In Love and Law

by Drake Koefoed

  When they had gone, Chrissie asked him.

  “It’s a courtesy, honey. It’s a real ID, but nobody expects me to do anything, except if they need a favor, and they know I will help out. It means I can carry guns if I like, and I do. If someone ever comes and wants to hurt you, then I want to have a gun. That’s not so complicated, is it?”

  “So this would go on in the United States. Like someone who has an FBI ID might actually be Mossad. Where does it end?”

  “Where do lies end in intelligence? Never. The former Mossad guy would not do something against the United States. You are trusted by an ally and given an ID, and you are obliged to be honorable in every respect.”

  “I wish I’d never heard any of this.”

  “Get this real straight. You didn’t hear it, don’t know it, never did, never will, under no circumstances will you discuss it, it never happened, you were not there, you didn’t hear it, you have no idea what people are talking about. You’re mystified by this whole bunch of talk, which cannot be right.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Great.”

  There was still enough light left to walk around a little. The house was stone and brick, surrounded by stone walls and stone stairways that led out of its various exterior doors. Large gently pruned flowering shrubs were all over. There were some nice perennial beds. Vines climbed trellises that stood far above the walkways. There were stone benches here and there. Fishponds were scattered about, filled by pipes that did not show.

  They went out a gate and closed it behind them. They came out on a hill and sat on a stone bench. Sheep grazed around them. The Med shone below.

  “We’ve arrived, Will. This is it. You have to work for four more years, and we will have everything we ever had a reason to want.”

  “You will have to work, too. You’re going to be on the phone for hours every day. You will be reviewing documents, editing photographs, answering mail on the web site, and getting the people for this place located, hired, paid, treated right. It won’t be like the DA office, but you will have work to do. Poquita is coming. And Quint, of course.

  “None of that amounts to much. Especially when we have Poquita.”

  The phone rang. It was Marcie, who wanted them to go to dinner. She sent a car, and they went. At the restaurant, they met Glenn, another photographer who was there, not to shoot the catalog, but to shoot Will shooting the catalog. Glenn shot Will and Marcie at their salads, and then Will and Marcie and then Will and Marcie with the owner of the restaurant. Will uploaded them to the palmtop, and uploaded the one to the web master, and the other to a printer in Rome who would crop, enhance and print the shot as a 24x36 and send it to Will’s house where he and Marcie would sign it, and then, if they wanted to mail it, there would be a mailing label. Otherwise they would roll it and put it in a clear tube, and on the bottom edge of the poster was the name and address of the person it went to.

  Chrissie went around the neighborhood to meet everyone. She soon ran into two Corsicans, Joe and Andy, who said they had worked the gatehouse at her place, and would like to return if she would have them. She scanned their IDs and photographed them, and had them put fingerprints on her palmtop. She sent all the information to Will, who sent it on to the Carabiniere.

  The report came very quickly. “These are good men, my Colonel. The Captain, he would speak with you.”

  “He may.”

  “Colonel, do you know of the little stone house near your North East corner?”

  “I know it’s there.”

  “We could make use of it. We want to be able to look over the Med, and to have some men there in case of any problem.”

  “You may do so. I’m not sure where the gate key is.”

  “We will cut the chain, and put on another if needed, and a new lock, and provide you with a key.”

  “I don’t know what is in the stone house.”

  “Nothing much. We will throw out the trash, and anything you may want, we will retain, and you can tell us.”

  “That will be fine.”

  “Thank you, my Colonel.”

  Will called Chrissie. She should hire the Corsicans. They came immediately and took over the gatehouse. They brought their wives, who looked just as tough as the men. Will told them about the Carabiniere using the little stone house, and they smiled.

  Will asked all the questions he wanted to. None at all.

  They went inside. Will and Chrissie looked over the master bedroom suite. With a closet big enough for Marcie, and a makeup room, a private bathroom, and everything else a woman might want, her side looked fine. Will’s side was a shower with no tub, a toilet and lavatory. The closet was fairly large, but it would have been a bit too small for Chrissie. They went upstairs and looked at the suites on the second floor. The nicest was the East one, where Will planned to put Marcie. The West one, which he expected to put Poquita and Quint, was smaller, but very nice. The North one was a great guest room. They went to their own and took a nap.

  Chapter 15 Marcie Comes to Italy Musical Theme; Call Me The Breeze by J.J. Cale

  j Marcie arrived with a truck and a crew of five guys, all of them lusting for her, as she preferred. She occupied the East Suite with a delicacy and dignity that has not been seen since Heinz Guderian. She deployed her dresses in the closet, occupied the floor there with her shoes, and took the man’s side of the closet without a shot fired, moving in her negligees and pajamas. She invaded the North Suite with a wave of her hand, and invested it with racks of businesschick outfits and jeans, sweaters, casual dresses, coats, and a number of large boxes. Chrissie came in. “Chrissie, darling. Does Will want to shoot this evening?”

  “I’ll go look for him and find out, Marcie.” . She went around, and eventually downstairs and out around the house. She heard a man and a woman speaking Italian. She knew a little of it

  herself. The woman was talking about a job, and the man was speaking very rapidly and mellifluously. He sounded like a professor of Italian literature. Suddenly she realized it was Will. “Halt. Who goes there?” “Chrissie, Will.” “Chrissie, this is May. She was a maid here once, she’s cleared. She wants to work here. She’s Sicilian. She understands she needs your kiss on the cheek before she can have the job.” “Kiss on the cheek?” “It’s not a real kiss.” “Why does she need me to approve her?” “Because that’s the proper thing. The lady of the house has to approve of the maid. She will work for you. She does not report to the Don.” Will’s phone rang, and he picked up. He listened for a moment. “This is her father. Is she hired? She will be good.” “She is hired.” Will spoke rapidly into the phone. He hung up. “Let’s go upstairs. I want to put her in South 2. We show it to her, and when her dad gets here, he will take her home to get her stuff, and then we will give her a couple of days to move in. We will not discuss her business with anyone. If he brings his wife, you show her exaggerated respect.” They went upstairs, and showed May the room. She ran around and fussed with things. She was getting a room in the palace. Her parents came and looked around, and were very pleased. They took her home to get her things. “Marcie wanted to know if you wanted to shoot tonight.” “I do, but not until May’s parents leave. Well, no, we can do business wear first.” Will went up and knocked on Marcie’s door. Marcie let him in. “Marcie, we have just hired a Sicilian maid. Her mother and father are going to bring her back in a little while, and we can shoot some pix, but it has to be very correct. You ready to be a businesschick?” “Sure. Get the camera ready, let’s blow away some virtual film.” They went to the office, where Marcie looked for things she couldn’t find in the desk, and her attaché case, which held a writing pad, a little zip up collection of pens and pencils, and a day planner, which should not taken as any indication that our darling could plan a day. Then again she made ten times as much as Will, who could plan an epoch, and schedule it on a spreadsheet, and a hundred times as much as Poquita, who could plan a millennium down to the microsec
ond, and remember the entire plan. Marcie looked for nonexistent bits of lint, pulled out files with nothing of consequence in them, looked over her shoulder at the camera, which really was watching, and tapped at keyboards running programs she didn’t know anything about. Will’s best joke in this line was having her running a super sophisticated debugger called ‘Soft Ice.’ To even try to explain what Soft Ice does would no doubt bore the reader to the throwing the book against the wall level, but you can take my word for it, it’s amazing. The chances of our darling Marcie learning to operate Soft Ice are pretty remote. She is more likely to run herself over with the seven three, and please, dear reader, relax. There is less chance that our heroine will manage to start the seven three than that a jack rabbit will learn to do an integration by trigonometric substitution. Marcie moved to the sophisticated evening dress thing. She chased Will down the stairs and he chased her back up. When that got old, she strutted around the living room in some really nice outfits. The doorbell rang. Will admitted May and her parents. They came in quietly. “Sir, you are here just in time to be photographed with Marcie Della.” They did a kind of family thing with Marcie looking at May’s hand, and that seemed to be all they wanted, so they took May’s things up to South 2, and had a brandy. Will said he would get them a little phone so they could call May any time, and he would be glad to pay for it, it wouldn’t cost much. Then he got them a phone with unlimited long distance, and explained that the company had supplied the wrong phone, but they didn’t have the right one, and, well, they would let them keep this one because they couldn’t find the paperwork, and, well, it was not worth bothering with. The bill would go to Will, and it would not be very much, and there had been all this confusion, but anyway, they could make as many calls as they liked and it would not cost a thing, now wasn’t that neat? Mama could talk to Auntie for hours every night, and it would all be free. Will would pay $89.78 a month for the service. Not for nothing had he taken General Barnes’ course in advanced bullshitting. Marcie did a hundred outfits in the lingerie catalog. May had to make the bed dozens of times. The yellow satin was fine for a while, then they needed the green. Marcie played with her stockings, toyed with bikini strings, lounged around in pajamas, and showed off the most fashionable new things. After about 3 hours, she started to look tired, and Will cut it off. The model has to look frisky, fresh, and ready for fun. Marcie had put in a hard few hours, and she was bushed. Will tucked her in, and went to the office. If this was a thriller, he would have a state of the art computer, and you could tell that at a glance. Since it is not, a state of the art computer at one time or another has included hard drives laying on the desk next to the machine, wires dangling. The state of the art main board might be in the case of an older machine. In the DOS days, the latest main board could be in an old box. You could have an amber monitor and the most powerful processor ever made. The most powerful computer system Will had ever worked with had 257 Taiwanese clones connected with a huge tangle of cables, and stacked like bricks. Explaining that system would definitely try the reader’s patience, so we move on. Will had a desktop with lots of ports and a nice monitor. Will took the camera to the desktop. He uploaded the pix to a folder called yyyy-mm-dd because it would sort in the directory. He put them on the hard drive, then on a flash drive, and cleaned them off the camera. He put the flash drive in a bag to go to the bank to a safe deposit box. He started an upload of the files which would go to the agency, the customer, Will’s US system, and commercial backup systems in Canada, Brazil, Mozambique, and Lithuania. He went to bed, and held Chrissie. In the morning, they collected a little dome tent and a few lawn chairs, and went to the beach. Will shot Marcie in every conceivable outfit for about 5 hours. As they packed, a guy told Will he thought that was a cool idea to bring the tent. Will sold it to him for $10 and threw in a pic of him with Marcie Della. Then Marcie put her cover up on. “Help us pack up, buddy. You get signed posters of anything that comes out that good. We have all rights to the pix. Your girlfriend can pack up that tent, and you can pretend you are Marcie Della’s boyfriend to the top of the hill. You agree knowing that I am recording this. your name is?” “Sure. I’m Don Blake.” A kid looked at him. “Is she really Marcie Della?” “She is. Carry those lawn chairs up to our car, and you can have a picture with her. We will have all rights to the pix. You understand I am recording this.” “I don’t care about that.” They went up the hill, Don holding Marcie’s hand. They stopped a few times and kissed. When they got to the top of the hill the girlfriend, Billi, with the tent more or less stowed right, took over. Will got one nice shot of them looking out on the Med. He got Don’s contacts and email in the palmtop. He took a pic of the kid and Marcie, she smoothing his hair. Will could tell she wanted to, but he was like 14, and even Marcie knew better, although ten years later, the population of 24 year old men who would regret a little fun with Marcie Della would have been zero. They went back to the house. Will uploaded the pix to the desktop, and emailed the ones he’d taken of his amateur models. They already had a poster printer at the house, so Marcie did a 24x36 for the kid, and signed it, “I wish we could. Love and kisses, Marcie Della.” She ran the ones of Don Blake after cropping them. She signed them, and they went into the mail, too. Will had an email from Aurora. “Your pix are incredible. We are all very pleased. Please do the negligees, and then get ready to tour Europe. You know the drill.”

  They went to the beach the next day. They got Don to bring the dome tent, and shot Marcie in the rest of the swimsuits on the list. A girl walked by while Marcie was changing. Will turned to Don. “She could be a model.” The girl came over. “I heard you. Are you serious?” “Sure. I’ll shoot you a half dozen pics free, you can put on Facebook.” “Is that how you get started?” “No. You have a portfolio showing you in swimsuits, underwear, dresses, as much variety as you can. You don’t do nudity. You need an agent, which is hard to get. If you do not have one, you try to get jobs for Sunday supplements and stuff. The guys shooting that stuff might connect you with like, $50 jobs. You try to work your way up, and you must work fast, because, well, how old are you?” “15.” “You will be a supermodel at 25 or you’ll be done. You need to be an actress by 30, or something else. Otherwise, you are looking at a lost career. Lots of you make 100 thousand by 25 and snort it all up in coke, and end up dead by 30. You need to plan on going to college.

  Be a nurse or an engineer, something that is in high demand. Ask employers and see if it is.” A red faced man came over. “Are you trying to seduce my daughter?” “No, sir. Talking about modeling.” Marcie came out. “Excuse me guys, we need to do some shots. We be back. Marcie played in the ocean for a bit, and they came back. “Will, give her $50 and let me do the auntie and daughter thing.” Will shrugged. “Would you like to do a little modeling job?” The girl said “Yes.” “Up to you, Sir. $50 for all rights. We’ll be done with her in an hour.

  No harm will come to her, and I would be glad to have you here to see that it does not, although I can probably handle that alone.” “No nudity.” “I never let them do that. I’m not against it on principle, but I think it trashes a model’s career, so I will not do it.” Will handed the contract to him, and they both signed. Marcie and the girl played in the waves and came back. They went in the tent, and somehow Marcie found another outfit for the girl. Out they came, and splashed around some more. The girl was an adorable little thing with pig tails, who had no idea how to pose, but could be caught looking cute pretty easily. They went through what they had, and Will saw Marcie looking a little tired and slightly over sunned, and called it off for the day.

  They invited their guests to the house for lunch. Anita made them sandwiches. “What are you called?” “Bob. My daughter is Teresa.” “I’d like a last name for the check.” “Jackson.” “Chrissie, would you cut a check for Teresa Jackson, $100?” She went to do it. “I thought you said $50.” “Too late unless you object to our using the pix in the Aurora catalog, with little credits somewhere with Te
resa’s name on them, just so maybe we can launch her.” Anita passed out sandwiches. She looked at the little one Marcie had asked for. “Is that all you’re going to eat, Marcie?” “For now.” Chrissie came in with some posters and one of Marcie’s black with gold flecks pens. “Love and kisses, Marcie Della?” “Are you really Marcie Della?” “Sorry if you thought I was famous like somebody on a sitcom.” She threw the posters aside and started into her sandwich. Then she dropped it on her plate, and went to her suite. Will took the pen and posters, and pursued her to her suite. “Marcie, I don’t know what you’re mad about, but please sign these posters for me.” She did. “I thought you liked Teresa.”

  “I do.” “So if I send her pics to Aurora, and they want her to work with you, you will be glad to?”

  “Sure. Figure on it for Mother’s day.”

  “You will be all right?”

  “Just let me be. We’ll shoot tomorrow, OK?”

  “Yes.”

  He went back down and gave Teresa her posters.

  “She likes you, and will be glad to work with you if Aurora asks. I don’t know what got into her, but she wants to be alone for now.”

  Bob asked “Did we do something?”

  “No telling what it’s about, Bob. It’s not good, but it isn’t the first time a model has acted nutty with me.”

  “We are going back to Kentucky pretty soon.”

  “If they want Teresa to work with Marcie, she should do it. Aurora will send her here first class. Or Marcie will send the Lear for her, or borrow Phillipa’s Gulfstream. I don’t want her dropping out of school, but she can study here, or call it home school, whatever. We will see to it that she has tutors, or gets in school here, or wherever we go, and I can teach her if nobody else does.”