The Convolutions of Catalonia

It is hard to determine whether Harry harbored any feelings beyond the task he needed to perform. He did indeed love Iniga in his own way but could it be said he felt that love in the form of an emotion for her? So many years of working within the context of spy-craft didn’t allow his emotions to determine how his operations were executed. He now had to find a way to get Iniga out of prison if he was to have any chance of getting his seed away from being adopted by a wealthy minion of Franco.

Harry had mixed feelings about what would become Nick; after all, Nicky would be raised in luxury and live a life of cushy privilege if Harry didn’t act. But, he feared the Franco grip on power was about to slip, or eventually be overturned, and he couldn’t predict how things would turn out for the ruling class in Spain. He also thought that, if he worked it right, Nicky could have American citizenship and get the hell out of Spain along with Iniga. This would take nothing more than obtaining a forged marriage certificate and bribing a few corrupt prison administrators. Finding the right corrupt prison official wasn’t all that difficult as they were as common as fleas on a cur around Madrid. However, a high profile Basque separatist such as Iniga posed a problem because she would be slated for a summery execution as soon as she gave birth.

Harry took a seat on a surreal bench with Commandante Rojelio at the Park Guell. The Comandante was tamping his pipe when Harry approached, pausing a minute to appraise an old acquaintance, “Senor Perro de Caza, it is good to see you are still alive.”

“Yes, and you have advanced in rank, Camandante, since I last saw you.” Harry was letting Rojelio know that he had inside information, knowing Rojelio’s rank, even though the Comandante was in plain clothes. He also knew he would have a hard time dealing with Rojelio because the man was one of the few decent people he knew in the Policia Armada.

“Who are you working for now, Harry?” Rojelio was especially suspicious of Harry Baker. He knew that Harry worked as an independent contractor and that meant he had no allegiance to anything, anyone, any ideology or faith.

“I’m doing this one on personal business. I know I can’t bend you with money but you can still help me, if you will.”

“It is about Iniga, eh?”

“Yes, and you know she is embarazada too.” Harry was glad that Rojelio came directly to the point. This saved them both a lot of time.

“Yes, she was fortunate I was her interrogator…” he finally lit his pipe, “I can tell, strangely enough, God must have a special love for that woman.”

“You can help then.”

“Donate some pesetas to the nuns at la Venta and you can get the child out if you act now. An adoption is in order and the vultures are circling with bids before Iniga’s belly even began to swell. I’m not so sure what it would take to get her released, but negotiations...”

“… I have a marriage certificate.”

“That might help but I can’t promise anything.”

“Do you find this park to be disorienting?” Harry didn’t like getting confused and the wavy undulations, swirling lines of the walkways and niches, evoked a bit of vertigo in his guts... or it could have been the carafes of wine from yesterday.

“No, it is a glorious tribute to the convolutions of the Catalonian politics we have to engage in to survive.”  He let out a wisp of smoke adding, “You ought to be used to that, Bird Dog.”

The Poetry of Doom

Misery, distress, indigence, adversity,
calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin.

“Are you sure, we had these hopes built up before?” she was hard pressed to restrain herself from throwing herself at Harry.

“It was Fournier in France that put the money up. I just passed it on to the right people.”

“Still, I’ll give you all the credit, Bird Dog. Where is he now?”

“Slow down, Iniga, he isn’t out yet…” Harry lit another cigarette. His instincts told him that Iniga wanted to reward him personally, “He is still in Caracremada, but any day now…”

“Please, Harry … money wouldn’t be enough, he was scheduled to be executed, wasn’t he?” her voice was a monotone that hardly revealed the emotion deeply buried... moving with great force like an underground river.

“We traded some Guardia Civil captured from a po-dunk town near Valencia. They were held by one of the enlaces you might be familiar with.” He reached across the table and placed his massive hand palm up in an offering. That night the salamander that would be dubbed Nicholas was planted in Iniga’s womb.

Harry’s maneuvers were not based on political beliefs as he had none. Nor were there but very few personal alliances that bound him. He was strictly on business and going to his dingy room to bed Iniga was extra-curricular to his business. His business in Spain today was to get Gotson released. There was no hurry as Gotson had languished in Caracremada for four years… since 1953… he wasn’t likely to die while Harry closed the deal. The fact that he had made up the bit about the enlaces near Valencia was of little weight on his conscience either. This was all a part of the crafts he’d learned in the OSS where a clear conscience was an extravagance afforded to those who had never been at war.

After approximately two months he and Iniga started to argue. She would nudge him after he had gone to sleep and ask… “So what is happening with Gotson?” They would argue. Harry would insist that he was powerless over the when and where of  it all. Iniga would then go back to her place as stealthily as she could. It wasn't safe for a woman to be on the streets unescorted as much as for the obvious dangers as it was for the patrols of the Guardia Civil.

Iniga thought she left Harry asleep on one such night. As soon as she shut the door he was up and pulled his window shade up and then down. It was time for the trade. She was able to reach the street corner when she felt her instincts tell her she was being followed. She ducked into a shop entrance and tried the door. Of course, it was locked. She was unarmed but for a small switchblade. She knew she had no choice but to toss the knife where she might find it afterward, if there was an afterwards, and to wait and watch. Waiting and watching was a talent developed over years as a guidari in the resistance. There was no traffic, so the tinny sound of the SEAT’s (pronounced like Fiat) four-cylinder motor approaching came as an alarm. The sedan screeched to a halt with all but the driver’s door swinging open in the early dawning hour of the Barcelona morn.

            Throughout Franco’s oppression women were the victims of an archaic machismo that filtered far past the demise of the Generismo. Spain went medieval where the rest of the western world tested the warm waters of modernity began before the advent of the past two wars. In the Spain of Franco women weren’t allowed to leave an abusive husband lest they be charged with ‘abandonment’. Submission to the males in her family was the law. Brothers and fathers managed her finances, and she could not become a judge or even testify in court. She most certainly could not even dream of becoming a university professor.

The irony of the trade-off for the release of Gotson was that Iniga, his closest confidant, was his ransom, and, the Guardia Civil set in motion the poetry of doom after Iniga slipped away into the night. She was politely interrogated at first.

Her interrogator offered her a cigarette across the desk-top that was gouged with a hollow protest… “no pasaran!”:  probably scratched in with an edge of a captive’s hand cuffs. He called her by her alias as he opened a file, “Maria Francesco?”

She knew that her alias would not have such a thick file but the ruse was courteously accepted. She had documentation and, by all appearances, her identity was settled. She had people from the enlaces, unaffiliated with guidari, that could have come to retrieve her but she was not about to implicate anyone else until she could determine the seriousness of her arrest. She played it like an innocent woman, Maria Francesco, caught on the streets in the predawn hour… “Si, senor,” her voice quavered.

“You were on the street alone tonight… You are puta? No, you don’t look...”

“No, no, no… no señor. I was going home but my brother couldn’t come for me.” She lifted her eyebrows and let her steel-gray eyes catch his.

“You’re eyes, they are Basque? … Even unusual for Basque… eh?” He flicked open a Zippo lighter with a US Marine Corps emblem on its face, “I am Comandante Rojelio.”

She restrained herself from a snide retort that would have been uncharacteristic of a woman of good standing. She stayed in character and managed to blush, casting her eyes towards her lap, “Yes, I am Basque.”

“So, your name… Maria Francesco, it is uncharacteristic of Basque names too, eh?” he was now taking out a yellow legal tablet from the center desk drawer. “I have been honest with you as I have given you my name and rank. Why would you try to deceive me, Iniga?”

A chill run up her spine. Her thoughts were clear… focused… sharp. This is where it begins… She knew what was coming… she would be told to list her enlaces (circle of supporters:) in lieu of an offer… a chance that her plight might be relaxed. The Law of the Fugitives (Ley de Fugas) decreed a fugitive’s life was dirt. Any fugitive could be generously offered clemency and released. Then, as she walked away, believing to have avoided years of imprisonment, a bullet would be dispatched to the back of her head thus saving considerable bother for all involved.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for several years now. It is a curious phenomenon, notoriety, si?” the comandante was authentically moved to meet an adversary that had been a nemesis since he had graduated from the academy in 1948. He had been on the scene when Gotson was taken in and he had seen a WWII picture of her in a file. She held a smatchet in front of her cupid bow lips with a face he would have no need to double-check.

Refusing to list her collaborators assured her that she would be tortured, raped and, most likely, murdered instead. She held one trump card up her sleeve that could reprieve her from further torture… if the Comandante found it to his advantage. “I am embarazada (pregnant).”

“So, you want to visit the nuns at la Ventas? I can assure you that your stay will be most comfortable for your first, what, nine months?” He saw her lips quiver for the first time and thought of the torture and rape that he was sure she would be in store for her. The Comandante was a practicing Catholic and, as a practicing Catholic, he’d embraced a compassion unfamiliar to those whose ambition preceded their devotion to Catholicism.

“We are ready for whatever you can dish out, Comandante.” She stiffened her resolve and considered that she would indeed be more comfortable than she was sure to be afterwards, rotting in prison.

“I’m sure you can endure more of it than me, senorita… or should I say senora?”

“It is Senora. I am married to the Basque cause.” She knew that these words were an empty proclamation but had always imagined she’d say something along those lines when captured.

 He stood to leave the room and stopped by the door, “You say you are married to the Basque cause, Senora, but the Basque cause has abandoned you. You will find your revolutionary fervor a luxury you can hardly afford from now on.”

Iniga

Harry had understated the complexities behind Nick’s surname. Ventas prison was from Franco’s dark decades as Generalissimo of Spain. Iniga had the misfortune to finally end up in one of the various prisons people like her perished. This imprisonment of the wives and lovers of radicals went on well into the sixties and for some into the nineties. Harry often tried to salve his guilt by reminding himself that the odds were that she’d end up in one of Franco’s jails or be shot down by the Civil Guard, with or without, his collaboration eventually anyway.

Harry was a young independent contractor back when the CIA was formed from the OSS. His physique had him standing-out too much for the CIA or anything but what he was so very good at. He was better suited for “black ops” that were “in and out” affairs of which there would be no official record if he was captured, arrested or killed. In other words, Harry was an assassin that carried under his fifties style crew cut-an encyclopedia of interesting details about the last forty years of the Cold War: details he could count on that no one in the Agency or the State Department would want out on the streets.

Rather than kill Gotson back in ‘53, Harry had informed on the whereabouts of his fellow guidari. Gotson was arrested and disappeared into the maze of Franco’s gaols in spite of Harry’s many connections of his past collaborations. At least Gotson wasn’t shot but he languished in the hell of Caracremada for four years and by coincidence, shortly before his unexpected release, Iniga was finally captured by the Civil Guard and put in with the nuns at la Ventas. Harry had everything to do with Iniga’s arrest; but, regardless, he experienced a deep remorse uncharacteristic of his occupational talents. He was, however, ignorant of the fact that little Nicky was a salamander planted in Iniga’s womb by him and he was disturbingly informed of Iniga’s pregnancy by an old colleague… a black-marketer he ran into while on one of his rare binges of regret.

Sitting at a table in a dark corner of a cantina in a seedy side ofBarcelona, downing one shot of American whiskey after another, he spotted the shady Argentinean enter the room before their eyes met.

“Senor Baker,” El Estraperlista (the black marketeer) slid into a chair at Harry’s table, uninvited. “Have you heard Gotson has been ‘rehabilitated’ He signed a denunciation of the anarchists and will be released this week?”

The creep reminded Harry of a sleazier version of Peter Lorre in Casablanca but he had to humor him. He was, after all, good source of information, “Yep, I heard… I haven’t been in a cave all this time.”

“Maybe you don’t know that Gotson’s chucha, Iniga, was arrested, serendipity, si?” 

Harry shoved his shot-glass across the table and filled it, “Drink? What else can you tell me that I don’t already know?”

“No thank you, por favor,” he shoved the glass back to Harry, “Oh nothing much, she was embarazada… heavy you say… with child… without a padre.”

“Pregnant, we say… eh.”

“Oh yes, I already have a lock on someone who pays good cash to the nuns for the little bastardo.”

“And, of course, you get a nice cut… eh?” Harry sobered up. He didn’t want to give away his hand, that he knew more and was most intimate with Iniga, to a man whose living depended upon playing both sides for a pecuniary advantage. The price would go up considerably if the shit-head knew he was interested, “Do you know where they are keeping her?”

There was no use wallowing in doubt or self-pity, for there were strings to pull, plans and bribes: He could not allow this uncustomary remorse to let his child be adopted-out and lost to an upstanding, good Catholic couple of moral and political rectitude. That is what would have been done with Nicky had he been officially termed “huérfano”, or, an orphan. Without an important American father these things were a regular atrocity for the duration of Franco’s horrible oppression… a policy that continued far past the generalissimo’s death in 1975 into the mid-nineties.

Iniga had made their first contact a month before in Barcelona, the stronghold of anarchists at that time. The Stalinist Communists in the PCE had left guerrilla groups associated with anarchists to fend for themselves in the struggle against militias, contras, Guardia Civil, almost everywhere else in Spain. Harry found himself caught between his affection for his old allies and overriding reflexes to duty and his duty called for him to take out the leadership of what was once the Maquis in Spain.

He was sitting at his usual corner table, as was his habit in most cafés, across from the door pretending to read the newspaper. Headlines featured the word, ‘bandoleros’, always something about this or that successful government action against common criminals. Harry knew that ‘common criminal’ was the euphemism within the jargon of Spanish journalism for ‘maquis’ by government censors in Spain. These were rarely written about unless there was an arrest of a guidari and these days the isolation of anarchist enclaves was nearly complete. He didn’t need to read the paper because he always had inside information on the real news of the day that the papers dared not touch.

“Perro de caza, you bird-dog, what brings you back to this cess-pool?” her voice still stirred him.

Harry flashed a grin. Only a few knew of Harry’s old code-name… ‘Bird Dog’… “Iniga, sit down, I have some business here.” Harry knew that his use of the word, “business’, carried some weight with Iniga.

Her eyes scanned the room… “Even here in Barcelona, one has to watch one’s back, eh?” She pulled out a rickety chair from across the table and sat down.

“Be careful too that you don’t miss what is in front of you,” he quipped. They sat quietly, with eyes fixed on each other, not in longing… checking…, as they had so many years ago in the Pyrenees.

“You are here on business, aren’t we well aware of what your business is today?” Iniga was never one to hedge; “We no longer have the same alliances, do we?”

“I have been away from OSS business since the war ended.” He was also well aware that this was a prevarication. Iniga would let it pass however, as they had more important business to take care of. “You were never all that good at diplomacy, were you, dear girl?”

“And you are still so good at lying,” she took one of the cigarettes Harry offered, “So, you had nothing to do with Gotson’s capture?”

“You still blame me for what happened four years ago but don’t give me any credit for his impending release, eh?” Harry could see by the way her eyes lit up that this was news, very good news, to her.

Fiction that Doesn't Lie in Wait

I try:
 I try to write fiction that doesn't lie. I lie in wait of the truth, finding what I know of scraps from experience... hard fought and won... one falling over another.. a mountain stream of consciousness... free of my own prejudices and ideals. Set me down in the ocean of dreams... let me float above in a glass bottom boat... jet ski me across the choppy landscape of waters... land my soaking, naked body on the beach... solid ground of being, past the shifting sands of facts... the atoms of Damocles... Oh,Father Blake, pontiff of my reality... grant me permission to press on... press on through the doors of perception. Am I a dog scratching at evasive fleas... an audience of stars...? Give the idea an ideal to grasp. Grasp the entrails of the unknowable before they slip away dear Zarathustra... speak no more about the Superman... he is a lost vision, goosestepping on a comic-book cover, inked in with kryptonite, banned  by our PC seers... Oh, volital evaporation of truth, let me stretch my fingers around your vapors.... why not... who am I to think I will let go of something that entertains me in the bardo... this breath of life between pauses of the inhaling and exhaling of the cosmos... if I can't dream now... how will I recognize the Dream of the Grand Foopah hereafter? If wishes were fishes they'd do all my dishes... if they did all my dishes I'd have nothing to do in the here and now.

geo, 03/28/2012

Another Dog Watching
the Goddess Play

A Funky Government Car

...the mysterious Iniga Baker
listed as his mother...

Nick secretly longed for what social workers would call "a masculine role model". He was eager to follow this man anywhere but he had mixed feelings. He now had a mother and a father even though they had abandoned him and his mom was dead. He had something to go along with this surname that had been attached onto his birth certificate... the mysterious Iniga Baker listed as his mother…. and this Harry Baker as his dad.

Nick was elated as they rode, father and son, cruising from the camp in a sedan… even if it was a funky government car. He had arrived at the camp in a County Sheriff’s van with a half-dozen other juvenile delinquents. This car was a step up from that.

“So, are you going to tell me more about my mom?” Nick hesitantly probed this strange giant of a man.

“Your mom had been given Baker as a surname. I managed to do that for her… I owed her that much.”

“What do you mean, ‘owed her’?”

“It is too complex to tell you all of it… maybe later. We have more important things to take care of for now.”

“Like?”

“Your education…” He passed a cigarette to Nick. “I knew you wanted one pretty bad, eh?”

Nick muttered, “They had a school at the camp.”

“No, I meant, a cigarette.”  Harry let it soak in that the boy, who had nothing but adversaries up to now, had a friend as his father, if not a good father… perhaps a friendly hand. “The camp has a pretty good school but it won’t look so good on your resume, yes?”

This guy was cooler than he thought, “True that, I guess so.”

They drove in silence a few more miles, headed for Lompoc, before Harry spoke, “I haven’t been much of s father and I know it. I’m not even going to try to make it up to you because there is nothing I can do for the past… but I owe you this much… your future.”

Nick had never heard anyone talk to him this honestly. The events of the day were overwhelming and this Harry dude’s tone put him in the mood to listen. He wasn’t speaking down to him the way parole officers and yard supes did.

“I gave your Mom my name even though we weren’t on the record as married until I found out she was pregnant.” He pulled the car into a convenience store in Buellton, “Need a sandwich or anything?”

"I'd just as soon you tell me how you got me outa camp?" this question had bothered him ever since Harry'd come out of the office... you don't get cut loose when the judge sentences you to sit in Juvie 'til you're eighteen. "You know, just like that?"

"Let's just say, I have sand," and they both laughed at Harry's awkward use of the jailhouse term for influence.

Reunion

It was easy enough to walk out of Los Prietos Boys Camp  and Nick could have done so. He stayed put because he had nowhere to go and, frankly, he liked it there. However, this institutionally friendly life changed one afternoon and, as he leaned against a rake in the yard, he watched a sedan with government plates pull up with an oddly familiar older man in a crew cut, coat and tie. Nick's eyes were fixed on the man as he shook hands with the Supervising Officer. The Soup, who was usually most confident around probation officers and staff, was most cordial and, to Nick’s overly sensitive radar, submissive to this character. His radar was confirmed when Nick was called into the visitor’s area... what the fuck, it wasn’t even visiting hours for the camp.

Rescue

The Soup left them at the table. The man’s hand closed on Nicks in a firm clasp. This was one of the few hands, even adult hands, that diminished his own. He had the same grey-blue eyes and his features could have been his own in twenty years.

“Harry, Harry Baker, Nicholas,” he offered, as the two of them scrutinized each other.

“Uh, same last name… who are you?” Nick found himself wanting to take a leak… maybe to just get away. He wasn’t ever this nervous around anyone, including adults.

“Take a deep breath Nick. I have some news for you…” it was over 95 degrees. He took off his coat revealing, not only the sweat stains on the light-blue dress shirt, but, an empty shoulder holster, as he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pack of smokes.

“You can’t smoke here.” Nick at once felt awkward for his uncustomary reflex to enforce the rules. "Hey, are you a cop or something?"

Harry lit it regardless, "Or something..." Nick was delighted. Even the Soup, standing off to the side in the shade, had nothing to say.

“You got some sand, eh?” Nick tried to sound cool.

“Nick, I’m your dad.” Harry let out a puff of smoke from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

“Fuck you, man, I got no dad.” His heart felt like the blood was boiling in it and his stomach ached… the smoke... those three words... but he kept his poker-face.

“I didn’t even know where you might be until I found your mom a few weeks ago.”

“My mom? Now I know you are bull-shittin’ me.” He got up to walk away but this Harry character just reached over the table, put his massive hand on Nick’s shoulder and sat him back down. Nick wanted badly to throw that hand off of him and follow through with a right-hook but thought better of it. The guy was old but he was huge and emitted an aura about him that only a fool would fuck with.

“I found her in Bethesda Maryland a few days before she passed away.”

“Passed away?”

“Yeh, Walter Reed,” flicking the coal off the end of his cigarette and putting the butt back in the pack, he continued, “She had to give you up when you were born. It is a long story and I can tell you all about it but we have more important things to take care of.”

Nick’s head was swimming, “You could have passed that butt to me, Dad.”

Nick’s sarcasm wasn’t missed but Harry was proud of his son. Hell, how would have he taken such news under similar circumstances?

“What the hell do you expect me to do with this information, pa?” Again, there was no affection in the use of the hillbilly expression for paternity.

Harry’s expression didn’t change. His poker face was as stoically unmoved as anything Nick could pull off. Nick hadn’t even noticed a folder Harry had carried to the table. He opened it to several pictures… one was a newspaper clipping showing a young woman with dark curls flowing out from under a beret holding an odd shaped dagger upright in front of her face. The caption was in Spanish and Nick could read some of it. Words like “Basque bandoleros” were easy enough figure out. “detenida”, "Iniga", “Gotson”, and "smatchet-daga", maquisard", "guardari", were words he was not familiar with. Before he could get lost in that image a few others were shown of what looked like the same woman… much older… gaunt… weary and frail. Another was a glossy Eight by Ten that had a red ink Top Secret stamped across its face of her with the same hair but snowy white though looking much healthier. Both sat in silence…

“Your mother was a hero of sorts, you know, depending on whose side… that knife is a smatchet, designed to drive through a NAZI helmet like butter.” 

"She was bad, eh?" Nick felt a taste of pride well up in the form of a lump in his throat.

Harry stood up, “You want to go home, son, or, do you like it here?”

The Deal of a Lifetime

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Billy, Pagers, Deals and Hitches

Chapter Seven: Billy

Billy’s trailer was down on the other side of the tracks… well, the other side of the freeway and the tracks… in a storage lot… where RVs, boats, trailers and storage bins were hidden away from the eyes of the tourists and locals. The lot was fenced in and secured with razor-wire running the whole perimeter. Billy felt relatively secure in the depths of the lot while he fixed another syringe of black tar. His pager beeped while he was in the midst of shooting up. “Who the fuck can this be.”

            He checked the number on the display. Billy was a long term user of heroin and it had been ages since he ever got a rush out of a fix. It now amounted to little more than to keep the dope sickness at bay. The number on the pager wasn’t one he was familiar with. “Damn,” he muttered, putting his flannels on over a stained wife-beater undershirt, “Another of the French bitch’s friends?”

            Still, he had to get a few more bucks together to score another 100 grams. He had about ten halves wrapped and ready that he had to unload before he had enough for that. He jumped on his bicycle and made it over to the Scolaries on Milpas to use the pay phone. His chest sank as he heard the Hispanic accent on the other end of the line, “Hey, Billy, meet me at three.”

“I’m not ready yet, Miguel.”

            “Sheet, Billy, wotchew mean… not ready?”

“Just a couple bucks short…” Billy wanted to bitch about using his name on the phone but he’d gotten even by using Miguel’s, “… didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“I’m in town joss a few hours… I give you a good deal; have a grand on you when I call.”

“Can I get credit for the diff…?”

“No, I call you back…”

“Give me ‘til five…” the line was dead before he could finish.

As Billy pulled up to the chain-link fence he almost rode away before he remembered he’d been so eager to get to the phone that he’d forgotten to lock the gate., “Can’t get too hungry, Billy,” he chided himself.

“Whew,” he exhaled when he saw Nick’s car in front of his trailer. He might be able to unload all his stash on Nicky.

“What’s up, Nick!” he hit the driver’s side window with the palm of his hand as he saw that Nick was nodded out… “Yo, Nick!”

“Uh?” the window came down… “I tried pagin’, where you been?” Nick muttered.

“No, you didn’t… I ain’t got no calls.” Billy knew it didn’t matter now.

“We need to talk… let’s go inside.” Nick started to open the car door.

Billy pushed it shut, “We can talk here” then he looked around… always paranoid… glancing over his shoulder towards the gate, “C’mon, let’s take a walk.”

As they got fifty feet away, Nick asked, “How much you got.”

“Right now?” Billy knew Nick was good for much more, “About ten hits.”

“I’ll take ‘em… you got a deal for me?”

“A buck-fifty…”

“One-fifty? Are you shittin’ me?” Nick had to bargain for everything… even though a hundred and fifty dollars wasn’t such a bad deal for fifty grams of tar. “I got a C-note… that’s all.”

Billy turned towards the trailer without answering: Nick followed.

“Okay, maybe?” Nick had a c-note and a fifty on him that he’d lifted from Adriane’s stash of cash the last time he’d been at her place but it was in his DNA to wheel and deal. He knew he couldn’t get change from any drug dealer, and especially not Billy, so he had to get him down to a hundred bucks or give up the whole fifty.

“Get the fuck outa here, you know one-fifty is the best I can do.” Billy was only playing along. He only needed about eighty bucks to score more and a hundred would have been a little gravy on top of what he needed but he hated these rich-bitches when they tried to milk him.

Nick played it too hard one more time, “One-hundred, you prick… and that is my final offer.”

“One-twenty-five then,” Billy stepped around to the end of a boat trailer.

Nick followed him, pulled out the c-note without saying anything more and handed it over rolled up. The deal was done… Billy pulled the trailer-hitch off the boat-trailer, taking out a snack-sized baggie with ten wadded-up foils of tar from the square tube the hitch is usually bolted within… He passed the bag to Nick as they walked back to his trailer, satisfied that he had enough now to buy the hundred grams from Miguel on time.

The Wheels Were Turning

Chapter Six:

The Wheels of Justice

Reversed: Obstacles, adversity, calamity.

Mickey was able to visit Adriane at her house when she was sent home. Her bedroom was upstairs and it was hard for her to get to the kitchen to help herself, so he used the couch on his time off and helped her change the dressing on the hole left by the abscess and faithfully brought chicken soup up to her. His feelings for her were stronger now than ever but he was able to control them. While in jail Mickey had done some thorough soul searching. He’d been able to sort out his emotions concerning Adriane and put them second to his own sanity.

During that time, Nick had been serving her and she confessed to Mickey that she delighted in making Nick go up and down the stairs to get this and that for her: “bring me a book… go to the garden shack and fetch my drawing board. I want a cup of coffee …something from the freezer.” Guilt motivated Nick to become her slave and she took out her spite on him in this manner. Mickey thought it was way too soft a punishment for the asshole and her lawyer agreed, but, what was anybody to do? She was the only one who could have had the bastard prosecuted.

“Do your folks know about any of this?” Mickey asked, thinking surely her family 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 this Gotson again?”

“Gotson, a dear friend of our family, was a Basque Maquis… a separatist… called a terrorist by the USA after the war… you know, Hitler and shit…when Franco ran Spain,” she spoke so proudly of him that Mickey was almost jealous of her obvious affection.

“Hmm, he must be old now… Franco has been gone a while,” he assuaged his envy.

“He is still very healthy and capable of doing some damage to Nick and his connections I think. I don’t want him to get in trouble over me.”

He thought, Shit, this could be an answer. Naw, he wanted vengeance but not so badly that he or anyone else could end up in prison for it. He wondered, could this Gotson character have some interesting covert suggestions? He shoveled that thought way to the back of his head.

“Yes, but Adriane, what Nick did to you... How can you live with this?”

“Yes, sure… He tells them that I am a slut and a junkie, that he is only trying to help me and that he gets frustrated at my relapses,” she sighed.

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

The wheels were turning…

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

Homer greeted him on the driveway of his place, leading him to the porch, looking back to make sure he was being followed as Mickey dismounted from the bike. What was inside the door that was left ajar was not a pretty sight. It was… well… everything was on the floor…. The Remington… and the monitor screen as well as all his papers. He 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?

His neighbor, Jack, came down from his apartment upstairs and stood at the door surveying the mess, “Some guy was here… what the hell, I didn’t know he was doing this?”

“What did he look like?”

“I never seen him before… he was tall… a big guy.”

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

“I didn’t see a car; he could have been parked around the side. I didn’t really look… I didn’t know he’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?”

“Just one… I think maybe I saw him before… tall, like that inspector… you know?”

That was better. He is at least giving up some useful information. Jack went back up to his apartment. Mickey picked the phone off the floor and set it on the desk. Should he call the police and report it? Sure, why not? He called, thinking, there were some obvious prints on the door, that they could dust the place. If it was Ryan, why would he leave prints? Was he sending Mickey a message? The place was trashed… that got his attention. He wondered, “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 most of what he wrote was on “A” disks but he was beginning to put it all on CD’s. Where are they? The “A” disks were all there but with screwdriver punctures in the cases. The CD’s were scattered from where he kept them in the desk drawer and gouged with X’s on the surface. All the other drawers were pulled out and dumped… What the f…? “My novels… thank God I have the manuscripts.” He had his two latest on CD’s in his cab anyway. The cab was parked on the street… He checked it. The doors were still locked. The visor still had his CDs there. He went back into the apartment to wait.

There was a knock at the screen door on the porch. My god, he thought, they’re here already? He looked out to see two Hispanic young men in suits with brief-cases. It was not the right time for this shit! Not sure what he expected of them but he opened the door.

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

“Oh, thank you very much but I’m good with it.” Mickey cut him short, trying not to be rude, he shut the door.

Other times he 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. Mickey admired them because they didn’t even know him and yet they were at his door, personally, and trying to save his soul. He wished them well but he had 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 the Jehovah Witnesses left. He thought, “… like they had to be waiting around the corner: or am I getting paranoid? The cops took the information and did the usual report. Mickey had only the computer and disks damaged and nothing but the hard drive was missing… TV, VCR, tapes … all went untouched. It was just a matter of the place being trashed. The cops turned to leave.

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

“So,” the #1 cop smirked, “you want us to get unit with a print-kit over here for this?”

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

“Okay, okay… we’ll dust ‘em.” The cop humored him.

He 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, a wrecked computer, and a few damaged disks, don’t amount to much as far as the case load goes. Still, he was peeved and saw the workings of Nick, Ryan or Richards in the shadows behind all this. He made his 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?” he pouted.

“Hey, will you back off a bit?” The print-kit 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 of seventy-five 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,” he ripped another piece of tape off of the door and pressed it onto a card, “this ain’t exactly a murder, you know?”

“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… jewelry, silverware… you know, 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, you know?”

“No, I don’t know…you know?” His annoyance went unappreciated as the duster was already halfway to his car.

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

A week or two later Adriane called. “I have a package from my father… it has journals… all in French but it has an ‘A’ disk with it. It came, Fed-Xed, today. I opened it up but I don’t want to read the damned thing… too hard right now. It has a lot in it about the Resistance and Gotson and Mama. Do you want the disk?”

““Yes, I’ll check it out.” He was connecting the dots and didn’t bother to say anything about his trashed apartment, “I’ll drop by tomorrow.”

“Are you okay?” as he hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks maybe she’s done with him for awhile, “Are you off the oxy… er… oh, what is it, cotton something?”

“Oxycotin… no, I have a few left. But my crater is pretty well healed up. Can you come over? I miss you.”

 “I’m a little busy today.” He had nothing to do at all but he was beginning to hear from her medicated speech that doing nothing was more productive that wasting another day with her.

“Sure, okay… the postman hasn’t come yet; I’ll send the package to you,” she moaned, “You can sort it out if you want. It could be interesting, eh? Oh, I gotta go now, Billy is….” She stopped herself, “…uh, someone is at the gate. I have to see who it is.”

“Okay, I’m good with that…” He said that but didn’t believe she didn’t know exactly who it was. He thought, “One lie deserves another. Seems that Billy is back in the picture and it won’t be long… if not already.”

An Old Country/Western Song

Mickey was there again, in County jail. His life was looking like an old country/western song to him, “I’m in the Jailhouse Now.” His thoughts were running wild… “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 am… Surely, I ought to be able to get out on O.R. first thing in the morning… no outstanding warrants or fines… living pretty clean too…what does all this have to do with a cosmic plan?”

A now familiar calm came over him as he sat on his bunk after all the noise of the concrete and steel settled down. He was at peace and it felt as though a hand was on his shoulder. He had a private cell, in isolation they call it, and waited while his mind leafed through old catechism stories, “Would an angel appear before me and unlock my cage?" The gentle hand on his shoulder assured him and he laid down to fall into a deep sleep.

It was about a week later that he 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!”

Three in the morning: What the hell? He didn’t like the feel of it. Was he out? He could get a ride home from another cab driver but shit. He noticed that Richards was parked at the far end of the parking lot. Just for the hell of it he walked over to his squad car. When Richards opened his window, he asked, “Don’t suppose you could give me a ride into town… eh?”

“I don’t think so, punk.” Richards rolled up his window and pulled away.

 The cab finally arrived; his sponsor and friend, Jim, behind the wheel. They drove for a good five minutes before Jim asked, “So, what did that cunt do to get you in jail this time, Mick?”

“You haven’t heard?” at that moment Mickey discovered he had a newfound distate for the "C" word... especially when applied to Adriane, "Drop the 'C' word, Jim."

“Yeh, yeh, okay," Jim grinned, pleased at this change in attitude, "it was on the front page of the News Suppress… but I wanted to hear your side.”

"I can't believe it Jim, but back there in my cell, a calm came over me and I felt a hand..." Mickey gave Jim all the details.

"The Hand of Gawd, eh?"

"Something like that."

“We didn’t think you did it and you still have your shift on the roster at the cab company.”

Jim assured him.

“I have to check and see if the city hasn’t pulled my license,” he would have been surprised if they hadn’t.

“I’m sure you can still dispatch if they did… you got everyone in the office behind you.” Jim had one eye on his rearview mirror, “That cop is tailing us.”

Sure enough, Richards was following the cab, making no attempt to make his presence unknown all the way back into town. He even parked at the end of the cul-de-sac just past Mickey’s place. Mickey tried to sleep but couldn’t nod out while thinking of Richards out there and wondering what that damned S.O.B. was up to.

It wasn't Adriane who bailed Mickey out, though he didn't know all charges against him were dropped. When she was finally able to communicate through her own lawyer the DA saw no chance for a conviction. She’d also had the restraining order on him lifted. It was very unusual for charges of spousal abuse or assault against any woman to be dismissed so easily. Mickey was curious about this lapse at what he suspected to be a covert corruption of the justice system. He seriously wanted to know, or do, something about it but what? It was his powerlessness over it all that bugged him the most. He was damned if he was going to do nothing. Had he spent a week in jail without an apology from the law? But he already knew that the justice system rarely, if ever, apologizes for its mistakes. Once they sink their teeth into you, no matter whether you are guilty as charged or as innocent as a new born baby, an ambitious prosecutor will comb the books to hit you with anything to get a conviction… unless you have connections.

A Damned Good Liar...

Bed-rest… She was sent home after the oxygen mask was taken off the open wound on her hip. Nick had a restraining order put on Mickey. Her protests were ignored at first. Nick had insisted that he nurse her and she was so doped up on oxycotin she let him. He wasn’t there much though and she had to struggle out of bed to get to the kitchen for chicken soup or to the toilet. She was weak and could barely make it back up the stairs. It would have helped had Nick been there but she didn’t miss him. She slept and let all his manipulations and lies rest with her. She wasn’t going to give up but, right then, she needed to rest.

CHAPTER Five:

Sean McKee: Mickey

From that first day back in September when he rolled out of bed, fell to his knees and asked for guidance, he was aware that his life was under new management. Having no idea of what that would entail, he began the task of, not only doing the next right thing, but tapping into the intuition of what that might be. He often said, “I knew, without being told, that I would have to make amends to the people 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 his daughter and the rest followed. He wanted to do it all right away but understood that it would be vanity to start this Herculean task without some sort of guarantee that he would not be inclined to repeat the same mistakes.

He went to AA meetings and listened to what others did to resolve these problems, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to just say I’m sorry, that he had to get serious about digging deeply into the causes and the fears that were the sources of these inclinations. He dreamed of having someone he could relate his innermost thoughts about these secrets and somehow knew that he would be able to handle them better if he did. Still obsessed with Adriane and unable to imagine his life without her, whenever she called he came running. For instance, he was at home on lunch break from the cab when she called. It was as though his heart was hit with a sledge hammer when he could hear the heroin in her voice over the phone: He was crushed.

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

Sitting on his couch…. thinking… his credit was still good at Willy’s Liquors, only a block away from his place, he  struggled with the whys and the hows and the what-the-fuck’s of it all. What was he supposed to do? Homer jumped up on his lap and calmed him down for a few minutes. A pack of smokes his friend Jim had left on his last visit was in the drawer of the desk for whenever he came back. Mickey had quit smoking before he’d gotten sober and was glad to not have to struggle with smoking as well as drinking. However, he sat there and decided to have a smoke and think about it before he went to Willy’s.

All the old hands at this say you are supposed to call your sponsor or help a newcomer when tempted to drink but Mickey chose to smoke a cigarette. Perhaps it was a way to slap back at GAWD. Not so sure of his motives he prayed, “Please help me,” as he lit one up. Immediately, before the smoke filled his lungs, he knew that he had awakened the monster of tobacco and had merely traded addictions. Still, it was a better option for him than drinking.

As he smoked the cigarette there was a knock on the door. Having nothing to hide, regardless, he felt more than a little bit concerned when he saw a uniformed cop standing on the porch; “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,” Mickey answered unsure. This guy looked like the rookie from way back… the Beatrice… what’s-her-name… uh-huh, it was him with a new rookie in tow.

“Do you mind telling me why you left the ER before the police arrived?” he was surly. His name-tag read, Richards, Dan Richards. Was he promoted to detective? Then why was he in uniform? Detectives are usually in plain clothes.

“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.” He sneered towards the new guy, “This one’s trouble.”

Number two rookie put his hand on the hilt of his gun… just in case.

He had thought that Adriane would have told the police what had happened and he would be cleared of suspicion… unless something worse had come about…, “Is Adriane okay?”

Of all the times Mickey had to go to jail… just when he started smoking again. Damnit, they don’t allow smoking at all in the Santa Barbara Police holding cells and certainly not in County. He would have confessed to anything for a smoke. His feelings were running all over the place… Wondered what Adriane had told the police and then smelling Nick’s B.S. on it. What the hell, he knew he was innocent and knew that he had luck with him… but, what if… what if? What then?

Mickey was kept in an interview cell where the powers that be had him cooling off. It seemed like a long wait... at least an hour… there are no clocks. Because of that his heart skipped when detective Ryan opened the door to peek in.

Ryan’s face lit up too. He then entered the door, “Mr. McKee, what the hell? I haven’t seen you in a while,” plopping down a thick file on the Spartan table between them he was almost jovial.

“Under these circumstances, I can’t say that I’m all that pleased to see you again, detective Ryan,” But Mickey was glad to see him. It’s hard to explain it but a familiar face gave him hope.

“Let me get some coffee for us and I’ll be right back.” Leaving the file on the table, Ryan went towards the door.

 “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Mickey tried to sound nonchalant.

Ryan kept going without comment and was gone for something like a half hour. Time means nothing in there. “Right back,” can mean any day now. While he was waiting Mickey flipped open a corner of the file… enough to see that the report on the top had Richards’ name on it.

Ryan finally came back into the room with two Styrofoam cups of coffee… black, “See here, Mr. McKee, we seem to have a problem…”

“What do you mean, we, no cream or sugar?” Mickey took a sip of the bitter brew, “…Or, do you mean, me, I have a problem.”

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

“All due respect, sir, police station coffee sucks.” Mickey’s lips burned from the coffee, “and 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 the reports.

Would it do any good to talk? Mickey suspected, by the detective’s tone, that anything he’d say one way or another was going to be used against him, It didn’t matter a whit whether or not his rights were read. If he refused to say anything they’d be able to avow he was uncooperative and if he did talk… what then?

“I took a break and went home for lunch.” He explained. “I didn’t have much time.”

“Did you stop by Adriane’s house then?” Ryan folded his arms and leaned back in his chair…

Mickey wondered how far Ryan could lean without flat out falling, “I had no plans to see her. I just had time to get home, wolf down a ham sandwich, and get back in the hack …”

“Then, 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 and read me my rights?”

“Mr. McKee, we have enough to hold you in jail for more than a few days,” Ryan thumbed through the files, “You’ve already been tagged 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.” Mickey’s eyes were fixed on the pack of smokes in Ryan’s shirt pocket…Chesterfields, non-filtered.

Ryan pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket … lit one and passed it to Mickey.

“Thanks, man, that was the best smoke I’ve ever had,” pulling on the smoke and letting the harshness of the vapors smack his lungs, he coughed, “I mean it.”

Ryan watched him take the drag and leaned back again in his chair. “So, you’re telling me you didn’t beat the crap out of her too, are you?”

To tell the truth Mickey wasn’t sure what to think… was he getting set up?

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

“You tell me, McKee, you know what you did…” Ryan opened the file again, “the last time we had a talk… 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?” Not remembering that far back or seeing Ryan in court… Mickey was concerned.

“Yes, when one of my cases gets to court 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?” he resigned knowing by then that there was no chance of going home today.

“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… not my motorcycle. I had to get back to work… Time is money in a cab after all… so I took off thinking she could 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?” He couldn’t help but to grin, thinking of the tomato soup the rookie had mistaken for blood.

“And it ain’t lookin’ good for you.” Ryan pulled out the Miranda card and read it.

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

“Go ahead, Mick, make it a good one.”

Ryan kind of pissed him off. He consider the word, Mick, akin to using the “N” word. Ryan’s an Irish name … but, he got the point, Ryan wasn’t a friend… figuring it was all over anyway… “What kind of pull does Nick’s daddy have over you guys… eh?”

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

Ryan stood by the water cooler oblivious that he was smoking in the non-smoking police station… Richards approached him waving the smoke aside and coughing… “What do you think?”

“He didn’t do it.”

“What do you mean, he didn’t do it? He was seen by Nick coming up the hill on his motorcycle…”

“Then how did McKee drop her off at the hospital in his taxi?” Ryan glared at Richards now, “The receptionist at the ER attested to that much and I already know that Mrs. Baker’s husband is a damned good liar.”