"Without a doubt," I said. "Without a doubt."
With the traffic still being slowed from the fire apparatus blocking the road, I reversed course and headed back up Route 286, taking the long route back to Tyler. The two-lane road traverses through the marshlands and has a great view of Tyler Harbor and the squat and bulky concrete buildings of Falconer Station, the nuclear power plant in this part of the state that attracted thousands of protesters when it was being built three decades ago, and hasn't attracted a single one in the past couple of years as it quietly produced its power without killing or injuring anybody.
Along the way north were a number of bait-and-tackle shops, seafood places, and one store that had a number of people parading in front of it, carrying signs. I slowed some as I went by. The building was one-story, wooden, with its windows blocked out by large sheets of brown paper. The place was called ROUTE 286 VIDEO and there were four people there, three men and a woman, slowly walking in a circle. Each of them carried a handmade sign on the end of a wooden stick:
FREE US FROM THIS FILTH
NO PORN IN OUR PLAYGROUND
GOD PUNISHES PORN
SINNERS PORN OUT NOW
I kept on driving for just a few seconds more, thinking not of those signs but of a certain newspaper man a few miles away, sitting confident and smugly, knowing in his heart of hearts that he knew what was best for this area.
I muttered something and then made a U-turn and drove back to the video store. I pulled over to the side and got out and deftly walked through the protesters as I entered the store. The woman among them called out, "Don't support these sinners; please, don't support these sinners!"
Inside the store there were racks of videotapes on the walls, categorized into comedy, science fiction, adventure, horror and family. Toward the rear was a counter where an older woman sat, reading a book and smoking a cigarette. She looked up at me and I hen went back to her book. By the counter was another doorway, with a sign on the closed door: ADULTS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. I went up to the counter and said, "People out there bothering you?"
She eyed me over the pages of her book. "Are you carrying hidden camera for one of those TV blooper shows, or are you just asking stupid questions for no reason?"
Her voice had an accent, Eastern European, it sounded like. I glanced at the spine of her book. Cancer Ward, by Solzhenitsyn. "Not a bad book," I said. "I liked Full Circle better."
She had on a shapeless flowered dress and one earpiece of her eyeglasses had been repaired by a bit of tape. "I've been out of the old country for almost twenty years now, and I'm still trying to catch up on the banned books. Trying to figure out what really went on. And I don't know sometimes why I do that, you know. What difference does it make? But still... I read. I want to know. That's all."
"Not a bad reason."
She motioned with her cigarette out the door. "Those people.... they think they know it all. They think they know black and white. They see a place that is a source of all evil. They don't see a store that just serves a need. They don't see an old Russian woman trying to make some extra money. They don't see all that. They are righteous and full of conviction, and I wish I could take them to my old home, where many people filled with righteousness and conviction slaughtered millions." She shrugged. "Enough of my talk. You're here to rent videos, are you not?"
"Yes, I am," I said.
"Then get to it, please." And she went back to her book.
I looked around the small room with the standard videos, and feeling a bit unsure of myself, I opened the door marked ADULTS ONLY and walked in. If you're going to make a stand, sometimes you have to do it in the mud, I thought. I stood for a moment, surprised at what I saw, and then I closed the door behind me. Luckily I was alone, for I thought that if I were with anybody else in here I would probably ignite from embarrassment at being in public with somebody else with so many video box covers showing naked people in various activities, some of which looked as if they were still illegal in some states.
The room was easily three times as large as the one I came from, and like in the first room, the videos were placed on walls and racks in different categories. But while the categories earlier had been horror or science fiction, the groupings here were quite different: straight, gay, bi, European... I went around the room, not looking at anything in particular, but just amazed at the quantity and variations. Who were these people? How did this all get produced and duplicated and shipped? Oh, I’m no prude and I've always been aware that one of the largest industries in the country --- especially in a couple of California counties --- is the sex industry, but the sheer magnitude of what was available out there stunned me.
After a few minutes the naked bodies and forced smiles and silicon-enhanced breasts all began to blur together, and I picked five videos at random and then went back out to the counter. I felt another hot flush of embarrassment, but the old Russian woman just went through the motions, as she no doubt did dozens of times a day. Since I was a new renter, she asked for a name, address and phone number, which I provided, and then I scribbled a signature on the receipt and went out the door. Thankfully by then the videos were in black plastic cases, so I didn't have to go through the picket line openly displaying my rented wares. Even then, they booed at me as I went back to my car, put the videos down on the seat and drove away.
I shivered, from the embarrassment of having been there in the store, and the feeling that whatever I was doing made absolutely no difference at all. The twenty dollars I had spent on renting these videos wouldn't make up for whatever lost business was there, and besides, defending the First Amendment was fine in the abstract. It got a little more gray and grittier when you looked at the wares the Route 286 Video shop was peddling.
Twenty dollars. I thought back to what I had also spent on I he lunch for Paula and an earlier gas-up of my Ford, and when I got back into the center of Tyler, about fifteen minutes away from home, I turned right onto High Street and drove up into the branch of the First National Bank of Porter. I pulled up to the drive-up ATM, right behind a red Toyota. A man with a baseball cap on backward was looking at the machine for a long bit, as if the instructions had been printed in Sanskrit. Then he pulled out an envelope and began writing on something in his lap. I waited. A Chrysler minivan pulled up behind me. I was trapped. The man in front of me kept writing and scribbling. He shook his head, tore the envelope in half, and went up for another one. From behind me a horn blew, and the man in front ignored us all. He returned to his life’s work. I had thoughts of men out there in suits keeping an eye on me, weapons in hand. In this location 1 was out in the open; 1 couldn't move.
Finally, the man in front of me triumphantly made his deposit and drove out, and 1 pulled up to the machine, braking a bit too hard. 1 slid in my A TM card and punched in a withdrawal for sixty dollars, and 1 looked about the parking lot as 1 waited. The lot was empty. The machine bleeped at me and I looked over. The card was hanging out of its slot, as well as a white receipt, but there were no twenty-dollar bills. Not a single one. 1 looked at the slip, where it showed my request and below, in a fancy blue script, INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.
A tickle began at the back of my throat. Back the card went into the machine, back again went the entry of my access code and the request for sixty dollars. Sixty bucks! I knew that my checking account easily had a hundred times that amount available, and I thought that perhaps something had gone silly in the ATM's innards, but the second round was the same as the first round.
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.
Now it was my turn yet again, and another horn started blowing from the line of cars behind me. 1 pulled out and stopped in the parking lot, looking dumbly at both receipts. Then I went through my wallet, pulled out an ATM receipt from the previous week, from this very same branch. The account numbers matched. Last week my balance had been $6,032.41.
Today it was zero.
1 got out of my Ford and walked straight into the bank branch.
The b
ranch manager was a woman in her mid-thirties with short, dark hair, named Gloria Harrison. She wore a dark blue skirt and a white shirt with ruffled collar and a Victorian-style brooch at her throat. On her desk were pictures of her husband and two young sons, a stack of free calendars, and a little glass jar that offered lollipops in a variety of colors. She wore half-rim glasses and was warm and pleasant and helpful and not able to get one dime of my work back.
“I’m so sorry Mr. Cole, but I received yesterday afternoon," she said, passing over a fax that had bleeped through her machine a few minutes earlier. "It's an order from the Treasury Department. They're fairly cryptic in what they say, but it does look fairly clear. There's an audit being performed of a certain activity within the Department of Defense, and because something... untoward has been found, they've seized your accounts as a precaution. Do you receive a monthly pension from the government?"
"I do," 1 said, trying to keep my hand steady as 1 read the cool legal words on the sheet of paper.
"Were you in the service, then?"
"No," I replied automatically. "Just in the DoD, working out of the Pentagon."
Yeah, just like that, I thought. A monthly pension, to keep my mouth shut about what 1 saw happen to me and my friends in the Nevada desert, and the columnist job through Shoreline magazine basically to launder the funds. Mighty Uncle Sam had turned on this particular spigot some years ago, and now he and his minions had just shown me how easily they could turn it off.
Off. Not only off, but drained.
1 looked up at her. "My savings accounts as well?"
A slight nod in reply. "Everything in this bank. I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, but we had no choice. We had to follow the directives of the Treasury Department. We've sent you a registered letter, explaining what has happened... "
Living the way I did, my mail ended up in a post office box in Tyler, and usually a twice-a-week visit was good enough. But not today, apparently.
"What's next?" I asked.
"I imagine they will be in contact with you, Mr. Cole. But I can’t tell you when. In the meantime, 1 suggest you get a lawyer. A very good one. And prepare, well, prepare for a long haul." She lowered her voice some, as if afraid the banking gods would hear her. "When you get caught up in the gears of something as large as the Treasury Department, it can be a very long time before something is resolved. A very long time, even if eventually is resolved in your favor.”
She paused. "A very long time," she repeated.
I paid very little attention to what was on the road ahead of me as I headed east, back to Tyler Beach and my home, the day now overcast again. The little gang of D EA agents and their head, Laura Reeves, had just shown me what they were capable of. In spite of my now-serious financial condition and my anger, I was impressed. Just a couple of days. That's all it took to seize my funds and stop my monthly stipend. Fine, I thought, making a left hand turn onto Atlantic Avenue, heading up to the Lafayette House. On my property was a hidden safe, and contained therein was about fifteen thousand dollars. I also had a couple of credit cards with zero balances that allowed cash advances. If need be, I could live off those resources for a year or two, until Reeves and her friends got tired of waiting and went on to something else.
I made a right into the Lafayette House parking lot, now almost feeling a hell of a lot better than I did back at the bank branch. I had taken a hit, but it was survivable. And if Reeves wanted to play hardball, well, I could take up the challenge. I could get one of the lawyers in town that I was acquainted with to take up my case, to start raising a fuss. Publicity? Reeves had said she was doing everything to avoid publicity, and I could show her in a day or two of my own what I could do in return. Hell, I could even come clean with Paula Quinn, and that would be a story I'm sure even her new boss could be interested in.
Down I went, over the bumpy dirt path to my house, and I thought I saw something on the front door as I parked my Ford in the garage. I got out and made my way across the thin lawn. The wind had picked up some, and the booming sound of the waves was comforting as I saw my brand-new front door and three white business-sized envelopes flapping in the breeze. All three had been stapled on the door, and I reached up and tore them free.
I looked at them in the late-afternoon light, the wind still malting them move in my hands. The first envelope was from the Internal Revenue Service was a receipt for cash funds seized at my residence in the amount of $15,113.12. These funs were going to be held in escrow until the completion of an investigation into a matter involving disbursements from the Department of Defense. So much for my well-hidden safe. I closed my eyes for just a second, and then went to envelope number two. It was from the Department of the Interior. This one was a bit longer and more in-depth than the IRS note, but boiled down, the message was pretty simple. When I had come out here years ago, the title to the house and property-which had once belonged to the Department of the Interior --- had been transferred to my name. Now, the Department was politely telling me that they were taking the house back, and I had seven days to move my belongings out. Have a nice day.
I sat down on the stone steps, looking at both messages.
The wind was making me cold, quite cold, and I shook myself free and got up, let myself into my house-my house, damn it! --- and flipped on the entranceway light. Nothing happened. I flipped the switch up and down again, and then looked at envelope number three. It was from the Exonia & Tyler Electric Company. I made a mess of the envelope tearing it open. Inside, the letter said at the request of this particular home's owner --- the Boston office of the Department of Interior ---- all power had been switched off
Back into the house I went, and in a matter of minutes I had lit a couple of candles. I sat down on my couch, feeling the coolness about me. With no electricity, there was no oil furnace, and no heat. The three envelopes were in my lap. I thought back to what the bank manager had said. I had just got caught up in the gears of something large and black and nasty indeed. Reeves and her crew wanted my cooperation, and they had just demonstrated what they were going to do to ensure it. A more noble and stronger man than I would fight them, would fight them on the leaches and landing fields and cities. He would move into a tiny apartment on the beach and put his belongings in storage, and get a job as a dishwasher or something, and eat lots of rice and beans and fight, fight, fight the good fight.
I sighed, looked about my house. My one sanctuary, the one place that had really belonged to me after a lifetime of renting apartments and condos. The memories and good times and quiet peace that had been offered to me here ...
Noble. Strong. Not two adjectives that applied to me at this particular moment. I got up from the couch and picked up a candle, and guided by its flickering light, I went up to my office. I looked around my messy desk for a moment before finding the business card that had been left here, and I picked up the phone. I got the reassuring sound of the dial tone. At least she had left that, but knowing what she had just done, I'm sure that this was part of the plan.
I dialed the number on the card, and the phone was picked up on the second ring. "Four-seven-four-six," came the man's voice, merely identifying himself by the last four digits of the number I had dialed.
"Laura Reeves, please."
"May ask who's calling?" the man said.
"Lewis Cole," I said.
"Hold one."
There came the sounds of clicks and buzzes, and I stood there, the candle in one hand and the phone in the other. Blue wax began to drip down the candle and onto my fingers, but I didn't move.
The phone seemed to ring again. "Hello?" came a different male voice.
"Laura Reeves, please," I said, and wanting to move things along, I added, "This is Lewis Cole calling."
"Just a moment."
There was a cluttering sound as the phone was put down, and then it was picked up. I took a deep breath. For a moment I was going to hang up the phone, but then I pressed on.
"Hello?" "Laura?" I asked.
"Yes. Is this you, Mr. Cole?"
"It is," I said.
“What can I do for you?” she asked in an innocent-sounding voice that was quite good. She had been trained well.
""I think you know already," I said.
"Maybe I do," she said. "Go on."
I looked around my dark office. "You got me," I said. "You've won."
Chapter Six
For the next few minutes, Laura Reeves of the Drug Enforcement Agency tried to be gracious about the whole damn thing. I guess she had read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, for she certainly was being magnanimous in victory. The first thing she said right off the bat was, "No, no, we haven't won anything," her voice sounding almost shy. "This isn't about winners or losers. This is about working cooperatively together for the good of your state, and for the nation."
I guess I should have hung up the phone on that twisted statement, but I said, "You want my cooperation, you have it. But I want everything else taken care of. The Treasury Department, the Interior Department, my bank and the power company. Understood?"
"Fine," she said. "Let's get together now and talk, and when we're done, it'll all be settled."
"I'd rather have it taken care of before I troop out some-where and meet up with you."
She laughed. "It wouldn't be a long troop. We’re right across the street.”
"Excuse me?”
"The Lafayette House," she said. "We've rented some rooms. I'm in five-twelve. We'll be expecting you."
And she hung up. I stood there in my dark office, the candle flame flickering bravely, the hot wax trickling down my fingers. I blew the candle out and in the darkness made my way downstairs and outside of my home.
The Lafayette House began its life as a tavern in the early eighteen hundreds, and is named because the Marquis de Lafayette, during his famed tour of the young United States in 1824-25, had supposedly stopped there for a drink on his way to Boston. Of course, if Lafayette had stopped at every public house and tavern that claimed his presence back then, his liver would have had the consistency of leather by the time he got back to France. I huddled in my winter coat as I trudged up my dirt driveway, and then walked across Atlantic Avenue. Since then, the place has been expanded, built upon, almost completely destroyed by fire a couple of times, before it reached its level of Victorian splendor back in the late nineteenth century.
Killer Waves Page 7
