The Chardon Chronicles: Season Two --- The Winter

by Kevin Kimmich

  Chapter Five

  Keith found a note on the counter from Chloe, “Going to D’s Farm, back mañana. Using ‘other’ phones! -C&T XOXOX”

  He held the note in his hand and grabbed a beer from the fridge. He was about to turn on the TV for some background noise, but before he clicked the power button on the remote, the mindless ritual of it really stung him. Soon he’d be an empty nester, and this oppressively quiet condo would be his experience every evening. For years, Chloe had been at the center of his life, and he hadn’t really thought about what he’d do next. “Shit…” He muttered to the empty room as the weight of it started to set in. He shook his head to clear the thought, then sorted through the mail, and glanced at the front page of The Maple Leaf.

  There was a photo of Rich Simons being sworn in, replacing Judge Ralph. Keith laughed ruefully. He took a six pack out of the fridge and drove toward the Wells Farm to see if anyone was around. There was nobody else he could commiserate with.

  The scream of a table saw cutting wood was coming from the shop. Keith waited for a pause in the noise to go through the door.

  Robbie was wearing a dust mask and carrying a newly ripped board to a work bench. He nodded at Keith and set the board down, then tossed the mask on the bench top. He said, “Hey Keith! Come on in.”

  Robbie’s shop was stocked with vintage reconditioned power tools and a wall of hand tools, shiny wrenches, antique hand planes, chisels and hammers all mounted on plywood. Projects in various states of completion sat around the shop on benches. The floor of the shop was concrete that had been polished to a glossy finish in spots from years of shoe treads. One corner of the shop was an office/man cave with a leather arm chair and an office chair. Robbie plopped down in the office chair and took a beer from the six pack and popped it open on the desk corner.

  Keith said, “I apologize if I’m interrupting anything. I really came over here because the girls left me high and dry for the evening, oh and this story! I couldn’t just sit around in the house and rant at the walls.” He handed Robbie the paper.

  Robbie chuckled. “Oh shit! That’s how it works. You play ball, you get ‘ahead’ in life. It’s pretty rare to have the complete behind the scenes view of the whole charade! Uniquely galling!”

  Keith sighed, “Yeah, I can’t really blame Rich, though. He actually tried really hard to do the right thing, but it was like swimming upstream.” Keith took a sip of beer and rubbed his chin, then said, “Which leads me to another point, how can I help out more in your family’s enterprise?”

  Robbie raised his eyebrows and nodded. “I’m really glad you asked! Johnny, Dana, David Mathis and I do a lot of work to coordinate our, for lack of a better word, intelligence operations. From my perspective you’d really be able to help out with that and drive it.”

  Keith considered for a few seconds and said, “I’m starting to understand a little bit of how you operate, but I need to ask some really basic questions before I’d jump in with both feet.”

  Robbie kicked back and said, “Fire away!”

  “What do you do for money? I mean, I have bills.”

  Robbie nodded, “Yeah. I totally understand, I think that’s the hardest thing to convey to people who weren’t brought up in this. I think it requires a pretty long winded explanation.” He took a drink.

  “Sure, go ahead and explain, I’m all ears.”

  Robbie collected his thoughts for a while to figure out where to start. He finally said, “You’re a small business owner. The entity you own is registered with the state. You do some type of bookkeeping so you can represent your earnings to the state so it can collect taxes and fees. You have a mortgage, which means you sold your future earnings to a bank to produce the digits required to buy your condo. You’re really plugged into a system of debt and accounting, aka finance.”

  Keith considered the statement and couldn’t find any fault, so he nodded. “That’s about right. So is everyone else!”

  Robbie continued, “Almost everyone else. There’s a whole separate economy. As far as I can tell, it’s been around forever, but over the past hundred years more or less, it’s gone incognito because finance has really invaded almost every aspect of people’s lives. Within our network, the things that replace the bankers are communication and cooperation.”

  Keith was skeptical. He couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. He said, “But you own this house, right? Isn’t that what makes this possible for you.”

  Robbie nodded and he pointed at Keith, “I think I need to give you a really concrete example so you can see how this works. There’s an old couple, friends of my family. They’re in Parkman, the house is starting to get a little run down and they can’t take care of the property. Do you want it?”

  “Wow!” Keith slapped his knee. “Man. That’s wild, really? I could have their house. No mortgage? How many times does something like that come up?”

  “Yeah. We do this type of thing every day, maybe not a house everyday, but there’s always something going on.” Robbie shrugged. “Think about this, for over a hundred years people in my family’s circle, literally thousands of people, haven’t paid a nickel of interest to a bank. All that wealth has continued to accumulate.”

  Keith whistled in appreciation as it started to dawn on him. “Holy shit! Yeah, I often think about all the money I’ve thrown away on interest: student loans, car loans, home loans. If I had all that back, I’d be a rich man!” He was still skeptical though. He held up a finger and said, “Alright, but let me play devil’s advocate here. Who puts you in charge of that information, or of handing the house to me?”

  “It doesn’t really work like that. I’m not in charge of anything, it’s extremely informal, if you get more involved you’ll get the picture quickly. Let me show you the email that let me know about the house.” He turned around and opened up a mail message and let Keith read it.

  Keith muttered, “Know anyone who could take care of the farm? Getting too old, want to move to Florida. Marvin.”

  Robbie said, “I hear about this, pass the information along through our network. Eventually someone likes the situation, and Marvin and Ethel like them, and they make a deal. It’s really that simple.”

  “A deal? Would they want money?” Keith asked.

  Robbie shrugged. “I’m not sure what they want exactly, if you wanted the house, you’d work it out with them. David Mathis takes this to the extreme. As far as I know he has no bank account, and he’s lived entirely in this network since he was 17! He’s the freest man I’ve ever met.”

  Keith shook his finger, “Okay, well, what about this, what if people in this network cheat. Like what if I took their house, but reneged on the deal.”

  Robbie shrugged, “It happens. It’s not utopia. Trust, relationships, common goals are really important, and usually people cooperate and work together, because, well, why not? But when it comes to disputes, there’s no courts, lawyers, law involved. Well, we are the law. It’s a group of really independent, smart people. They don’t put up with shit.”

  Keith chewed on the ideas for a while. “I find it totally intriguing, but I’m an old dog, so I’m slow to learn the new tricks! I’ll keep thinking about it though.”

  “Do you mind if we talk shop?” Robbie asked.

  “No problem, what’s going on?”

  Robbie scratched his beard, “Well, a few years ago, after Matt and Telia disappeared, a woman, actually a fairly famous actress Heather Madher, was really interested, actually aggressively interested, in continuing Matt’s work.”

  Keith’s face lit up, “I loved that show… What was it? Dark Alliance… How interesting. Do you think she was somehow connected to the Sheriff and the Judge or that cult in Hudson?”

  Robbie furrowed his brow and said, “Even if she weren’t directly involved, she’s probably the source of the information, so somehow she’s probably connected to the Brotherhood. Her daughter was Tracy’s roomie in boarding school. It just seems so hard to b
elieve Heather would endanger us.”

  Keith laughed. “Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, the explanation which makes logical sense, but we refuse to believe because it makes no sense from a sane, decent point of view, is actually what happens. Do you want to hear how I got shot? It’s a similar situation. I actually bled because of my naivete.”

  Robbie nodded, “Yeah, I’ve wondered about that.”

  “I was working on an embezzlement case for an evangelical church in Brentwood. That’s a ritzy neighborhood just outside of Nashville. I guess it’s like a nouveau riche version Gates Mills or Waite Hill. Ostensibly, I’m tracking this woman down to recover funds and to prosecute her. I mean, it’s a church, these assholes are talking about Justice, Jesus, the ten commandments and holy, holy, holy stuff every day. Turns out they wanted me to track her down because everyone was embezzling from the church and she had the records and was blackmailing the Reverend. So he and his wife found a hit man, some asshole they hired off the Internet, to kill her. I got caught in the crossfire, we had a shoot out. The hitman died, all those church assholes went to jail.”

  Robbie guffawed. “That’s an amazing story, and point taken. So let’s assume the worst about Heather.”

  Keith said, “Exactly. In retrospect, I knew something was fishy right at the beginning, but I kept thinking, nah, these are church folk, how bad could it be? Chloe and I got into deep shit at that cult freak show in Hudson for the same reason. Assume the worst, then be pleasantly surprised, that’s how I try to play it, now.”

  Robbie drained the last of the bottle and opened another, then said, “I keep wondering why would they need the notes and plans? Matt and Telia showed the reflector to her, they were thinking about mass producing them, so they wanted the Madhers to be investors. Heather’s a smart woman. Let’s assume they started building a reflector based on what she remembered. ”

  Keith was puzzled, “What about the network? Why didn’t Matt and Telia use that? Why’d they get her involved in the first place?”

  Robbie shrugged and said, “Yeah, I don’t really know. I never asked about that… Maybe they thought it would be quicker to tap into a big pile of money like the Madhers instead of doing all the leg work and convincing it would take to get the network to do it. Plus Heather’s influential with a mass of people, she’s like PBR while we’re more like artisanal beer!” He held up the bottle.

  Keith considered a moment, trying to figure out a likely scenario. “So maybe the Madhers built a reflector, but it doesn’t work, and they don’t know the secret sauce.”

  “That’s my thought too.” Robbie said. “Now Tracy, Chloe, Johnny and Dana are thinking we should just publish the plans online.”

  Keith raised his eyebrows. “Chloe?”

  Robbie said, “Yeah, she and Tracy were kicking the idea around. I’m starting to get Tracy a little more involved in the thinking and planning and she asked Chloe.”

  Keith nodded thoughtfully. “Well, let’s say the Madhers built this gizmo and want to use it for nefarious purposes. Helping them out by publishing the plans might not be a good idea.”

  Robbie sighed. “Yeah, I worry about that, also. Tracy and Chloe made the point that like a gun or a nuclear bomb, if one person can build it, another can eventually, so why not take the ‘arm everyone’ route and publish them?”

  Keith smiled, “Those are smart girls! I find it hard to argue with that, but man, it would be nice to know if the Madhers built one of these things, right?”

  “It sure would!”

  Keith said, “I will look into it.”