Adriane: the sequel to a Taxi Romance continues...

At nightfall he waited with a half-dozen of his maquisards lined up and ready to light flares illuminating the improvised landing strip. The feint purr of the Lysander in the distant black sky assured him the plane was on time… within seconds and there would be no waiting around. Gotson didn’t appreciate the help his little band was getting from the British. He didn’t believe in the adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” After dealing with the Stalinists, Anarchist and Republican infighting in Madrid, Gotson observed that the worst enemy of the resistance was the resistance itself. Why would the British government be free of similar play-pen shenanigans? This was life or death to him while they at times seemed to view the guidariki as pawns in the big game. He felt better off high up in the Pyrenees where his decisions didn’t have to go through a committee.

“There it is …” a young maquisard called out. The commander’s attention was on the landing strip…  a black Lysander landed squarely in the midst of two rows of flares, having been lit only moments before, coming to a stop fifty feet from those marking the end of the strip. Gotson admired the ability of these pilots to land on a dime and take off without a minute lost. He watched as a tall, broad shouldered man with close cropped, blond hair and a huge backpack, jumped to the ground. The plane was immediately turned around by his men and headed down the strip to disappear into the night, “This way,” he said in English and the group darted off into the forest.

After about a half hour hike they came to a small hut where a young girl, Iniga, one of maquisards waiting for their return, lit a kerosene lamp and put it in the middle of the table. Gotson thought of her as a fiery angel with a moon face and cupid bow lips framed by unruly and wild brown tufts tied down under a provocative Basque Beret. She was only seventeen but had already been slated for a train from Gur to Drancy and sure death before he managed to have her released two years before. She had witnessed the assassination of Durruti at the Bridge when she was barely a teen.

“So, what are we doing… no supplies… no ammo… nothing from you Brits but another face to feed?” She blurted out before the tall muscular, blond man could say anything. He was busy unloading his back-pack onto the table. A suitcase was opened to reveal a radio.

‘The rest will be dropped tomorrow night… we have another radio code… the other has been compromised. That is why I’m here.”

Gotson had heard that accent in Madrid. It was the accent of the Lincoln Brigade he’d fought with in the last days of the Republic in Madrid. He had a kinship with some of the Americans… more than with the British. They were idealists who’d become as disillusioned as he.

The American pulled another kit out of his pack and put it on the table. Beside two dry cell batteries, there were two thirty-two caliber Welrod pistols with silencers and several boxes of ammo.

No one used their real names and very few asked, but Gotson finally recognized the man. He was Harry Baker and had come to Madrid in the last weeks before everyone with any sense scrambled out of there. He never got to know him but he suspected that Mr. Baker played both sides to his benefit. Madrid was far away but the wounds… the distrust… it never heals.

After everyone bedded down outside the hut Baker sat at the table and lit a pipe, “You are familiar… you were in Madrid at the bridge?”

“Yes, and you were with the International Brigade at Manzanares… when Durruti was taken out… It was almost over then. How did you get out?”

“That’s classified, sorry.”

Gotson pulled his Welrod from inside his jacket holding it steady between Baker’s eyes. “This round I put in the chamber is classified too… so tell me Mr. Baker, how did you get out of Madrid?”

Baker didn’t flinch… there was no reaction. It seemed as though the guy didn’t care one way or another whether Gotson pulled the trigger. “Let me just say it was a matter of knowing where the bricks, walls and body parts fell during the bombardments.”

“They say… some I know to be reliable… they, and there was more than one, I’ve heard them say that it was a Stalinist that shot Durruti.” Gotson had been with Durruti, the leader of the anarchist column, during the drive to Zaragosa.

“It could have been,” the American still hadn’t even blinked.

Iniga burst in the door and came to a halt when she saw the two men poised in an absurd diorama… neither moved. “I hate to interrupt…  better put a bullet in his head, Gotson, we have to get moving.”

Two more maquisards entered the hut, “Bind him… we’ll pick up our conversation later.”

Baker put his hands behind his back without resistance while a cord of sinew bound them. Two hand guns, 9 mm Lugar semi-automatic pistol and MP 40 German machine pistol with a detached shoulder stock, were lifted from inside his heavy jacket along with a peculiar knife. Gotson found a makeshift garrote and two knives in shoulder sheaths. He simply grinned at the girl when she examined one of the odd shaped heavy daggers that were also dropped on the table, “It’s a Smatchet. You can jam that fucker right through an SS helmet. You can have it… I’ll keep the other.”

She nodded in approval as they left the hut but Gotson didn’t put the Welrod down until Baker’s hands were secured. Quietly she snuffed the lamp and the band filed out up the hill and split up into two or three man groups. Iniga took the point while Gotson held back behind Baker.

Gotson stood on an outcrop to pause and check his watch. The column in pursuit would be almost to the hut by this time. He could see a few lights from farm houses in the valley below from his viewpoint but the darkness hid nearly everything else. Had he not known the terrain so well, he wouldn’t have been able to guess where the hut they’d just left might have been… he could hear one of their pursuers loudly complaining that they had to dismount their horses at the hut and hike from there before Gotson left his perch… slinging his British Sten and taking up the rear behind his compliant and strangely complacent captive, he puzzled over what to do now. He could have blown the hut with plastique at this time but he didn’t want to give the Regulares any reason to retaliate with reprisals on the villagers below who had as little knowledge of the actions of the maquis as did the Guardia Civil. The Regulars weren’t as brutal with reprisals as the Civil Guard, or the Germans in France, but trouble of any kind in the countryside could turn the locals against them and the Maquis sorely needed the support of the villagers.

Adriane: The sequal to A Taxi Romance: Chapter Nine: The Maquis, Gotson

The year was 1943 and the fall had brought with it the changing of colors along the Catalonian mountain pass through to Col du Pourtalet in the Pyrenees. The Basque Maquis’ heart would have reveled in the crisp cool air of this landscape but he was thinking about how the summer of 1940 had brought bad news in Biarritz as the Maginot line collapsed under the relentless forces of Hitler’s blitz. Gotson had crossed the Pyrenees many times from 1936 to 1939. He and Dominic Fournier, Adrian’s father, had been in Guernica during the infamous fire bombing, retreating to Bilboa… surviving the War of the North and eventually held out at last in Madrid. Nightmares of squadrons in waves… Junkers, Dorniers, Heinkles, Fiat and Messerschmitt fighters … he could still see the bombs dropping and the strafing. Joining a handful of students led by Francisco Oscuro and his “Dark Ones” they stood up to the Condor Legion as long as they could in Madrid and then slipped out, or melded with the population. The confusion and rubble the fall of  Madrid, the Republican dream, his hopes for a liberated Basque Country, all was crushed along with it and he returned to Biarritz.

Having set up a chocolate shop in Biarritz, Gotson retired from the revolution but still longed for the overthrow of Franco’s Falangists. Dominic left the struggle then too and went on to Paris. Both were disillusioned with the betrayals by the Stalinists and the constant infighting... the power struggles between one faction or another in Madrid. Being a witness to the atrocity; the murder of over a thousand Nationalist prisoners ordered by the Stalinist advisor, Koltzov, Gotson became more loyal to his people, the Basques of northern Spain and southwest France, than any allegiance to political ideology. Political ideals all sounded good in the propaganda of the time but the sight of such brazen disregard for human life was what he’d been struggling against in the dust and ruins of Guernica and Madrid. The crimes of the Republic under Soviet usurpation equaled those of General Mola on the other side… No pasaron, indeed.

He'd seen Paris fall to the insanity of another form of fascism and he also saw this as an opportunity to gather forces sufficient to wrest Basque country from Franco. While at the same time he did this, he could put a thorn into the Nazi’s on the French side of the Pyrenees. Nazi oppression would make it easier to organize a guerrilla movement now that France itself had been occupied. After all, Gotson was more talented at organizing guerrillas than he was at managing his chocolate shop. He'd left the shop the year before to a cousin and disappeared from Biarritz before the Gestapo would surely ferret him out and, took  up the fight he’d abandoned in March of 1939.

Adriane: The Sequal to A Taxi Romance: Chapter Eight, Family Connections

CHAPTER 8:

Family Connections

Detective Ryan was at his desk when he got a call on his cell phone from an acquaintance in Langley. He looked perplexed but he answered the call, “Yes, Judge, how’s the family?”

It was chit-chat… he knew what the call would be about; he wasn’t quite ready for this.

The Judge, Marcello, was once an O.S.S. officer during WWII, working with, and utilizing the resistance to Hitler in southern France, throughout the war. He was never a judge in any official sense of the word but people had been calling him the Judge for so long very few knew how he got the name. Harry Baker, Nick’s dad, was also a young agent in the Pyrenees with the Spanish Maquis, helping with the French Resistance to drive the Nazis from Southern France altogether. Later they had been sent to work after the pact of 1953. That pact allowed the US to have the Rota U.S. Naval base and, as part of the deal, the Eisenhower administration covertly sent CIA personnel to help Franco’s forces in the Pyrenees to hunt down the infamous Spanish Maquis, Gotson. This was before the Basque separatist movement had blossomed by the late fifties and there were only small bands of anti-Franco resistance groups scattered in the mountains at the time. Ironically Nick’s dad had long experience fighting alongside of Gotson before. But he had little or no problem when assigned to his new role. Ryan was still a pimply kid on his paper route at that time but the link was there.

Ryan was a good cop. He wasn’t corrupt but he was older, wiser and way too close to retirement to mess with the Judge. He had served with Harry Baker in Viet Nam and had heard enough of the Judge to regard him highly. The Judge was now a retired State Department diplomat who was with the American Embassy in Saigon back in 1968 during the Tet. Ryan had been a Marine intelligence officer working with the, by then, seasoned C.I.A. officer. He mostly knew of the legendary Judge as a voice on the other end of the line. The voice on the other end of the line counted on the bond, a bond that went beyond duty and patriotism. That bond was forged under fire and was nearly unbreakable. However, the strain of dealing with the peccadilloes of Nick Baker had stretched that bond to the limit.

Ryan found it especially distasteful when he found out that Nick had lied about Sean McKee’s role in Adrian’s beating. He was furious and cringed at the prospects of what he might be asked to do; wanting nothing more than to wash his hands of the whole business.

“You know Ryan, I didn’t call to talk about my grand-kids' kids,” as usual, he was not one to skirt an issue.

“Yeh, I know, I was just stalling.”

“I am fully aware of how distasteful this business has been; and, I assure you, we’ll make that up to somehow.”

“Nick has my hands full and I’m not sure how long I can keep his name out of the D.A.’s line of fire.” Ryan sounded exhausted. “We couldn’t get anything on McKee from his hard drive: a little porn, but hey.”

“We owe it to his dad. I promised and so did you.” The voice sounded resigned, “Just keep an eye on this Mick character. A guy like that might be useful to us.”

“Sure…,” Ryan waited for the Judge to say something more until the line went dead. It was a secured line, as usual.

Adriane, the Sequel to a Taxi Romance: Shades and Shadows

I didn’t realize it at the time but it didn’t take a wild conspiracy to explain the reticence of the police to dust for prints. As in all small, affluent, cities like Santa Barbara, the police have their hands full going to calls for burglaries where real items with serial numbers are taken off to Oxnard to be hawked for a fix. A trashed room, and a wrecked computer, doesn’t amount to much as far as the case load goes. Still, I was peeved and saw the workings of Ryan or Richards in the shadows behind all this. I made my annoyance clear by glowering at the cop as he did his job.

“When you find out who these guys are will you let me know tomorrow?” I pouted.

“Hey, will you back off a bit?” the officer pulled a piece of clear tape off the spot he’d dusted, “I don’t know what you expect to come of this but by this time tomorrow your report will be at the bottom of a pile on some corner desk in the assistant D.A.’s office.”

“Won’t you like… run the prints through some list or something?”

“Naw, it ain’t like that at all,” he ripped another piece of tape off of the door and pressed it onto a card. 

“Really, if this was a house in Montecito you’d run ‘em, huh?”

“You know that stack of reports I told you about? They’re mostly from folks who actually lost something… from houses in Hope Ranch and Montecito.” He closed up his print kit, handed me a carbon copy of his report but stopped before going out onto the porch and said, “You can replace that hard drive for less than a hundred bucks.”

“Thanks… are you buying?” My quip went unappreciated as he was already halfway to his car.

It was hard to read his name on my carbon copy but I made it out to be, through the faint ink and scrawl, Schmidt or maybe Schultz. I threw it in a corner and went to work putting things back in order. A mess like this was incentive to clean house so I did that and felt pretty good about it around midnight when I finished.  I called the dispatcher to let him know I wouldn’t be coming in that night and stayed home with my tidy desk and trusty Remington.. I held the phone back from my ear as he cussed me out, put the events of the past few days on paper and then I finally hit the sack by three a.m. 

A couple of days later Adriane called. It was one of those calls I have gotten so many times. She was done with me for awhile as she had other suitors tending to her. I suspect it was Billy, “So are you off the oxy… oh what is it, cotton?”

“Oxycotin… no, I have a few left. But my crater is pretty well healed up and I have someone to run errands.”

“Okay, I’m good with that…” I said that but didn’t believe myself… Never mind convincing her of it.

“I gotta go now, Billy is….” she stopped herself, “Someone is at the gate. I have to see who it is.”

Okay, I thought, one lie deserves another. Billy is back in the picture and it won’t be long…

A Time Ago And Then

This was my first novel. It is a fictional memoir on sale at 25% discount ($3.74) with coupon code: RJ58Y. A free sample, 20% of the book, is also available. I welcome any and all criticism or reviews on this blog. Thank you.

A Time Ago And Then

Ebook By George B Couper
Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: Aug. 09, 2011
Category: Fiction » Literature » Literary
Words: 97636 (approximate)
Language: English

Ebook Description

Max, a USN submariner, is laid up in a hospital with a broken back in the late sixties: there, he begins spiritual journey that takes him through LSD,the Altamont Speedway fiasco, to the communes of New Mexico, Jamaica and drug dealing in Miami. Ending up in Santa Barbara his misadventures touch on the violence, cults and religions of the era as he struggles to find peace within himself.

Tags

homelessness, lsd, alternative lifestyles, mescaline, taos pueblo indigenous culture, rape and its aftermath, alcoholism and recovery, altamont speedway, pre reggae jamaica, taos communes, berkeley politics, religious sixties cults

Adrane: The sequal to A Taxi Romance... The broken wheel

The wheels were turning…

I left her house. A patrol car was parked down the street. Was it Richards?  I suspected so. What was that guy up to and why was he watching me? It isn’t like I had the potential of being anything like a dangerous criminal. Perhaps it wasn’t me he was watching… it could be Adriane. Whoever it was it didn’t seem to me to be official police business. Something stank of this whole thing and I had no idea how I was going to deal with it.

Homer greeted me on the driveway of my place. He led me to the porch, looking back to make sure I was following after I dismounted from the bike. What I saw when I entered was not a pretty sight. The door was ajar and inside was… well… everything was on the floor…. The Remington… and the monitor screen as well as all my papers. I approached the desk to see that the side of the case to the computer was open and the hard-drive was missing. Damn, who? What? Why?

My neighbor, Jack, came down from his apartment upstairs and stood at the door, “Some guys were here… what the hell, I didn’t now they were doing this?”

“What did they look like?”

“I never seen them before… one was tall… a big guy.”

“Did they walk up or did they come in a car?”

“I didn’t see a car; they could have been parked around the side. I didn’t really look… I didn’t know they’d done…” his tone was a little too apologetic. I knew Jack would have stayed low and wouldn’t have done anything to stop it.

“How many were there?”

“Three… I think that I saw one before… like that inspector that was here before.”

That was better. He is at least giving up some useful information. Jack went back up to his apartment. I picked up the phone off the floor and set it on the desk. Shall I call the police and report it? Sure, why not? There were some obvious prints on the door. At least they can dust the place for prints. If it was Ryan, I’m wondering, why would he leave prints? Was he sending me a message? The place was trashed… that got my attention. So, what was I doing that would deserve this much attention and what is on my hard drive that he would want? At that time everything I wrote was downloaded to ‘A’ discs. Where are they? Good… I found them untouched where I kept them in my desk drawer. All the other drawers were pulled out and dumped… What the f…?

There was a knock at my screen door on the porch. My god, I thought, have they come back? I looked out to see two Hispanic young men in suits with brief-cases. It was not the right time for this shit! I’m not sure what I expected of them but I opened the door.

“Hello,” the older of the two greeted me, “We would like to share some information from the Bible...”

“... Oh no, thank you very much but I’m good with it.” I cut him off trying not to be rude I shut the door.

Other times I would have invited them in and offered them some tea. It is always good to be polite when someone has a Bible and the burden of hauling a vision of the dead prophet around. I admire them because they don’t even know me and they are trying to save my soul. I wish them well but I have business to attend... clean up this mess and think. Maybe I should wait ‘til the cops get here.

The police arrived a mere minute or two after I called… like they had to be waiting around the corner: or was I getting paranoid? They did the usual report. I had a few things damaged and nothing but the hard drive was missing… TV, VCR, tapes, discs… all went untouched. It was just a matter of the place being trashed. The uniformed cops took down the information and the value of the ruined computer and started to leave.

“Wait a minute,” I demanded, “Aren’t you going to dust for prints or anything?”

“So,” the #1 cop smirked, “you want us to get the print kit out for this?”

“Sure I do… I want to prosecute the fuckers that did this.” Frustrated I pointed to the prints that were so obvious on the window of the front door. “There’s some right in front of you.”

“Okay, okay… we’ll dust ‘em.” He humored me.

Adrian: the Sequel to A Taxi Romance, continued... revenge.

Three in the morning: What the hell? I didn’t like the feel of it. I could get a ride home from another cab driver but shit, otherwise, it is a bitch to get back downtown at that time of night. I noticed that Richards was parked at the far end of the parking lot when I was released and stepped outside to have a smoke and wait for the cab to show up. That damned S.O.B. followed us until I was dropped off at home and parked down the street in the cul-de-sac after I went into the house. He made no attempt to keep his presence unknown. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t while thinking of Richards out there and wondered what he was up to.

 It was Adriane who bailed me out. She also had the police lift my restraining order. No one was charged with the crime and all charges were eventually dropped. It was very unusual that spousal abuse charges could be dismissed so easily. I was so stunned by this oversight, this lapse, this covert corruption of the justice system that I seriously wanted to do something about it: but what? It was the powerlessness of it that bugged me the most. I was damned if I was going to do nothing but these things become an obsession. Had I spent a week in jail without an apology or anything from the law?

I was able to visit Adriane at her place when she was sent home. Her bedroom was upstairs and it was hard for her to get to the kitchen to help herself. So I used the couch on my time off and helped her change the dressing on the crater left by the abscess and brought chicken soup up to her. My feelings for her were stronger now than ever but I was able to control them. She told me that Nick had served her while I was in jail and that she delighted in making him go up and down the stairs to get this and that for her: bring me a book… go to the garden shack and bring me my drawing board, a cup of coffee, something from the freezer. His guilt motivated him to become her slave and she took out her spite on him in this manner. I thought it was weird and too soft a punishment for him. I told her so but what was I to do? She is the one who could have had him prosecuted.

“Do your folks know about all of this?” I asked, thinking surely her dad would want to do something about it.

“No, I do not want a scandal, they would go nuts and God knows what Gotson would want to do.”

“Who is Gotson again?”

“Gotson was a Basque guerilla when Franco ran Spain,” she spoke so proudly of him that I was almost jealous of her obvious affection.

“Hmm, he must be old now… Franco has been gone awhile now.”

“He is still very healthy and capable of doing some damage to Nick and his connections in the D.A.’s office. I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

I thought, shit, this could be an answer. I wanted vengeance but not so badly that I would end up in prison for it and I wondered if this Gotson character might have some techniques to employ.

“Yes, but Adriane, you have been terribly abused. How can you live with this?”

“He tells them that I am a junkie and that he is only trying to help me and that he gets frustrated at my relapses.”

            “Yes, but can’t you see that he is dangerous and might kill you the next time?’

Adrian: the Sequel to A Taxi Romance, continued...

Of all the times I had to go to jail… just when I started smoking again. Damn-it, they don’t allow smoking at all in the Santa Barbara Police holding cells and certainly not in County. I would have confessed to anything for a smoke. My feelings were running all over the place. I wondered what Adriane had told the police and then I smelled Nick’s B.S. in it. What the hell, I knew I was innocent and I knew that my luck was with me… but, what if… what if… what if. I was kept in an interview cell where the powers that be had me cooling off. It seemed like a long wait... at least an hour… there are no clocks. My heart leapt when detective Ryan opened the door to peak in. When he saw me I thought I saw his face light up too.

“Mr. McKee, what the hell? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Under these circumstances, I can’t say that I’m all that pleased to see you again,” however, I was glad to see him. I can’t explain it but any familiar face in jail gives one hope.

“Let me get your file and I’ll be right back.”

 “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

He was gone for something like a half hour. Time means nothing in jail. Being right back can mean any day now. He finally came back into the room plopping a file down on the table. “See here, Mr. McKee, we seem to have a problem…”

“We? You mean me. I have a problem.”

“Why don’t you just tell me your version of what happened and…”

“All due respect, sir… Aren’t you going to read me my rights?”

“I can tell you now that the courts will go easier on you if you cooperate,” he said as he thumbed through his reports.

I wasn’t sure whether or not it would do me any good to talk but I suspected by the detective's tone that anything I’d say one way or another was going to be used against me whether or not I had my rights read. If I didn’t say anything they’d be able to say I was uncooperative and if I did say anything it wasn’t likely it would matter one way or another.

“I took a break and was at home for lunch." I hesitated, Ryan didn't seem to be listening, "I didn’t have much time.”

“Did you stop by Adriane’s house then?”

“I had no plans to see her. I just had time to get home, gulp down a ham sandwich and get back in the hack…”

“The, are you saying you didn’t go to Mrs. Baker’s house?”

“No, I went there alright… I got a phone call. She was hurting.”

“How did you know she was hurting?”

“Listen, maybe you want to get this interview over with and read me my rights?”

“Mr. McKee, we have enough to hold you in jail tonight along with a restraining order. We have enough of your past on record to throw the book at you. Do you want to cooperate or not? Tell me now, because I’d just as soon get home to dinner.” He slammed the file shut.

“She called me at home and she was hurting. I could tell she was hurting because she could hardly talk.”

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket … lit one and passed it to me. “Thanks.” Man, that was the best smoke I’ve ever had. “I mean it.”

He watched me take a drag and leaned back in his chair. “So, you're telling me didn’t do it, are you?”

To tell the truth I wasn’t sure what to think… was he setting me up?

“Do what, smash her face up or inject her butt with tar?” I was tired… “Tell me, Ryan, is she going to be okay?”

‘Tell me, McKee… the last time we had a talked… the Bea Brinker case… it turned out that the judge thought you hadn’t done anything wrong… lack of judgment were his words, I recall.”

“You were there... in court?” I didn’t remember seeing him…

“Yes, when one of my cases gets to court I want a conviction. The DA doesn’t care to lose cases and I thought we had enough on you for something… maybe not spousal abuse… maybe something like creating a disturbance… anything.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Don’t get smart with me, asshole. This time we have a clear-cut case of bodily injury. Mr. Baker saw you on the way up the hill on your motorcycle as he was leaving and, guess what? When he left home he says Adriane was okay…”

“I was in my cab."

"Whatever."

"So, does this mean you will read me my rights and tuck me in for the night?” I knew by then that there was no chance of going home now.

“Just tell me what happened and stop wasting my time.”

“I went up there… her face was bashed in and her eye was swollen shut…. Then she showed me the abscess on her hip and I took her to the ER. in my cab and not my motorcycle. I had to get back to work... time is money in a cab after all... so I took off thinking she would explain what happened.”

“According to this report she did tell officer Richards what happened.”

“Was he the rookie that was with you on the Bea Brinker case?” I grinned thinking of the tomato soup he’d mistaken for blood.

“And it ain’t lookin’ good for you, Mr. McKee.” He pulled out the Miranda card and read it to me.

“Could I ask one more question before you go, Ryan?”

“Go ahead, Mick, make it a good one.”

He kind of pissed me off. I consider Mick like using the "N" word. Friends could use it but, I got the point, Ryan wasn't a friend... “What kind of pull does Nick’s daddy have over you guys… eh?”

Ryan just stood up and had another officer cuff me to take me back to a holding cell. But before we parted paths he said, “Keep asking those kinds of questions and you will be in deeper shit than you are now.”

There I was again, in County jail. My life was an old country/western song, “I’m in the Jailhouse Now.” Pardon me, Hank Williams, but I don’t want to be in one of your songs at this moment, eh? I thought I’d broken that cycle when I got sober but here I was. Surely, I thought, I ought to be able to get out on O.R. first thing in the morning. I’ve cleared up all and any warrants or fines.  I’ve been able to live pretty clean too. I wondered what all this had to do with a cosmic plan. A now familiar calm came over me as I sat on my bunk after all the noise of the concrete and steel settled down. I was at peace and it felt as though a hand was on my shoulder. I actually turned to look but no one was there. So I sat with my back to the wall of my cell… I had a private cell this time…isolation they call it… and waited. Would an angel appear before me and unlock my cage? The hand on my shoulder assured me and I laid down to fall into a deep sleep.

It was about a week later that I was awakened at three in the morning, “McKee, roll it up, you’re goin’ home.”

“What… Someone bailed me out?”

“I don’t know… just roll it up, will ya!”

The Sequal Adriane: Chapter Six, First Challenge

The hierarchy of heaven is a bureaucratic division of labor. When Mickey got sober his case was elevated up a notch and in the hands of another guardian on the upper floor… (Yes, floor, lacking a better word for these purposes). It was as though he was encircled with a shield of protection and nothing in hell could touch him. Once a soul has progressed into the realm of the spirit there are more powerful angels and demons to aid and confront the pilgrim. That is why they say we trudge the road of happy destiny. Of course, Mickey only gets a hint here and there of this promotion but he does see immediately that his sobriety is a daily regimen and if he wants to stay on his pink cloud he has to take certain steps to protect himself and utilize the help his guardians want him to have.

Chapter Six

Sean McKee: Mickey

First Challenge

Since the day I fell to my knees and asked for guidance, I was aware that my life was under new management. Having no idea of what that would entail I began the task of, not only doing the next right thing, but tapping into the intuition of what that might be. I knew, without being told that I would have to make amends to the friends; family and foes I had harmed, short-changed, lied to and otherwise stepped on, throughout those dark days of my drinking and drugging. The first that came to mind was the abandonment and neglect of my daughter and the rest followed. I wanted to do it all right away but I also had the feeling that it would be vanity to start this herculean task without some sort of guarantee that I would not be inclined to repeat the same mistakes.

I went to AA meetings and listened to what others did to resolve these problems. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to just say I’m sorry and I knew that I had to get serious about digging deeply into the causes and the fears that were the sources of  my inclinations. I often dreamed of having someone I could tell my innermost thoughts about these secrets and somehow I knew that I would be able to handle them better if I did. For instance, I was still obsessed with Adriane and couldn’t imagine my life without her. Whenever she called I came running and I was at home on lunch break when she made that last call. When I found out that she was using heroin again I was crushed.

Crushed is the best word for it. My heart could have been vomited out; it stuck so in my throat. This was my first real test of my new-found sobriety. The manner in which she had banned me from her bed and then got tangled up with any low-life she could puzzled me. What was worse was that she kept me around as if I was a eunuch and that drove me nuts. When she called that day and I saw her face bruised I was furious. I wanted to murder whoever did it. Then, when she showed me her abscess, my anger was smashed along with my hopes for her. She nearly died and that was the closest I have ever gone back to drinking.

Sitting on my couch I thought of Willy’s Liquors, only a block away from my house. As I sat I struggled with the whys and the hows and the what-the-fuck’s of it all. What was I supposed to do? Homer jumped up on my lap and calmed me for a few minutes. I thought of a pack of smokes my friend Jim had left on his last visit. I kept the pack in the drawer of the desk for whenever he came back. I had quit smoking before I got sober and was glad I didn’t have to struggle with smoking as well as drinking. However, I sat there and decided to have a smoke and think about it before I went to the liquor store.

I know… you are supposed to call your sponsor or help a newcomer when tempted to drink but I chose to smoke a cigarette. Perhaps it was a way to slap back at GAWD. I’m not so sure of my motives but I prayed, “Please help me,” as I lit one up. I felt better immediately but I knew that now I had awakened the monster of tobacco and that I had merely traded addictions. Still, it was a better option than drinking.

As I smoked the cigarette there was a knock on my door. I had nothing to hide but I felt more than a little bit concerned when I saw a uniformed cop standing on my porch. I answered anyway; “Can I help you?”

“Sean McKee?” he had a note pad out.

“Yes.”

“”You dropped off Adriane Baker at the emergency room today?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Do you mind telling me why you left before the police arrived?” he was surly. His nametag read, Richards. No first name… no rank… just Richards.

“Yes, I had to get back to work. She called while I was on break and I had to get back before…”

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

I had thought that Adriane would tell them what had happened and I would be cleared of suspicion… unless something…, “Is Adriane okay?”

Is God a Huge Ego with Gonads?

Bed-rest… I was sent home after I was taken off the oxygen mask. Nick had put a restraining order on Mickey and my protests were ignored. Nick insisted that he nurse me so I let him. He wasn’t there full time and I had to get out of bed to get to the kitchen for chicken soup. I was weak and could barely make it up the stairs. I was so doped up on oxycotin that I might have had a hard time at any rate. It would have helped had he been there but I didn't miss him. I slept and let all the manipulations and lies rest with me. I wasn’t going to give up but, right then, I needed to rest.

So Angel had to admit to Imp that the old beard made a mistake and that it was a gamble to put Nick back in the house. Actually, Angel had hoped it would speed things up and cursed the impatience off such a petulant idea. The impression folks get on the earth plane is that the spiritual realm functions on different laws than the physical plane, that everything that happens is part of a plan and nothing happens by accident. Any angel or imp knows the laws of natural selection and evolution apply in heaven as on earth. I.e., just look at how Western civilization or Judeo/Christian religions have evolved since the days when adulteresses were stoned in the town square by the elders and gladiators hacked each other to death on the bloody sands of the Coliseum in Rome. It is hit and miss, and many misses between hits, that moves things along. If there is a plan at all it is that life ends up a little better for the sacrifice and that everyone gets a chance… a roll of the dice towards that end.

“So, you aren’t gonna throw in the hat?”

Imp’s impertinent smirk was almost more than Angel could take. There is no sex on the spiritual plane but Angel felt the masculine urge to slap the fucker. Even the Big Kahuna wasn’t one or the other… depending how the idea of God is perceived. The truth is that sex is transcended at that level. Would anyone reasonably ascribe sexual identity to a process? It certainly wasn’t productive to appear before Moses or Muhammad without direct instructions on this matter. The Christ tried to level it out, to little or no avail, when he said that after the resurrection we are neither married nor given in marriage but become as the angels: in other words… sexless. But Christ blew that notion when he referred to God as our heavenly Father.

Angel smiled at the inequity if God was the only one in heaven with a pair of gonads? God’s relationship with humankind is more the creation of idle minds than it is of any definitive universal reality. The fact is that a paternal maternity describes better what happens here: just as God’s laws are descriptive rather than prescribed the creation is more an improvised dance than the will of a huge ego with sex organ. This being the case, Angel never had the option of taking the thought of slapping Imp up to the level of an action.

Police Protection

The abscess had to be cleaned and they knocked me out to fix the broken jaw (mandibuler fracture, they called it)… My nose and cheek bone were broken too: eye was swollen shut by the time we got to the E.R. They had to do some fixing there. The abscess left a crater… a gash at least an inch deep... four inches long and an inch and a half wide… down to the muscle. They had an oxygen mask taped down on my face and another taped onto the gash. An oxygen mask on the gash was weird... something about oxygen speeds the healing. My jaw was wired shut. I had to try to talk through my teeth and the mask. One of my doctors was a young, handsome, man who must have been an addiction specialist. I don’t remember his name but I do know he was kind.

“Just show me some fingers or nod yes or no. How long have you been using?” he asked.

I held up two fingers.

“Two years?”

“Uh, uh…nuh” I knew he couldn't understand me if I tried to speak through my teeth and the mask but I tried anyway.

“Two months?”

I nodded a yes.

 “Well, the anesthetics and Demerol will stave off withdrawals while you are on them. Are you ready to detox?”

I had mixed feelings. If I don’t have something I will go back to drinking and if I don’t drink I will go crazy. The last time in France was particularly bad because I did it cold-turkey. I dread so much the muscle aches, the stomach cramps. I couldn’t sleep… and more than anything the gnawing, the restlessness, vomiting, diarrhea… as the demonic mania of heroin calls me…

“Nu-uh!” I tossed my head back and forth I exclaimed through my wired teeth.

“If you are afraid we have some pretty good medications that help with the symptoms,” he tried to assure me.

“Pleeee, nuh.”

“You know, we could have lost you? I’ll keep checking on you though, okay?”

I loved warmth in his tone. There was no hint of medical superiority. His bedside manner was more like a visit from a concerned friend. I didn’t want him to leave. I slept… I don’t know how long.

I awoke to see officer Richards face. He was cold and dead serious.

“I have to make a report on what happened. Can you help me with that? Just nod yes or no.” He pulled up a chair next to me. Unlike the doctor I felt uneasy about this cop. What the hell was I going to be able to tell him through my wired jaw and oxygen mask? I didn’t want to rat out Nick. Then again, I knew he’d probably do the best he could to protect Nick. No one would believe anything his junkie wife said if ever it went to court for spousal abuse.

I tried to shout… It probably sounded more like a muffled, “eee---iiit---me, duumut!”

“Who hit you, Mickey?”

“Nuuh, Nick!”

“Mick?”

Shit, I thought… this is useless. I can’t talk and this guy is obtuse. I want to sleep… “Guuh-uhhhwuh!” I tried to say, “Go away!”

I closed my eyes and ignored him until a nurse showed up at the door. “Mrs. Baker needs to rest. You can try again in a few day.”

“I have enough now, thanks.” He got up to leave.

 As he went for the door, I ripped off the mask and tape and yelled as best as I could through my teeth… “No, it was Nick and it was my fault!”

He didn’t stop or acknowledge my plea at all. I heard him talking with the nurse in the hall outside my door.

“Yeh, her husband says she was fine when he left to run some errands. That is when he saw Mr. McKee coming up the street on his motorcycle.”

I feared for Mickey and what this Richards would do to cover Nick.

Abscess and Abuse

I felt dirty with Nick in my house. To think I once loved the man but he became a shade of his former self. “You have to go, Nick. I can’t live in the umber of doom you bring in my door.”

He didn’t answer. It provoked more anger and I wanted so badly to lash-out but feelings of indifference prevailed. I went upstairs and changed into street clothes, putting his car keys in my pocket. As I came back down to the foyer he was standing in front of the door, blocking my exit. He towers over me and weighs at least a hundred pound more than I, but he wasn’t going to intimidate me: not today anyway. “Get out of my way, Nick.”

“No.”

Taking off my shoe, it was only a canvas deck-shoe; I whacked him across the face… once… he didn’t move… twice…. he flinched… the third time, he came at me. I backed off, “What are you going to do?”

I suddenly realized how stupid it was to attack him with a little shoe. He was so doped up I could have hit him with a poker and he wouldn’t have felt it. He wrapped his arms around me in the straight-jacket of his embrace.

“Stay here Adriane, call Billy. I need to talk with him.”

“Talk?”

“Yes, I’m broke, I need to see if he'll give me credit… or maybe you, my beloved, can do that for me?” he let me go, “You know, for old time’s sake?”

“No… I won’t do it. You are already into me for more than twenty grand, you bastard.”

I came to… I didn’t know what hit me or how long I lay there. I looked in the mirror. Half my face was black and blue. The keys to his car were no longer on me… shit, what should I do now? I can’t go anywhere with my face like this. Should I call the cops? What good would that do? He has too much pull with them. Call Billy? Make sure he doesn’t score? Oh, God, if only Gotson were here…

Confusion… a doped and confused state of mind… that is what heroin does to me. I count the benefits… I can paint when I am stoned. Getting on methadone would be a good idea. I did that once and was okay with it but I hate it if they start cutting back on my dose. They do that to gradually wean you off it but that doesn’t work for most addicts unless I truly want to quit enough to suffer that... and I never really do. All that process does for me is… well, I call Billy for something better and sometimes I end up waking with tubes and crap in the ICU.

I stood there and I felt my hip where I usually hit up. A bruise had been there for a few days... maybe a week and it is getting worse. I’ve heard about all the bugs… a flesh-eating virus had been going around town. Damned tar .That bruise on my but was full of puss now. My face black and blue… my jaw hurts… It hurts to open my mouth… I need to get to a doctor for some antibiotics and check on this jaw. Forget Nick. Forget the house. I called Mickey to see if he could come over. Maybe he can give me a ride to the E.R.?

It was at least an hour before Mickey showed up on his motorcycle, “What the hell happened to you?” he said as I let him in.

“Thank God you are here, Mickey… I need help.” I fell into his arms and, as I let him hold me, I was safe.

“Was it Nick?”

“No… it isn’t what you think… it was my fault. I hit him first. I started it… ouch,” each word sent searing pain through my jaw, “It hurts when I try to talk.”

“I didn’t bring an extra helmet… we’ll have to take your car.”

“You might have to take care of the dogs a few days too.”

“What? They don’t keep you overnight even if your jaw is broken…”

“I have an abscess…”

“An abscess, what, I thought you were clean?”

I could see by his expression pity… deep hurt…, “Oh, Mickey, I can’t paint or do anything when I drink. I need to keep this house clean so I smoke some meth and heroin settles my nerves…”

“No problem, we’ll get you to the hospital…”

Adriane, the Sequel to a Taxi Romance: Nick Returns

“Watch this,” Angel smirks at Imp, “I’m going to hasten her demise, help your odds a bit, by putting Nick back in the house…”

The doorbell chimed and Angel admires what he saw as she descended the stairs displaying the contours of her body, pulled her robe over the purity of her nakedness…. aka Duchamp… and closed it with a strap. She opened the door. Two police officers were standing close, noses nearly touching the door as though trying to peek in through the two inch window peep hole. They stepped back, startled, “Eh hem, I'm Richards, are you Mrs. Adriane Baker?”

Being entirely unaware of what Angel and Imp were up to on the high celestial plane, I supposed I’d left the gate open… it annoys me when people get all the way onto the property and to the door when I am working.

“Yes, no, I am… that is at least until the divorce is final. What did he do now?” I truly never knew when the police showed up at my door.

“He’s okay. We simply need to know if you will let him in your house.” Officer Richards spoke somewhat sneeringly.

“I don’t like the looks of this… what is going on?”

The second officer was more congenial, “… he told us to take him here.”

“Why not?” I had no idea. I mean, Nick’s dad had some sort of pull with the SBPD and DA’s office. I don’t know what; but, whenever Nick got stopped for driving all smacked-out or drunk, he never went to jail or got a ticket for it. I thought of this sense of entitlement… “What do you want me to do?”

“Okay, we just needed to check with you.” They went back down and fetched him out of the squad car. He could walk on his own but he was in one of those Zombie trances. I had them escort Nick into the music room and sat him on the couch. He sat without saying a word.

“Here’s the keys to his car. We parked it a block away. You are okay to drive, right?”

I didn’t think I looked fucked-up. The question annoyed me and the prospects of putting up with Nick in my house was more than I could take. I asked, “Do I look okay to you? You are the police, aren’t you? You should know…”

“I’m sorry; we will be on our way.”  They went back to their squad car and waited until I got in Nick’s car before they left. I wasn’t afraid of being nailed for a DUI. I was high, alright, but I wasn’t drinking. Besides, I doubt whether either cop had been able to see my irises because I was wearing my transition lenses. Even though that surly cop, Richards, did made me nervous the way he was eying me up. Of course, I put on a tease walking down to the car in my light kimono style robe. It didn’t make any difference to me any longer as I got into the car and parked it up in back in car-port. While parking it I rammed the garage wall, breaking a stanchion… but what the hell… and then made my way down to the house with Sushi and Tofu in tow.

“So, what the hell Nick, are you planning on staying here?”

“Uhhh, mmphmutter mumph.”

“I can’t understand you!” I shouted damned near in his ear.

“Uh, do you have any coffee?”

“Sure…”

“How about coke.”

“A coke or ‘Coke’?” I was pissed and wanted to needle him.

“Coke….,” his head slumped, chin to his chest, “c’mon girl, Coke.”

“You say that clearly enough… damn it Nick!” I went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of Coke, put an iced glass on a tray with the Coke and coffee, and served him like a waitress.

“Thanks… can I use your phone?” he bent down to the tray and sipped from the cup without lifting it.

“You look like a cow at the trough…”

He looked up at me with big cow eyes… “You got Billy’s number?”

“Billy? You know Billy too?”

“I introduced you,” he paused a minute and asked, “didn’t I?”

“No, Rod introduced me to Billy.”

“Who do you think introduced Rod to Billy?”

“Small world, eh?” I had no idea that Rod had any contact with Nick before we’d… Oh, well.

“Yeh, I told Rod that you would soon be available and I’m the one that told him he could go ahead and fuck the shit out of you.”

He was goading me now and I was playing right into his hands.

The Bureacracy of Heaven

            Between birth and death… between one fix or another… I no longer wonder what it is that I am doing here. It is a dreamscape I occupy for a spell… a spell cast by an illusionist… the master illusionist… you call it God? Mickey calls it the great Whazoo. How many theologians can we count dancing on the head of a pin? But in the dreamscape something else is going on.

 Picture heaven… the throne room of God… full of grace and light but, as we shield our eyes, we see lower levels of celestial bureaucracy. Highest rank among the non-warrior angels is the more meticulous Guardians: protector angels with tasks involving individual treatment and care for bumbling fools among us on the earthly plain. These angels, having seats in cosmic cubicles, are deputized with duties to not only protect and guard us individually but also have the onerous responsibility to call us home if we are otherwise obtuse in hearing the bells, whistles and claxons… warning sirens of impending doom. There are times too, when some have done nothing wrong at all or have been especially prescient and have foreseen their own demise. It is simply a matter of calling them heavenward when they have accomplished all that needs be done on earth. In other words, there is a time when the Gautama has done all he can do and the angel passes some bad pork his way… or when Jeshua Ben Joseph has finished thing up and a bug is put in Judas Iscariot’s ear to cash in on the carpenter.  While these events come off as tragic or puzzling at best angel sees them from another perspective… after all, the chap has been up to this a long… long time. So many… many, times there have been mass extinctions… whole populations wiped out by tsunami and only a few could be saved. Angel knows that it all works out eventually and that our worst tragedies here have no more meaning or impact on the heavenly scale than that of a bug splattering out its brief existence on the windshield  of a station-wagon on its way to a family picnic.

Our Angel in charge of Adriane is busy at his desk watching Adriane shoot-up a muscle-pop of tar in her butt on the big screen when he is visited by Imp from the Satanic Entourage. Imp pulls up a seat next to him smacking his lips, “Oh, yes, she is on her way now.”

“Yes, you might say so. We almost had her clear of it…” Angel pulls open a drawer and takes out a pint of Nectar, passing it to Imp.

“What’s a few pints between friends, eh?” Imp wonders why Angel is so damned optimistic. After all, since they made their bet, Adriane had been revived by paddles in the ICU and, even after getting clean while in France… within a few weeks of returning to California she was right back where she left off…, good and fucked up.

Angel always delighted in the game… the give and take of it… and he suspected that Imp was in it for more than a few pints also. “So, my friend, you think you are ready to close this deal?”

She is nude and now standing in front of the easel, picking up a paint brush, strokes a broad crimson swath across the canvas. Standing back from it she takes a cloth soaked in turpentine and smears the red into a green patch that showed a half-face peering out…

“Angel, don’t you wish you could see the eroticism of this picture?” Imp leered.

“Hey, I’m an angel but I can still see and feel everything in creation…”

“Yeah, but look at her… a fine form, eh?”