Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  “I’m alone.”

  “Where’s your father and his partner?”

  “Out of town.”

  “Drop your weapon,” Ashe shouted from behind us.

  Tim spun, and at the same time, pulled Susan into him as a shield, shooting Ashe. Ashe dove for protection. Tim crouched down with Susan still in front of him and began to scramble back out of the line of fire. Josh rushed him but took a hit in the leg. A short exchange of gunfire occurred between Ashe and Tim.

  “Don’t shoot,” I yelled at Ashe, “you might hit Susan.”

  Alarms had sounded and people shouted and ran in panic. Holding Susan by the hair, Tim disappeared around a corner. I jumped up and chased after him as the evil forces who carry out The First Law of Life crashed down on me. When I came to an open maintenance door, I found Susan on the floor with her throat slit. I covered her gushing wound with my hand, pinching the jugular shut, but I gazed at her open unblinking eyes and feared the worst. “Susan, don’t go,” I whispered desperately. I could hardly breathe but managed to call for help. I screamed. I heard Ashe rushed up from behind, calling 911 on her cell. A great hole opened up inside my stomach.

  Ashe raced off after him, and for a minute I was alone with Susan in the grey corridor, watching her blood seep into my clothes like a slow wash. In a minute, I knew she had fled the world. I wept until the ambulance took her body away.

  After the funeral, I devoted my time to Tappets and withdrew from the world, I became a recluse. As far as I was concerned, they had won: Lloyd, the Family and whatever being set up the system which had invented The First Law of Life for those born unlucky and especially orphans. It seemed unjust, but what could I do? They were more powerful than me. I told Peter to stop the investigation before anyone else got hurt. I was unaware that behind my back, the Zucker family paid Josh to continue hunting Tim Daniels.

  In regards to The Family of Truth, I cleared my mind of them, and was glad I had. It wasn’t until two years, three months later, on Friday, October 12, 1990 at La Guardia Airport, when I found myself once again forced to face the painful past. It was a grey raining day, apropos, and Una, Mary, Stan, and myself traveled to the airport to watch the arrival of Love Moses as he was delivered to the American authorities who had finally settled the extradition case with the Swiss.

  They brought him forward through the throng of press and film people. Some of them were wet, and some held umbrellas. Unlike at my trial, no one shoved or pushed, instead they shouted their questions from a respectful distance. The Federal Officers and the Swedish Police tried to keep an area just in front of Love Moses and Divine Love open so that some progress was made.

  A female care-giver in a nurse’s uniform pushed Love Moses, who was now a crippled old man in a wheelchair. His white stringy hair almost covered his unfocused eyes. He looked as though demented. I knew Una was a happy witness. Her eyes were almost laughing. Divine Love’s tall graceful figure hadn’t changed that much. The smile and vacant eyes had disappeared, replaced by a pout and a condescending gaze. Her long blond hair was combed behind her and had faded–her thin face appeared still fervent. How her life had been distorted, I could only imagine, and she was still entangled in it. “Forgive me for saying so,” Una said, “but he looks like a mad scientist with his distraught daughter.”

  “He’s a pathetic caricature of a man,” I said, “the end of an evil idea brought forth by a fool. Look, he’s stopped to say something. We should get closer.” Una shook her head at me in refusal. “He’s justifying himself to his followers,” I said. “He’s nothing but a Nazi.”

  “He’s responsible for murdering several people,” Stan broke in, “not for killing six million Jews. Watch what you say in public. The press are everywhere. Don’t think for a minute that we’ve gone unnoticed.”

  Except for Una, all of us looked right and left as though to make sure we were alone, but after all, I knew Stan assessed it correctly, and oddly enough, even though I’d expected it, the attention Love Moses received, surprised me. “They say he’s completely mad,” Una said, “and now that I’ve seen him, I’m more inclined that it’s true.”

  “If he’s crazy,” Mary said, “they won’t be able to touch him.”

  “I’m glad we’ve come tonight,” Una said, “seeing him now, well, he’s nothing but a shriveled up old man, and his followers are here, and seeing their thin bodies and worn old clothes is sad, but when the press flash their cheerless faces all over the world, that’s when people will know that a bad thing came into being and is now being brought to justice.”

  “Yes, wait until they see him,” I agreed. “They’re expecting a vibrant and inspired leader. He’s decrepit.”

  “You’ve done well, Christian,” Una said and hugged me. “I’m proud of you. God bless you.”

  “That’s right,” Mary joined in, “you’ve every right to be proud about your instrumental role in bringing this day about. He fought extradition right up to the end. He’s truly afraid. It’s almost completely behind us now. Sally and Susan would be proud of you.”

  Love Moses and Divine Love passed where we stood, and for a moment, they had a clear look at us. “He knows who we are,” Una whispered.

  It was true, I saw the recognition on his face, and then the throng swallowed him up again. “What a lecher,” Mary said. “I guess he is sane after all.”

  “They call this closure now,” Una said, “but it sure feels like victory.”

  I smiled and wished it felt like victory. I returned to work, and in the months ahead, spent almost all my time at the office. Isaac told me sometime after this that I was now called, The Monk. Stan turned sixty on July 20, 1992 and we held a party at The Vanderbilt Office. He said he would remain on the board and work two or three days a week. It was about this time that Divine Love received immunity from the government and reverted back to her original name, Sabrina Light. She confirmed that Love Moses ordered the creation of The Hostility Branch, the murder of Rick Edwards, Barry Wall, Anna Chapati, and Sally Tappet. She couldn’t confirm, but lent credence to the idea, that Tim Daniels also had a hand with the killing of Susan Garland, Graham Robert, and Hiroyuki Nakamura.

  In the fall of the next year, she was reportedly killed in an automobile accident. I took notice of it, but Josh couldn’t discover anything suspicious about her death. By 1996, I owned and controlled much of a trimmed-down Tappets. I realized I had become a bit of a hermit and Una, Mary, and Stan, complained about it, but I ran the company successfully and since they were the direct recipients of that windfall, what could they really say? I continued to live at home, but was seldom there.

  Many a night in a hotel room left me depressed. My name kept coming up in the papers as the most eligible bachelor in New Jersey. I supposed that was a joke.

  On Saturday, February 7, 1998, in Los Angeles, California, I attended an unveiling ceremony for Rick Edwards at Splinter-Pearl Park, now Edward’s Gardens. Although the temperature had risen steadily, a cool breeze blew in the grassy park which fell out to a wooded area. The temporary stage I stood on, was adjacent to a monument which had just been unveiled by Janice Edwards. It was a large stone carving of Rick Edwards surrounded by an extensive flower garden, mostly annuals, but some bushes and flowering trees. The statue, bolted to a huge polished granite boulder, held a memorial tablet on either side, giving a short history of Rick Edwards and FOCUS.

  It had been built only a few miles from where Rick had been assassinated. Rick’s family, including his oldest son Adam’s four grown children, and his wife, Isabel, stood on stage with Janice Edwards and myself. An enormous orange-brown apartment-building complex off to my right and a highway overpass, no more than a half a mile to the north, could be seen from the stage. I could hear the traffic and the sound of horns off in the distance.

  Adam was about his father’s height but wasn’t plain-looking like Rick had been, but rather muscular and fashionably dressed. With his prominent brown eyes, shaved head, and broad smile,
his dad’s dynamic inner self seemed to have manifested itself outwardly. As for Janice Edwards, she had gained some weight since I had last seen her, but to me, pretty much looked the same. She had already spoken to the crowd of over fifteen hundred people and her speech was inspirational. I admired her greatly. At age fifty-one, she remained devoted to the cause of her late husband.

  On stage with me, also stood Josh and Yan, as well as three famous people from the cult intervention movement as they now called it, the head of Cult News Network, the creator of Vanguard Week, and the author of the best selling book, Combating Cult Mind Control, all ex-cultists, and all who would speak after me. After a few words about what a great dad Rick Edwards was, Adam introduced me to the audience. Many of them were members of FOCUS or former cultists who had been deprogrammed using Rick’s methods. I received a warm welcome and was happy for that. I usually faced sympathetic audiences at work and didn’t know what kind of reception I would receive here. I mentioned how in April of 1993, over ninety Branch Davideans, an outbreak of the cultist and doomsday teachings of Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, died. Large speakers at the back of the crowd, gave my voice a strange echo effect. Vernon Wayne Howell, a.k.a. David Koresh, from Waco, one time wrote: ‘I have seven eyes and seven horns. My Name is the Word of God and I ride on a white horse. I am here on earth to give you the Seventh Angel’s Message. I talked about how in 1996 over thirty cultists of the Heaven’s Gate Group in Los Angeles, committed suicide to meet their believed destiny with a spacecraft and how last year 10,000 people were helped by FOCUS.

  When my short speech was done, the applause was sustained, and when I shook Janice and Adam’s hands, a translucent event occurred. In the back of the crowd, I suddenly caught sight of the weathered figure of Tim Daniels out of the corner of my eye. A shudder passed through my entire body. I was certain it was him. “Tim Daniels is here,” I whispered to Josh stepping to the side of the stage and pointing. We both rushed off the stage even as the crowd continued to applaud, Yan followed directly behind us. We ran to the back of the park only to catch sight of a bright red Jeep speeding away. When we reached my car, we found the four tires slashed.

  “Shit!” Josh said.

  I watched the Jeep disappear. I didn’t know if every person’s occupation was written on his person or not, but certainly for Tim Daniels it was the case. The man undoubtedly looked like the predator he had become, a psychotic killer and I could pick him out in a crowd. “This means he is hunting me,” I said sadly, thinking of The First Law of Life for orphans.

  Neither Josh nor Yan disputed it. The next week, I entered into an agreement with Josh to hunt him down and kill him. Both Stan and Mary disapproved of it, but Una asked them what else I could do.

  Una had told me that Gandhi had one time said that a great orator is to be feared, that he was dangerous because men killed for ideological beliefs and could be moved by an inspired speaker to murder others. She was reading, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., in tandem with the Time Warner Audio Book, A Knock at Midnight, the original recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi’s criticism hadn’t applied to Martin Luther King, Jr. He’d always been careful to promote democratic values and nonviolence, just like Gandhi himself, and John Locke. All of them were believers, but they had all preached tolerance. I wasn’t a believer nor ideological, just afraid for myself and the ones I loved.

  In March 2000, more than a thousand cultists of the Movement of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God at Entebbe, Uganda committed suicide or were murdered, most were burned to death. Joseph Kibwetere, their leader, claimed to talk personally to the Virgin Mary. I’d have never believed Jimmy Jones’ horrible record of the number of murder-suicide victims would have been topped. At Jonestown, the international media played the story for days, the story at Entebbe didn’t last one news cycle. America was sick of hearing about cults.

  I threw myself into my work again. When I was younger, I had thought that I could make Tappets one of the most thriving companies in the world. I’d now realized a much smaller goal. To be a modern industrial giant, you needed to take on a sort of credit expansion which gambled your future away. It would have destroyed the founding principle that Una, Mary, and Stan, lived by.

  By September, 2000, Mary and Stan had decided to purchase an expansive home in Jamaica and live part of the year there with Una. I was none too happy about this decision, but they didn’t ask my opinion. I think they had both come to realize that Tim Daniels was going to kill every soul close to me and that their best tactic was to get away. They must have sensed the inevitable First Law of Life for those born unlucky, especially orphans, and had conceded. I feared they were right to do so. Security at the mansion was tight. Josh practically lived there, but Mary and Stan wanted out. I’d to decide to buy it from them or sell it. More than once Mary had brought up the topic, Stan was more patient, but I just couldn’t bring myself to a decision. Isaac became my number two man as Mary, Una, and Stan slowly bowed out of Tappets, and two months later, their new mansion in Jamaica was ready. They now worked very seldom from the New Jersey offices, and though they were on call for me, I seldom needed their advice on the day to day operations, and long term planning we did in person.

  Isaac was enthusiastic about ‘continentalizing,’ as he called it, and selling off our European and Asian assets, settling out with Una, Mary and Stan, and in general, making the whole Tappets’ structure completely America, that is, in either South or North American. With the North American Free Trade Agreement in place, I saw the wisdom in this and we began to plan ahead for it, but like a lot of events in my life, it immediately took on a design and time-frame of its own. It came to fruition within months, at least on paper; it of course would need more time to get it all behind us.

  One night when Una, Mary and Stan were in town, they dropped over and made supper for me. I think they had chosen that night to muscle me on the house. It was a Thursday in November and the table was set exceptionally topnotch and the meal was one of my favorites; Una was a dynamo.

  After we sat and said grace, Mary swallowed a glass of wine in one shot and I knew I was going to have to decide on the spot. “If you don’t take it,” she said, pouring herself another glass, “I’ll sell it immediately.”

  I looked at Stan, and he shrugged. This meant he wanted nothing to do with the conversation. I could see that she was all business. Several candles shone and reflected off the silver chalice of white roses in the center of the table as we ate. Una had brought them. “Take it,” Una said teasingly.

  “You don’t have to take it, Love,” Mary said, “Good memories come with the house, but bad as well. Since Sally died, the only place that appeals to me is in Jamaica with Una. You’re the President of Tappets, I think you can live where you want. But Una wants you to keep the house. Dad doesn’t care one way or the other. I say, if you don’t buy it from us, it goes. You see there’s no compromise position for you to take.”

  “Whatever will you do?” Una asked, teasing me further.

  “Tag-teaming me,” I said, “Do you have no shame?”

  “You control a huge industrial organization,” Mary said, “yet you seem incapable of this one small decision. Stan always says that wealth is a form of slavery, and the Lord knows that I wouldn’t want you to work any harder, but we’ve been talking about this for two years. Decide. You can see I want to move on.”

  “I’ll stay here for the time being and pay the figure of two million.”

  “We all know it’s worth three or four,” Stan said.

  “Fine then,” I said, “two and a half?”

  “Done,” Mary said authoritatively and Una rose to go to the kitchen. She walked with a hard limp because of a recent fall. For a moment, I watched her as she cleared the table. “I’m glad you’re keeping it, dear,” she said as she returned. “It’s part of the family and everybody needs roots.”

  I knew it was true, but it seemed
to me, I’d ruined any chance for the Tappets to put down roots. After dinner, I arranged a limousine for the three of them to the airport, and once they were off, I climbed the stairs to what use to be Mary’s office. I caught my reflection in a full-length mirror. Compared to the youthful orphan who first came here stealing flowers, I seemed unrecognizable, once more, a complete stranger onto myself, and now with a touch of grey – life flew by! I thought I looked a little like a banker; an unfriendly loans officer. I hated the idea of my lost youth, and in truth, I fantasized about revenging myself on The Family of Truth now, but of course, what was the point? They were all gone except for Tim Daniels: Dead, imprisoned, or lost in the shuffle, a pathetic waste of life.

  I checked the mail on line from my management team and for several hours dealt with the issues that they faced, then, I poured myself a rye and mineral water. I put on Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major.

  I had been instrumental at Columbia Records for getting the vintage vinyl by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a quarter century old, to disk. This was among Stan’s favorite. I thought of calling a young Jamaican woman I’d met through Josh and Ashe, but by car it would be at least an hour and put me out of sorts for my meetings in the morning, none of which I could afford to put off. Just recently I’d envisioned relinquishing control of Tappets, provoked in part by Una, Mary, and Stan’s departure to Jamaica. Though the nineties had been rewarding for us economically, many major headaches arose currently which I simply wasn’t looking forward to handling alone. While I worked, I heard a noise downstairs and looked at my watch.

  “Josh,” I called out, thinking it might be him. No answer came and I unlocked a drawer in my desk, taking out a small Ruger 38 and dropping it into my pocket. Tim Daniels, and where he would strike next, never strayed far away from my mind. “Josh,” I called again.