Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
Page 10
Chapter Four
The Executioner, like all normal people, hated Los Angeles. But, technically, his rental car was driving him to somewhere in Orange County, not that anyone bothered to make the distinction anymore – it was now all one big wretched Third World mega-city. Its dysfunction was, however, the main attraction for the man in charge of the debt collector network that The Executioner worked for.
While the debt collectors in The Executioner’s network were, on paper, independent contractors that got paid per successful client, the man at the top was still indispensable to them. His contacts inside the American government and various overseas police forces kept the supply of clients flowing. However, this man, known only as Marv, was wary of the protection he enjoyed from certain individuals within the government. He knew that if he lost this protection and wasn’t able to purchase a new high level friend, he may find himself in prison for 20 years.
And this was where Los Angeles came into the picture. This city was beyond the reach of American federal law enforcement, and the California state government had not been a relevant force in Los Angeles for quite some time. As for the city government, it was too busy with managing an increasingly difficult city to assist federal or state authorities. So Marv was quite happy to make his home here.
Unfortunately for the debt collectors, Marv was very old-fashioned and he liked meeting face-to-face with them. This meant they had to regularly visit Los Angeles and choke on its pollution while wading through what felt like, at times, a war zone.
The Executioner looked out the car window and wondered what would kill him first: the traffic, the extreme pollution, or a stray bullet. More likely it would be some infectious disease, as relatively few people in Los Angeles had been vaccinated for anything in a quite a few years. The combination of impoverished and uneducated Latin American migrants with no access to health care and the over-educated white pseudo-intellectual underclass who believed that vaccines were a corporate plot resulted in Los Angeles being the worst city outside of Africa for outbreaks of a variety of diseases, plagues and viruses.
But The Executioner didn’t know anything about that. He never bothered to research his trips to Los Angeles. He only made short trips from the airport to wherever Marv was living at the time, and then back to the airport for a quick escape from the city.
At Marv’s ugly and oversized house, the door was answered by yet another strange and beautiful woman of indeterminable ethnicity who spoke English haltingly. She seemed nice. Smiling, the lady of unknown origin introduced herself.
“I Marv’s girlfriend, Rebecca. Marv in office. You want beer?”
“I’ll trade you a few pronouns and an indefinite article for that beer, thanks,” joked The Executioner, taking advantage of the knowledge he had gleaned from the very helpful remedial English app ‘An Introduction to English Grammar for Learners of Bahasa Indonesian Grammar, 7th edition.’
Not getting the joke, but laughing politely at what she hoped was something light-hearted, she ran off to fetch The Executioner’s beer.
The Executioner walked into Marv’s office and greeted him warmly.
“Hey Marv.”
“Hey man, welcome back to the Land of the Free.”
On the desk was an old plaque. The Executioner read it out loud.
“Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom. 2022 MVP. Marv the Impaler.”
“Yeah, one of the guys I worked for ages ago had it made for me as a joke. It was an employee of the year sort of thing,” said Marv. “Don’t worry, I didn’t actually impale anybody. It was just a nickname. We were civilized back then…all we did was harass student loan defaulters and their families over the phone and online. But you like it? Jealous?”
“Yeah, but I want mine with an Oxford Comma.”
“Don’t start with your fancy words,” laughed Marv. “You’re from an even smaller town than me.”
“Right. I’ll stick to grunts and barks. But that plaque, it doesn’t need the date on it. That joke is old.”
“Yeah, I know. Nobody at the time thought we would actually literally kidnap and ransom people. The guy who made it was sort of, like, able to see stuff in the future that didn’t happen yet. There’s probably a big fancy word for that sort of thing. Anyways, head out onto the veranda. Everyone else is already here. Grab a beer from the fridge and join the guys outside.”
“Your girlfriend or new wife or whatever is getting one for me,” said The Executioner.
“Oh yeah, helpful isn’t she?”
“Yeah. Where’s she from?”
“She’s, uh, from Indonesia. You should surprise her and speak Indonesian with her!”
“I’m pretty sure she’s not Indonesian. Like 100%,” said the now bemused Executioner.
“Yeah, she moved there from Vietnam for some dumb reason.”
The Executioner walked into the kitchen to investigate the status of his beer and found Rebecca rifling through various drawers. On the counter were several different brands of beer lined up and unopened. Smiling widely and apologizing she said “Sorry. Maybe Marv’s friends take bottle opener.”
“That’s OK. I’ll take the Mexican bottle. It’s a twist off cap.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, again apologizing.
The Executioner opened his beer and asked “So, Rebecca, where are you from?”
“Vietnam. But I lived in Indonesia for four years. Then my husband there divorce me. I run away with my daughters. Now I married… Now I am married to Marv. But Marv does not want my children. They live in Vietnam with grandma. I send them money.”
It was the type of explanation that The Executioner had become used to while traveling through various parts of Asia: complete, blunt, honest, and often quite sad. Rebecca – certainly not her real name – was a cliché. She was too young and too pretty for the now wrinkling and increasingly haggard Marv. But it was a relationship of convenience that probably worked out well enough for everybody involved. Divorced women did not fare well in Asia.
The Executioner, taking leave of Rebecca, walked out onto the deck and saw only one familiar face – one that he didn’t particularly like. The man he recognized, known merely as Tim, was wearing a thick beard and a shaved head – as if he was coordinating his looks with his old friends who were still working as mercenaries. He was the regional coordinator for Europe and he was terrible at finding people. Tim relied heavily on corrupt police and local private investigators to do his work for him. The Executioner was far better at mixing with expat communities and slowly figuring out who the runners were.
Tim was just as ugly on the inside as on the outside. He had a reputation for being pointlessly cruel to runners. This had the result of debtors now avoiding the parts of Europe where Tim had good local investigators. The Executioner considered him unprofessional and totally lacking in creativity.
A second man whom he had never seen before was busily talking to Marv. The new guy had the look of an unsuccessful real estate agent or a successful lawyer. The Executioner avoided eye contact with him.
Marv looked up and didn’t waste any time.
“So, tell us about Burma.”
The group looked at him like it was an interrogation. The Executioner was worried that they may know about the failed side operation in the Yucatán.
“Two successful; one wasn’t,” said The Executioner. “You got the money for the first two and I’m sure you saw the video for the third.”
“I saw two videos,” said Tim, vaguely.
“OK. You saw the video where I didn’t use a bag. What’s the other video you saw?”
Tim put his phone on the table and stretched out the screen. A video started to play. A runner was kneeling on a concrete floor with a bag over his head. And then what looked like The Executioner walked on screen from the side and swung a steel bar into the runner’s head. The video ended.
“That’s not me. Why is he wearing my gear?” exclaimed The Executioner.
“Don’t worry about it. You’re like a famous luxury brand; this guy’s a knock-off product,” offered Marv. “I’m surprised this sort of thing hasn’t happened sooner. Anyways, he’s no threat to our business. And I don’t think that he’s a threat to you. But we’ll keep an eye on things, and if we get any more info, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Yeah, this guy is my first priority,” said The Executioner.
“Well, don’t worry too much about him,” said Marv.
“OK.”
It was not OK. The Executioner was deeply angry and wanted to focus all of his attention on this imitation executioner. He wanted this problem fixed now. Nothing had been going right for him lately, from the failure to get the runner in Burma to pay out, to the failed attempt to grab Mick in the Yucatán.
Marv didn’t seem too worried about The Executioner’s problems as he busily made notes in pencil on his paper notepad. Marv was big on paperwork; from operations details to contact info to future budgeting. Marv dealt with data security by never using computers for business. He had no online trails to follow. He had no computer files to steal. He had no records to download. Instead, his office had the feel of the 1950s. And his most important records sat locked in an office safe built on technology from that same era. If anybody wanted to hack Marv, it would have to be with a knife in his back.
Marv sat silently for a few seconds before declaring “So, that’s your business. Now onto business that’s relevant to everyone.”
He turned to the unnamed man who had been sitting silently and said “Rich, can you introduce yourself and repeat the basics of the deal to the guys? I understand everything now, but I don’t think I could put it in words myself.”
“Sure, no problem. My name is Rich. I have a last name just like you guys. And like you guys, my company has no name. But what we do is lobby the government in DC, inasmuch as they are still relevant. We have many clients who do work overseas, just like you. Long story short, your business thrives on runners being stripped of citizenship and on American embassies and consulates overseas denying consular services to Americans who are in the process of defaulting on their debts. However, you all have been riding in the wake of the big loan collection companies who operate domestically. It is their lobbying that stripped debtors of citizenship and legal protections. However, the overseas market has not been a focus of these companies for a while. So my job is to keep on top of the members of the Foreign Affairs Committees in the House and in the Senate. There is talk of restoring citizenship and consular services to debtors as a way to get them back home where the big debt collection companies have a much better chance to get them to start paying. It would be an amnesty. Good tactic for the big guys, but bad for you.”
“I imagine the big players’ pull with the politicians is a hundred times stronger than anything we could do. How the hell are we – or Marv rather – supposed to compete with these companies?” inquired The Executioner.
“Well, getting runners to return to the US is a tiny part of their prospective business, but a huge part of yours. It’s like a fox and rabbit thing. They are running for their dinner, you are running for your life. Or rather, let’s just say they probably won’t put much effort into this thing, and they won’t lean too hard on the committee members. So we merely have to take care of these rats in Congress. They will gladly feast at our table right after feeding from the big boys. But what our strongpoint is – my company’s strongpoint, not yours – is public relations and media manipulation.”
The Executioner laughed, noting the obvious, “Our reputation can’t get any lower. You are not seriously suggesting trying to sell our image to the public are you?”
“Yeah, he’s not talking about debt collection anymore,” said Marv, cutting in to the conversation. “You missed the last meeting. We are doing some expansion into new growth areas. That’s why Rich is here.”
The Executioner then realized what he had briefly forgotten: that he was still only a very successful debt collector, not a regional manager. He opened another beer, asking “So, what’s this new growth area?”
Everyone looked to Marv. He looked directly at The Executioner and said “We sort of already discussed this last year. It’s about moving the female runners to Dubai and the other Gulf Arab cities.”
“Oh, the white slavery thing? I’m not too keen on that,” said The Executioner.
“Listen, you were invited to the last meeting,” said Marv. “We said it was important. But it wasn’t to consult you on what sort of new business opportunities we can find. It was to offer you a chance to keep your head above water. The truth is…the debt collection business is in decline. You know this. But we can pick up work by moving girls to the Gulf Arab countries. You would be the best person to handle exports from Southeast Asia. And as a regional manager, not just as a debt collector.”
Marv was right. The debt collection business was in decline. The main problem was not a shortage of debtors. The problem was that the overseas debt collectors had become too effective in catching runners. And The Executioner’s video uploads had had a very strong deterrent effect. Many debtors were now resigned to staying in America and giving up on the option of living overseas, especially as that meant living with the constant fear of being caught or executed. As for those who continued to flee, they were generally more savvy than the earlier generations of runners. Blue Team was giving them good advice and helpful tools. Another American small-to-medium-sized business was being destroyed, as far as Marv was concerned.
“Right, OK,” said The Executioner. “But Marv, here’s my concern: you want to get into the business of selling white American girls on the slave market to Arabs? I know that some of the other debt collectors are already doing this occasionally. And I know what the other debt collectors are doing to the women when they catch them. Everybody knows this. There are videos being sold online. We can call it lies and slander, but nobody buys that. This will bring some seriously ugly attention that will raise our target profile.”
“Sure. That’s fair,” interjected Rich. “Nobody buys that. But do they care? I don’t think they do. It doesn’t affect their job security. It doesn’t affect their family. Whatever level of concern they are showing right now can be washed away with the right sort of messaging, to make sure it doesn’t gain any traction.”
“Messaging? What’s the English translation for that buzz word?” asked The Executioner.
“OK. Let’s first deconstruct this white slavery hysteria,” said Rich. “First of all, the buyers are from many different races and religions. These people who are complaining, these internet and news commentators, they are motivated by Islamophobia. Why focus so much of their so-called anti-slavery campaign on Muslims? Their complaints are thinly disguised hate speech. Furthermore, nobody complains about all the Latina, black and Asian girls being sold. But when a single white girl decides on her own to go work as a prostitute in Arabia, everybody is all up in arms. This is simple racism.”
“What?”
“Ridiculous, of course,” said Rich. “But I can swing the FCC to sanction any of the smaller players who attack the trade in girls to the Middle East. Their criticism is Islamophobic racism and slander against American allies, etcetera, etcetera. It will never get on TV. If it’s on the American internet it gets fined and exiled. If it’s coming from the foreign internet it gets blocked. Simple. And we’ve already had some great articles published on countering the white slavery myth. Journalists are easy.”
“Wait, you’re threating the journalists or paying them?” asked The Executioner.
“Both,” replied Rich. “The deal is…”
“Sorry,” cut in Tim, “what is the F
CC?”
“It’s the Federal Communications Commission,” replied Rich. “They are God’s representative on TV, the internet and in virtual reality, as far as viewers and producers of content should be concerned. They can shut you down for slander or racism or expressing views that harm the American economy. So, uh… where was I?”
“The journalists.”
“Yeah, the journalists. We can threaten them with our friends in the FCC. But that’s the stick. The carrot is that we commission articles by journalists. They are cheap. Really cheap. And desperate. We pay them for two weeks work what you would get in one day. We already bought our first cycle of articles and social media attention. I sent the campaign to Marv. Lots of stories, commentary and secondary mentions on social media. It’s moving well enough. Basically, to sum it up for you, we bought a bullshit story that says we have worse slavery here at home, everybody knows it, the American girls are willingly working overseas, etcetera.”
Tim cut in, asking “What about that documentary from that European filmmaker? That was brutal. I watched it last night while doing research. The testimony from the American girls who had been rescued by that humanitarian organization was pretty convincing. Shit, I wanted to bomb the entire Persian Gulf after watching that. That was slick. Good production value. But, well…I already wanted to bomb the Persian Gulf for no reason anyway, so I’m not sure how effective it was.”
“Sure, sure,” conceded Rich. “We’re working on our next cycle of the media campaign. The story is pretty much ready. We are saying that those girls in the documentary went willingly and independently to pay off debts. We are gathering testimonies of their promiscuity and prostitution. We have combed their old social media for images of them in skimpy clothes, drinking, putting their hands all over random guys. One of them even had some nude photos – that’s perfect. One was sued in college for making a rape allegation. They’ve got baggage. Consider their reputations trashed.”
“Why so much focus on trashing these women?” asked The Executioner. “Anyways, besides that, we target runners. These women probably weren’t even running from debt. I saw that documentary. Only one of those girls was in debt, and she still had a couple of years before we, or others, could legally target her for full collection. She was in the earliest stages of default.”
Tim laughed out loud, asking “Are you serious? Dude, you smash in people’s skulls. You are brutal. You spill their brains out onto the concrete floor of random abandoned industrial facilities in whatever third world country. And now you are some humanitarian, all worried about women’s rights? We all know that you avoid targeting female runners for collection. As if they are allowed to get away with destroying the American economy just because they are weak and vulnerable girls?”
“He’s right,” added Marv. “You are so brutal to the extreme with the guys, and then you let women off the hook. You kept turning down female clients until I quit sending them your way. And you don’t seem to look for any on your own. You could have doubled your take if you would work with women like everybody else does. Why do you think that you are still not a regional manager even though there is an open slot in Southeast Asia?”
“Fine, say what you want,” said The Executioner, with minimal effort. “I think that women should be treated differently.”
“You’re a dinosaur. Women’s equality means that women get treated the same as men,” laughed Tim.
“Someone should sell you into sexual slavery, Tim. You would probably enjoy it.”
Marv decided it was time to stop a fight from starting.
“Long story short is that there are not enough debtors to go around,” he said. “And there are not enough female debt defaulters on the run to support a business that focuses on moving girls to Dubai. In particular, not enough young and pretty ones. Young, white and pretty ones. The guys in the Persian Gulf are just such racists. So…listen, any girls working overseas are fair game. They left America, they left their rights behind. They abandoned this country. In my view they abandoned their citizenship. Simple.”
Marv again looked directly at The Executioner and asked “You in?”
“Did you just say that we will be targeting girls who are in the early stages of default? And not only the ones that are in full default?”
“Yes.”
“I need to speak to my lawyer, the Indonesian one. I’ll see the legal ramnifications or ramifications…or whatever. If I’m going to be traveling all over Southeast and East Asia I need to know what the legal liabilities are for me.”
“Fine,” said Marv. “Let us know by the end of the month. Otherwise, you can continue with the debt collection for as long as you can squeeze some money out of that. But we’ll have to find a regional manager, so this job offer has a time limit.”
Tim, still looking to provoke The Executioner for his own amusement, mockingly asked “Hey Marv, can we rewind the conversation a bit? We need to focus on getting our friend to acknowledge his deep-seated racism against Muslim customers who just want to buy American.”
“Tim, how many Muslims did you ‘evacuate’ from France?” asked The Executioner, using his fingers to indicate scare quotes on the ‘evacuate’ euphemism.
“Not enough. Not enough, man. But seriously, I have no problem with Muslims living in Muslim countries. But they were asked nicely to leave France and they reacted violently. And now I have a French passport and twelve apartments in Marseilles,” said the smiling Tim. “If they had left when they were asked to, they could have sold those apartments, not left them empty and free for me.”
“You were a volunteer?” asked Rich.
“No. Mercenary. I got paid in Euros, French citizenship and spoils of war,” stated Tim matter-of-factly. “I’m not like the new class of war tourists. God, I hate volunteers. It used to be that you had to fight in your own country’s wars first and get some experience. But now you can fight in whatever war you want. Any idiot can. And I don’t mean like private security and whatever, because those guys can shoot straight. I mean whatever dodgy random dude who read some stuff on the internet and wants a cause to join.”
“What do you mean, exactly,” asked Rich.
“Like, for example, I know a guy who fought in some place in Africa,” said Tim. “I can’t remember the name – it’s all Kalashnikovs and bananas to me. He went there because he believed the diamond mining industry and some government death squads were killing villagers. So he goes and joins the resistance. He had never even served before. Not even like the National Guard or law enforcement or anything. So he was online all the time at first, posting pics of himself with all these black militias dudes like some big celebrity: the crazy white guy who wants to fight in Africa for no pay.”
“Sure,” said The Executioner, “just like the guys who went to fight in the Balkans as volunteers. And not like the war criminals who got paid by the French government to toss little Muslim kids into the Mediterranean.”
The Executioner actually couldn’t have cared less about Europe’s ethnic cleansing of Muslims. He was only trying to bait Tim in to getting angry.
“Exactly. You’ll really like the ending now...” said Tim. “So, the photos...the online war-selfie fest slowed down. Then nothing. He wasn’t a really close friend so I figured, whatever, I guess he’s dead. But he wasn’t. He turns up back in Europe looking for work. So I meet up with him, not that I’ve got work for a guy as unstable as that. And you know what he told me? He tells me that this village liberation organization militia he joined turned out to be ten times as bad as the government. Basically, it was a mix of crystal meth and cannibalism. It was the most insane horror story I’ve ever heard. Refugees wanted to flee towards government-controlled areas ASAP. The diamond mine death squad stories were total BS. It was actually some weird tribal, anti-government criminal drug war thing where the rebels had forgot what the conflict was actually about in the first place. So I figure that he’s learned his lesson. But no he hasn’t.”
“Did he go back to Africa?” asked Rich.
“No. He flew to Bulgaria or Romania or somewhere to whatever country is unfortunate enough to share a border with Greece. Then he slipped across the border to some really lame overweight version of Sparta to join an insane Christian crusader militia - one of those outfits that go into combat carrying those ridiculously heavy Highlander swords that they only ever use to execute prisoners. So he’s now posting pics from…I don’t know where – Bosnia or the Former Macedonian Republic of Greece or wherever. Total idiot. He’s got some medieval monk haircut and he paints a cross on his forehead. He spends his holidays decapitating Albanian villagers or Turkish soldiers or Arab refugees or something, I don’t know. Completely hilarious.”
The Executioner had quit listening part way through Tim’s story. He excused himself and went to the kitchen for another beer. He then decided that he would rather drink by himself in the kitchen. There he could just barely hear the conversation continuing on the deck. But it was quiet enough.
Rebecca entered the kitchen. Smiling, as always, she asked “How long you will be in Los Angeles for?”
“I leave tomorrow morning. To Vietnam, actually. I have some business there.”
Rebecca’s broad smile widened even more.
“Where in Vietnam? What city?”
“I’ll be in Ho Chi Minh City for about ten days. I have to train some of Marv’s new local contractors.”
Rebecca’s smile had now reached its maximum.
“That’s my home! Please, you can visit my mother? Can you bring her my gift? And gifts for my daughters?”
Courier services would be far quicker and way more accurate, and not at all expensive. But The Executioner didn’t bring up that fact. He couldn’t say no to Rebecca’s smile, which now suddenly seemed far more genuine. He agreed.
Rebecca returned from her room with a small wooden box in her hands.
“I will get your number from Marv,” said Rebecca. “I will send you my mother’s address and my mother’s messenger ID. Use translator app on your phone. She doesn’t speak English. My daughters, they are learning in school. They can maybe speak a little bit. My mother has lot of energy. She will take you to the good places. Not to the bad tourist places.”
The Executioner smiled and took the box from Rebecca. It was the first time he had smiled in a while. Walking back out onto the veranda, his smile disappeared.