July 2013 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter
Welcome
to the July issue of the Scribblers. This month we have a review of Robert Penn Warren's book All
the King’s Men from Jamie Baker, an original story written by John Matthews, writing prompts and the next installment of our progressive story, In the Line of Duty. I hope you enjoy them.
Come Write WithUs
Having read previous newsletters, you probably know that we love to write and we love to write progressive stories. We are about to start a new one and we'd love to have you help write it.
Here's how it works: Someone writes approximately 750 to 1,000 words to start, then emails it to the next person who adds another 750 to 1,000 words and emails the whole thing to the next person. No one sees the story until it's their turn to write their part.
If you would like to participate, please email me here
Book Review
All The King's Men
by Jamie Baker
The opening line is “To get there
you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good
highway and new.” And it is a good opening line. The ‘you’ fosters intimacy with the reader,
it pulls the reader into the story. The
opening line suggests movement and transition; a destination, one unknown as
yet. The highway suggests speed, and
the ‘new’ highways suggests modernization.
But if the opening line isn’t enough, read what follows.
You look up the highway and it is straight for miles,
coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black
and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and heat dazzles up
from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with
the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take
a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the head you’ll
hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front
wheel hooks over into the black dirty shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk
her back on but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe
you’ll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. But you won’t make it, of course. Then a nigger chopping cotton a mile away,
he’ll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing up above the
vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent,
metallic, throbbing blue of the sky, and he’ll say, “Lawd, God, hit’s a-nudder
one done done hit!”
This is the beginning of the
novel All the King’s Men written by Robert Penn Warren. Warren (1905-1989), was one of the 20th
century’s outstanding men of letters.
Among other accomplishments, he was awarded 3 Pulitzer Prizes and the
Congressional Medal of Freedom, founded the Southern Review, and was named the
country’s first poet laureate.
Modern Library listed the novel as
the 36th greatest novel of the 20th century and it was
chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best novels since 1923. In 1949, the book was adapted for film; the
movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The novel was produced as a movie again in 2006.
The novel tells the story of
political tough guy, Willie Stark, who rises from
poverty to become the
powerful governor of an unnamed southern state during the 1930s. The story is often described as a
fictionalized account of Louisiana’s colorful and notorious governor, Huey
Long, who served from 1928 to 1935.
There are a number of important parallels between Stark and Long. Like
Long, Stark is an uneducated farm boy who passes the state bar exams and wins
election to a minor local office. They
both rise to political power by campaigning for, and then instituting, a series
of radical liberal reforms designed to tax the rich and ease the lives of the
state’s poor farmers. They manipulate
their opponents through the clever use of political favors, bribery and
blackmail. Like Long, Stark is
assassinated by a doctor—Dr. Adam Stanton in Stark’s case, Dr. Carl A. Weiss in
Long’s.
The novel is a multi-layered
plot told through the eyes of the narrator, Jack Burden, son of one of the
state’s aristocratic families. He eschews
his genteel upbringing to become Stark’s right hand man, using his skill as a historical
researcher to uncover the unsavory secrets of Stark’s enemies. Through Jack Burden, the novel explores
racism, greed, hate; and also delusion, morality, and love, with an intensity
and empathy that is compelling and visceral.
Warren’s use of language in
describing his characters is just as compelling as his expose of political
chicanery. For instance, this
description of Stark’s chauffeur and body guard, Sugar Boy:
His name was O’Sheean, but they called him Sugar-Boy
because he ate sugar. Every time he went
to a restaurant he took all the cube sugar there was in the bowl. He went around with his pockets stuffed with
sugar cubes, and when he took one out to pop into his mouth you saw little
pieces of gray lint sticking to it, the kind of lint there always is loose in
your pocket, and shreds of tobacco from cigarettes. He’d pop the cube in over the barricade of
his twisted black little teeth, and then you’d see the thin little mystic Irish
cheeks cave in as he sucked the sugar, so that he looked like an undernourished
leprechaun.
The book is a long one, over 600
pages in the Harcourt Books hard cover edition.
Jack Burden rambles into philosophical territory on several occasions,
arguing the existence of God, for instance, or the complexity of human love. Some of this navel gazing can be lengthy and
not entirely clear or satisfying, but it does light on some thought provokers,
as when Burden observes “It is a human defect—to try to know one’s self by the
self of another.”
Later in the book he expands on
this idea:
You meet somebody at the seashore on a vacation and have
a wonderful time together. Or in a
corner at a party, while the glasses clink and somebody beats on a piano, you
talk with a stranger whose mind seems to whet and sharpen your own and with
whom a wonderful new vista of ideas is spied.
Or you share some intense or painful experience with somebody, and
discover a deep communion. Then
afterward you are sure that when you meet again, the gay companion will give
you the old gaiety, the brilliant stranger will stir your mind from its torpor,
the sympathetic friend will solace you with the communion of spirit. But something happens, or almost always
happens, to the gaiety, the brilliance, the communion. You remember the individual words from the
old language you spoke together, but you have forgotten the grammar. You remember the steps of the dance, but the
music isn’t playing anymore. So there
you are.
It’s a good book. I recommend it with 5 stars. So there you are.
Writing Prompts
Each month we try to provide a writing prompt or two to give you a jump start on a story. Try to write 750 to 1,000 using one or both of these. Have fun with it.
1. Bill is broke. His rent is past due, his car won't start and he just received a notice from the electric company that his power will be shut off if he doesn't pay. Fortunately, after 8 months of unemployment, he's starting a new job.
On the evening of the first day of his job at an upscale men's clothing store, Bill finds a wallet filled with cash under the fitting room seat. What does Bill do?
2. Janet, a mother of 2, is on her way to the garage to have her aging Chevy repaired. At an intersection she sees a scruffy looking man placing a little girl into the trunk of an old Toyota. Janet picks up her cell phone to call the police, but she battery is dead. She feels compelled to save that little girl and follows the old Toyota. How does Janet rescue the child?
New York, A Love Story
An Original Story by'John Matthews
I’m sitting on the ledge around the
fountain at Conservatory Garden. It’s a
warm spring Saturday and a slight breeze is spraying a pleasant mist from the
fountain across my back. My Peugeot
leans on its kickstand in front of me waiting patiently for me to catch my
breath. It should have been a leisurely
ride, but for a weekend biker it was more exercise than I was used to. In New York a girl doesn’t really need a car
and my Peugeot is my concession to luxury. My baby. A bicycle with a fancy name and a price to go
with it. But what else do I have to
waste money on?
Did I think it was a boy magnet? Did it work?
Well , Darren wasn’t that much of a catch and he didn’t hang around that
long, but he was okay for a while. We went on rides together. He did some work on my bike before we split
up. He tried to be helpful, but the truth is, the
Peugeot hasn’t worked quite right since he worked on it.
No, that didn’t have anything to do with
our breakup, but that’s another story.
So here I sit, wondering if I should take my bike to the
shop.
“Hi, there, you look lost in thought.”
Hmm. Maybe the magnet is working. I look up and there is a VERY nice looking
guy. Tall, dark, dressed in something
between blue collar work and casual clothes.
And I’ve heard worse pickup lines.
“Just wondering if there’s something wrong
with my bike,” I say.
“Nice looking Peugeot, what seems to be
wrong?”
Okay, he recognizes the lion. Nice touch.
“I don’t know. Just
seems…sluggish.”
He reaches for the handlebars. Then hesitates. “Oops, may I?”
When I don’t object, he squeezes the front
brake. “This could be it. Somebody has shortened the brake cable. Your pads are touching the rim.”
“That would be my boyfriend,…I mean my
former boyfriend. I think he tried to
tighten it or something,” Former
boyfriend, why did I say that? He’s
smiling like he knows I said it for a reason.
Nice smile.
“It’s Saturday. Might not be able to find a place open for
parts. Do you ride here every Saturday?”
Very clever twist on the “Do you come here
often?” line. But he sounds so, well, nice. No other way to describe him. So I tell him
yes.
“Tell
you what. I could pick up a new cable
for you. You could probably use new
brake pads too. And bring them here next
week.”
“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that. I have a shop I go to. They’ll fix it.”
“But they’ll charge you labor, and it’s
only a five minute job. Let’s do
this. You buy the parts. Meet me here next week and I’ll put them
on. I’ll bring tools.”
If that was an invitation to a date, it
was the smoothest one I’ve heard in a while.
But he’s definitely interested.
“Okay, same time, same place.”
“It’s a date.” How could he be more definite than that?
“Gotta run now. Hey, my name’s Bill.” He holds out his hand. Nice. Strong, clean, dry. Good all-American name, like that guy on Ally
McBeal. Or Clinton. Or Mazeroski, the
scourge of the Yankees.
“I’m Kathy.”
“Nice to meet you, Kathy. See you in a week.”
I don’t believe in love at first sight. But this couldn’t start out much better.
* * *
I spend the week alternating between
walking on a cloud, and telling myself
I’m just getting my bike fixed.
Why does work seem so much more pleasant? Why am I cleaning my apartment
as though I’m expecting a visit from Martha Stewart? Why am I buying wine? Gotta think rationally here.
I stop in at the bike shop. Using the closest thing I have to an expert
tone, I ask for a front brake cable and a set of shoes for a Peugeot Mixte.
“We can install and adjust those for ya,”
says the greasy clerk. “No extra
charge.”
“No thanks. My boyfriend can do it.” Boyfriend.
Getting ahead of myself here.
I spend an afternoon at work polishing my
script for Saturday. It can’t fail. Bill will fix the bike. As a thank you I’ll offer to treat him to lunch. Perfect first date. He will either accept or if he’s busy he will
make a date with me for later. I know he’s
interested. He’s got to do one or the
other.
Is it over the top to buy a new cycling outfit,
get my hair done, and have a manicure just to have my Peugeot fixed? Of course not.
* * *
Saturday dawns as sunny and perfect as last
week. I’m sitting by the fountain again
watching the puffy clouds drift through the robin’s egg sky.
Here comes Bill. Right on time. Plain white T-shirt, jeans. Does it look like he got a haircut? I think so.
Clean shave. None of that
pseudo-stylish two day growth that just signals lazy. He has a compact tool kit wrapped in a canvas
envelope that he can slip in his pocket.
Wow, he looks even better than I
remember. He compliments me on buying
the exact parts that are required for the fix.
He sets to work, and true to his promise, he’s finished in five
minutes.
“Want to take it for a test spin?” he
asks.
“Why don’t you do it? You know what to check for.”
He hops on and rides up the sidewalk then
rides back a little faster. Right in
front of me he squeezes the front brake and the Peugeot stops on a dime. The rear wheel actually jumps an inch off
the ground.
“Seems great. Hey, you have a camera on that cell
phone? Why don’t you let me take your
picture with your bike in front of the fountain?”
Here’s my chance to really make my
move. “I just wish there was a way I
could get a picture of both of us.”
He looks around. “Hey, Buddy,” he calls to a passerby. Bill’s so pleasant it’s hard to imagine how
anyone can resist him. He gives the guy
my cell phone and tells him what he wants.
We go stand together with the Peugeot in front of the fountain.
“Don’t you feel nervous giving the phone
to a stranger?” I whisper.
He just smiles again. “If he takes off I
think I can catch him.”
The guy doesn’t take off, of course. He hands my phone back to me. The picture is beautiful. I hadn’t even noticed that Bill had put his
arm around my waist. We’re a cute
couple.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m sending the picture to my home
computer, so I can make a print.”
“Let me take one of just you,” he says.
“Will you make me a print of that,
too?”
He wants my picture! This could be the real thing. For some reason I’m feeling very possessive
of Bill. I hope I’m not moving too fast
but I plunge ahead with a request.
“When you stopped the Peugeot, I saw the back wheel jump up. Are you sure it’s okay?”
“Pretty sure. I was just using the front brake. But how about if I take it on a longer
test? Around the block? I’ll give it a good workout just to be sure.”
He pulls carefully out into traffic on 5th Avenue. He lets a couple of cars pass then gives a
polite hand signal to turn onto 102nd Street. As he turns he gives me a thumbs up
signal. Okay so far.
I have never been so happy in my
life. I sit down by the fountain and
wait for Bill to come into view returning down 106th Street.
I don’t know how long it was before I
realized that Bill had stolen my Peugeot.
And my cellphone.
Sometimes I still tell myself that it must
have been a misunderstanding, or an accident, heaven forbid. Or a kidnapping. But how would I report such a thing? The cops might just write Bill off as a
common thief.
But I still have the print of Bill, me, and the Peugeot framed above my
TV. A remembrance of a nearly perfect
relationship.
THE END
In The Line of Duty
Parts
7 thru 12
John
Matthews
Jack stood at his apartment door, fishing in his pocket for his
key. Before he found it, Wilson nosed
through the unlocked door.
Wilson bounded over to Kelly, who was sitting in Jack’s easy chair, and
hopped into her lap.
Kelly gave Wilson a big kiss and a hug.
Jack just stared. He’d have liked
the same treatment from Kelly, but not right after Petraeus and Wilson had both
had a turn.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
“First of all, I’m in the Secret Service, so it’s secret. Second, you gave me a key, remember?”
She was rubbing Wilson’s belly.
Wilson didn’t care whose belly she had rubbed before.
“Sit down and listen,” said Kelly.
“You have something I need, but first I have to tell you why.”
Jack pulled out his notebook. A
private investigator, he was always prepared.
“No, just listen. This is
secret. We don’t want notes lying
around. Besides, I don’t think you can
write and listen at the same time.”
“Holly Petraeus and Paula Broadwell dragged me into the Clintons’ powder
room at the party. They need our help,
but it’s complicated.
“Pea…, I mean the general, isn’t having an affair with Broadwell. It’s all a sham. It’s a trick to lure some terrorist
organization into a trap. The terrorists
could create some doctored, compromising photos of Petraeus and Broadwell, then
use them to blackmail the general, in order to get him to turn over some secret
information.
“When this happens, it would give the U.S. a perfect chance to pass
along phony information, information that will cause the terrorists to make a
mistake that will destroy them. They’d
never know what hit ‘em.”
Kelly paused. “Jack, you look
tired. Are you following any of this?”
“Sure. Phony affair, phony
intelligence, blow up terrorists.
Check. And you say Holly
Petraeus knows about all this?”
“Sure, she’s playing along and having a great time playing spy.”
“But does she know about you and the general?”
“Of course not. That’s why she
and Broadwell collared me to help them.”
“But I didn’t see you talking to them.”
“The powder room, idiot! Your
friend Dewey Lubuck didn’t see anything
either. Tell him to get a better disguise.
The caterers the Clintons hire don’t usually eat snacks from their own
serving trays. And if you’re going to
watch me from the top of a building, don’t stand with the moon behind you.”
“Okay, but this whole thing sounds pretty simple,” said Jack.
“I haven’t gotten to the complicated part yet. Turns out the terrorists didn’t need the
secret info as much as they need money to fund their operations. The quickest way to get money in Washington
is from rich diplomats, like the Thai ambassador. They decided to kidnap the ambassador’s son
and hold him for ransom. They figured
they could lure the son into a trap by stealing his cello and dangling it in
front of him.
“In order to get the cello, they contacted Broadwell, and threatened to
expose her affair with Petraeus, unless she began an affair, a real affair this
time, with the Thai ambassador as a way to find out where they hide the cello.”
“A cello’s a big fiddle, right?
It shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Harder than you think. But
Paula’s pretty smart. She likes playing
this spy game too.”
“How’s she going to do it?”
“She’s already done it. The big
fiddle, as you call it, is in a secret compartment in the ambassador’s son’s
Escalade. Paula has stolen it and is
headed for some place the terrorists have directed her to.”
Jack’s eyes started to light up.
“What they should have done is got the FBI to keep on her tail, pardon
the expression.”
“Now you’re catching on. That’s
just what they did. But the FBI, with
their usual razor sharp precision, lost her when she went through the Fort
McHenry Tunnel. The incompetent bastards
asked for private help to track her down.”
“Who did they ask? Anybody we
know?”
“Your friend and boss, Dewey Lubuck.”
“So you need me to find Dewey, so you and the FBI can find Paula and the
Escalade and the fiddle before the terrorists do something bad to her.”
“You’re catching on quicker than I thought.” Kelly got up, dumping Wilson to the
floor.
Part
8
Colleen Weikel
“I’m
on it, Kel.” Jack said, stuffing his phone into his jacket pocket and heading
for the door. Looking back, he saw Kelly
on her knees looking under the antique coffee table that had been his
grandmother’s; the only nod to the Victorian Era in his ultra-modern
apartment. “Lose something?” Jack asked.
Holding
up a button from her jacket, she said, “Found it! Lost a button.”
Jack
knelt beside the marble topped coffee table and picked off a button of another
kind. Grinning and holding the bug out
to her, he laughed, “You lost more than that.
Here, keep it. I’ll tell you what
I find out; you don’t have to bug my place.”
He tossed the little silver disc into her handbag, watched it fall to
the bottom among the used tissues and gum wrappers, and strode down the dimly
lit hallway and out of the door into the parking lot.
In
his old beater car, Jack dialed Dewey Lubuck.
He was cruising along the I95 trying to catch up to Dewey. Kelly had said he had about an hour’ head
start. Dewey answered the phone on the
third ring. “Yeah?”
“It’s
me and you still owe me one, Dewey,” Jack said gruffly, hoping Dewey wouldn’t think about that
statement too hard.
“Nice
try, Moron. I think you got it turned
around, dontcha?” Dewey laughed. “So what do ya want?”
The
cellular signal was fading in and out as he drove through the tunnel. Don’t
shut off, he pleaded to the powers that be while he talked to Dewey. “Ok, ok, ya got me. But look, I know what you’re working on and
I’m on the same case. The cello thing.”
Dewey
drew a loud breath and swallowed hard, “How in hell do you know that? I just found out about it 10 minutes ago.”
“The
SS,” Jack said, relieved that he was finally out of the tunnel and cruising at
top speed. His old beater car, a candy
apple red ’55 Chevy with a rusted looking body had the engine of a race
car. One of the local motor heads
rebuilt it for him a year ago and although it wasn’t a thing of beauty, it
could win an amateur race hands down.
“The
SS? The Secret Service? Are you shittin’ me, Jack?”
Swerving
to avoid a collision with a Yellow cab, Jack swore, then told Dewey what he
figured he already knew.
Unimpressed,
Dewey said, “Yeah, so? Tell me something
I don’t already know.”
“I
know who’s driving the car. The gray
Escalade. The one with the cello in the
secret compartment. And I’m pretty sure
I know where it’s going.”
What
he didn’t tell Dewey was that he had a receiver that tracked not the Escalade,
but the driver. Kel had slipped it into
her purse during the party at the Clintons last night right after the powder
room conference.
“Aw,
fuck!” Dewey fumed. “Must be nice having
all the info fed to you by the top feds.
Gotta start sleeping with the right chicks.”
Jack
laughed and snapped his phone off as he put the pedal to the metal and blew
around a string of cars. The device
monitoring the whereabouts of Paula Broadwell showed she had exited 95 and was
moving in the direction of the Holland tunnel and the lower west side of
Manhattan. Traffic was moving at 85 – 90
miles per hour and he sped up, passing another line of cars in his way. He saw Dewey staring at him as he passed his
BMW. Dewey did not look happy. Jack was probably 5 miles behind Paula and
gaining fast.
Paula
drove the speed limit. She knew that a
cop delaying her to give her a speeding ticket would put the genius cello child
in more danger than he already was. She
wished she knew her way around the west side better. The damn car’s GPS worked, but the automated
voice spoke Thai, not English. That was
no help at all. Her only choice was to
watch closely and pray she’d find Ann and William streets in time.
Maybe
she was selfish, but she cared more about the public learning of her supposed
affair with Petraeus than she was about the kid with the million dollar
cello. He was nothing to her. Petraeus wasn’t either, for that matter, but
the publicity could damage her credibility as an author and put an end to a
lucrative career. Not to mention her
husband’s reaction to the unwanted attention that could damage his career as
well.
Jack
pulled in behind the pearl gray Escalade and wished he could somehow direct
Broadwell to her destination. His
patience was wearing thin. He knew they
didn’t have much time.
The
Escalade hung a left onto Ann, a right onto William and crept down the block
until it came to a stop in front of an abandoned three story tenement building
with boarded-up windows and graffiti on the painted and peeling brick walls.
Part 9, Jamie
Baker
Dewey, peering over the mahogany steering wheel of his BMW,
watching the tail lights of Jack’s rust bucket disappear into the
distance. He let the cruise control maintain
85 mph, while his mind rushed over what he knew of this current case.
Walter White, his FBI contact, hired him to find the Thai
ambassador’s son’s car. White says that
the ambassador intimates that the cello and the sheet music stashed in a secret
compartment are even more important than the car. White tells Dewey that the car is on I95,
probably heading for NYC.
Jack tells Dewey about a complicated plot, a plot that he learns
about from Kelly. According to Jack,
Kelly tells him about a conversation she has with Paula Broadwell and Holly
Petraeus. The two women are supposed
to play along with a story about an affair between the general and Broadwell,
who are pretending to have an affair, so that the general can be blackmailed by terrorists. The terrorists will blackmail the
general for information, but they’ll be fed misinformation. But, according to Jack, according to Kelly,
according to Broadwell and Mrs. Petraeus, what the terrorists really want is
money to finance their terrorist operations, so
the terrorists have blackmailed Broadwell into stealing the Thai
ambassador’s kid’s car, with the cello and the sheet music, as bait to lure the
kid, who they will hold for ransom. And,
according to Jack, Kelly has put a bug into Broadwell’s purse, so Jack can use
it to follow her to the meet with the terrorists.
Dewey rubs the back of
his neck and then pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut for a
few seconds. When he opens them again,
he realizes that daybreak is over, it’s now full day light and the I95 traffic
is thick with morning commuters.
Something, he tells himself, is seriously wrong with the facts
of this case. He knows that the
government is ridiculously compartmentalized, with each level of bureaucracy
and every department engaged in turf warfare.
He knows that not only does the left hand not know what the right hand
is doing, but the fingers of the left hand don’t even know when they’re not on
the left hand any more. But even given
that this is the government’s standard operating procedure, it still doesn’t
make sense.
For one thing, why is Kelly learning about this in a powder room
from two women who are not SS agents?
Why didn’t her boss brief her on these
terrorist-kidnapper-blackmailers?
And with all the surveillance resources the government has, why
is his company involved? Shit, Dewey
thinks, looking for a million dollar cello or missing sheet music or a stolen
car or an author posing as a bimbo or whatever the hell his firm has been hired
to find is one thing, or maybe 4 things, but why would the FBI hire
a small, local, 3-operative security firm to foil international
terrorists? Even the FBI wasn’t that
inept. It just doesn’t make sense.
And then there‘s Jack Porter.
He doesn’t make sense either.
Take his so-called surveillance vehicle.
Who tails suspects in a car that looks like it came thru a time
warp? Jack used to drive a grey Chevy
Tahoe, so common that half the time even jack wasn’t sure which vehicle was
his. But this new ride? Hell, Jack may as well try sneaking up in an
Abrams tank.
And what private eye
travels with a dog? How secretive is
that? On a stake out, an operator can
hide out in a car with dark windows for hours.
When nature calls, he can pee in a bottle. But you can’t make a dog pee in a
bottle. Dogs have to be walked. Kind of blows your cover, yeah?
But it was more than the car and the dog. Jack himself was, well, different in an
unsettling kind of way. Take his
relationship with Kelly. It’s one
thing to have a girl who sleeps around a little. Hey, this is Kelly Cranston we’re talking
about, she sleeps around a lot. But
still, if you know about it and it bothers you, break it off. But follow her? Get your partner to keep an eye on her at a
party? Spy on her from a roof top? That’s masochism defined. It’s crazy.
If he had it to do over, Dewey thinks he’d never have gotten
involved in this case. In fact, if he
had it to do over, he’d never have brought Jack in as a partner. The guy is getting hinky, maybe even leaning
toward the unstable. If he wasn’t a
partner, Dewey could just fire him, but now, well now, it will be hard to get
rid of him. Hard, but not impossible.
Dewey speed dials Natasha.
“Hello, Dewey. You’re on
the road?”
“Good morning , sweetheart, yes I am on the road. Would you make a few calls for me, set up a
little thing?”
“Of course. What do you
need?”
When Dewey finishes the call, he reaches over to the glove box
and pulls out a small black box. A green
light pulses rhythmically in sync with a low beep. Counting the beeps in 10 seconds, Dewey calculates
that Jack’s red Chevy is less than 10 miles away. Dropping the box into the console, Dewey
punches the accelerator and the speedometer needle jumps to 100. Dewey slides the vehicle between and past
slower traffic, following the car that is following the car that is supposedly
on its way to meet up with terrorists.
Part 10
John Matthews
Meanwhile, back
in Washington, Kelly and Peaches weren’t letting a little bit of international
terrorism, blackmail and kidnapping get in the way of a good, once in a
lifetime, affair.
The general loved making dramatic
entrances and Kelly enjoyed meeting him the same way. She was under her sheets, wearing the same
outfit he had admired in their meeting a few nights ago.
He opened her door, still wearing the
formal uniform from the Clintons’ party.
It was now midmorning and the sunshine through her bedroom window on the
stars and gold braid made him sparkle like a Christmas tree.
Kelly pulled the sheet up and tucked it
under her arms. She sat up, hugged her
knees, and watched the general undress.
Getting rid of a class A service dress blue
(formal) uniform was not as simple as
dropping her bathrobe. There was the
honors sash, the medals, the epaulettes, the satin cummerbund, the bow tie, the
shirt studs, the cufflinks, the shoes spit shined to patent leather luster, the gold striped
trousers, all before it even started to get interesting. Even a four star general only had one set of
formal evening clothes, and Petraeus, as the current darling of Washington, had
to use his more than any other military brass.
Yes, there was brass to be polished also, but he had people to do
that. He hung the garments carefully on
shaped wooden hangers and placed them in the space in Kelly’s closet that she
had cleared for him.
Kelly just smiled and shook her head. Men.
It didn’t matter if they were generals or admirals, NFL quarterbacks,
scoutmasters, Roman Catholic cardinals, dictators in banana republics, or
Imperial Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan.
They loved their uniforms.
Of course Paula Broadwell or Blackwell, or
whatever her name was, was no different.
At the Clintons’ party, she would have been appearing as an author, not
as a major in the Army reserve, so she was in elegant mufti, but when she and
the general appeared together on maneuvers, inspections, and field trips, their
camo fatigues were always carefully coordinated. It would be a catastrophe if one showed up in
jungle green while the other was in desert sand, even if it was for a book
signing in Topeka, Kansas. They were both
good at making public appearances, just as they were good at carrying on the
deception of their supposed affair.
But Kelly and Peaches were good at their
activities also, and even though their lovemaking was both tender and athletic,
they didn’t waste time, and soon they were lying next to each other, both
trying to seem like they weren’t breathing hard, and talking about spy stuff,
their second favorite subject.
Side note: I couldn’t find a good way to write a sex
scene so if either of you want to write your own here, be my guest. John
“So how come you know about this Thai
ambassador, musical prodigy son, valuable cello thing, and I don’t?” asked Peaches.
“It’s a girl thing. Why do you guys get to have all the fun? Bill Clinton doesn’t know about it. You should have seen him trying to put the
moves on me at that party.”
“I saw.
I’m not head of the CIA for nothing.”
“But Hilary Clinton knows. So we have women from the Army, the Secret
Service, the State Department, the CIA, and a dog who may be a woman, I’m not
sure. But we weren’t able to find a
competent woman in the FBI to help tail Paula to the terrorist hideout.”
“You call her Hilary?”
“Not in public, but girlfriends get chummy
pretty quick.”
“So with all this woman power, why
couldn’t you find a woman in the FBI?”
“Probably because no competent woman would
join the FBI. Hilary had to arrange for
an FBI contact. It’s a guy named Walter
White. He promptly lost Paula when she
went through the Fort McHenry Tunnel so he contacted a private eye named Dewey
Lubuck. Lubuck didn’t even know enough
to ask about the tracking device we put in the ambassador’s Escalade, or at
least with Paula, who’s in the Escalade.
But my friend Jack works for Lubuck, so I gave Jack the tracking
receiver to go after Paula and the Escalade.
He has an amazingly hot car and he may even have caught up with her by
now”
“Jack?
What kind of a friend is Jack?”
“Boy, Sir, you sure know how to hone in on
the important stuff. Just a friend. Anyway, all we have to do is wait for him to
call. He can get it under control. After all, he has Lubuck on his tail to help,
Lubuck has an assistant named Natasha or Natalia, I’m not sure, maybe it’s two
assistants, and they all have FBI contacts to call after they do the difficult
stuff.”
“I really can’t believe the FBI is as
inept as you describe them,” said the general.
“You probably know a lot about government
successes, but at Secret Service School they teach us about the screw-ups, so
we don’t make the same ones. I’ll bet
you don’t even know about the Sandusky mess.”
“Sure I know, but that’s taken care of.”
“I didn’t think you knew. Sit back, General, and I’ll tell you a little
story.”
Kelly related the following to the
disbelieving general.
Probably the best example of FBI incompetence was an attempt the
FBI (which the Secret Service referred to as Fuckedup Beyond Imagining) had set up to try to gain some control over
the epidemic of child molestation.
The public only knew
it as the Sandusky affair. But the real
story was too horrible to even hint at to the public. The FBI had recruited Jerry Sandusky, an
assistant coach at Penn State, another assistant coach Mike McQueary, and
several former students who had benefited from Sandusky’s Second Mile
Organization. Sandusky was, in reality, as nice a guy as his longtime
reputation held him to be. His love for
kids was strictly on the up-and-up and the idea of anyone molesting any of the
beneficiaries of his charity was so horrifying to him that he agreed to be the
bad guy in the FBI’s charade. He would
pose as a serial molester, with the help of McQueary and the former students who
agreed to pose as victims. He would actually
agree to be discovered, convicted, and go to prison, for a short time, in order
to gather and pass information to the FBI about networks of child
molesters. It was a very unselfish thing
to do. But Sandusky felt he’d had a very
lucky life and this was his chance to help, and eventually be seen as a hero
for his actions.
The FBI’s mistake was
their belief that there was a sort of child molestation mafia, that it was a
highly organized crime that could be infiltrated and conquered from within.
Secrecy was paramount. The university
president, vice presidents, and chief of security were all kept in the
dark. It was especially decided that head
coach Joe Paterno could have no part in the operation. A suggestion that Paterno was even peripherally
involved was considered to be too damaging to the reputation of Penn
State. And if the operation came off as
planned, Penn State and Paterno would, in the end, be showered with the heroism
and praise that they deserved.
But almost from the
start, things began to go wrong.
McQueary was supposed to tell Paterno of the fictitious assault by
Sandusky. As the story worked its way up
the chain, someone would report it to the police, Sandusky would be arrested,
convicted, and begin his service as an undercover agent of the FBI while a
prisoner.
But McQueary hadn’t
been rehearsed well enough by the FBI.
His report to Paterno was too watered down. Paterno’s report to his superiors was watered
down a little more, until University President Spanier received a report so
ambiguous that he felt it was within his right to deal with it on his own. Sandusky was simply told to stay away from
the locker rooms and showers.
The FBI, not wanting
to waste the effort it had already expended, arranged its own carefully placed
leaks which eventually got the case before a grand jury. The jury, the attorney general, and other
officials who weren’t in on the secret
operation decided to indict President Spanier and two other officials in
addition to Sandusky. This was never intended by the FBI. In addition, Paterno, who was also completely
outside the loop, hung his head and said he “Should have done more”.
To the FBI’s credit,
they secretly used their influence to try to mitigate the damage to the President,
the two officials, and Paterno but were only successful in keeping Paterno out
of legal trouble. But things had
spiraled out of control. The press tore into Paterno. Student protests erupted and turned
ugly. The reputation of the university
sunk, and college football in general stood in disrepute. The FBI considered just abandoning the
operation, admitting its errors, hanging its head in shame, and letting
everyone go free.
But everyone knows
what happened instead. Joe Paterno got sick and died. The FBI decided they could no longer admit
what they had done. Even though Joe’s
death was not the FBI’s fault, the fact that he had died under this cloud left
the public feeling the scandal was responsible.
To discover there was really no scandal at all would just transfer the
blame for Joe’s death to the FBI. They
might as well have been accused of killing Mother Teresa.
So the whole thing
was swept under the rug. Sandusky
understandably claimed his innocence, but, good soldier that he was, did not
accuse the FBI, and quietly agreed, for a while at least, to keep doing his
undercover prison work as planned. Then when Louis Free, the FBI’s former
director, got into the act and conducted his investigation with absolutely no
knowledge of what his former agency had done, it sealed the deal. How could the FBI admit that its former
director had not known what was going on?
For the good of the country the FBI had to retain its reputation
in order to be an effective crime prevention force. The FBI continues today to try to gain the
acquittal of the other officials without admitting the agency’s own guilt. The problem of how to get the innocent
Sandusky out of jail has not been solved.
Certain people at high levels in the FBI are shrugging their shoulders
and labeling Sandusky as collateral damage, a victim of friendly fire in the
battle against child abuse.
So Kelly Cranston knew she was part of a
house of cards that could easily topple and hurt a lot of people. But her youthful optimism left her feeling
she could have her fun, and slip out before things got nasty.
By the time she finished her story,
Peaches was sitting on the floor in his skivvies polishing his shoes. Kelly recognized this as his signal that,
even though she was ready for some more fun, for now, he was worn out. Maybe Holly Petraeus was making demands on
him also, thought Kelly.
* * * * *
Jack had been maintaining a safe distance
behind Paula and the Escalade. When he
saw her stop at the old tenement building on William Street, he hit the brakes
hard. Wilson tumbled to the floor. This was actually a relief for Wilson. He had
to pee badly and stopping meant he would finally get his chance. A second later another jolt snapped Jack’s
head back.
Dewey was steaming and the BMW was
steaming. Vapor from his broken radiator was seeping out around his crumpled
hood. His front bumper was entangled with the rear bumper on Jack’s Chevy. Dewey
almost forgot that he still had the cell phone to his ear. It was ringing. He answered without even checking who was
calling.
“Hi, Sweetie,” said Natalia. “I got the info you wanted. Ya ready for it?”
“Listen, Natasha. I’ve been in an
accident. I’m okay but you have to get
up here quick. I need help and the
Beemer’s out of commission. Things look
like they’re going to heat up in a hurry.”
“First, Sweetie, who the hell’s Natasha?
Ya foolin’ around or somethin’?”
Part 11
Colleen Weikel
“Natasha? I didn’t say Natasha! I don’t know any Natasha,” Dewey said. He needed Natalia to help him and couldn’t
afford for her to leave him sit right now.
But she was in D.C. and he was here.
Dewey waited
for Jack to get out of his rust bucket.
He didn’t have to wait long. Jack
slammed his door shut, went around the other side, let the dog out and let him
pee on Dewey’s tires, then knocked on the drivers’ side window.
“Yeah?” Dewey
grumbled.
“What the hell
are ya doin’, Dew? You slammed right
into me. Saw you following me all the
way from outside D.C. after I passed you.
Thought I lost you at first.
Where’s the bug?” Wilson put his
paws on his car door and licked the window.
“Get your dog
off my car. He’s going to scratch my
paint.”
Jack barked a
laugh, “Ya think you need to worry about scratched paint? The front end is buried in my trunk. I don’t
see how a couple scratches are gonna hurt it now.”
Dewey
repositioned his hat, stifling the urge to slam his fist into Porter’s
face. “Goddamn it, Jack! You
are the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever known! Get the goddamn dog off my car and get the
hell out of my way. Got it?”
Jack raised his
hands in surrender, spun on his heel and backed away. Wilson wanted to explore the grounds and mark
his territory anyway.
Outside the
room with boarded up windows on the third floor of the old tenement building,
Paula Broadwell listened at the door.
There was no sound. She dropped
to one knee on the filthy, broken, urine-smelling floor and peered through the
keyhole. The Thai ambassador’s son was
tied to a straight backed wooden chair in the center of the room. Most people would be sweating bullets, but
the kid was cool as a cucumber. He
either expected to be rescued or he just didn’t understand the situation. She could see the kid, but no one else.
The sound of
footsteps coming from a lower floor caught her attention. She had to get out of sight. She climbed inside a rickety old wooden wardrobe
dresser that sat against the far wall.
If anyone were to see her, she’d stand out like a sore thumb in her
designer clothing and styled hair. She
hoped the smell of soap from her shower wouldn’t give her away in this filthy,
godforsaken place. Holding her breath,
she waited for the footsteps to come closer.
Whoever it was, he was on the stairs.
They creaked under his weight. Must
be a big guy. The old wardrobe was
cracked along one side panel. She peeked
through it. She could see a gun and dark shoes.
Shiny shoes. Expensive
shoes. Shoes that were out of place in
this dump. Like a hippo in a flower pot.
So
was the scent of Bulgari Green.
Expensive shower gel. Who was
this guy? She heard a key click in the
locked door. Whoever this was meant
business.
Part 12 (Ending)
John Matthews
Paula just sat and held her head in her
hands. What was going on? Krit Xuto wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to deliver the cello as the
trap to lure him in. Why did they want
the cello if they already had the kid?
The key turned in the lock and the door
swung open. A huge guy in an expensive
suit and shoes to match pointed a gun at her.
The gun wasn't as intimidating as the overpowering smell of Bvlgari
Green which drowned out the smell of her Jean Nate. They stared at each other. The battle of
smells was not pleasant, especially when mingled with the urine soaked floor.
“Good, you’re here,” said the guy. “You better have the fiddle.”
“Who are you?” asked Paula.
“You don’t gotta know. Besides there are too many characters in this
story already. That Lubuck guy can’t
even remember his girlfriend’s name.”
“I know,” said Paula, shaking her head. “Sometimes I can’t even remember my own
name. But what do you need the cello
for if you already have Krit?”
“Why don’t I just let him tell you? He’s a pretty smart kid. At least he thinks he is.”
Krit Xuto was just taking it all in. “You have my cello? How did you get it out of the Escalade?”
“It’s still in the Escalade,” said
Paula. “How did they get you?”
“I got a phone call saying my cello was here
in New York. The Escalade was gone so I figured
they had stolen it. They told me I had
to come here to get it because they couldn’t figure out how to get it out. They said they’d give it back and just keep
the Escalade if I’d get it out for them.
My dad has a private jet. I took
it and got up here quick. But I was
careless. That’s why I’m tied up.”
“When I heard the Escalade was gone,” said
the big guy, “I knew you were on the way.
So I called the kid and lured him in.”
“You heard,” said Paula. “How did you hear?”
“You can hear a lot if you infiltrate the
FBI’s communication system. It’s very
easy to do. I understand the Secret
Service refers to the FBI as…”
“Yea, Yea, I know,” said Paula. “So what are you going to do now?”
“First, I’ve got a buyer for the fiddle, if
I can get it out of the Escalade. I was
just goin’ to start workin’ the kid over to get him to tell me how to do
it. But I just heard on the phone
intercept that Lubuck’s girlfriend, Natalia or Natasha or whatever her name is,
called him with the secret code. By the
way, Lubuck’s downstairs along with some private eye. I gotta get down there before they figure out
how to get into the Escalade.”
__________________________________
Meanwhile, downstairs.
“Natalia just called me with the code to get
into the Escalade’s secret compartment to get the fiddle,” said Dewey to
Jack. “If we can get it, put it into
your car, which looks like it’s still drivable, we can get it back to DC before
they lure the ambassador’s son to come up here.”
The secret code was surprisingly simple. The
first four notes of Saint Saen’s most famous cello composition played on any
cell phone opened the secret hatch. In a few minutes they had the cello out of
the Escalade and were strapping it to the top of Jack’s Chevy. But they still had to untangle the Chevy from
the bumper of the BMW.
“You jump up and down on the bumper while I
try to back the Chevy away from it,” said Jack.
“Wilson, you stay clear. I don’t
want to hit you.”
Dewey bounced on the bumper as Jack floored
the accelerator. The wheels spun, but
the bumpers stayed locked. Finally the
power of the Chevy actually started to pull the BMW. Dewey gave one mighty bounce and the bumpers
released. The Chevy rocketed ahead, but
Jack quickly slammed on the brakes. The
cello, which hadn’t been tied very securely, shot off the car and the heavy
scroll at the end of its neck caught the big kidnapper squarely on the
jaw. The kidnapper had come downstairs to stop Jack and Dewey
but he was so surprised by the mess they were making of things he was caught
off guard. But he reacted quickly. He held onto his gun and pointed it at Dewey who was still
standing on the BMW bumper.
But Wilson was also alert. Even in the dark, the kidnapper’s shiny shoes
were a treat he couldn’t resist. He
clamped onto one and the kidnapper’s shot went wide. Before he could recover, The Escalade backed
up and pinned the kidnapper against the Chevy.
____________________________
Meanwhile, back upstairs.
“Krit, if I can bounce my chair over to you, so
we’re sitting back to back, do you think you can reach the knots he’s tied me
up with?” asked Paula.
“I think so,” said Krit, “When you play
cello, you learn to do things with your fingers without looking at them.”
The kid was good. In seconds both he and Paula were free. Paula ran over and knocked one of the boards
out of a window. The mess she saw below
would have panicked a lesser
person. There wasn’t time to go down and
help. But she still had the keys to the
Escalade. They included not only a
remote starter, but the ability to put the car in gear remotely. She fired it up and started it back toward the
kidnapper who was getting ready for another shot.
The second shot was badly aimed also but
unfortunately, it went through the cello, which was now lying in the
street. Wilson had released the
kidnapper’s shoe and now eyed the cello as an interesting place to have another
pee.
“Sorry about your cello,” said Paula as she
and Krit stared out the window.
“It’s pretty tough,” said Krit. “I’m sure it can be patched. And a bullet hole from a kidnapping attempt
might make it even more valuable.”
____________________________________
Back downstairs again.
A black government sedan pulled up to the
ugly mess of the wrecked BMW, The Chevy and Escalade with the kidnapper pinned
between them and a bulldog sniffing at a beautiful cello.
Two FBI agents jumped out of the sedan, guns
drawn.
Dewey thought he recognized the agents. One was an older white haired guy who looked
vaguely like Walter White but for some reason seemed slightly different. But the other was definitely Carlotta
Page. The Donut Hole job must have been
a cover. No wonder her donuts were so
terrible.
The old white haired guy was laughing. He put his gun away. “Looks like you guys have things under
control,” he said. No, it definitely was
NOT Walter White. But why was he so
familiar?
_________________________________
A few days later, Kelly Cranston, Hillary
Clinton, Holly Petraeus, and Paula Broadwell sat around a glass table on the
terrace of the Thai embassy, a pitcher of Margaritas on the table in front of
them. Nearby the gentle strains of Saint
Saens’ “The Swan” were coming from the
recently patched cello being played for them by Krit Xuto.
“I’m so glad we can all end up friends,
after this affair.” Said Kelly.
“Please don’t use the term ‘affair’ “ said Paula.
She smiled as she sipped her drink.
“I’m still not clear on one thing,” said
Holly Petraeus. “Paula has explained how
the kidnapper was caught, but how did the FBI get there so quickly, and who
were those agents?”
“You have your husband Peaches to thank for
that,” said Kelly. “After I told him how
screwed up the FBI was and told him that story about the Sandusky mess, he was
really upset. He pulled some strings,
and he pulled them quick. He arranged for
the FBI to grab that incompetent Walter White and make a quick switch. They placed White in prison in place of Jerry
Sandusky, who was innocent all along.
They swore Sandusky in as an agent and paired him up with Carlotta Page,
who used to be White’s partner and sent the two of them to New York to settle
things. But when they got there Paula,
Krit, and Wilson, with a little help from Jack and Dewey, had taken care of
things.”
“Sandusky will be cleared and given the
respect he deserves,” said Hillary. “I
pulled some strings to help with that.”
“Peaches and I are on the way to
reconciling,” said Holly Petraeus. “He’s
really a good guy, just got too caught up in all this hero stuff. Kelly, I want you to know I hold nothing
against you.”
“Thank you, Holly. It was over between Peaches and me. But don’t worry about me. I’m afraid I’m not ready to become a ‘good
girl’ just yet. I might look around for
some other political type to have a fling with.”
For some reason she could not force herself
to make eye contact with Hillary.
THE END
