen who were caught up in the agony of a too long-awaited Jihad, and it was their vision of that all-consuming war that embraced the dream and spread it throughout the desert where it seduced one holy man after another until finally it reached the mind of the one unholy man who would make the dream their religion.

                    Through him the dream did not become a religious Order whose followers worshiped Allah or Mohamed; nor did they worship Jesus Christ or Life, the followers of Jihad Al- Islam’s MISSION’S END worshiped the thought of Jihad, which was not Allah, but his War.

                    They dreamed of, and they envisioned a war that would place humanity in the middle of a global conflict that would engulf the entire world and last forever.

                    On the morning of June 6, just one month after the Iraqi People were announced free an over enthusiastic, and too curious computer genius hacked his way into the outdated files of retired army General Ralf D. McMahon, and on that day that dream came one step closer to becoming a probability instead of just a distant possibility.

                    After his first quick look through several of the old letters in the files, David thought that this file was like many of the other old military records he’d gone through recently.

                    Meaning that the information contained in the letter was probably useless and his search of the old Database would end without a profit.

                    So far, in this Database, he hadn’t found anything current or anything worth selling, and his inquisitive sojourn through it had proven to be interesting, but without financial value.

                    Two days ago, he’d found the old letters stored in the army’s Database warehouse located at Army. AWH. Org and thought that maybe, just maybe there would be something there worth knowing.

                    Lately, he’d only been able to make a dollar here, and a dime there selling little known or unsuspected information about various Cold War deals and outdated political scandals, and his hope was that this Data base would change that.

                     The letter he was reading now was like most of the other letters stored in the file; meaning it was old and mostly chitchats.

                    The letter appeared to have been written by a bored General, and David’s thought was that he

          Had Probably wrote it to another high- ranking military officer who was probably also bored.

          They were both either dead or retired now, David didn’t know, or even care, which was the case

          here, but he was sure that the officers were one or the other. On second thought, as he re-read the letter, he figured that there might be a dollar or two in it. In fact, he was so sure of it when he finished reading it the second time, he was willing to bet his last dollar on it.

          The letter was dated August 20, 1966, and it was from General Ralf D. Mc Mahon to someone in Washington, DC named Gerald Swartz.

                              It read:

          Gerald, I just returned from Columbia S A and like we both suspected, the Fascist down there,

          the same ones who persist in pleading with our government for aid in their continuing fight against what they call Communist aggression are at this very moment raising the largest Cocaine crop in that country’s history.

                    There is no doubt in my mind now that just as we both predicted, it will end up on the streets of

          this country and in the veins of our children.

                    It seems to me that in one way or the other they are determined to get American dollars to

          finance their continuing fight with the Peasants down there.

                    That Leftist political opportunist, Roual Ortega said last week that he has reached an agreement

          with the Rural Freedom Fighters for a long-needed cease- fire.

                    If he can bring about a cease- fire that leads to peace, he is sure to be Columbia’s next

          President.

                    He would also be a President that the fascist in power down here will never accept, and they are

          prepared to do anything to prevent that event from happening. If he gets elected to any office, I personally will not rule out assassination.

                    A piece of gossip that may or may not interest you if you can still remember our brief stay in

          Columbia in the summer of ’62, and can also remember the beautiful Senorita Louisa Mendez, who played lover to both of us for a week without either of us knowing or suspecting her interest in the other.

          This piece of gossip about her may interest the columnist in you. It would seem that our

          beautiful lady is still up to her tricks, only now they are played on an international level.

                    As you know she is now the wife of Bolivia’s Secretary of the Interior, Gustavo de Leon. ‘The Lion of Bolivia’, as the locals call him.

                    Well Gerald, I found out that while the Lion is out in the jungles chasing freedom fighters, the

          The lioness is in the city chasing freedom.

                    Rumor has it that she and her husband’s sworn enemy Fernando Silva are lovers. There is also a

          question here about the true paternal parent of their recently born son Juan.

                    As you know, the cocaine farmers in several countries down there have developed strong ties

          with the Iran Contra terrorist organization, and Fernando Silva’s rural militia Freedom Fighters Royal

          are said to be trained by the terrorist.

          His family is rural, and they have ties with many of the poor farmers in Colombia, and that

          along with his political connections in the Capitol has placed him in a very lucrative position that could become politically powerful.

                    As you know millions in drug dollars have been used to fund the training of terrorist and

          enabled them to carry their destruction around the world, and that brings me to something else.

          I ran into that loudmouth Washington Hawk Senator Winston Thorn the other night at the

          American Embassy, he’s been fixated on terrorist and their supporters ever since his re-election two years ago, and I suspect that he is down here on another one of his notorious terrorist hunts.

                    The Senator has stated several times before that Bolivia is the terrorist main supporter in South

          America, and he claims that their funding comes mainly from the Drug cartels there.

                    I think that Gustavo de Andes of Bolivia is the target of his attention this time, he and the

          Senator was constantly together at the Embassy party.

          Some people here say that de Andes’ close friend Fernando Silva is the conduit between the

          drug cartels, the farmers, and the terrorist organizations, but I don’t know anything for sure on that, so I will end this long- winded piece of gossip right here.

          I am off to Korea on Tuesday, and I wonder what our friends over there have been up to since I

          was there last.

          So, Gerald, until you hear from me again keep the speculations in that column of lies you call a

          Commentary within reason.   

                    Your Pal,

          Ralf D. Mac Mahon

          David placed the one letter he had printed in an envelope and walked to the Bus Stop on the

          corner of Odessa Street and Pennsylvania Ave.

          The Washington Review was only six blocks up Odessa Street from his house and he could

          have walked to it, but he had a dollar and a quarter that he couldn’t buy anything with, and since the nation’s capital was always hot in August, he figured he might as well invest the money in air- conditioning.

                                                            I         

         

          Halfway around the world, in the city of Ramallah, it was hot in January, February and in August. It was hot in Ramallah all year, but today, despite the sweltering heat, Sheikh Mohamed Al Sudda was cool.

          Like General Mc Mahon he too was aware of South America’s drug cartels and their

          worth to terrorist organizations, their value to Al Qaeda and many other terrorist networks was well known to him because his conversion to the Jihad Al- Islam philosophy of WAR and his subsequent terrorist training were products of their money.

                    Today he was preparing to watch a worldwide demonstration of several other products that were produced by them.

                    Like Sheikh Mohamed these were human products that South American drug dollars along with Al Qaeda training had created.

                    From his seated position inside the air- conditioner Tel avi News van that was parked on the West Bank of Palestine he would watch the wake-up call that the Jihad Al- Islam terrorist network was sending to a sleeping world.

                    He turned on the little television set that was linked by satellite to relays in the three cities that would host the first announcement to the world of Jihad Al- Islam’s existence.

                    Today’s exhibition would also be Jihad Al- Islam’s first stern punishment to the population of that world.

                    The world’s population would be punished because it had to know that Jihad Al- Islam alone ruled the vertical and the horizontal planes of Man’s existence, and it alone controlled the ups and down of every life.

                    That was only one of the many painful lessons that had to be learned by an undisciplined and misguided populous, and there were many others.

                    Yesterday the world was free and ignorant in its freedom, but after today it would know that any thoughts of freedom or peace as obtainable goals anywhere in the world were unrealistic and that any effort to procure them would be punished instantly.

                    From this day forward the world and all its citizens would not know peace or even dare to dream of freedom, they would know only Jihad Al- Islam, and after tomorrow they would have no fear of dying because funerals would be an everyday occurrence, and death would be a familiar face to be greeted enthusiastically on every street corner, and at every curve in the road their lives followed.

          It would be a road that Jihad Al- Islam would map out for each of them at their birth, and then in pain and suffering all of them would walk that road until death released them from its path.

                    The Sheikh punched the ‘On’ knob and scenes from Tokyo, Japan, Paris, France and Washington, DC sprang onto three of the four screens on the television before him. On each of the three screens there was a solitary view of one setting in each of these cities.

                    In Tokyo it was a crowded marketplace where narrow straw filled lanes meandered between the subtle hues of pink and blue on wind ruffled silk booths.

                    Each lane was filled with Kimono clad shoppers jostling each other for room as they peered into the crayon-colored cubicles at the merchandise laden stands covering the floor inside each of them.

                    Dark red rickshaws and gaily- colored motor scooters danced erratically through the pedestrian traffic that occupied every visible inch of the busy market.

                    An automobile jammed highway in Paris France with a view of The Arc de Triumph standing majestically in the distant background filled the second monitor where a multitude of mini-French automobiles flowed in a steady stream, both up and down the four lanes of the overcrowded highway running across its screen.

                    The cars on the right side of the screen were headed toward and through the Arch de Triumph at the top, while cars in the other two lanes flowed through the Arch coming toward the camera before vanishing off the screen at the bottom.

                    On each side of the busy highways the Sheikh could see oblong wooden plots filled with multi- colored clusters of orange and yellow marigolds.

                    For a moment the marigolds, along with the white and red Rose bushes that were planted along a walkway that meandered through the plots filled the screen, and for that moment they held his attention.

                    On this afternoon the walkways were crowded with a gaily- dressed crowd of pedestrians who were also moving along steadily going in both directions.

                    In the background behind them, and far above the magnificent view of the Arch de Triumph the Sheikh could see the flashing rays of a bright yellow sun that floated serenely through a dark blue sky dotted with large fluffy white clouds.

                    Only on the screen showing Washington, DC was the street deserted with nothing moving on the two lanes of the tree lined Avenue this camera looked down.

                    On the side- walks there were no fashionably dressed women with pastel-colored umbrellas and debonair men walking at their sides, or automobile traffic moving in either direction on the street.

                    The only things that moved in this scene were the large puffy white clouds at the top of the screen, and they floated slowly across a clear blue sky high above the waving limbs of windblown cherry blossom trees.

          Beneath one wind swept limb a lone figure sat unmoving at the bottom of the screen. He sat near an intersection where that empty street met a busier one, and for the entire time the Sheikh and the camera looked at him he remained still.

          While he sat there looking like the silent image of some meditating Buddha he never once turned his bowed head or uncrossed his folded arms.

                    As the Sheikh watched him and this barren scene in Washington, DC he considered the symbolism of those two streets and their relationship to the world’s present condition.

                    Looking at that solitary figure sitting on that empty street corner he thought to himself that the world was truly in a near hopeless condition.

                    Like that street it too was standing still, and it was trapped in a senseless, pathetic state that everyone living in it had allowed it to fall into.

                    Looking away from that lone figure and the emptiness surrounding him to that busier other street he reasoned that there was so much to be had on one side of Life; On that side the sun shines forever, and the streets over there were always freshly paved.

                    Those were the streets traveled by the few who were wealthy and had plenty, but thinking of those brightly lighted streets while watching this little un- traveled side street reminded him that this street was one of the murky-, dark streets on the backside of life that too many people were forced to journey along.

                    This was one of the Down- streets and the Dead- ends that led to nowhere that the poor and people without power were forced to travel on.

                    During their travels the two streets met at various Intersections, but they never joined each other, and they rarely exchanged traffic.

                    The Sheikh knew that yesterday each of those two streets moved in their own direction and at their own pace, but at 3:30 pm today that deceiving scene on the television would change and the world’s Intersections would change along with it.

                    After 3:30 pm everyone in the world would know just how little difference an extra dollar made in the scheme of things.

                    They would know because under Jihad Al- Islam the rich and the poor would all be equal, and they all would follow the same road, just as they all would die the same death.

                    In a matter of hours Jihad Al- Islam would make itself felt, and its presence known in the day- to- day existence of Moslems and Infidels, Jews and Gentiles, and then they would all know that Jihad Al- Islam and not money would be the difference. There would be but one equalizer and its reality would be felt in the life of all of them.

                    Its presence would be felt in the lives of those who believed in everything, just as it would be felt in the lives of those who believed in nothing.

                    After today the rich and the poor would know and believe only in the truth and the reality of a world governed by the philosophies and the tenants of Jihad Al- Islam.

          Years ago, the Sheikh had learned that the history of Jihad Al- Islam’s War Philosophy was a

          Humble one.

          He was told that the Philosophy of War had begun in the Middle East with little alignments of Moslem Insurrectionist who toyed with overthrowing suppressive Dictators and their intolerable regimes.

          They struck quick, and in the name of Allah and Justice they rained destruction and death on their unsuspecting enemies, then like the invisible ghosts they were, they would vanish leaving confusion and mayhem behind them.

                    Wherever the Insurrectionist went Death went with them, and Misery walking on both of their heels plodded closely behind.

                    The name Terrorist was later attached to the little bands of vanished warriors as atrocity after atrocity was laid at their retreating feet.

                    One moment they would be there, fighting, killing, and causing untold death, then in the next minute they would disappear and be gone like the lives of their victims had disappeared and were now gone.

                    In time shock and disbelief became their calling cards, because along with death, destruction, and their victims, these were the other two things they left behind them.

                    Soon, ‘Who’ and ‘Why’ became mysteries that distinguished them from other fighters who were known by their enemies.

                    For years they fought and vanished in the silence of obscurity, then in 1962 after DEATH met BIRTH, CHANGE and CHAOS entered the picture and things changed.

          Together all of them brought DESTRUCTION and HELL-FIRE into existence, and the little bands of nomads stopped vanishing. 

                    The Sheikh knew that now with a six- member board of direction and thousands of followers who worshiped War Jihad Al- Islam was ready to be seen.

          The little bands of vanished warriors had ventured far beyond that humble beginning, and no longer did just Moslem Insurrectionist fill its ranks, today its followers came from many religions, and they may have worshiped other religions, but today Jihad Al- Islam was a religion itself, and after tomorrow the entire world would bow it’s head obediently to the new religious order of Jihad Al- Islam ‘s MISSION’ S END.

                    When the Sheikh looked back at the crowded scene in Tokyo, it reminded him that the first tenant of this new religion proclaimed that there would always be war.

                    War would always be here it said, because the masses would always be here. The poor and the greedy would always populate the earth, feeding on and feeding off each other in a destructive food chain that would keep each of them at the other’s throat forever.

                    The second tenant said that only in war could the answer to man’s hunger for man be found. Anger and aggression were the only opiates that gave a rational meaning to their cannibalistic hunger for each other.

                    His new religion had also shown him that the populace of today’s world foolishly sought the one thing that it could never have.

          They sought social perfection in an economical utopia where everyone could live together and be happy.

          Foolishly they envisioned a dream- world in which the rich and the poor could live with each other in harmony.

          Stupidly, they believed in a Heaven on earth that would be a luscious pasture where the sheep and the lions could graze together in peace.

                    The religion of Jihad Al- Islam didn’t profess to give the world’s populace what it wanted, Jihad Al- Islam promised to give them the opiates they needed.

                    Traditional religions like Judaism and Christianity had failed hopelessly in their efforts to bring peace and prosperity to mankind.

          They tried and they failed; Man had found neither peace, nor tranquility in either of them, and in the centuries of their existence, nor had they managed to foster a real sense of humility or true feelings of love in their followers.

                    In the two decades of its existence, Jihad Al- Islam had succeeded in giving its followers plenty of, not what they wanted, but what they needed.

          War.

                    Looking into his mind through the images on the Television screens the Sheikh sat back and

          smiled to himself in anticipation.

          II  

                              Walking through the door of the Washington Review David Shoreborn considered the letter in his

          Hand, he’d been seriously hacking for over ten years now, and saying that was like saying that he’d been at

          it for most of his life.

                    He got his first computer at ten, and by the time he was fifteen he was already finding his way into other people’s Databases.

          Now, at the age of twenty- two he was a serious Hacker and nothing in a Database was secret because every Database was open to him.

          In the last two months he’d sold only three items, and he’d sold them to that many different News reporter.

          He wasn’t certain, but after reading the entire letter again on the Bus he was of the definite opinion that the information in it was sell-able, especially that part about Fernando Silva’s suspected ties to the drug cartels, that bit of trash should be very valuable to a Gossip columnist.

                    The letter was over thirty years old, but that shouldn’t matter, the important thing was that Silva became Bolivia’s Minister of the Interior under a regime that had sworn to destroy the drug trade, the Cartels, and the growth of all mind- enslaving products in Bolivia.

                    Because of his Party’s adamant stand on ending drug production, Silva’s face had been a regular in the South American press during that time.

          Therefore, any discrediting information about him should be worth something to the Press, especially when drugs and politics were involved.

          Looking at the letter in his hand he knew that Drugs and comments about them did sell newspapers, so any information about them that was also discrediting and scandalous would be worth a lot of money to Paul Rogers, Social Editor of the Washington Review.

                    He also knew that dirt like this didn’t come to the Press every day, and on the day that it did come it didn’t come cheap.

          This was the only one of the stacks of old letters in the Database that he had printed, the other letters were still on disks in a box back at his house waiting to be printed if this one was sold.

          He handed the printed letter to the chubby Reporter and looked away with bored disinterest.

          Paul Roger gave the single printed sheet an uninterested glance and then waved David away. The Newsroom was getting nosy and beginning to fill as the end of the Lunch hour approached.

                    At the thought of lunch, which he hadn’t had for a few days, David’s stomach growled loudly in agony.

          When he had money lunch was a large BLT and a double order of fries, a medium Coke to wash it down, and a cigarette afterwards.

                    On days like today when he didn’t have money, lunch was a thought between a cigarette and the grumbling sounds made by his empty stomach.

                    Over his left shoulder he gave the Reporter another anxious look then thinking that he could still get a meal at the Mission if he hurried, he walked away from him.

          Once he was at the Mission he would probably have to help with the dishes because he was late, but still he could end this two day fast he was on.

                    Looking back over that same thin, left shoulder once more he hurried out the door thinking he’d catch the reporter tomorrow. ‘Or maybe come back later,’ he whispered out loud just to appease the growling in his stomach and soothe that void feeling in his pocket.

                    After his first glance at the letter in the Newsroom Paul Rogers had almost dismissed the old letter David Shoreborn handed him.

          He was on his way to Lunch and not impressed by the stack of other letters from the same source that the kid had mentioned.

          Sometimes he came in with something worth buying and sometimes he didn’t. Like, take the information for the review he had written a few months ago about New York’s senator Tom Jackson and his adulterous affair with the wife of the southern Speaker of the House.

          That piece of slander alone could be said to have jump- started his stalled career as a social columnist; hat little piece of defamation could also be said to have stalled the Senator’s career.

         

         

                                                                                              CHAPTER Two

         

         

          Gossips and Gossip columnists were usually females, but when the Society columnist position came open at the Washington Review three years ago he jumped at it.

                    Maybe in the rest of the country a Sport column was First- class news and a good position for an ambitious Reporter to be in, but in Washington, DC sports were second- class events that weren’t even considered news, and Sports casting was certainly not a good position for an ambitious Reporter to be in, especially with the Red Skins playing like they were playing this year, and last year, and the year before that.

          It was gossip that sold papers in the nation’s capital.

          Who scored and who didn’t score had nothing to do with numbers on a game’s Score- board. The white southern Speaker of the House could tell you that in the Nation’s capital gossip is the name of the game and a score could put you up in the game, or a score could put you out of it.

          The Black Senator Jackson could attest to the fact that n Washington, DC gossip was the medium of exchange that could move a player up or down in the political arena.

          They could tell you that, but Paul Rogers could tell you that and much more than either one of them could because he’d moved enough players up and down in the game to know it worked.

          He’d recognized the names of both people mentioned in the old letter almost instantly. The writer was the Army’s much decorated, retired General Ralf D. Mc Mahon, and the Gerald this letter was addressed to could be none other than the well-known, recently deceased Anchor for WKDZ TV News, Gerald Swartz.

                    The General’s name might have gone unnoticed to most people, but Gerald Swartz was a name every Reporter in Washington DC knew, and even though the letter was more than thirty years old, many of the people mentioned in it were still in the public eye, and therefore they were still newsworthy.

                    The former Leftist Insurrection Leader, Roual Ortega was now Columbia’s President, and the son of Gustavo de Leon, Bolivia’s former Secretary of the Interior was now Bolivia’s Vice President.

                    As he read the letter, he became so engrossed in the familiar names and the ancient gossip about them that the kid slipped his mind entirely.

                    When he did look up, the kid was gone, and the room was growing noisy as it was filled with people returning from lunch.

          He hurried back to his office, and after sitting down at his desk he took up the pencil and paper that were his sword and shield.

          These were familiar weapons that he used daily to attack his enemies and shatter the worlds they lived in.

          With his hand posed above the sheet of blank paper the contents of the feature he would write danced enticingly in his head, and behind his slightly furrowed brow it danced a jetty of a story.

          It would be a titillating story that covered a thirty- year span of mixed tidbits of maligning gossip that insinuated naughtiness.

          The Social section of The Washington Review would begin a saga of defamation that would waltz its way through those thirty- years and stretch itself across two continents.

                    In the end there would be gifts of unwanted prizes, prizes like dishonor and shame for the owner of every name mentioned in it.

          Their disgrace would be the reward and the product of their unmasked sagacity. He would see to it.

          He would start by candidly letting the people of Bolivia know that it’s former Minister of The Interior, the much- applauded Fernando Silva was once considered a conduit between the drug cartels and Middle Eastern Terrorist.

                    That would certainly shock them, but then in round about apology, in a nice/nasty way he would let them, and the lovely Louisa Mendez know that the past did indeed have a startling way of catching up with you.

                    As for her husband, the Lion of Bolivia, he would soon know that his roar had failed to reach the ears of, or frighten Columbia’s Secretary of the Interior, just as his questing sperm may have failed to reach Louisa’s fertile egg.

          And what of the little Lion, Juan de Leon, a man who is about to become Bolivia’s next President? Juan de Leon was a man whose opponents said was being elected on the laurels of his father’s accomplishments.

                    Could he possibly not be the fruit of the Lion’s loins? And if he wasn’t, did that automatically make him the fruit of Fernando Silva’s loins?

                    What if it did or it didn’t, would any of that tripe make him less qualified to be President? He would put the questions of Juan’s heritage and qualifications before the people of Bolivia and let it be their call.

          All that he would do later, but for now he put all thoughts of the article aside and picked up the mike then yelled for Harry over the in- house speaker.

          Harry’s Grandfather was the Paper’s Editor and Harry was the paper’s Run- a- Round- Boy. When he came thirty minutes later Paul had him copy the letter and told him to put the copy in his private file cabinet in the Newsroom, the original was to be returned to his work desk in the office.

          After Harry ran off to the copy machine, Paul put his pencil away and stood up. Standing there stretching and listening to his stomach growl he decided that now was the time to go to Lunch, the story would wait.

          Harry was eighteen years old, and this was his first Newspaper job, Reporting and newsgathering.

          was in his blood, and in his mind, he saw himself, not as an insignificant little Run- about- Boy, but as a future Journalist- in- training.

          Standing at the Copy machine he made two copies of the letter; one copy he placed in Paul Roger’s file cabinet as instructed, the original went back on Roger’s desk beside the typewriter, but he paced the second copy in his beginning files for his own future use.

                    While Harry skipped away from the old cigarette scarred desk in Paul Rogers little office dreaming of Breaking News and the sensational articles he would someday write while sitting there, a few blocks away from the Washington Review Akmed Al Sulliman waited patiently.

          It was midafternoon now and the temperature was rising steadily, the little amount of shade that was provided by the small Cherry Blossom trees lining Odessa Street did little to cool him most of them weren’t as tall as he was, and even for an Iranian Akmed was short.

          The occasional breeze that stirred the little pink blossoms on the tree limbs was a very gentle one, it didn’t attempt to steal a man’s hat or ruffle a woman’s hair as it sailed gently past them on the street.

                    And instead of being bold and pushy, it came and went as unobtrusively as an autumn wind could be expected to come and go in the nation’s capital.

                    Under its waving branches Akmed had either sat or stood in this one place beneath this one tree for the last four hours.

          Unlike the gentle breeze moving around him he hadn’t moved more than ten feet from this spot since they left him here right before the lunch hour.

          According to his watch it was now 4:45 pm. The Diplomatic Motorcade should be coming by any minute now.

          Once again, turning his head and bending at the waist, he looked expectantly up and down the busy main street that his little side street intersected with.

                    The street sign on the corner said its name was Pennsylvania Ave., and in the far distance at one end of that busy street he could see the White House.

                    Even though there were other buildings that surrounded it, and some of them were much larger and taller than it was, the brightly lighted little structure stood out in his view. Looking at it in the distance Akmed thought that it appeared to be standing there alone.

          That single white building by itself had caught and held his attention from the first moment he looked in that direction, and during the total time he sat there beneath the cherry blossom, in his mind it had dominated that whole area of Pennsylvania Ave.

                    Standing up there in the distance on that mid-autumn day, in the bright glare of afternoon sunshine the White House looked magnificent.

                    At one time in his life Akmed greatest dream had been to visit America’s First family in their world famous home.

          He had wanted to come there as a welcomed guest, and in his dream, he would be an invited foreign celebrity who would meet and shake hands with the American President.

          Perhaps while he was shaking his hand he would speak respectfully to the First Lady, and later he would rub the head of one of their children.

          He preferred to think the child would be a boy who would be tall and well mannered. He would be the exact image of his father who would look at him with pride and love in his eyes.

                    After greetings were exchanged and the speeches were made for the television cameras and the Press that were certain to be there.

                    After all the Hubbub was over, he would turn away from the First family for a moment, and in that solitary instant he would speak silently to Allah.

                    He would ask him for a blessing and a place at his side in Paradise, then he would turn back to face America’s First family and the News reporters.

                    When he was once again facing the President, he would give him the present he had worn next to his heart and had brought all the way from Iraq just for him.

                    It was a beautiful dream, but now, as he looked down the traffic crowded Ave., he knew that the dream would never come true.

                    He would never get to speak with the American President or ever visit him in his famous home, his plans and Allah’s plans were not the same, it was Allah’s desire for him to be here on this corner at this moment, on this day.

          Here on this corner was where he would give the greatest gift that was in his possession to give to another man.

                    His mentor and religious leader, The Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammed al- Sudda had informed him at prayers this very morning that the time had come for him to go to Allah’s side. The Sheikh had assured him before they prayed together that his place in Paradise was reserved.

          So, he was left waiting on this obscure and seldom traveled back road in the heart of a great nation’s Capital.

                    Here he sat alone on this unknown side street that connected with one of America most well-known Avenues.

                    Here, unseen, but in sight of the most viewed residence in the world, a residence that was the home of the mightiest man in the world.

                    Here on this obscure little corner was where the most precious gifts two men could give would be exchanged.

          Akmed Al Sulliman whispered to himself. ‘My gift for his gift.’

          His frown was piteous when he looked down at the threadbare old brown Trench coat that covered his emancipated chest and hid the wide band of plastic explosives that covered his narrow body from his neck down to his ankles.

                    The price of his admission into Paradise was his life for the life of the man riding in the third car in the motorcade. 

                    Since birth, his life here on earth hadn’t been worth much, and in reflection of what he had come to be his mother’s pain at his birth could have been spared.

                    He was born in a desert tent that was a poverty crowded little hovel on the outskirts of Basra, he came as one more mouth to feed, to a tent that was already filled with hunger from too many mouths to be fed.

          No, his life was not too high a price to pay, he had brought nothing into this world, and after twenty- two years of living in the deserts of Iraq he had managed to gain nothing from it.

                    In his way of thinking, the entire worth of his life could be calculated by adding the total amount of nothing he had amassed since his birth. He did have twenty-two years and a life, but both of them were given to him.

          His mother’s pain at his birth gave him his life and the twenty- two years came to him through the grace of Allah who suffered him to live through them.

          In all that time, all he had gained for himself was nothing; that and this old threadbare trench coat was all he had.

          It was nothing, but in death, and on the other side of this nothing he would gain something that was far more precious than this poverty clothed existence he now endured.

          On the other side of this poverty filled existence he would gain something more precious than life, because in death he would gain Paradise.

                    He whispered softly to himself when far up the street the first Police motorcycle came into view. “Allah be praised.”

          Soon the long black cars would come by him, and when they did he would be ready, the gates of Paradise would open wide and he, Akmed Al Sulliman, would run eagerly through them.

                                                                      I

          With a weary sigh Allen Mc Mahon stepped into the back of the Stretch Limousine, he was tired now as he was always tired.

          One exasperating Peace Conference after another exasperating Peace Conference was finally wearing him down.

           If it wasn’t the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Middle East, it was one Leftist group of Freedom Fighters or another somewhere else.

          They were everywhere now, fighting against this Government or that Government, for this reason or for that reason.

                    South America and Africa were the present Hot- beds of social revolution, and Asia from one corner to the other was in waiting for a long overdue redistribution of economic wealth.

                    Added to this growing list of groups with realistic and justifiable issues were the emerging Terrorist groups.

                    They too were springing up everywhere, and they wanted everything, or they wanted nothing at all, it depended on who was asking, and which group of terrorists they were talking to.

                    How do you negotiate with a terrorist, and what do you offer a person who wanted nothing but an argument?

          He’d asked himself that question, or questions like it, so many times since September 11, 2001, and up to now he had never found an answer to any of them.

                    With a furrowed brow and an uncertain smile, he acknowledges that his failure to find answers to those questions was probably because he hadn’t yet figured out how to talk to deaf ears.

          “Mr. Secretary, Sir. Is there anything else you require Sir, before we leave this Parking lot, Sir, wine, women, or perhaps a song, Sir?

                    He laughed silently to himself as the teasing tones of his Bodyguard/Chauffeur’s voice floated into his thoughts.

                    “I have just been informed that the security escort is in position, Allen, we can leave when you’re ready.”

                    “No, Ben, there’s nothing I need, and we can go now.” He answered, pushing the disturbing thoughts to the back of his mind where a pile of them waited now.

          Regardless of how hard he tried to ignore them they were always back there waiting, and it seemed to him that now he could never get away from war, or thoughts and threats of war.

                    Looking out the window as his car was pulling out of the parking area, he noticed that the Vice President’s car was parked near the Exit gate with its hood raised and the chauffeurs from two other cars along with the Vice President’s chauffeur were peering into the open engine compartment.

                    Several yards behind the gate Vice President Jackson was sitting in a police car watching the chauffeurs carry out their inspection.

                    Allen’s car was waved through the Exit along with the car behind him, now instead of being third in the procession as he usually was, he would be first and the Vice President’s car would be third.

                    When it rejoined the procession The Lebanese Peace Council and then the Minister of Homeland Security and Defense followed the Vice President’s car.

                    As they entered Pennsylvania Ave seven motorcycles in the security detail quickly surrounded the five cars, three Motorcycle police with flashing lights led the five slow moving Stretch Limousines down the crowded street while four other cycles followed them.

                    The procession was moving along slowly, and it was only four blocks away from the White House when the drunk staggered into the streets and was almost hit by the second car in the line.

                    Two Motorcycle cops at the front of the procession slowed their cycles and turned around intending to go back and remove the fallen man from where he lay at the side of the Vice President’s stopped car, they’d just dismounted their machines and were running toward him when the bombs went off. The explosion was so great it shook the ground and shattered windows in a four- block radius.

                    Two blocks up Pennsylvania Ave. the car carrying the Secretary of State was blown over and then thrown to the side of the street, as were the cars behind it and all the cars between it and the Vice President’s Limousine.

                    On all four corners the Cherry blossoms trees were bent, twisted and uprooted by the tremendous force of the blast which left a ten-foot-wide crater at the Intersection of Odessa St. and Pennsylvania Ave.

                    The two Police officers from the Security detail and their motorbikes were blown into and then thru the window of an office building across the street, but all that was found of the drunk and the Vice President’s Limousine was burnt pieces of cloth and twisted metal debris.

          Two days after the explosion an Electrician repairing downed power lines on the roof of an office building three blocks away found pieces of the Vice President and his chauffeur.

                    Torn and mangled tatters of cloth were found hanging from a television antenna near a charred hand that was later identified as belonging to the Vice President’s driver.

          The left hand along with the sleeve of the black chauffeurs’ uniform that contained the arm was hanging from that bent antenna.

          A few pieces of burnt rags from a suit identified as belonging to Vice President Jackson was all that was found of him, and although neither of their bodies was ever found, DNA samples were used as proof their deaths.

          That night as they watched the 6: O’ Clock News one question hung prominent in the minds of all Americans, the President voiced it when he said to his cousin Gerald, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security and Defense, one of the few people in the procession to have survived the blast without injuries.

                    Looking away from the television the President asked him. “Why kill the Vice President and not the President?”

          When the sound track for the Evening News came on at seven they were still searching for an answer to that question.

         

                                                            II

         

                    “Good evening, viewers. And a very sad evening it has turned out to be. This is Gordon J. Horn for WKDZTV with local news from our nation’s capital and news from around the world.

                    “Today, an explosion on Pennsylvania Ave. near the White House has claimed the lives of several prominent members in the President’s cabinet. Among those lives lost is the life of Bryan Jackson, the Vice President of the United States of America.

                    “Unfortunately, we are told that the entire Lebanese Peace council was lost in that same explosion. Local authorities are still uncertain as to exactly what happened, but it is rumored that before the procession entered Pennsylvania Ave, the Vice President’s car was seen with it’s hood raised and several chauffeurs were searching the engine compartment.

                    “We don’t know whether that incident was related to the explosion, but we do know that on Pennsylvania Ave., four blocks short of the White House, after they left the parking lot at Dulles International Airport, a bomb blew up the Vice President’s car.

                    “Vice President Jackson met the team of peace negotiators at Dulles International after they returned from a classified investigation that was centered in Lebanon.

                    “ We were told that they were headed to a hastily scheduled meeting with the President at the White House when the bomb explosion occurred.

                    “We do not know at this time exactly what this team of peace negotiators had to report to the President, but we have learned that they had information so vital to national security they felt that it must first be heard by the President’s ears only.

                    “Ever since he announced the conclusion of the war in Iraq, The President has been on-going and straight forward in his efforts to obtain world peace.

                    “In spite of continued efforts by terrorist to destabilize the new government in Iraq he has continued with his plans to bring Democracy to the Iraqi People.

                    “ To do this he has placed Peace teams in all the hot spots around the globe and on his list of war causing agents terrorist are said to be at the top.

          “They alone are said by him to be the major cause of conflicts in the world today, therefore the elimination of terrorism and terrorist is very high on his agenda.

                    “His staff says that after today’s bombing he is even more determined and adamant in his efforts to find and eradicate the threat of terrorism wherever terrorist may be hiding.

                    “Today’s bombing took place only a few blocks away from the White House at approximately 4:00 P.M. and is believed to be the work of a Middle Eastern terrorist network who may have thought that the President was in the car with the Vice President.

          “Just a minute.” Horn shouted as he turned away from the camera that was aimed at his face. “ We have Breaking News from Japan where at approximately the same time the bomb went off on Pennsylvania Ave. a similar explosion occurred in that nation’s capital.

                    “Our sources in the Japanese Embassy say that a suicide bomber blew himself up in the center of the Osaka Metropolitan Market Place killing an unknown number of people along with himself.

                    “Japanese authorities are estimating that deaths in that Tokyo bombing will reach into......” He stopped talking and began shaking his head from side to side as if that motion would negate what he was hearing.

          When he turned back to the camera there was a look of horror on his handsome face, then looking into the camera he whispered softly, still shaking his head in disbelief. “Wait..., Oh my God! This is terrible.” He moaned then said in explanation. “The numbers I just got for lives lost in that bombing are in the tens of thousands, and I was just informed that we have also received a report from our affiliate News station in Paris, France where an explosion near the Arch De Triumph has taken an enormous number of lives in the French capitol also.”

                    While Gordon Horn and his listeners rocked in disbelief and shock at news of multiple explosions from around the world, in the Tel AVI News van on the West Bank of Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Al- Sudda was barely able to contain himself as the reporter’s voice droned on detailing catastrophe after catastrophe, each one with a higher cost in human life than the one before it.

                    Of course, this Second-hand review was nothing compared to watching the events as they unfolded as the Sheikh had done earlier from the air-conditioned News van.

                    There was indeed a small advantage in knowing the exact time when something was going to happen, but there were even greater advantages in arranging for those things to happen at that time.

          On the television the News commentator’s voice droned on –and- on in disbelief as it gave estimated death figures and mind- boggling details of the three bombings.

                    His verbal details and descriptions of the events were so vivid, and his voice so shocked that even the cruel streak in the Sheikh was appalled by the destruction the three bombings had caused.

                    But even as the Sheikh listened to, and enjoyed the animated account he wondered if Jihad Al- Islam had gone too far this first time.

                    He wondered would the world accept the outrageous number of deaths and still see the necessity of their being sacrificed.

                    Sitting alone before the four screens of the television set with his chin cradled in his hand the Sheikh fell asleep, but he missed nothing of the program.

          Over the next three nights the Arab Satellite T V channel al- Jazeera ran a copied version of WKDZTV’s Evening News and he watched each one of them.

                    The day after the explosion the Al Qaeda terrorist network claimed responsibility for the blast in Washington, DC that killed the Vice President and the total Lebanese Peace council.

                    The Bombing was touted as a strike against American Imperialist for their false persecution of and subsequent overthrowing of Sadam Hussain, who Al Qaeda said was an elected representative of the Iraqi People.

                    At the end of each broadcast a message claimed by al- Jazeera to be from Osama bin Laden was read.

                    In essence the message said that Jihad Al- Islam had laid the foundation for the new world Order with the bombings in the other two cities, and from that moment forward the leadership of the entire world was in the controlling hands of Jihad Al- Islam, and until the Puppet Governments in office in every country around the world bowed to its will bombings and other disciplinary measures would continue. 

                    The first night of the broadcast when the al- Jazeera Reporter read the message he stopped at the second page and looked away from the camera.

          When he faced the camera again the remainder of a smile was fading into a look of incredulity and disbelief as he said in a strained voice when he continued reading the pages held in his hand.

          “Each one of the countries listed below will pay a tax of two million dollars, the money will be placed into the Swiss bank account listed on the directive that will be sent to each country’s Treasury Department.

                    “The money must be in the bank account by the first day of next month, and any country failing to pay its taxes will be disciplined.

                    “Six Countries are listed in the message:

          1. Spain.

          2. The Democratic Republic of Germany.

          3. The Republic of Hong Kong.

          4. Great Britain.

          5. Italy

          6. The United States of America.”

           

                    After reading the names of the six countries, the Reporter reminded the listening audience that the message was believed by al- Jazeera to have come from Osama bin Laden, and that it was in no way a prank or a joke played by the station.

                    Allen Mac Mahon was still devastated by the events of three days ago when he heard of this new threat to America.

          Not only was the United States suffering from a staggering death toll, but its allies Japan and France were reeling too.

          His shoulders slumped as he walked dejectedly toward the Oval Office, like everyone else in the American government he had heard the al- Jazeera News broadcast and waited for the tax letter to arrive at the Treasury Department in Washington.

                    Personally, he didn’t believe the message was from bin Laden, but the name Jihad Al- Islam had caught his attention and held it.

                    The Name Jihad Al- Islam (‘Islam’s Holy War’) brought fear to his heart, as did the threat in the names of all terrorist organizations.

          They all caused fear in him, but for some reason his fear of Jihad Al- Islam was different, it was something more than just a fear of terrorist and terrorism.

                    Yesterday the letter demanding the two-million-dollar tax for Jihad Al- Islam had arrived at the Treasury Department, and this month ended in two weeks.

          The President was holding his ground and was still adamant in his stand to not pay the terrorist organization ‘One red penny.’

                    Allen had made this journey to the Oval Office so many times in the past that he couldn’t number them, he’d always come bringing either good news or Bad news, but worst of all were the few times he came and brought no news at all.

          Today was one of those ‘No news’ days, but some people would say that under the circumstances this time for once, ‘No news’ was good news.

          In the past week he had made the calls, and he had shaken every branch in every shady tree that he knew of, but so far nothing about Jihad Al- Islam had fallen out of either of them.

          Benjamin and Estrella were out there right now doing the same thing and coming up with about the same result.

          The premature gray hairs that now dominated his formerly blond head were a growing testimony of all the news he had carried into that room over the years. Good and Bad news.

          The sagging shoulders were something new he’d picked them up somewhere during the last week or two.

          His shoulders were still as broad and as strong as they had always been, only now they sagged and gave the appearance of weakness.

                    Adam said the moment Allen walked through the door. “Good morning, Mr. Secretary.”

          Allen smiled back at the dark face of the old man standing half hidden behind the door he had just walked through.

                    The old Negro was so quiet and so much a part of the White House a person could easily overlook him in passing through it.

                    Adam was not a politician, and he didn’t have a staff title that Allen knew of. He wasn’t a Butler, a Wardrobe Handler, a Chauffeur, or a Man Friday, he was simply, and to Allen always had been, just Adam.

          Adam had been a part of the White House during the last six Presidents, and as a child Allen was left with, and cared for by Adam while his father, the General was in conference with whichever President was in office at the time.

           He had to be close to a hundred years old, Allen thought nodding his recognition of the greeting as the smiling face disappeared again behind the closing door.

          When the door closed behind Adam, and Allen entered the room he noticed that of the five other men in there only his head was grayer than Allen’s.

         

         

          CHAPTER Three     

         

         

                   

                    “Mr. Secretary. Mr. Mayor. Mr.…” Allen began greeting them.

                    “Mr. Secretary, can we dispense with the titles” The Speaker of the House Thomas William-Smith cut in.

          “I am sure we all know who the others here are. What do you know of this outrage that happened on Thursday, and about this tax that we are supposed to pay to these murders?”

                    Ignoring Allen who was preparing a reply he continued. “It is needless to remind you Sir that this is the second, and by far the greatest insult to this country perpetrated by terrorist.”

          Turning to face the others seated in the room he said. “And now after this recent wave of violence they have the gall to demand payment of a tax. Must we sit idle while they slaughter half of the world’s population for money?”

                    “Mr. Speaker.” The Secretary for Homeland Defense and Security cut in. “Before any of us start to campaign, let us remember the purpose of this meeting.”

                    “And just what is that purpose?” The Minister of Defense asked in a sarcastic tone of voice. “You call us here without a moment’s notice, with no security provided for our protection, and you yourself probably don’t have any new knowledge of what happened three days ago.”

          Pointing his finger at the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Security he shouted, throwing the last two sentences at the room before rising angrily from his seat and heading for the door. “The Vice President is dead, sir, how is the homeland defended?”

                    “Wait a minute, Mr. Minister.” Allen yelled, reaching for his arm as he walked past him. “Let’s not let this happen, this is exactly the response that our enemies want from us. All of us have dealt with terrorist before, and that’s the reason we are gathered here today, for us to get angry and become disruptive among ourselves would be playing right into their hands.”

          Looking his appeal to The Minister of Defense he added. “Gentlemen, please, let us remain calm. Will you please be seated?”

          The Minister of Defense bowed to the Secretary of Homeland Security first, then he bowed to each of the other men in the room.

                    “Please forgive me this morning, Gentlemen, the Vice President was a family member and a dear friend, his death has weighed heavily upon my shoulders.”

                    “Just as it has weighed heavily upon us all.” Gerald Alexander Bush said apologetically. He had only recently been appointed to the office of the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Security, and he was still trying to settle into a job that basically didn’t have a formulated description.

          He and Congress were writing his job’s description on a day- to- day and –as- needs- arose and were perceived basis.

          He felt that the terrorist attack of three days ago was a thorn in his side that he didn’t deserve. His ears were ‘to the ground,’ as the saying went, but they had heard nothing coming up from it, and ever since 9/11/o1 the Government had Informants placed in most of the known terrorist organizations and nothing had been said by any of them about a plot to assassinate the Vice President.

                    He knew that Sadam Hussaein’s pals in the Baath Party celebrated July, 17th because it was somewhere around July 17th in 1968 when the Party took control of Iraq.

          America had overthrown Sadam Hussain on May 6, 2003, only two months short of his thirty- third anniversary as Iraq’s premier Dictator. 

                    Gerald Bush had watched the calendar closely as both dates approached and departed, he had been certain that Salaam’s friends in the Feda Yeen or Al Quaeda terrorist networks would commemorate one of those dates with some kind of fireworks, but the days came and went with no sparks.

          Now, after only a few months on the job, there was this madness about a terrorist tax, and threats of more bombings in reprisal if it wasn’t paid by the end of the month.

          Sitting beside him, the Rev. Thomas William smith, the Republican Speaker of the House was serving his third term in the United States Congress.

          They were both Republicans, but unlike Gerald Bush, who was moderately liberal, he was a true Republican Rebel from the Lone Star State of Texas, he was tall, thin, and as conservative as anyone would envision an old Texas Republican to be.

                    He was also rather young for the position he held in Congress and the responsibilities that went along with that position, but looking at him from the corner of his eye Bush could find no sign that either of them were a weight to him.

          He wore his brownish- blond hair in a modern stylish cut that complimented his large head and oval face, and since there were no signs of gray or balding, he appeared younger than the fifty-three years his Birth Certificate said he was.

          From his narrow waist up to his broad chest and wide shoulders his range tall body was trim, and when he spoke that deep base in his voice held a Southern drawl that carried a false lulling effect that his opponents had learned to be weary of.

          His words had a way of seeming to bring comfort to the mind even when they were harsh and loaded with venom as they were now.

                    “In my opinion Gentlemen, and that is if I was asked for an opinion. I would say that this terrorist situation has gotten way too far out of hand.

          “Can any of you honestly imagine paying this terrorist tax that every government in the world is commanded to pay?”

          Pausing, he looked sternly at every face in the room then whispered loudly to it. “Two million dollars! And we all know where this idea comes from, don’t we?”

          He paused for a moment, then said softly above the whispered comments rising around the table.

          “It comes from the Middle East. Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and yes Israel, too. They all harbor and train terrorist.

          “We don’t want to say it, but we know that Israel is at the center of most of the Middle East’s problems, it’s true!”

                    Shaking his head dejectedly, he said. “Politically speaking, we all know that this is a very unpopular position to sponsor, but someone must sponsor it, and I will.”

          He stopped talking for a moment, then after looking each of the other men directly in the eye he continued slowly. “Gentleman, the truth must be known by the American people, and if its true that Israel is harboring and training terrorist, then Israel like Iran and Iraq must be invaded and stopped.”

                    Raising his hand he pointed to the ceiling saying. “This recent atrocity should have been the last one this country has to bear, but now because of the Jews we are asked to pay a tax or face more bombings.”

                    As he whispered into the startled silence the raised hand came down in a closed fist and slammed onto the table. “Right now, gentlemen, we have the military might and the necessary resources to end this wave of senseless terror forever, but what we don’t have is the guts to do it.”

                    “Mr. Speaker.” Allen said realizing where William-Smith was headed and attempting to change the direction.

          “I have information from the Lebanese Peace conference that I just attended that point away from the assumption that we are dealing with an ordinary terrorist organization. The members of the Lebanese Peace council have been investigating a rumor that is circulating among mercenaries who are now in their pay, and this rumor has to do with a new religion that....”

                    “Allen.” Senator Thorn said sympathetically as he cut across the unfinished sentence. “I am

          sure that we are all anxious to hear every new rumor that is floating about in the Middle East, but now is not the time.”

          He smiled and winked at Allen. “For now, let us hear what the Minister for Homeland Defense

          and Security has to say about the attack on the Vice President and the payment of this so called Terrorist Tax.”

          Looking from Allen to the Minister for Homeland Defense and Security he asked. “Mr. Secretary,

          what do you have to say concerning those events?”

          Ignoring the protests of the Republican Speaker of the House every head in the room but Allen’s turned toward the Minister of Homeland Defense who was taken unaware by this sudden change of direction.

          Even as the Minister of Homeland Defense eyes rose from the table to survey the expectant faces trained on him Senator Thorn’s eyes went to the ceiling.

          Looking at the expectant faces around the table that were now watching him Gerald Bush cleared his throat, and with a slight trimmer in his voice managed to say.

                    “I need not say that Tuesday was a sad day for all Americans, and I know that along with 9/ 11 that infamous day will go down in history as a slap in Americas’ face and also the face of the world. And because of that let us not forget that this time America was not the only country attacked by these thugs and assassins.

                    “The lost to Japan and France was as great to them as our lost was to us. The last figures I heard have the total combined death toll in the three countries at around forty thousand dead.”

          For a long time after he gave that total, he stopped talking and just sat looking into the eyes of each individual at the table waiting for the implication of those numbers to settle in and register.

                    When a few heads began to nod thoughtfully he continued. “And so gentlemen, if we look beyond our national boundaries we can all see that even though our lost was great the lost to humanity was the greatest loss of all.”

          When he paused to catch his breath and to let his last statement sink in, Allen’s voice cut into the silence.

          “Of course, we are all devastated by the huge loss of lives caused by these atrocities. And of course, this present slaughter does transcend geometric borders, and that is why we too must be able to rise above our pain and our suffering and transcend our borders and go beyond them.

          “We must seek the cause of these attacks, and we must find and punish the perpetrators, no matter where they hide, then we must eliminate both so that this will never happen again. The Lebanese Peace Coun...”

                    “Allen.” It was the well- modulated voice of the Senator cutting him off again. This time his voice gushed with a false tolerance that barely covered the undercurrent of anger floating beneath it.

                    “Please.” The Senator’s voice begged. “Let those of us who wish to hear, hear.” All heads turned to Allen as The Senator voice asked beseechingly. “Please, Allen, let us hear what the Minister has to say, then all who wish to can hear your rumors while the rest of us get on with our appointed duties.”

                    Allen bowed his apology to the Senator and to the rest of the room and remained quiet through the long- winded speech the Minister of Homeland Defense and Security gave.

                    His dialogue was composed mostly of evasive rhetoric that seemed to say a lot while in reality it said nothing.

                    Sitting through it Allen also said nothing, and for the total time the Minister talked his eyes never looked in the Senator’s direction, but his mind never left it.

          He wasn’t fooled by this pretended interest in the Minister’s explanation of what had happened three days ago, if there was one thing the General had taught him as a child it was how to recognize a diversionary attack.

                    The Senator had made two attacks against him, and both had stopped him from introducing the same subject; the Lebanese Peace council and their talk about some new form of mercenaries and a religion that was built around the idea of murder and terrorism for profit.

          The Peace council had told him that they had contacted these mercenaries in Lebanon just before they returned to America.

          Looking away from the Senator Allen was beginning to wonder just what did Winston Thorn and the mercenaries know that he didn’t know?

                    The Peace Council must have spoken to these mercenaries and learned something important, but they were gone now, and that information was blown up with them.

                    Now, he wondered who else would know what the mercenaries knew, other than the Peace council and apparently the Senator across the table?

                    Most of this assembly knew that for a long time Thorn had been a terrorist hunter, and he had contacts in all the known terrorist havens.

          Looking up at the ceiling Allen was certain that Thorn knew what the mercenaries knew, but what he didn’t know, and couldn’t figure out was why Thorn didn’t want the others at the table to know it too?

                    Sitting there pondering these questions Allen paid little attention to the long- winded diatribe flowing from the mouth of the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Security.

          Instead of fatiguing his ears with the verbal slobber that was coming from the other end of the table his eyes and his mind surreptitiously considered the poised intrusions made by Senator Winston Thorn.

         

                                                                                                  CHAPTER Four

         

         

                    While he considered Thorn, sitting at the other end of the table the voice of the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Security offered him many words that were in the form of an apology, but the man speaking those words didn’t apologize for anything.

                    The voice admitted that it recognized that something inexcusable had happened, and that someone was responsible, but who was responsible was never mentioned by it.

                    When the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Security finally finished talking and the voice fell silent, as Allen looked around the table he saw that those sitting there who weren’t yawning were already asleep, and those who were doing neither were gone. As he stood up and prepared to leave the room he noticed that the Senator was among the latter.

          After passing through the Oval Office he was approaching the Exit door to the hall when he spotted Adam leading the Senator into the President’s Private chamber.

          He watched them disappear behind the closing door then entered the hall and walked quickly to the elevator and went to the first floor.

                    Thirty minutes later when he climbed into his limousine and started the long journey out to his house in Arlington over- head the sun was going down slowly and night was fast approaching Washington, D C.

                    The next morning was spent making calls around town asking about the Lebanese Peace council and the Mercenaries they met in Lebanon.

          In the afternoon he made the rounds re- shaking old informants bout the raised hood on the Vice President’s car before the Motorcade bombing, but had no one knew anything other than what was reported on the News.

           At Six O ‘clock on Friday, when the Evening edition of the Washington Review arrived at the stands, the Social columns got more comments than the front page editorial.

          The Editorial was a rehashing of the bombing that took the lives of the Vice President and the Lebanese Peace council.

                    Looking through the paper Allen noticed that only a six sentence space on page five was given to the letter receive at the Treasury Department demanding two million dollars for a tax the columnist said was reminiscent of the old Protection racket practiced by bullies and mobsters the world over.

                    The Reporter basically treated the demand for money as a joke, and in large bold letters in the second paragraph he stated that if the terrorist would accept Confederate money or 2 kt. gold bullion, and they promised to collect it in person a Brinks armored car would drive 8 tons of2 kt. gold bullion or a similar quantity of Confederate dollars to a collection point of their choosing.

          The column ended saying that the terrorist could keep any change above the two million dollars they asked for.

                    While Allen laughed and made fun of the Paper’s treatment of the terrorist demands in Marseilles, France on that Saturday morning Louisa Mendez, the widow of Bolivia’s long dead former Secretary of State, Gustavo de Leon was shocked to see a black and white photograph of a much younger Louisa and the Lion at a Ball given by the American Embassy in the 1960’s.

                    The photograph appeared on the front page of the Review’s Society section, and in the background behind her Columbia’s former minister of Defense smiled seductively at the camera, or was it her he was smiling at?

                    It was hard to say from the angle the photograph was taken, but the caption under the photograph said curiously in block letters. Juan’s Mother! Juan’s Father?

                    Of course, she knew that the Juan in question was her son who was about to become Bolivia’s next President.

                    When her maid arrived she was passed out on the Living room floor with the spilled pages of the Washington Review’s Social section scattered around her.

                    The Front page of the Editorial that carried the tax demand made by the terrorist organization Jihad Al- Islam lay unopened on the couch.

                    An hour later when it was brought to his attention, a violent fit of anger was a Latin male’s reaction to the Society column’s insinuations.

                    The Little Lion had called his mother after reading the terrorist tax demand in the Morning Edition of Neuevo Mundo and was told of her condition and given a vivid description of what caused it by her gossiping French maid when she answered the phone.

          Years ago, and even before he was born, his father had shot and killed a man to silence the voice of this same smear on his mother’s reputation.

                    In the end it hadn’t mattered to either of them that the man he shot was an innocent Bystander, or that the man standing behind him that night was his wife’s seducer.

          Guilty or not, the rumor had died with the man he shot, but now almost forty years later, and from an entirely different direction, the rumor was back again.

          That day, in the home of the Little Lion, his father’s anger rose again. Juan de Leon was a grown man now, and he was a tall, broad shouldered, small waist individual who moved with the fluid motion and the agility of a Spanish Matador.

                    The viscous and deadly world of South American Politics was Juan’s chosen arena, and in it he would seductively waive the red Flag of challenge at the bulls trotting around on the electoral battlegrounds.

                    Openly, he invited them to charge him, to attack the issues he campaigned on, and like maddened bulls in the arena of slaughter, his political opponents soon found that the flaccid flapping of the red cloth was deceptive and that its innocent flutter hid the stiff blade of a sharp sword that could bring instant death or ruin to anyone’s political career who was foolish enough to charge the flag.

                    Juan was a ruthless politician, as his father before him had been a ruthless politician, but more than that, he was also a proud man who was about to be elected to Bolivia’s highest office, the Presidency.

                    That was a position of great honor and power, and a man had to be worthy of such a position in order to hold it.

                    Juan de Leon, ‘ the Little Lion’, was a Latin man whose opponent had already insulted him by accusing him of campaigning on the laurels of his father’s accomplishments.

          That was degrading enough, but there was no greater insult that could be given to a proud man of Latin birth than the one implied by the Society pages of the Washington Review.

          For this Reporter to even assume, and then to imply that he was not his father’s son was the greatest insult to him that was possible, and for the Reporter to say it was the same as saying that his mother was a Whore, and he was a Bastard.

          He made a quick call, then threw the paper aside and ordered his car brought to the front of his mansion.

          Once in it he directed his driver to the airport where he purchased a ticket on the next plane to Washington, DC.  

                    As the plane took off, on the ground below it the people of Bolivia weren’t the least bit interested in a sex scandal of vintage proportions, they didn’t know Louisa and had only heard of De Leon through historical documentaries.

                    Also of little importance to them was what was said about Bolivia’s former Minister of the Interior of 30 years ago, the implication that he was accused back then of being tied to the drug cartels came as no surprise to the majority of them, the much applauded Gustavo De Andes, as he was referred to in the Social section of the American paper, was no longer a part of the Bolivian government, and Nuevo Mundo reminded the Bolivian people that unconfirmed accusations of ties with Drug cartels and drug money was a common practice back then.

          Nuevo Mundo was Bolivia’s largest Newspaper, and it ran several feature articles on former politicians who were accused of having drug ties and later proven to be innocent of those charges.

                    ‘These kinds of accusations were common during those times’, the Reporters said, and they said over and over again that these accusations were often made without proof or any incriminating evidence.

          The last featured article it printed ended with an apology to the family of the former Lion of Bolivia, which was accepted, but an apology for the insinuation that Fernando Silva was once considered a conduit between the drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorist was rejected and that did get a reaction from the Press and the Bolivian people.

                    Senior Pa Pa Fernando, as he was affectionately called by the masses, was a philanthropist whose acts of generosity were known throughout the South American continent.

                    It was said by them that knew him and that he gave up politics and his position in the Government because of the corruption he found in both.

                    He was now retired and lived in solitude on his thousand- acre estate that was named The Hacienda Royale where he donated his crops to charity to feed the poor.

          It was said that he paid a good wage to those who came there and helped him harvest the crops for the poor.

          South Americans made written demands to the American Newspaper asking it to apologize for the Article, and soon some Papers in South America took up the cry and asked for an apology.

          For a short time, there were editorials in a few European papers that mentioned some of the items found in the Washington Review’s Social section, and Senior Pa Pa Fernando was mentioned favorably in several of them.

                    In Petoria, South Africa, as he said his noon prayers Adel al Sulliman bowed reverently toward the eastern mountains.

          Even as he faced the ground and prayed, he knew that the day of awakening was nearer by one more day.

          Like all of the faithful Adel prayed to Allah three times a day, but unlike the other faithful followers of Mohammed it was Jihad Al- Islam that he served when he was not praying.

          Yesterday’s mail pouches had brought news of the three bombing that was the heralding call of the New World Religious Order of Jihad Al- Islam.

                    When his prayers were finished, he opened the French language edition of the London Times and his eyes were surprised to see the smiling face that covered page one of the Society Section.

                    The name printed beneath the face didn’t mean anything to Adel, but the face was a familiar one to him.

          The face was familiar because along with two other photographs he carried a photo of it in his pocket.

                    After nearly a week of waiting for the news of the bombings and the tax demand had finally reached his remote mountain hideout.

          When he first read the death tolls, he was astonished to learn that there were twenty-seven thousand dead in Japan alone.

          The Paper said that the Osaka Metropolitan Market was destroyed, and fires were still claiming lives and property throughout the Japanese city.

                    There was a brief mention of an unknown number of wounded that was estimated to reach into the tens of thousands.

          It was unbelievable.

          In Paris, France the number of dead was not nearly that great, but it was still staggering. Two thousand dead and the Arch destroyed.

                    Only the news out of America was a disappointment to Adel. The exchange of gifts had not gone as planed.

                    The life of the Vice President was a worthy gift, but it was not the gift Jihad Al- Islam had wanted. Somehow the American Infidels had deceived him, and his brother Akmed had not gained what they sought.

                    Yet, even if he could not stand by Allah’s side, or sit with the chosen at mealtimes, Akmed would still walk the golden streets of Paradise, he would walk them because giving his life had purchased his admission into Mecca.

                    In the coming weeks Adel would purchase his own place in Paradise when he and five other pilots in five other countries entered the gates of Mecca along with the thousands of Infidels slaves, they would bring with them.

                    Even sitting on a mountain- top in the middle of the African continent he knew that no country would pay the first tax without persuasion.

                    Jihad Al- Islam had known it weeks ago, and even before it sent the tax demand it had placed him and the five other pilots in position.

                    He would bring the lesson of obedience to Jihad Al- Islam’s wishes to Johannesburg, South Africa, which was the only country not on the list.

          Johannesburg like the five Islands that were chosen at random for sacrifice by Jihad Al- Islam’s council of six would be another example of random selection that would be a lesson given to the rest of the world.

                    In the Pacific Ocean, the Islands were the Philippines and Guam, while off the American Coast, the Islands of Hawaii and Puerto Rico were chosen.

          After a heated debate the British Isles were finally placed on the list.

                    Lightening flashed in brilliant streaks as the dark water filled clouds of tropical storm Isabella rolled and rumbled their way noisily across the western shores of the African continent before spreading out over the Atlantic Ocean.

          Looking from the dark cloud filled sky to his hand Adel al Sulliman studied the photo of the man he had carried in his pocket, while miles away, in Bolivia, at the other end of Isabella’s long journey Fernando Silva rode his white horse Diablo through acres of tall yellow corn and the wide green leaves of tobacco that filled the fertile valleys of his immense property.

                    High above him, and stretching almost up to the dark, storm pushed clouds rolling across them row after row of growing plants climbed upward to the mountain’s top, and once they were there the waiving leaves stretched across the summit then dove down to the flowing clay-colored waters of the river that separated his Hacienda from the Cattle ranch of his neighbor in the next valley.

                    When the white stallion came abreast of a broken post on the backside of the mountain, he saw by the tracks that his neighbors’ cows had run over the fence and trampled into his cornfields again.

                    He nudged the tall horse to a quicker pace as it followed the meandering tracks as they wandered aimlessly through the broken stalks of young corn.

                    “ It was to be expected. ” He said aloud to himself and the plodding horse. “A cow would always be a cow, and cows ate corn.”

                    He shook his fist at the sky and moaned. “What could one do in a situation such as this, where his neighbor raised cattle and he raised corn?”

                    Luckily, neither he nor his home, the Hacienda Royale, depended on the crops he raised for an income.

                    The vegetables he raised were given to the poor who came to harvest and collected them. Coffee and Tobacco were processed then packaged and distributed to anyone wanting them.

                    His charity was a way of life for him, and anyone who knew him knew of his benevolence and his generosity.

                    In the first year after he retired from political office as Bolivia’s Minister of the Interior he had traveled to the Persian Gulf.

                    Three year after his return from that trip he became immensely wealthy, and two years after that he bought the Hacienda Royale and became a philanthropist.

                    His home was a focal point for all aspiring South American politicians, just as it was a frequent stop on the road to acceptance by social climbers.

                    His home and his lifestyle were said to be a blessing and an example for rich and poor alike in South American, and his name was mentioned often in the prayers of everyone who knew of him.

                    Now that he was no longer a public figure his days were spent giving to the poor and traveling the world searching for and meeting a certain kind of people.

          It was on one of his many trips to the United States that he met Father John. At the time of their meeting, Father John was a Louisiana priest who had made a few mistakes in the last year, and one of them was about to catch up with him.

                    In moments of weakness, many times he had contemplated committing suicide, but upon reflection he was always reminded that it was a moment of insane weakness that had brought him to the predicament he was now in.

          More than once he had thought seriously of taking his own life, but he hadn’t done it because he couldn’t justify losing his Eternal soul for a little carnal sin that lasted less than thirty minutes and was committed in a moment of flesh driven weakness.

                    According to the Christian Doctrine Self- termination was an unpardonable sin, and suicide was Self- termination.

                    Father John knew in his heart of hearts that God would probably forgive him for his little carnal indiscretions, but in his mind, he knew that the Church and his congregation would never forgive him.

                    Knowing this, he knew that in time the parish and the Cardinal would find out about his failing, and when they did his days as a priest would be numbered.

                    For over a month he had wrestled with his religious convictions and his sense of shame at the world knowing what he had done, and it was during this time of mental wrestling that early one morning he met Fernando Silva.

          On that morning after a long night of wine minus women and song he was out walking on a parish back road, and as he staggered drunkenly along in the dusky mist of pre- dawn he was seeing and then not seeing the flickering mirages and shadows that played games with his vision in the gloom of early morning.

                    It was in just such a flickering image that he saw an apparition that caused him to laugh out loud and slap his thigh.

                    At first he couldn’t believe his straining eyes, but as the specter came closer through the swirling mist of morning and the alcoholic fog in his eyes he realized that his vision wasn’t fooling him.

                    Slowly, through the dense fog a great white horse with a short rider on it that sat facing backward came walking toward him. 

                    All of a sudden, at the sight of the horse and its rider, his burdens fled, and for the first time in months Father John laughed out loud with an ease that was childlike.

          He laughed and laughed, and laughed, and in no time at all he had introduced himself to a foreign man who was sitting backwards on a horse, and then for no reason he was telling his life story to a stranger.

                    A few minutes later, after sitting backward on the big white horse himself and riding a mile or two with Fernando, who now rode facing forward he found that there were options other than suicide that would free him from his present predicament and keep his shame hidden; options that wouldn’t place his soul in jeopardy of Hell’s eternal fires.

                    Fernando Silva told him that murder was just such an option, it would solve his problem, and as cold- blooded and atrocious as the thought of premeditated killing sounded, unlike self- determination, it was a forgivable sin.

          Father John knew it was a forbidden solution, but still it was a solution that was forgivable by his God and his Church.

          Talking with Fernando as they rode was like Confession the only difference here was that he talked now instead of listening.

          And just as the Confession booth eased the burdens of his parishioners, looking behind the horse at the places they passed by while he talked seemed to ease the burdens sitting on his guilt-ridden shoulders.

                    A week after the small male child he had molested and his family disappeared life became not only acceptable again, but to Father John it also became enjoyable.

          He returned to his former self and found that ‘Self’ smiling and laughing at the foibles of his grown children.

          At Morning Services when he stood before his little congregation and smiled benedictions and blessings on them, as they bowed before him a halo seemed to circle above his bald- head.

          Soon his dedication to his ministry took on a new enthusiasm, and as his gradual change from the passive ‘turn the other cheek’ teachings of Catholic Christianity to the aggressive offence of Jihad Al- Islam’s Philosophy of WAR it went unnoticed.

                    Before long Father John, ‘The Blessed’, as the always smiling, fat little priest came to be known throughout the parish could be spotted almost anywhere at any time, preaching to whoever would stop and listen to him.

          A friend from South America gave him a large white stallion, which he rode sitting on backwards, and when people asked him why he rode sitting backward on his horse he would say with a distant and far- away look in his eyes. “So that I can see how far I have come, instead of how far I still have to go.”

          Then he would smile and say that the road forward led all the way into Eternity, and only God’s vision could see that far into the future.

          Still smiling he would say that a man could only look behind him to the place where his road began, and he could judge the distance of his progress from there, but the road into the future was God’s province, and it must remain a secret to Man, because if he knew where it led to, and his final destination, a man might refuse to go there.

                    The Common goal and Personal sacrifice became frequent topics of his sermons and the repeated theme of the private lessons he gave generously to anyone who would listen to them.

                    While he exhibited a paternal- like interest in his students, he taught those particular lessons with a patience that was almost Biblical.

          Later he began visiting their homes and teaching the men confidentially, and in time some of his brightest students began to prosper under his ministry, and soon, they too took on missionary like duties that caused them to visit other parishes and other men in their homes.

          Eventually the best of them were sent to foreign countries where they began ministries of their own.

          In the course of their studies, they had learned from Father John that Jihad Al- Islam would bring about God’s war, and just as he had learned from Fernando Silva, that war would save humanity from itself.

          Now they taught that lesson to others.

          They had also been taught that Jihad Al- Islam’s leadership council was originally composed of six men who had risen above the selfishness of their former religious and humanitarian shackles.

                    In all the world they alone had seen the light shining at the end of Death’s tunnel, and now they strove to bring that Light back to the dying world of the living.

                    They realized that because of this vision only they were equipped to guide Mankind out of the Death- in- Darkness that the Judeo-Christian religions had cast them into.

                    They had each of them taken a solemn oath and sworn to rule the world until Death delivered light to it, and they swore to each other that they alone would rule it or destroy it in trying.

                    DEATH, in the form of Senator Winston Thorn had met BIRTH at an Embassy Party in Bolivia four years before 1966.

          At the time of the meeting Gustavo De Andes was only an aspiring politician with profitable connections to several rural cocaine farmers.

          Four years after that meeting, he was Vice President of Bolivia and on his way to being a very wealthy man.

                    On the night of their first meeting, he learned that not only was the Senator a fast- talking American politician he was also serious in his efforts to stop the drug cartels.

                    Later in their relationship, De Andes discovered that the Senator was an aggressive War- monger and that he was serious about stopping the Socialist in Russia and the Communist in China.

                    Along with stopping cocaine and marijuana production in South America he said he was going to end Dictatorships and stop the corrupt politicians who profited from them.

                    In lucid moments he acknowledged that Communism and Capitalism both had their benefits and their faults, but he said that eventually they and all other present forms of government would have to be revamped and re- created to meet the demands and needs of the future.

                    Later than that in their relationship Gustavo discovered that the Senator was a hunting hawk who was ready to pounce on anything and anybody that stood for something.

          That night as the Senator talked Gustavo listened to the seemingly insane rambling of his political beneficiary he came to realize that wrapped deep in the madness of the Senator’s anger there was a smidgen of profit.

          The more he listened, the more obvious it became that if he played his cards right he could capitalize on that smidgen.

                    The next day the Senator left Bolivia and went back to America, but before he left, he put in a good word here and there and Gustavo’s political life changed.

          The next election he got elected to a small office, and for a while he felt important and thought that he was going somewhere and would one day be somebody, but after ten years of one exhausting

          Governmental office after another Gustavo gave up on politics and dropped out of the public’s eye.

          He moved to Iran where he abandoned Christianity, a year later he picked up the Qur’an and became a Moslem and a re- born man.

          In a strange way it was Gustavo’s conversion to Islam that initiated the emergence of Jihad Al- Islam and gave the Senator a means toward stopping everything he felt he needed to stop.

          Gustavo’s former ties with terrorist organizations in the drug trade had introduced him to the Sheikh Mohammed al- Sudda, who at the time of their meeting was leading a small band of desert nomads who were out of work Mercenaries turned drug dealers.

          It was his new religion Islam that introduced him to the concept of Jihad, which he learned was Allah’s Holy War.

                    Shortly after he moved to Iran he agreed to act as a Go- between for the Senator and members f the Saudi royal family who were having troubles with the followers of The Ayatollah Amir Qureia, a Moslem cleric that was gaining a widespread reputation and popularity as a revolutionary Holy man with a vision of Jihad.

          One day while waiting on the Ayatollah, who he was negotiating a labor contract with he ran into the Sheikh again, and after the Sheikh brought up the visionary aspics of the cleric, he mentioned some of the Senator’s thoughts on the world’s condition.

          The Sheik and his mercenaries were in Arabia on behalf of a neighboring oil producing country that had procured their services.

          They were busting pipes, spilling oil and burning refineries while running amuck across the countryside creating any form of havoc they could think of.

          The Senator was in Arabia on behalf of the American President attempting to settle the on going dispute between Arabia and that same neighboring oil producing country, he had given his best efforts to negotiating an end to this destructive situation, but as smoke from one oil field after another in both countries darkened the skies with their expensive acrid smelling smoke he was having no success, his efforts at negotiating an end to these on-going acts of reprisal on both sides was proving to be nerve racking, and since failure had never been an acceptable option for Winston Thorn he was often depressed.

          It was around this time that he began calling himself DEATH and saying that the world and the people who populated it were sick and needed a cure.

          It was DEATH who re-educated the Sheikh and taught him that the true value of being a mercenary was in being a terrorist also.

          And since they were already in Arabia DEATH started the first lesson with the Saudis.

          With them he showed the Sheikh profits that lay, not so much in the destruction of oil wells, but in the threat of their destruction.

          It was in Saudi Arabia that DEATH taught Sheikh Mohammed al- Sudda the true meaning of terrorism, and the product of that education was the religion it gave to the Sheikh and his followers.

          That education gave them a religion of war that pointed their futures in a direction that led them into an earthly Paradise with a source of income that was bottomless.

                    It was DEATH who showed them that the world was like the human body, he told them that when a cancer attacked the lungs in the body the sickness didn’t stop there, it affected the entire body.

          With a patience that was all enduring he explained to them that the same reasoning held true for the world they lived in and the various sicknesses that were attacking it.

                    Cancers like Communism and Capitalism, Autocrats and Plutocrats; Potentates and Pretenders, he called them all and counted their number on his fingers until the fingers ran out and the list still went on.

          In the end he said that the rulers and the ruled, the rich and the poor were all unwanted cancers that were sickening their world.

          Then he told them that just as you had to cut cancers out of the human body to cure it, the cancers in the world had to be cut out and eradicated before the world could get better and eventually be cured.

                    As the Sheikh and his followers listened to and learned from the teachings of DEATH, they remembered the prophetic visions of The Ayatollah Amir Qureia and Jihad Al- Islam took shape in their minds.

          The nomads knew that the world was slowly being filled with angry and disillusioned men, they knew it because the deserts had always been filled with them.

                    They knew that now, even the Industrial world was finally learning that money didn’t grow on trees or security in fertile soil, those were things they had known all along.

                    In the deserts they learned long ago that in the rays of the morning sun sand glittered, but they knew that didn’t mean it was gold.

                    Now, because the world had finally learned that everything that glittered wasn’t gold, paucity like a thief in the night or an unwanted guest visited wealthy, fertile industrial lands, and scarcity fed in them as it had feasted for centuries in the barren wastes of the deserts.

                    Every day now, poverty could be seen strolling down the well-lit streets of Inner-city ghettos with their chests stuck out and a swagger in its walk.

          After school, it hung out on the playgrounds and at the YMCA where through the contents of brown penny wrappers and clear plastic bags it played tag with the minds of young children.

                    On weekends it hangs out on the pork- laden grills of backyard Bar- B- Ques in suburban communities outside the city limits.

          Hiding behind split level houses where malnourished fat children chased each other and played games it smiled knowingly at their mothers while down the road it hid from their unsuspecting fathers who were farmers that drove bright red tractors thru row after row of flourishing green plants that were nutritionally deficient.

          Hiding within the stalks of the oversized, over fertilized vegetables, Poverty and its partner Hunger waited patiently for the harvest, they knew that after the plants were picked and eaten the stomach would be full, but the body would still be starving.

                    Allah had sent the Senator to them from one of the richest countries in the world, the United States of America, where even now poverty and hunger claimed thousands each year.

                    Unknowing, the Senator had brought Jihad Al- Islam to the desert with him and the nomads there made a religion out of it.

          They knew almost instinctively that in time Jihad Al- Islam would grow and spread just as Man’s anger would grow and his hunger would spread.

          And along with that knowledge they knew that in time the number of its followers would equal the grains of sand on the desert’s floor.

          They knew it, because unlike fundamental religions that expressed belief in an eternal paradise and a peace that could be found only in the grave, the religion of Jihad Al- Islam frowned on and even forbade its followers any desire for peace.

          The followers of Jihad Al- Islam sought a form of life that was death’s ally and peace’s sworn enemy.

          The Jihad Al- Islam Philosophy of Life stated that a real life could only be found in change, chaos and disorder, and according to the Philosophy of Life a person had to search diligently through the burning embers of some disturbance to find a life for himself, and when the gift of life was finally found it was so precious it could only be exchanged for another’s life.

                    To go alone peacefully to death and the grave was a waste of that gift, therefore Jihad Al- Islam’s philosophy of War taught that the more lives a person took to the grave with him the more precious was his own life.

                    In time it wasn’t long before the Sheikh and his mercenary nomads waited eagerly for each message from DEATH, because in each message there was always chaos and destruction, and as they sent many others to the grave the value of their lives grew.

                    In time the money that came with the messages became less important to them, because in time their bellies became full, and their hunger was satisfied.

          When the grumbling in their stomach stopped its distraction and allowed them to hear the thoughts floating around in their brain, it told them that it was not the money, but killing the cancer that was most important.

          The brain told them that only when they learned to identify the cancers by themselves could the world’s healing process begin.

          The brain concluded that those people who ruled the world were responsible for the condition the world was in and therefore it was they who were the cancer, it directed the body and the body acted and eliminated a cancer.

          The brain understood that when this one was gone there would always be another one seeking office of power and that he would have money to go along with the offered claims of a better and a fairer representation for everyone.

                    The claims would sound good to the voting populace and his promise of more of ‘This’ and less of ‘That’ would be very convincing.

          And he too, like the incumbent would shake hands and kiss babies all through the election process and his face and voice would become as familiar as the face and voice of friends and family members as it invaded a voting homeowner’s privacy every day until the election was over.

                    Later, when the nomad’s brain arrived at the conclusion that in the scheme of things it was only the office of power that was important it directed the hands to accept money from the Office holder and from the Office seeker.

          Before long it became common practice that while the right hand took the money to protect the crooked incumbent ruler, the left-hand accepted money to dispose him.

          The brain, which guided the actions of both hands, understood that the office of power would still be there tomorrow, and tomorrow there would be another incumbent dictator or corrupt politician with promises in it.

         

          CHAPTER Five

         

         

          For days he had studied this man’s features as they smiled at him from a photograph he carried in his pouch, and the minute he stepped into the Bazaar Wilson spotted him.

          The face was imprinted on his memory, but even if he hadn’t memorized the face, the pale color of it would stand out here like a pig in a Moslem meat market.

                    He waited beside the gate and let the tall white man get far ahead of him, in the sea of surrounding black hair and sun burned brown skin the blond hair and white skin were like beacons.

                    The man’s three Body- guards weren’t as easy to spot, but Wilson’s patience and his close observation of the people around him soon paid off.

                    The short Iranian with the limp in front of the blond head and the tall woman with red hair that followed a few steps behind him were good candidates, so was the heavy chest Black man who walked a few paces behind them following the woman.

                    Wilson noticed that whenever he turned into a side street or stopped to inspect merchandise in a stall the three of them were always somewhere near the blond.

                    When he considered the height and size of the tall Negro the weight of the small Handgun beneath his left shoulder felt very reassuring.

                    Wilson didn’t think that beside him and the Bodyguards there were two other people in the entire market who owned a small caliber hand- gun.

          Rifles and automatics were another story, everyone in Lebanon owned an Assault Rifle and an automatic pistol, they could be found lying in every gutter beside the bodies of the men who had owned them in life.

                    The blond stopped before the tent of Jafar, the Gunsmith, he paused, looked quickly back over his shoulder once, and then ducked into the tent closing the flap behind him.

                    Wilson walked hurriedly past the entrance to Jafar’s tent, and on pass the next tent, but when he was certain that the Bodyguards weren’t watching him he hurried around the tent side and fell to the ground.

                    Two minutes later he had crawled behind Jafar’s tent where he made a small vertical incision near the ground with his dagger, then very carefully he opened the slit and pressed an eye to the hole.

          The blond and the Gunsmith sprang into view.

          Through the slit he had a clear view of both, but what was more important to Wilson than seeing them was that he could also hear their conversation.

                    For three days Allen McMahon had searched the Lebanese countryside looking for directions to this market and this man, they were the only clues he had to finding out what the Peace council had found for the President, and for two of those three days Wilson had followed him to learn what he and the Lebanese Peace council knew about the leadership of Jihad Al- Islam.

                    Wilson had lost him early yesterday morning just outside the camel stands on the other side of the wall surrounding this same market, he had turned away for a moment and the man disappeared.

                    The American was posing as a businessman with Interests in South Africa. The story he gave the Gun merchant was that he needed a security team to protect a valuable cargo he had to move across that country.

                    The men he needed had to be top caliber mercs who weren’t afraid of a gunfight and killing if it became necessary to protect his shipment.

                    Wilson heard him say softly to the old Lebanese merchant. “I found you in a Palm tree.” To make sure that the gunsmith understood him Allen pronounced each Arabic word carefully.

                    The phrase was a code that contained the identity of the man who had recommended the gunsmith to him.

          “And my needs are great.” He said and placed a thick roll of American dollars into the hand that was stretched anxiously toward him.

                    “When will you need these men, American?” Wilson heard the gray- headed man ask as he took a seat next to a gun rack filled with shining automatic weapons.

          Looking around the tent he placed the roll of money in his underpants and took a small black automatic pistol out of them.

                    While they talked Jafar toyed with the little pistol by bouncing it slowly from the palm of one hand to the palm of the other hand.

          As he watched the bouncing pistol Allen noticed that the thumb on the left hand was missing, as was the little finger on the right hand, the two missing fingers told him that the old man was a thief twice convicted.

                    As he pistol bounced from one palm to the other Allen watched and considered Jafar and one second the little automatic was traveling slowly from one hand to the other and the next second it was pointed at him and coughing.

          Allen was saying as he moved to stand before the gun rack. “I would like to have them by next week, if that is possible. The sooner...”

          The gun rose and pointed, the direction it was pointed in followed by the quiet hissing sound it made stopped Allen in mid step and mid-sentence.

                    As his legs turned weak then buckled, he stood wobbling, looking mystified from the smoking gun that was pointed toward him to the smiling face of the Lebanese merchant.

          There was a muffled crash behind him as something heavy fell onto the tent and then rolled to the ground outside.

          “Pardon my countryman, American.” The old gunsmith apologized as he rose from his seat and walked pass Allen.

          “Some of them are too nosy for their own good, let us see which nosy one this was.”

          He bent down and raised the tent bottom beneath a small circular hole that was an inch to the side of a three- inch slit in the tent fabric.

          Then with strength that Allen wouldn’t have suspected he swiftly drugged the body of a heavy muscled man through the gap.

                    When the body lay stretched on the floor inside the tent, Allen saw that the bullet had entered the man’s head through his left eye.

                    “Someone you know American?” the gunsmith asked, watching his startled reaction.

          “No.” Allen said stepping closer to the dead man and reaching down to turn his face toward him.

          “No.” He said again after taking a long look at it.

                    Even before he approached the body Allen had known that he wouldn’t recognize it, but he wanted a closer look at the clothes the man wore, and he wanted to see if he had any tattoos or scars he might recognize.

                    The old green and white robe the dead man wore was like the one any poor Lebanese laborer would wear, but as he bent down Allen saw that the man’s face wasn’t Lebanese.

          This man’s face was sun burned to a dark brown color, but its features were not Middle Eastern, they were European.

          Beneath a straight narrow nose, the pale thin lips in the brown face smiled up at Allen, and above the nose the one eye remaining in the head was green.

          Allen was so surprised by the eye’s color that the gunsmith’s last remark didn’t register for a moment, and when Jafar’s words did register, he had just spotted the pistol clutched in the dead man’s hand.

          “ It was pointed at you when I shot him, American.”

          The questions, ‘At me’ and ‘But why’ raced into Allen’s mind, but the words never reached his lips because suddenly he knew why the gun was aimed at him.

          Who else would know what the Lebanese Peace council knew? And who would have been blown to smithereens with them if the Vice President’s car hadn’t stalled causing his car to change positions with it?

                    No one else would know, except Allen McMahon, the same Secretary of State who had traveled with the Peace council to Lebanon.

          But Allen McMahon didn’t know what they knew. They had found something so vital to America’s national security that they wanted the President to hear it before they told anyone else and all he knew was that it was something about an American politician.

          He looked down once again at the body lying at his feet and after a closer inspection the face was still unrecognized by him, but he had seen it somewhere before, and it was recent that he’d seen it.

                    He bent over and pulled the robe’s sleeve away from the right arm and looked inside the armpit and then did the same with the left arm.

                    “This one is not Fedi Yeen, American, he is a different kind of monster.”  Jaffar the ‘Gunsmith’ whispered ominously as he walked toward Allen and the prone figure lying on the ground.

                    Bending down and raising the right leg of the dead man he said. “This one is Jihad Al- Islam and he stands on his identification.”

                    After stripping away the worn leather sandal, he pointed to the three pale scars that crossed the exposed heel.

                    Allen saw that one was a long vertical line with a short horizontal line crossing it at the top and another crossing at the bottom.

          Binding over himself to take a closer look at the scars he saw that the three of them formed the shape of a capital I.

                    As he stood up Jafar said. “He is a very dangerous man to have after you. You are familiar with the tale of the Hydra? Well, this snake has many heads also, and they are all deadly.

                    “Another one will attempt to do what this one failed to do, and another after that one until the deed is done.”

                    “But who are these people?” Allen asked as the impact of Jafar’s words sank into his still shocked consciousness. “These Jihad Al- Islams.” 

          “They are a subject that I have already spoken too much of, my friend and for my own safety I must say no more. And for your safety, you must now leave.

                    “Go back to America, American.” He took a long look at Allen’s pale face, and then shaking his darker one he whispered sadly. “There is no safe place for you now, but at least in America you have family and friends to surround you. Go now.”

          He pushed Allen toward the tent flap and turned away from him. “I will make this snake disappear beneath the sand under my tent where others of his kind have disappeared in the past.”

                    “Go now.” He said again as Allen stepped cautiously out of the twilight of the tent into the blinding sunlight outside.

          For a while inside the cool tent, he had forgotten the time and the sweltering temperatures of the

          Lebanese afternoon.

                    As his eyes adjusted to the blinding glare he moved cautiously away from Jafar’s tent and began searching the crowds for his Bodyguards.

                    Estella’s thin frame was easy to spot standing at the side of the Linen tent across the alley, Benjamin was one tent away at the entrance to the Pottery tent next door.

          Of the three only Deft was missing and Allen’s eyes searched the nearby tents and the moving crowds for his familiar form, or his limp.

          When he failed to find either of them in the crowds he beaconed to Estrella and Benjamin, and in a moment, they were both standing at his side.

                    “Where is Deft?” he asked in a whisper while attempting to hide the anxiety constricting his throat.

          Both of their heads turned away from him as their eyes swept the crowded marketplace around them.

          It was just before the afternoon Prayer hour and at this time of the day the merchants were at their busiest.

                    Unlike a market scene in America where the shoppers would be mostly female, here the majority of shoppers were male.

          There were a few black robes covering veiled figures sprinkled through the crowd, but the white robes with green stripes of laborers were dominant.

                    “He went to the back of the tent you went into, Allen, I’ll check back there.” Estrella whispered as she moved away from them.

                    “No, don’t.” Allen whispered back in a voice that was a little too loud.

          When Benjamin turned to face him there was a question on his lips, but he never got a chance to ask it.

          Right after he turned, and just before he pushed Estrella to the ground, fear replace the question mark on his face.

                    After sailing silently through the area, she had just occupied the wrinkled blade of the dagger pierced the tent behind her. As he snatched the fallen woman up from the ground Benjamin yelled. “Move, Allen.”

                    So great was his strength that while one hand effortlessly raised her to his shoulder, the other hand snatched Allen to his chest.

                    The second and third daggers sailed past them to enter the open entrance flap of the tent where Allen had been standing.

          Just after Benjamin pulled Allen away from the entrance a startled cry of pain came from inside the tent.

          Ignoring the cry, he tossed Estrella across his left shoulder and leading Allen by the hand ran around to the back of the next tent then entered the thong of shoppers.

                    They were three tents away from the tent behind the gunsmith and moving swiftly upstream through the crowd of robed shoppers when Estrella spotted Deft’s legs sticking out of a bed sheet between two tents.

                    Deft could hear with the help of hearing aids and the 3- inch orthopedic shoe he wore helped, but it didn’t completely eradicate his limp.

                    He said that because he was born with his right leg longer than his left, all his life the limp had been there and it didn’t matter to him that he limped he said that it felt natural for him to limp when he walked.

                    It was that black high- heeled orthopedic shoe on the left foot that caught her attention as they raced by the tent.

          Estrella would have stopped, but she was on Benjamin’s shoulder and Benjamin never paused as he ran past the bed sheet.

                    She looked up from the ground and noticed that Allen was now running in front of Benjamin with a drawn gun in his hand.

          She wiggled twice and in a loud whisper told Benjamin to put her down, he did, and as they raced through the sea of milling robes, she drew her gun and covered their Back trail.

          Ten minutes later, when they were seated in a taxi and headed back to their hotel, the old Lebanese gunsmith’s words came back to Allen.

                    ‘He is a very dangerous man to have after you.’ Jafar had warned him just before he asked if he was familiar with the Greek tale of the Hydra.

          Allen knew that in Greek mythology, the Hydra was the most hideous and unusual of all creatures created by the Gods.

           According to the Greeks, for each head on the monster that was cut off two new ones grew in its place.

                    Jafar had told him that this monster that was after him had many heads and they were all deadly, he’d said that another one would attempt to do what this one failed to do, and another one after that one until the deed is done.

                    Looking out the window of the fast-moving taxi Allen wondered where the real head of this Hydra was.

                    The snakes trying to kill him may be many, but Allen suspected that only one head directed the Hydra they were a part of.

          As the lone taxi sped him through a vast emptiness that stretched into the distance on both sides of the dirt road, they followed, he wondered where that monster was.

                    Just before nightfall they passed a bombed mosque on the outskirts of a deserted village, years ago in an effort to protect it from ground assaults a series of wide trenches had been dug around the little marble building, and in one of these trenches Allen could see the rusted right track of an Old Russian T-34 tank looking boldly upward to the darkening sky while on the other side the left track peeped timidly at him from beneath the sands of the collapsed trench.

                    The shallow well in the village center was almost dry; the bottom of it was filled with a moist paste that was composed of dried mud, bird feces and the rotting remain of dead animals that came there to drink.

          They poured what liquid they could strain from the fetid mixture into the car’s radiator and raced on into the cold air of the approaching desert night.

                    A mile later as he looked up through the rear window, high above the speeding car, the evening sky slowly became dark and sprinkled with the blinking lights of distant stars.

          Looking at them Allen couldn’t believe that the same night sky that covered this barren countryside also covered the fertile Farms states back in America.

                    He thought of his Home- state Nebraska and the unending wheat fields that surrounded the General’s home where they lived before the move to Washington and the rampant madness of politics entered and altered both of their lives forever.

          While the taxi raced its way into the night his mind limped wearily over the same paths it had followed so many times before, and as it searched, reminiscing through old memories of home and the General, his eyes started to flutter.

          His mind slowed down and paused tiredly in its reminiscence, and a moment later when his breathing became deep and slow it came to a standstill and stopped searching.         

         

                                                            III

         

                    “Good evening viewers, this is Gordon J. Horn with WKDZTV’s Evening News.” Gordon Horn said as he gave the smile that had started every evening Newscast for over seven years. “News brought to you from our nation’s Capital and from around the world.”

          As he came to the end of the introduction the broad smile faded and his face took on a solemn expression when he said.

          “And again, we must begin the commentary with sad news. Tonight, I regret to tell you that the beautiful city of Manila in the Philippines no longer exists, it was destroyed last night by terrorist bombs and four other major Islands along with the city of Johannesburg in South Africa were destroyed with Manila.

          “The Islands of Guam and Puerto Rico were hit by a wave of bombs early this morning and we are told that fires are still rampant on both of those Islands. We are also told that there is an Armada of watercraft circling them.”

          He glanced at a note that was handed to him and said. “The Red Cross has just informed us that everything from small fishing boats to larger pleasure craft, along with Jet skis are being used to attack these Islands, they say that weapons ranging from ancient howitzers and bazookas to modern rocket launchers and surface to air missiles are being fired from the circling watercraft.

          “The Red Cross is attempting to give assistance, but all local authority from the Military to Civil agencies on each of the Islands are in disarray.

          “Hawaii has recently come under attack by what appears to be shoulder launched missiles fired from two Princess Line cruise ships that are said to be headed toward California on the west coast of the United States.

          “England, in the British Isles is presently besieged by Car bombers, and we are told that paraffin bombs are being dropped from the Twin- engine biplanes called Crop- dusters that are used by English farmers.

          “Along with carrying the paraffin bombs that are setting fires to anything flammable on the ground beneath them, the planes are said to be pulling long white flags that say in red letters. ‘Pay your tax’       “The Royal Air Force’s 2nd Division Air fleet was bombed and destroyed two weeks ago by Irish terrorist, and Britain’s 1st. and 3rd Airborne Divisions are defending the boarders of Wales and Scotland against repeated entry attempts by foreign crime syndicates.”

          He glanced at another stack of papers that was handed to him then looking up into the camera he said. “And the IRA is alive and back at the throat of the Queen’s Government, a new resurgent faction of the old Irish Republican Army has claimed responsibility for several of the bombs exploded yesterday in the House of Lords.

          “The group called itself the I.R.A.A, and said the initials I.R.A.A. in its name stands for Irish Republican Anglican Army.

          “This New I. R. A, as it is now referred to by the British Press is in opposition to any treaty or Cease- fire agreement reached by the old Republican army and the Queen’s Government. A spokesperson from their leadership committee told this reporter last week that they would accept nothing less than the total surrender of the British army and the resignation of the Queen.”

          After making this last statement an amused smile flickered briefly across the lips of Gordon Horn then vanished as he looked into the camera and continued.

          “Now, moving on to News from another section of the world. Before dawn, this morning shoulder launched missiles were fired at military installations in South Korea.

          “The Anthrax loaded missiles were launched from three different North Korean locations and neither one of those locations was a Military base. This was the second unprovoked attack on South Korea by what is believed to be a religious terrorist cult that has recently gained popularity in the North Korean country.

                    “Guerrilla Warfare is also on the rise in Italy again, Rome is now in the hands of the Capone crime syndicate’s enforcers. The former Catholic government that was located in Vatican City vacated its offices two days ago, but fighting between the mobsters and the catholic population continues.”

          Looking down he shuffled papers on the desk then looking up into the camera again he said. “And now we go to our On- the- Scene Reporter, right here in America where tonight Carlos St. Andrews is in the nation’s Capital.”

          A hazy view of smoke laden pink clouds floating across a red- orange sky replaced Gordon Horn’s smiling face just before the camera zeroed in on a fatigue suited figure crouching behind a six-foot-high wall of sandbags.

          The sandbags surrounded the man and a blue and white metal plated van that had WKDZTV News written of the side.

          The camera dropped from the clouds and ran quickly across the broken tower of the Washington Monument then found the smiling face of Carlos St. Andrews.

          “Carlos, can you hear me?” Horn’s voice came out of the pink clouds.

                    “Yes, I can, Gordon, and I am standing here in front of the Justice building where the President of the United States is meeting with officials from the F B I, the C I A and several judges from the nation’s Supreme Court. Ever since the bombing that took the lives of the Vice President and the Lebanese Peace Council three weeks ago crime has run rampant in the streets of Washington.

                    “A week ago, Solomon Haider, the leader of the new Iranian crime syndicate in the United States announced that his syndicate was at war with all American Law enforcement agencies and since that announcement there have been numerous bombings of police vehicles and several attempts on the lives of Department chiefs that the Iranian Crime syndicate.”

                    “Excuse me, Carlos.” Gordon Horn interrupted from the Newsroom. “But does anyone have an idea as to why the Iranian crime syndicates have suddenly taken this unusual stand? I am told that this is the same policy followed by other Middle Eastern syndicates around the world. Surely they can’t expect to win this war against Law enforcement. And one other thing, Carlos, does this have anything to do with this terrorist demand for tax money?”

                    “Well, they certainly can’t hope to defeat the entire body of Law enforcement.” Carlos offered the camera as he faced the building behind him.

          Stepping adroitly around the question on the terrorist tax demand he pointed and said. “Just yesterday, as you can see behind me, the Justice Building itself came under attack.”

          “Do the crime syndicates actually think they can force the Government to implement this terrorist tax, Carlos?” Horn asked, bringing him back to the tax question.

                    “No, they don’t, Gordon, and we don’t know exactly what they hope to gain, but here at the Justice Building we believe that today’s meeting will shed some light on their strange behavior and ultimately bring about a solution to this growing worldwide problem.

                    The camera swung briefly away from his face and followed the pointing arm to the building behind the News van where wide pock mocked steps led up to two closed metal doors.

                    When the camera returned to him, saluting into the lens he said. “This is Carlos St. Andrews reporting from in front of the Justice Building in our nation’s capital.” Then waiving a camouflaged dressed arm, he yelled. “Back to you Gordon.”

          The camera floated slowly across the waiving hand then across the empty walkway behind the sand- bags.

          It hurried pass the shattered windows and blast torn buildings lining the street in front of the Justice Building to swing upward.

          A brief glimpse of a smoky red skyline vanished from view as the camera zeroed in on the handsome face of a laughing Gordon Horn seated behind the News desk at WKDZTV.

          “And now.” Horn said smiling broadly into the camera. “From a more humorous part of the world. It would seem that the Mendelin drug cartel and the Colombian Government are back at war, but this time for once it’s not with each other, and so far it is not violent. The two of them are in a fierce verbal war with the Bolivian Government.

          “These new hostilities are said to arise from a comment that both Columbia and Bolivia claim originated in a Washington Newspaper. The article in question is said to imply that the recently elected President of Bolivia, Juan, ‘The Little Lion’ De Leon is the son of Columbia’s former Secretary of Defense, and not Bolivia’s former Minister of The Interior, Gustavo De Leon.

          “Bolivia’s newly elected President is said to be fighting mad at the insinuations made in the American Paper’s article, some of which were picked up by his opponents and mentioned at a recent political debate.

          “Neither of the parties involved would consent to a Blood test or any other accepted medical procedure that would solve this problem and answer the question of parentage.”

          He shuffled the papers in his hand and said smiling into the camera. “The Mendelin drug cartel is angry with both countries and the American Press over what it says are implied allegations that it funded terrorist organizations in the 1960s, the cartel claims that it’s terrorist funding programs were begun in 2002, the year that terrorism became more profitable than illegal drug production. They too are demanding an apology from the American Press.”

          He took a moment to rearrange the papers on the desk in front of him, then looking up from the papers his eyes found the camera lens and his face was back to its sober self when he said.

                    “After much consideration and some very deep thought, the President of the United States of America has decided to not pay this terrorist tax of two million dollars. At 9’O Clock Eastern Standard Time tomorrow night he will speak to the American people about this decision. Until then he reminds us that this is still the greatest country in the world and that our homeland is secure. It is defended by the most trained and well- armed military in existence today.

                    “In the words of the President, I say to you. ‘Sleep well, America, because your military and your government are awake, and they are watching out for you’.

                    “Good night, all, and God bless each and every one of you.  This is Gordon J. Horn for WKDZTV’s Evening News.”

                    As the Newsroom filled with the Evening News sound track the lights dimmed, and when the trolley bearing the camera and its crew were headed off the Newsroom floor, Gordon Horn settled down into the padded leather of his seat behind the News desk.

          Every new broadcast now left him more depressed than the one before it. He didn’t know about the rest of the world, or his listening audience, but he wasn’t going to sleep well tonight, that is if he slept at all.

                    He shook his head as the soundtrack pulsated quietly through the dim lighted room, and when the room became completely dark his head rolled to the side and his eyes blinked twice, then they closed.

                                                                                                                      IV

          On the outskirts of the sprawling city of al Haji in the Iranian desert, there was an ancient Moslem Mosque.

          The Mosque appeared to be abandoned, but its appearance was designed to be deceptive, and in this particular case those appearances were not only deceptive and misleading, they were outright lying.

          The building was far from being deserted or even empty, construction crews had worked around the clock for a week to give it this look of ancient un-use.

                    The chipped holes in the intricate blue mosaic pattern on the domed ceilings and the jagged cracks running across the exposed white marble walls were all man- made and made recently.

                    Buried deep in the sands below the white marble structure was the meeting room of the world’s new rulers.

          It was in that room that four men sat on a raised redwood platform in golden chairs, and it was in that room that these men made decisions that governed the entire world.

          Before each throne, which the chairs were, a three- foot stainless steel scorpion sat poised on a polished glass Sundial.

          In its left claw each scorpion clutched a miniature globe of earth and in its raised right claw it held a struggling human.

                    There was a name written in Arabic on the back of five of the six throne seats, today three chairs on that platform were empty and one of them had no name written on it.

          On this empty seat in the place where a name was written on the other chairs there was a picture of an open grave with a broken white cross for a Head stone.

                    The second empty chair carried the Jihad Al- Islam name HELL FIRE and those words had been etched deeply into the golden metal then painted a dark red.

                    The remaining empty chair belonged to the dark, muscular man who stood by the door leading out of the room, and in bold block letters CHAOS was etched on the back of that golden chair.

                    “Gentlemen DEATH will not be able to make this meeting.” He was saying to the seated men. “His Washington persona demands that he be at a meeting there instead pf here with us. HELL, FIRE’S continued absence is a mystery to me, as was his recent acceptance to this council by the Senator.”

          The Ayatollah Mohammed al- Sudda looked at the four men seated across the marble floor and the harsh expression on his face along with his unyielding stance showed the contempt he held them in.

                    He stood before them with his legs spread wide and his hands balled into two tight fists that hung at his side above the wide leather ammunitions belt that spanned his trim waist. The color of the belt matched the brown leather combat boots he wore on his feet.

                    Behind the row of bullets that circled the belt three pearl handle Colt 45. Automatics pressed tightly against his body, and beneath his bald fists a pearl handled 357-magnum revolver rested on each hip.

          Hiding unseen behind the bandolier of mixed bullets that crossed his shoulders and met in the center of his back was a small 32- caliber derringer.

          Mohammed al- Sudda was a desert warrior and as always, he was dressed to kill.

          Today above a green cotton robe he wore a white silk turban on his head instead of his usual green and white bandana and combat fatigues.  

          Although the Sheikh was an Arabian and was born in the desert of that country, he was a Harvard graduate and he spoke English as well as anyone in the room.

                    When the Senator first met him, he was an educated ‘No- body leading a band of other ‘N o- bodies, but in the last year he had promoted himself to the rank of Ayatollah and started wearing a diamond in his ear.

          Now, to the world, he was an educated Moslem Holy man that led a band of enlightened warriors who served Allah in his war for humanity.

                    Each of the men seated before him wore business suits and along with the name Jihad Al- Islam had given them each of them wore some form of religious title.

          Although the name that Jihad Al- Islam gave them was carved in Arabic on the back of their seat, their dedication to that religion was recorded in their Bank accounts.

                    The Rabbi Nicolas Swartz was a self- ordained minister who belonged to no synagogue or temple, and neither was he Jewish.

                    What he was was immensely wealthy and greedier than any man had a right to be.

          A month before his faithful meeting with Fernando Silva Swartz ‘s willingness to do almost anything for money had brought Father John to his Law office.

          Because he was a lawyer and a politician lying convincingly was a familiar and regular endeavor for the Rabbi Nicolas Swartz.

                    From Father John he had obtained a lie that promised to make him rich and powerful where being a first rate attorney and liar who was a second rate politician would only make him rich.

                    Today, thanks to Father John, he was a Lawyer, a Politician, and a Salesman, and because of Father John he was a compelling liar that was selling a product that basically sold itself.

          After only one demonstration of this product his sells had begun to increase in a manner that was almost geometric.

          That one demonstration was so convincing it made other demonstrations unnecessary, and just like the customers in the old pyramid schemes did, in time his customers became salesmen too.

          Almost unwillingly they sold to others the same product they had just bought from Nicolas Swartz.

          It was such an easy product to sell Swartz couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought of it himself long ago.

          The product Nicolas Swartz sold was Protection, and in no time, in the nation’s prisons and jails where he actively recruited his salespeople the mane Nicolas Swartz was a passed around commodity.

          In the Business community, after each demonstration some merchant would mention his name to another merchant and another customer would be recruited.

                    DESTRUCTION was the name on the back of the throne where he sat next to the Righteous Rev. Thomas William-Smith who was a tall, thin freckle faced south Texas Baptist minister.

                    William-Smith was an ordained Reverend and an elected politician in the United States’ Congress who represented the state of Texas.

          His childhood idols were Billy Graham and Alabama’s former governor George Wallace, and while it was the influence of Billy Graham’s radio ministry that motivated him towards public service and his family’s church that gave him an idea for a way to serve others while serving himself, it was his admiration for George Wallace and his defiant stand in Selma that led him into politics.

                    A large percentage of his converts, both at his family’s church in Laurel-Smith, Texas, and those in Jihad Al- Islam’s army came from jails and prisons.

          He and the Rabbi usually saw eye to eye on most things including religion. The fact that one of them was a Christian and the other a Jew didn’t matter to either of them.

                    The Reverend Thomas William-Smith was the second member on the council who represented an established religious order.

         

                    Written just above his head on the tall seat that the Righteous Rev. Thomas William-Smith sat in was the Arabic word for CHANGE, and above the seat next to him where Gustavo De Andes sat BIRTH was written in a flowing form of Arabic script.

          De Andes wore, but seldom used the religious title of Father, which Jihad Al- Islam’s founder had bestowed upon him.  

                    “The Tax will certainly be paid now, and I think that we should put off any new business until the Senator and HELL FIRE can vote.” The Rev. William-Smith said in his soft south Texas drawl.

          “There is still that issue in North and South Korea concerning the nuclear warheads, but if left alone that issue will probably resolve itself.

          Then there is the mounting situation in the United States between Law enforcement agencies and the Iranian crime syndicate.”

          He smiled in the Sheik’s direction and nodded to the others before saying. “We can exploit that situation later and profit greatly from it then, but for now I would rather end it and restart it at some other time.”

                    “Of course you would want to stop it, Reverend, your money is stashed in banks in two of the besieged American cities.” Sneered the Sheikh.

                    “One of which is in the State which elected you to Congress. ” He turned his back to the Reverend and looked out the door.  “Need I also say that you are a Fraidy cat and a coward, too?”

          Turning around to face the room he said. “Oh! And need I mention this greed you have for gold and money that you will probably never live to spend?”

          “Sheikh al- Sudda, please, let’s be patient and wait for the Senator and HELL FIRE’s opinions.” Nicolas Swartz offered cutting in. “What difference could a day or two possibly make?”

                    “And the Jew is there again to rescue you, Congressman. Is he always there to defend you?” The Sheikh hissed leaving his place by the door and approaching the seated men.

                    “Can you wipe your behind by yourself or does he do that for you too, along with kissing it?”

          “Wait a minute,” Thomas William-Smith yelled rising angrily from his seat.  “I

          don’t have to take this from you, you sub-human, kill crazy desert spawned maniac. I’m going to wait until the Senator is here.”

          He shook his fist threateningly at the approaching Sheikh and yelled. “To hell with you!”

          “I say we all leave now and return when he and HELL FIRE can be Present.” Rabbi Swartz suggested timidly as he turned in his seat and looked.

          toward Father John with eyes that implored him for an answer.

          Father John was the only one to sit in a seat on the platform that was without a name, or a symbol carved into it.

          “What say you, Father?” His voice implored while his eyes searched Father John’s face looking for agreement.

          His eyes patiently sought an answer, but even before Father John could respond two thunderous explosions shattered the silence in the small chamber.

                    First Father John’s ears and then his eyes sought and found the spot where the sounds emanated from.

          Later, when he was finally able to pull his eyes away from the smoking gun in the hand of CHAOS, they refused to rise any higher than his heaving chest.

          His ears heard the bodies slide from their chairs, dislodging the scorpions on their way to the floor, but as his brain refused to recognize anything but the heaving chest of the Sheikh and the smoking gun held in his outstretched hand his eyes didn’t acknowledge the movement.

                    “Oh, My god, Jesus!” exclaimed Father John calling the name of a deity he had had not thought of in years and had almost forgotten.

          “What have you done?” He yelled at the motionless figure of the Sheikh. “Hurry, help me, maybe they are still alive. Don’t just stand there, Sheikh Mohammed, do something.”

                    “You wretched imbecile, it has been years since I shot a man and he lived.” The Sheikh answered with disinterest as he turned and walked away from the fallen men.

                    “Why, why shoot both of them?”  Father John yelled in anguish at the retreating back then dropped his head and began mumbling a forlorn litany of nos.

          “No, no, no.” Father John moaned. When he heard fidgeting in the seat to his right his head stopped moving, and as it turned in that direction his questing eyes sought those of the only other person seated in a room still echoing with the thunder of gunshots.

          Looking up his frightened eyes sought the evasive eyes of Gustavo De Andes and he asked. “Why did he shoot them both, De Andes?”

          When his eyes found no response in eyes that continued to avoid them, they returned to the cold stare of the Sheikh.

          “Why did you have to kill both of them?” As he pleaded with the dark

          unresponsive eyes of Sheikh Mohammed al- Sudda his voice trembled with passion. “Why shoot both of them?” 

          The Sheikh answered in a quiet, composed matter of fact voice. “You know how it is with the Board of Directors Father, especially directors of a diversified religious organization. In a world- wide theological organization like Catholicism, Christianity, or Jihad Al- Islam there is always some disagreement about policy, and when there are men like us on the board.”

          As his eyes found those of Father John and then those of Gustavo De Andes the soft voice of the Sheikh continued.

                    “You start off with six strong willed men and somewhere along the way those disagreements occur, and they are settled, sometimes they are settled with violence and when that happens there are five men, then four, soon there is but one, Father, it has always been that way with wars and warriors. In the end only the best, the strongest is left to carry on.”

          Looking at the bodies on the floor The Sheik whispered. “Survival of the fittest, and no matter what some people will try to tell you, Father, survival is nature’s only goal, Self-preservation is its first and only law.”

          In the seven years he had sat on the council of Jihad Al- Islam Father John, the former kindhearted, Catholic priest from Louisiana had seen some horrible atrocities committed in the name of religion.

                    He had ordered and even committed a few of those atrocities himself, but now as he listened to this patient, remorseless voice and looked into the uncaring eyes of CHAOS he knew that this was the worst he had seen.

          And listening to the whispered words as they were spoken so dispassionately, he knew it was only the beginning.

                    Sighing his eyes avoided those of CHAOS and dropped to the two bodies lying at his feet.

          They were bodies of friends, who were alive and warm a moment ago, but now, all of a sudden, they were dead and cold.

                     One moment they had been trusted fiends who he would’ve died for and they in turn, would have died for him, then in the blink of an eye and the instance of a senseless argument they became deadly enemies, a second later they became dead.

                    “But how will we explain this to the Senator when he gets here.”  The quivering voice of De Andes asked the vanished back of CHAOS.

                    “What will he do?” Father John asked the room as he imagined the angered Senator, the man who until just now he had thought was the most insane man he had ever met.

                    “Who cares, my papal comrade.” The laughing Sheikh answered never looking back. “You above all should know that among the dead there is always room for one more.”

          From down the hall his voice laughed back at them. “What’s one more corpse added to their untold number, be it he or me, I really couldn’t care.”

          When the sounds of his laughter and footsteps were gone and they were certain that they were alone, both De Andes and Father John breathed a sigh of relief.

                    For one frightened moment they thought that they too would be added to the growing number of dead.

                    Gustavo De Andes was the first to rise from his seat and inspect the bodies of CHANGE and DESTRUCTION.

                    There was a moist third eye in the center of each of their foreheads. When the Sheikh said that it had been years since he shot a man, and he lived his words were true.

                                                                                V

          After leaving the mosque the hidden oasis he sought was a family treasure and its location was a secret that was known only to his tribe.

          For generations, to keep the secret, the directions to it had been passed down from father to son within the tribe.

                    Over a hundred years ago the small basin that held the precious water was surrounded and covered with cut Date palm trees, the silk material that was thrown over the palms to form the large sheltering dome that covered it was taken from tents that had been the homes of his forefathers.

           Years later, after the homeless tribe left the oasis and settled in another part of the desert the sands covered the silk cloth.

          Now, the only thing that marked the location of the Oasis was the Y shape of the three dunes that hid it.

           In time the ‘Y’ shape became a landmark for travelers on their way to the city of Kirkuk, but the treasure that was buried beneath the Y remained unknown to all but a few of his tribesmen.

                    Within minutes after leaving the mosque his body was drenched with the foul-smelling odor of his own sweat, and the smell of it told him that for too long he had lived in the soft comforts of civilized society and Air-conditioned luxury, two comforts that most of his tribesmen had never known or would live to experience.

          The blasting inferno of the desert’s heat spurred the Sheikh on towards the Y that was now visible in the distance ahead of him.

                    The old camel he rode plodded on toward it, relentlessly covering the sandy miles in its awkward stumbling stride.

          For three days and two nights this valley between its pulsing humps had been his seat, but his destination was already in sight and soon he could trade these thumping mole- hills for a comfortable seat on the desert floor.

                    To the average eye the unending undulating sea of rising and falling sand presented nothing recognizable beyond sand dunes that moved constantly with the blasting winds that were constantly pushed around by the hot desert air, but the eyes of the camel’s rider were not average, and neither were they fooled by the desert’s play at deception.

                    They saw that one group of dunes didn’t move with the shifting sands, and they saw that the sand covering these dunes moved and flew away only to be replaced by the sands of shrinking dunes behind and around them.

          These dunes grew and shrank with the movement of the sand around them, but their shapes never changed.

          This part of the desert was on the way to his tribe’s home and since youth its shifting spectacle was impinged upon his memory.

          From almost a mile away the shape of the Y was visible to Sheikh Mohammed al- Sudda, and for him that meant the long journey from civilization was nearly over.

          Seeming to know this, the camel’s pace increased. It was an ancient one, an old white male that had belonged to his father before it became his after his father’s death.

                    The camel ran unerring to the single dune at the bottom of the Y and when it knelt there the Sheikh dismounted and began to dig at the top of the dune.

          Soon he had uncovered the entrance hole that led to the water basin that was hidden within the sand.

                    He entered the hole and when he had filled three goat- skin water bags the Sheikh emerged and watered the thirsty camel before releasing him.

          The Sheikh knew that once released he would find his way back across the desert to the oasis at Masquii where his tribesmen there would care for him.

                    After walking away from his tempers’ violent display tat al Haji the Sheikh had decided that he would disappear and remain in hiding at the Y until summoned by his brother, who alone knew his whereabouts.

          There was water here, and in the desert that was most important. Food and pleasure could be found and bought from the caravans that moved constantly across this barren piece of wasteland.

          As the lone camel trotted off across the shifting sands of the desert, the Jihad Al- Islam councilman known as CHAOS re-entered the opening in the molehill of shifting sands.

          Before the camel had gone beyond sight of the Y the hole was closed and the ever- shifting sands had recovered the opening and hid it again.

          Once again the Y stood as it always had, it was three dunes in a desert that was filled with dunes, and to the average eye, it was inconspicuous and obvious.

            

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