A Taxi Cab Grilling

  Cruising up Loma Alta with a fare to the top of the Riviera after the bewitching hour: three am.

She asks: Why do you like driving at night?

Overvoice: My  standard answer:…

He: the people… the traffic… the mystery, etc, I especially love it when it quiets down in the middle of the night … like now, after the bars close.

She: Do you take a lot of drunks home?

He: Yeh.

She: Drunker than me?

He: I take some pretty good and drunk folks…

She: Am I as pretty?... Good?... or drunk, as any of them?

He: Yeh, I guess so… all I know is I take ‘em home and, if they are happy… I’m happy.

She: And if they aren’t happy?

He: I can’t be responsible for their unhappiness.

She: What do you think makes the so unhappy?

He: Perhaps it has something to do with expectations when those don’t measure up to the reality of Samsara. What do you think?

She: About what?

He: What makes people unhappy?

She: I think it is when they depend on others for their happiness.

He: That sounds like a big part of it. Maybe even the biggest part…. Do you like living up here?

She: It’s okay.

He: I enjoy driving up here.

She: Why?

He: Because it is up here… and this car loves winding roads.

Overvoice: She paid the fare… I watched her count out the bills. It occurred to me that her questions were pointed and bitter… there was an acidic quality to them. She was unhappy and the conversation did nothing to make her feel better. I got the distinct impression that she thought I had to be the most uninteresting and boring shit she ever been in a cab with... Oh Well... next.

A Dream

I just write. I got up early and went to my faithful old Remington to record this dream. The Remington did something it has never done before. The keys wouldn't strike the page so I had to abandon my dear one to get down this dream before it drifted away and my mind reconstructed the damned thing to make sense of it. I need to take a good look at my Remington and see what I can do to repair it because it is where I usually type out my rants and dreams. It is so much more fulfilling for me to pound out stuff on its keys... so here is the dream:

In the dream she was there… she was there in the bed with me. I HELD HER TO MY BODY AND HER BODY MERGED WITH MINE. It was sweet and lovely and all that crap and I say crap because she left the bed... it wasn't even my bed after all. I followed her on a mountain trail … she protested… “Do you have to fuckin'  go where I go. Let me go.”

So I let her go as she went off the trail through a thicket. I saw her struggling through the briars and then, even against my will, I went up along side to where she was, causing her to protest once more, “Let me alone now. I hate you… Don’t you know? I want to get away from you!”

But why” I called out to her in the thicket, “weren’t we just together making love?”

“Don’t follow me… let me go my own way!”

I let her go and after that I saw her with another man in the dunes... yeh dunes... you know... a dream eh... they were making out… anger and longing mixed… “Why? What did I do wrong?” I raced across the sand as though I were flying… flying up to them... and turned last minute as though I were on skis… I sprayed sand on them as she grinned in a gesture that said, “I’m no longer yours… go away.”

I... my feet in boots not skies, like a skier flying past her and her new lover as they embraced, had sprayed her with sand… with sand… with sand... with sand.

A Scribbled Secret Notebook

A Throwback to Another Era

My best writing comes from the morning hours: five am to noon. The afternoons are usually enjoyed, either walking on the beach with my honey, or doing errands. The beach is now my main thing. The mountains once were (before sciatica and arthritis took me out of the kinds of hikes I love). We are blessed to have both here. Blessed... hmmm, sounds pretentious but it is the best word I could come up with. Blessed it is then.

This morning I put Adriane on hold to let my juice go somewhere else... guiding light when I write is the advice on writing found in God Never Blinks by Regina Brett: #4. Take a risk. What would you write if you had six months to live? Say it.


Or in the words of the dumbsaint of the mind, Jack Kerouac: Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy.


These are the times I pound out nonsensical sense on my Remington Noiseless antique. I do that because I love the noiselessness of its muted thump thump of the keys that demand some energy that the pulse the percussion section makes to the music of my mind. I like to hear the mechanical ticking of a wind-up watch too... these things make me a throwback to another era... a friend gave Bonnie a bunch of old watches and stuff in a box. She likes to take them apart and use the gears and cogs for her assemblages. She saw one she liked and wondered whether it worked... "we can get a battery... eh?"

I popped the stem and wound it... putting it to her ear... she exclaimed... "the battery still works!"

I am only ten years her senior but I can see that I belong to a seemingly simpler era... but an era fraught with contradictions and confusions as great as the present day. Time doesn't change for us but the perceptions of time does. The big picture can be found in subatomic wavicals as well as in the amazing array of galaxies that spin around mindless of our minute and ordinary concerns that demand we are important in the cosmic scheme of things... but ever creating and ignoring us, as I ignore, the community of neurons and synapses that compose this tripe.

Question: Would Melville find the typewriter a clattering  intrusion on his perfect mastery of a Thoreau pencil?

I am writing Adriane to a click click of keys that take very little energy. I am spoiled by grammar and spell check... I can look at the monitor screen and scan over the pages without without crossing out changes and can effortlessly edit and edit and edit forever if I please.

I wonder: Did the scribes of yore...  Whitman and Wordsworth did they pencil before they quilled? Did Dante have to edit his own work or did he send it off to someone else with a perfect hand and eye for detail? It goes on and on way back to the aboriginal cave paintings where a bison is scribed over with an extinct tiger with time and time again with a giant sloth or woman's vagina...

I was just wondering.

Reading now: A Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

I read a paragraph or two while I sit on the can... if you know what I mean. He uses dialect, pigeon English and accents as deftly as Mark Twain. I love how the story goes back and forth from inside the minds of each character. I'm only about one third of the way through it. I haven't read anything else by him but I will.

Closing the Deal

Chapter Fourteen:

Closing The Deal

Nick contacted Billy again after he parked at a filling station in Beullton. Goddamn, they took the pay-phone out… should I use my cell? Naw. Drive a little further… maybe the phone at work… oh, a little too close…. Shit. Billy is waiting for a call. I’ll take a chance… get a new phone… maybe say I lost this one if the narcs track it.

“Hey…”

“Where were you? I‘ve been waitin’ at this goddamned phone an hour!”

“Calm down, Billy….” Nick had enough confidence based on bias that wasn’t about to let a low-life like Billy to push him around, “What is so goddamned important.”

“It’s big… we need ten grand to get in on the deal,” Billy’s voice had sparks of anticipation flying from his side of the phone. “The boys in Tee-Jay trust me with this… if we can come up with it… the other half when we can.”

“Yeh, but I don’t like having my cajones attached to ten-grand,” as Nick spoke his mind was already racing… how could he get Adriane in on the deal? Ten-grand is chump change to her and… maybe he could make up for some of that twenty grand he owes her. “I’ll check it out… how soon do you have to know?”

“By tomorrow, asshole, Honcho is coming up in the afternoon,”… the line went dead. That is the way Billy always did business: brief and to the point.

Adriane hesitated to pick-up the phone when she saw Nick’s number displayed on caller ID. It was never good news but, for curiosity’s sake, she couldn’t resist, “Yes?”

“We need to talk. Can I … can we… can you meet me somewhere, I’m at work. I have a way of paying you back the money I owe you.” He was pulling at straws and he knew she knew it but you never know… if he sounded humble enough. He told himself… try not to sound so fucking eager.

“Yes… so, what is it going to cost me this time?’ she was in no way going to fold this time. These pitches, and she had learned the hard way, always came with a price for her. The money didn’t matter to her as much as it was for her distaste for being conned by him. She let his pitch by, low and outside: Ball one!

“It would be an investment Adriane,” he didn’t like her tone… calm down… better salve her ego… second pitch, “I know better than… I won’t try to pull the wool over your eyes.”

“Nick, Damnit… I don’t know what you mean by wooly eyes… Why don’t you ever call to ask me how I’m doing before you try to sell me on one of your big deals?” Ball two; she hung up… leaning against the wall next to her easel she let out a muted moan and waited for his call-back. If it was a big deal he’d call back right away. If he just needed money for another line or balloon he’d pass on her and hustle one of his other marks.

She picked up the phone, “Make it a good one this time Nick.” His call was his third pitch. Strike one, ball two.

“I’m, sorry, Hon, I should respect your intelligence… let me explain myself…” he told her of Billy’s big deal and how he wouldn’t ask her for anything if it wasn’t a sure thing and so on, “You can triple your investment as soon as we turn it over…”

“How much, Nick… Just fucking tell me how much.” She was interested, but not for her own profits. I was more of a matter of getting rid of Nick along with his debt. Strike two, ball two.

“Twenty-five grand…” he knew she wouldn’t go for that much but he might as well try for a cushion in case anything went wrong. He still had at least one more pitch.

“”Shit, you asshole, you are already into me for almost that much.” she sniped back at him but was relieved he wasn’t trying to dig into her for more. She was also well aware that Nick’s deal was probably doable on half that much. She simply needed to make him grovel for it if she was going to part with it. “If you can turn it over right away then why can’t you get credit from them… whoever they are?” She swung but tipped the ball. Foul ball! Strike two, ball two.

“These guys are from Tee-Jay,” he knew it wouldn’t take much persuading now that she sounded somewhat interested. “They can be pretty demanding and impatient if it turns over slower than I’m thinking.”

“Yes, but what do you think I will do if you burn me?” she let the slider by, Ball three!

“I trust that you wouldn’t stuff my cajones in my mouth and put a bullet in my brain pan?” he thinking, C’mon bitch swing.

“Okay, I can come up with twenty in cash before the local bank closes.” Steeee-rike… Thuh-reeee! “I can’t get you more. Unless, of course, you can take a check from a foreign account,” She knew he’d more than happily take the fifteen and wasn’t at all surprised when he accepted without hesitation.

The exchange of cash for kilos of tar went off at a popular taco joint on Milpas. Nick was not at all worried about the meeting. He was more excited to finally meet with some of the Tee-Jay boys even if they were lower echelon gangsters. He had seen the Mexican magazine, Alama, and marveled at the graphic depictions of gangster executions depicted on its pages. He knew these guys were capable, or even responsible for some of it. Manuel had been a mysterious voice on the phone that Billy spoke to but Nick was meeting him for the first time. With him was a San Diego brute that lumbered into the place whose eyes did all the talking. You did not want to mess with him. Manuel, on the other hand, wasn’t threatening at all. He was almost friendly but he spoke with the assurance that his words were taken seriously by all. He did not have to feign arrogance and his demeanor put anyone he talked with at ease.

They sat down at the table where Nick and Billy had been waiting and without pause Manuel gestured to Billy, saying. “We’ll have a couple of quesadillas.”

Billy understood the gesture and reluctantly cued up in the line at the order window. The common picture of these transactions taking place in an isolated desert location is mostly myth. This particular place had an outdoor area with tables under a canopy that is always crowded. There was no table service but the place was a popular joint for people who came from all over Southern California for the friendly ambiance on the patio as much as for the food.

Billy kept his peace while Manuel had a brief but friendly chat about the food with the West Los Angeles gay couple at the table with them. It was customary for people to share tables there which added to its unusually friendly atmosphere. He then turned his attention to Nick, “So Mr. Baker, you are, shall we say, the principle investor?”

Nick was assured that Manuel’s discretion commanded an equivalent respect even though they were discussing the matter at hand quite publically. “Yes, I am most pleased to be a partner in this enterprise.”

“We can discuss it after we enjoy our quesadillas,” he flashed disarmingly pearly white teeth and continued, “Perhaps you can give us a tour of the city. I have only been a few times here and I like it.” He then turned his attention to the gay couple asking about where they were from and how they liked Santa Barbara.

It is a relaxed and easy affair that is in no way to be transacted without some degree of caution but the security comes from dealing with dependable and profitable associates. Nick and Billy knew that these Tee-Jay, Arellano Felix, cartel folks really didn’t give one shit for the lives of those who crossed them: there were no second chances. Maybe even a fourteen year old kid, Nick couldn’t help miss but notice in the parking lot, was probably armed with a Mac 11 machine pistol in his baggie pants awaiting a signal… they were quite willing to ‘clear the room” of anyone interfering with business, DEA or ICE… collateral personnel… it didn’t matter to them. The kid was a willing and expendable asset bred for this purpose to use in extreme cases. But it wasn’t likely anything dire would occur during the transaction because the cartels were shy of drawing attention to themselves in del Norte in the manner they eliminated competition in the open in Tee-Jay.

Manuel liked to exchange bundles of c-notes and packs of tar in laptop packs instead of briefcases. He considered them to be too obvious and were passé for open transactions. Billy picked up his pack from Nick’s car and the four rode off in Manuel’s Mercedes. Manuel waved a hand for Nick to sit in the front seat with Manuel and Billy had the back seat with the Hulk. As they drove away from Milpas and up the steep winding Garcia Road to Alameda Padre Serra Manuel’s the Hulk opened the laptop case and thumbed through the bundle of twenty bills while Nick picked up the case from the floor at his feet.

Unzipping the case Nick saw nothing but a laptop. Manuel gestured with his free hand flipping. Nick didn’t quite understand until Manuel  “check the battery.”

Nick opened it up finding four bundles wrapped in cellophane where the battery would have been. “Very clever,” he said as he pulled the two out… about a half kilo. He stuck a pen knife into the cellophane and then took a taste… swell… the bitterness soon turn to a mild high and Nick could tell that this was potent stuff…. a higher grade than what Billy had been hawking.

“Good enough for you?” Manuel grinned.

“Yeh…”

Adriane: The Sequel to A Taxi Romance

I am excited about where this novel is going but I had to pause and straighten out some of the errors in the timeline and where certain characters fit in. The writing process is what this blog is about and I am amazed that there are writers who can spill out words on the page in perfect order and don't get the story line mixed up. I get so involved with each situation and character and how he or she develops that I lose track of the wheres and whens of the whole sha-bang. Then I have to pause and go back over after I read it to someone and tweak, add or omit whole pages... save 'em for future reference and to meld in later or perhaps they are fodder for another novel all together. But I love it and wouldn't enjoy it as much if it worked out otherwise. I have always enjoyed the train ride more than arriving at the destination  but I am travel weary and ready by the time I have to get off at the station

The Price of Love

Harry Baker would have his hands full DE-institutionalizing his son but he also had his hands full with his own medical condition. He knew he had four, maybe five years or more if only he could quit smoking, before the emphysema that was gradually drowning him would take him under. He owed it to Iniga… he’d promised her that much… and these were the few kinds of promises men like Harry were honor bound to keep.  She was there in Walter Reed after he’d managed to verify, through Marcel Fournier, that she was a veteran of the resistance in France: a concentration camp survivor and, while in the resistance, a rescuer of American pilots during D-Day in Normandy. He’d done so when Gotson reached him through old contacts in the OSS and informed him she was suffering cancer in a flea-bag hotel in NY City.

He came onto her ward with a bouquet of flowers and a gnawing anxiety. Her skeletal frame was hardly discernible from the tubes, oxygen mask and wires to monitors. He put the flowers, Red Gladiolas, in a vase and sat by her as she slept.

She awoke with a start, “Hurrry?” she slurred…. sedated, trying to say through a thickened tongue, Harry.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“And, along comes the injustice of God.”

“What, Iniga?”

“That fate would shove your fuckin’ face in front of my eyes before I die.”

“Gratitude was never your strong suit…”

“I am grateful that I can tell you about our son.” Her contempt softened as she said, "Our Son".

Harry took note that the lines of premature age, and the darkened skin under her eyes wrought by cancer, had not withered away the beauty of her cupid bow lips or the steely determination of her grey eyes no longer framed by wild shocks of black Basque hair. Her eyes were set deep in the death’s skull of her shaved head but were still like his: those eyes were pleading. He wasn’t used to the sight of Iniga submitting to pain and it was most disconcerting to see her in physical weakness.

“He is in California…” she paused to take another hit off the oxygen mask; “A boy’s camp of some sort. He still has your name, Papa.”

“What do you want me to do about him?” Harry could tell, as soon as he protested, that any objections he might have would be vanity, but he tried… “He doesn’t know me.”

“He needs help. I had no idea of his situation…” she arose on one arm and spoke forcefully, “until we tracked down that damned wet-nurse.”

Harry saw again her fierce determination as she continued, “The cur left him at an orphanage in Los Angeles... like a donation … a bag of groceries!” she wheezed…”I was too weak to follow-up…. but I found out where he is now.”

Harry hadn’t given Nick much thought at all over the past sixteen years. He was honest with himself about it. Love wasn’t part of his vocabulary. It was an expense… a far too costly investment in time and energy to commit… to do what he knew he needed to do now. He needed to do it now because he realized… or allowed the realization… that deep recess of buried emotions… that he loved Iniga and in loving Iniga and his betrayal required something g of him.

“It is up to you Harry, find him.”

“I will.

“Try to give him a life Harry.”

“I will.”

“oh, yes, Harry…”

“Yes…”

“Thanks for the gladiolas.” She turned her head to the side “Now go away please, before I cry.”

Harry knew then what the rest of his life would be. He took the first flight from Dulles the next morning and never saw Iniga again.

Promises aside, Nicky had very little contact with his dad after Harry set him up in Charleston South Carolina with his new step-mom, Marilynn. Marylyn and Harry were separated and Harry was out of the picture for the most part. Nick had taken to studies under a tutor he’d been assigned and even managed to complete prep-school at Bishop England Catholic High School in South Carolina before Harry used his connections to get him into The Citadel. Noting Nicky’s physique and size, Harry hoped Nick would adapt and choose a military career and be primed for life there better than as a civilian in Ivy League colleges.

Nick loved the discipline at The Citadel more so than he did the studies and, because he was possibly the most physically intimidating “knob” on campus, he was not hazed as much as other Fourth Class Cadets there. However, engineering, mathematics, military history and instruction weren’t for him but, hell, Nick had already been institutionalized and anything, even the rigors of military school, was a good deal better than the dumbed-down kindergarten of Los Prietos. He decided, after his first year there, he had no desire for a military career nor did he have any academic aspirations. He discovered that a gift for gab opened doors for him that even the best colleges could. By this time, he had taken to the newly discovered privileges of wealth and the prestige that wearing the right clothes, driving the right car and living in the best neighborhood could avail him. He felt that he was wasting time sitting in classrooms when there was so much money to be made in the world beyond the walls of the Citadel.

While Nick was at The Citadel, and because Harry was hardly ever around much, Marilynn acquired a Realtors’ license and set up an office in Mount Pleasant. Nick fell right in with her after leaving the Academy and the two; Nick’s natural good looks, glib tongue and his innate ability to read other people; together with her pretentious airs and business acumen, made them a good team in the polite airs of Southern congeniality. Marilynn was a matronly southern-belle whose pretenses were less annoying to Nick than they might have been had he not already spent some time in The Citadel acquiring manners.

 Nick took his libido into town to the gay bars and picked up on an occasional prostitute too. He hadn’t the pedigree for the society girls and he was a twenty-seven year old bachelor with what would be a good prospect anywhere else but Charleston. While sitting at Dudley’s, complaining about his last affair that ended just when he thought he’d arrived, a real-estate acquaintance asked him, “Why honey, are you wasting your time with these stuck-up bitches in Charleston? You don’t have the pedigree for these Southern Belles…”

“Yeh, that’s true, but if only…”

“If only… if only, darlin’… if wishes were fishes.” Nicky listened out of boredom but paid attention when this swish with the fishes was on to something when he quoted the Beatles song, “You should get back to where you once belonged… Jo-Joe.”

“You mean California?”

“Oh sweetheart, you are getting warm…” he nuzzled up to Nick’s ear, “C’mon, Nicky, you know Santa Barbara is teeming with trust-fund babies who could care less about class distinction.”

“How do you know about Santa Barbara?” Nicky wiped the moisture from his ear with his sleeve.

The friend leaned back on his bar stool slurring, “Oh, they have one of the mo-ossst delightful gay-bars in the whole world, lover boy,” he then stood with his chest puffed out proudly, “go to the Pub and be sure to tell Frankie, Donny of Charleston says, ‘Hi there’.”

Settlements

 

Gotson had endured four years of torture, solitary confinement and deprivations that cannot be described. Harry observed the Civil War guidari, veteran of Guernica and the Battle of Madrid… Los Oscuros (the Dark Ones) with the infamous Galvan (who never surrendered), the Maquis of the Basque struggle, and the Resistance in France and Spain… The list is long and Harry had only respect for the man.

They met in a safe house of one of the enlaces as Harry spoke first to make arrangements… the betrayer with the betrayed, “We meet again, Gotson.”

“It is difficult to say why,” he answered, "but I am glad to see you again, Bird Dog,” Gotson's   frail frame sank into the easy chair on the other side of a small table. 

Harry watched, fascinated by the reed of an arm barely able to hold up the cup of tea Gotson seemed to relish. “Didn’t they try to fatten you up before they released you?”  Harry knew that his negotiations, bribes were resisted until… even for Iniga. The release came as uncustomary as it was unexpected.

“No, I expected the usual treatment,” setting the cup down and pointing to the back of his head… “You know, Ley de Fugas.”

Harry didn’t marvel at Gotson’s lack of bitterness. Even four years of unimaginable torture did not destroy the quality that preserved him through twenty years of post Civil War concentration camps in France, guerrilla warfare and, now, Caracremada: he never hated his enemy. Even the Stalinists back in Madrid or the PCE, when they kidnapped and assassinated, summarily judged and shot, resistance fighters in forty-four; or, when the Central Committee of the PCE suspended support for agrupaciones (guerrillas) in the early fifties: Harry had never heard a sour word spoken by Gotson against the Nazis, the Civil Guard, or the horrors committed by Franco’s Morrocan division. To Gotson, a soldier was a soldier. The horrors of war hardened him against the cruelties of humanity and it didn’t matter how viciously and inhumane they were they earned his respect: even mercenaries like Harry Baker.

The necessity of Harry’s meeting with Gotson to spirit him back into France, at the behest of Fournier, might have been less than an uneasy fellowship of the betrayed with the betrayer; but nothing tasted worse on Harry’s tongue than his betrayal of Iniga. She had to sit with the nuns in La Ventas until he could somehow spring her. He was compelled to devote himself whole heartedly to this task using whatever funds he’d earned in Gotson’s release to somehow get her out. His efforts finally came to a head after Nicholas was born in prison. Even Harry’s forged marriage certificate and testimony by the priest (he’d bribed to sign it to verify that the marriage took place) wasn’t enough for the stubborn mother superior.

Harry set little Nicky up in another safe-house when he was hatched until his mama was freed. Three months later she had been taken to the safe house by the bribed Padre and their first contact was a fiery one. He’d gotten the news that his efforts were successful via a phone call from the same bribed Padre. She was taking a bath when the wet nurse let Harry in the apartment.

“You can wait here, senor.” She gestured towards a straight backed chair next to Nicky’s cradle.

Harry didn’t even think of lifting the screen over the cradle to look in at his son like any proud father would.

 Harry had counted on his betrayal being a secret and that his affair with Iniga would bepick up where it had left off before she was arrested. He sat and waited as the wet nurse knocked on the bathroom door, “Senora, your husband is here.”

"I don't want to see him!"

The ruse that they were a happily married dissipated as he crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. He stood stunned at Iniga’s naked body. She looked better than the last time he’d seen her and he longed to hold her in his arms. She was still startled at the sudden opening and reached for a gun that was no longer there at all as one would always be before her arrest.

“What makes you imagine that you are welcome here?” she spat out the words with a contempt that was quite the opposite of Gotson’s angelic acceptance.

“Is this the gratitude I get for your freedom?” Harry knew this was a weak thing to ask but he had no words for the unaccustomed guilt her indignant posture extracted from his gut.

“You are alive now because I have no way to kill you, Harry,” she showed her palms as the hatred seethed from her cupid lips. Those cold steel-grey eyes diverted his to her firm breasts, wet hair, and then led to a scar that went down the length of her belly: a Caesarian birth, no doubt.

The conviction of her words left Harry with little to say. Words weren’t his strong suit and neither was the expression of emotion. He understood that she knew what had happened but he tried just one time to explain, “Gotson is in Biarritz.”

“That was your trade?” she looked up at him and his chest ached to lift her and press his body to hers.

“Yes.”

“Go, and take Nicholas with you,” she spoke with a determined voice but her steel grey eyes welled with tears. “I am going back.”

“No, I won’t take him, he needs a mother.” Harry made a desperate plea to her maternal instincts.

“Okay, but if you don’t take him you’ll never see him again.” She countered.

“You will die in the Pyrenees, Iniga, the US has a base in Rota now,” he had to make this one last argument, though he knew it would not mover her. “The CIA is very good at taking care of insurgents. Even if you win… look at Iran…” referring to Mohammad Mosaddegh’s parliamentary government, overthrown when oil was nationalized... before the CIA re-installed the Shah, “you think they will tolerate a Basque government run by anarchists or, worse, communists?”

“No, Harry, my time in La Ventas convinced me. My world is not yours,” she then added, “I can’t go back; we are guidari and we are as dead the minute we pick up a weapon to resist.”

Harry remembered the first time he and Iniga met in a cabin in the Pyrenees during the war. She was only a teen then with Gotson’s guerilla group… her frame so small a rifle would outweigh her but she carried a pack… and a fierce determination he just saw again. He let his eyes caress her body one more time before closing the door. He heard her from the bedroom say as he left the apartment and his son, Nicky, “Adios, Bird Dog, I love you,”

“Adios, my fiery angel.” He wasn’t used to poetic adieus and he hoped that leaving Nicky with her would hamper her revolutionary fervor. It would not be so. They would not see each other for over four decades as she lay dying. Nicky was lost to him too. She arranged for her wet nurse to care for him. She immigrated to the US with Nicky and put him at on the steps of a Catholic orphanage with his name on a tag pinned to his diaper a few days after her feet hit the ground off a Greyhound Bus in Los Angeles. A life begun in a sewer of betrayal, abandonment and deceit left Nicky with a perspective on life that can be understood under these circumstances.

Now, at sixteen, as Nick was approaching manhood after bouncing from the orphanage to foster homes… to another foster home… to another foster home… to Los Prietos Boys camp.  Harry Baker had his hands full de-institutionalizing his son.