Cafe Underground Presents
COMING UP ROSES
Book 2 -- Chapters 7
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL
MENU
....back to WRITING
....author RL Bell
Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES
Chapter 7
Back in their office the next morning, Lena set up coffee while Andi punched in a call to Ramirez. Not surprising--she got his voice mail and contented herself with leaving a message. She called Francois next, got his electronic voice and left another message as the heady aroma of french roast wafted over to catch her attention. Morning was no time to be in a hurry--she could wait.
Lena efficiently processed a stack of monthly invoices, updating payments and sending out late notices. Try as they did to get up-front retainers and keep that pot of money solvent, jobs had a natural tendency akin to gravity or losing sox in the laundry, to expanded beyond client payments.
In the back of her head, Andi worried over how Lena reacted to the idea of being an auntie. This morning, they avoided any subject vaguely related. Andi's morning shower was melancholic. Despite Lena's concession, the spat stole pleasure.
They barely exchanged two dozen words all morning, quietly aware of the argument laying behind them. Andi rubbed her temples with both hands. With Lena hurt, how could she even broach the subject again?
Her own motivation seemed glaringly clear, it had been since learning of her mom's cancer that she started noticing babies. Now they were everywhere; supermarket and cars, running down sidewalks, carried sleeping. End of life--beginning, there was a symmetry--even if it was simplistic pop-psychology. Why shouldn't she be Simone's auntie?
In high-school, realizing her attraction to girls, she'd given-up motherhood fantasies. Pastel wall paper in sunlit baby's-rooms hung with mobiles and the fresh smell of powder were dreams reserved for breeders. Giving it up seemed part of accepting herself and she'd turned away with resolve.
Andi snuck another glance; Lena worked silently, bobbing her head to an inner syncopation, pausing to look from her monitor to the ceiling as if choosing a perfect word, reaching for a file with her right hand as her left rose to snap downward at the wrist--held shoulder-high as if popping a crash-cymbal in a big band. Lena worked at her keyboard as if it was a loom or some machine she ran with both hands and feet to a driving, two-fisted beat.
Andi smiled tolerantly, it was that kookiness that make her appealing. She could do without being an auntie if Lena really cared. Lena's office-dance was charming.
Andi suddenly caught herself up short, shook her head and blinked two or three times. Damn...what was that anyway? She rubbed her forehead, chewed absentmindedly at her lower lip and spun her chair around so she could gaze out the window.
Three long breaths later, focus began to return--the beat of life stretched before her like railroad-ties or power poles when the speedometer touched 70. Everything fell into place again. She counted breaths--two to the measure with quarter-note triplets--six/eight-swing--her usual meter. She felt the beat without moving a finger, reassured that the world ran on.
She swung her chair back around to her desk. OK--what had she been doing? Working; Feight's roses and murder, considering suspects.
She tapped her finger on the desk top and considered the research she'd given Francois. Surely Tyson was fair game--the dead have few rights. The others were suspects in a murder case she'd been hired to inquire into--it might be tacky to investigate one's own clients, but she could live with it. She'd do what they paid her to do--even suspecting them of murder. It was a funny business.
The phone rang, Lena answered and glanced over, then lowered her receiver and mouthed "Ramirez."
Andi nodded as she reached to pick up the phone.
"Ramirez here, Wicksham...returning your call..." he boomed the greeting.
"...amigo," Andi rejoined, "...I was wondering if our common project's made progress." Andi leaned back in her chair and propped her feet on an open drawer.
"Our common project being Tyson's locked-room or the funny-money?" he asked dryly. "I read new faxes three times a week..."
"Aren't the cases the same? And is that all the time you put in?" Andi asked with a cautious chuckle.
"I also get to attend three boring meeting and field a dozen meaningless phone calls...a waste of time..." Ramirez griped good naturedly.
"Serves you right for snatching my twenties." Andi observed unsympathetically. "I was hoping you could give me background on Tyson and his boy Rex..."
"Tyson was a rich, political nut-case...Rex seems to have been a boot-camp Ken doll."
"You're saying they were gay?" asked Andi incredulously.
"What am I, a mind reader? No...I'm just labeling Nimitz as a starched-shirt military type. His room had piles of militia periodicals...he wasn't a heavy reader. Christian-right brown shirt stuff...flag waving...fetus worship...grieving because his generation hasn't had a real war to fight."
"Counterfeit bills?"
"Not a one...maybe he just split when he saw there wasn't going to be a pay-check." Ramirez continued, "There's nothing we got that can keep him from walking...he's not a suspect yet."
"How about accessory to counterfeiting?" Andi offered.
"That's officially still under wraps."
Andi doodled at the margin in her notebook. "No leads on Tyson's green BMW?"
Ramirez chuckled. "You mean that 850 you mentioned..."
"Yeah...?" responded Andi warily.
"It's Nimitz's. The boy's rich...lot's of money by the sound of it...in a trust fund." Ramirez sounded disgusted.
"So why play house-boy/butler to Tyson?" demanded Andi.
"Exactly..." confirmed Ramirez. "Our psychologist's profile has him doing it because of an `authoritarian orientation and a military fixation reinforced by a rigid, yet vulnerable belief system'..."
"You got somebody doing psychological profiles? Wow..." Andi humored, "...and using big words too...that's nifty..."
"It's called having a budget, Wicksham...I could get used to it. Rex's tabloid headline would be `Could have been a playboy, but militia-terrorism appealed,'" Ramirez quipped expansively.
"Wow..." Andi repeated, underwhelmed at Ramirez's rambling.
"Is there anything else you wanted?" Ramirez was in an all around good mood.
Andi looked down her notes. "How about Tyson?"
"The psychologist doesn't like the supernatural angle...the idea of Feight's evil spirit wisping through keyholes freaks him out."
Andi gave an appreciative snort, "And that angle seemed to hold so much promise..."
"Yeah...c'est la mort." Ramirez obviously didn't care. "Tyson's string of convenience stores have been laundering money three years. Allen's got the banks cooperating on condition that the bogus green they collect gets redeemed."
"You mean their loss is covered but mine isn't?" railed Andi in mock-outrage.
"Probably something to do with volume and that they don't mouth-off..." offered Ramirez idly. "Too bad Tyson died, he diddled both receipts and purchase records--we could string him up on fraud and tax-evasion..."
"Damned inconsiderate of him." consoled Andi.
"It's hard to get good criminals..." Ramirez observed in standard police-issue monotone.
"Lieutenant Allen still gung-ho?"
"...shoveling resources by the metric-ton, but all I get is excruciatingly-long faxes--thank God nobody asks me to do anything."
"Small favors...'eh?" consoled Andi.
Ramirez cleared his throat and changed focus. "Talbert and the boys reviewed the security system tapes for the day Tyson croaked. Nice system...two cameras, one pointing down the hill covering the approach to the house, the other watching the parking area and front door. No one could drive up without being recorded."
"And..." Andi prodded. "You said before the showed nothing."
"Yeah...they showed Rex taking off, then Tyson walking around; out to a garage and to look at his roses...later they show Rex returning and the emergency response of police, fire department and paramedics...the time imprint on the tapes are close to the police radio-logs, so they're assumed to be the real thing."
"So Rex is off the hook?"
"The time between him coming back and his 911 call was damn short...six and a half minutes...almost as if he came looking for a corpse. Not much time to look around, see Tyson through the window from a flower bed, try to rouse him, attempt breaking in, then finally calling...but that doesn't bother Talbert and Allen and they don't ask my opinion..." Ramirez seemed unconcerned.
"So is Rex off the hook?" Andi repeated through gritted teeth.
Ramirez seemed ready to answer. "Never seriously considered...time of death was set at about two hours before they got through the window bars and that took forty minutes from the initial call. Unless Rex parked off camera and hoofed in to plug him...then trekked back to make his automotive appearance. It's unlikely anyway...by the psychologist's profile...and he has alibis covering his whole time out."
"He'd know how to avoid the surveillance cameras..." Andi pointed out.
"Yeah, he would..." conceded Ramirez
"Any mud on his shoes when the uniforms arrived?" Andi asked hopefully.
"...there was, but remember he'd stood in the flower-bed trying to rouse Tyson. It was noted, but seemed appropriate." Ramirez seemed eager to move on. "Is there anything else you wanted?"
"I guess not...adieu, mon ami." Andi concluded lightly.
"Happy trails..." he hung up.
She could simply confront Gould with a question about Rex--ask why he didn't come inside. The concept was plausible--Gould could have kept the others occupied while he snatched the bushes. He'd then wait out of sight until she came by, toss his bags of roses in her trunk and be gone.
Andi looked in her notebook for the times Gould's Mustang passed the convenience store in and out--thirty-two minutes--poor Rex, it would have been a long time out in that downpour.
Andi spun the scenario another few notches. Would he have brought a shovel or risked taking and returning one of Feight's? Simpson claimed she was watching out the window much of that afternoon yet denied seeing him. But Gould knew Simpson would answer the door--that would take her from the kitchen window at least a minute, she could strike up a conversation to delay her another few minutes...it might be enough if Rex was ready with a shovel as she climbed the front porch stairs.
Andi made a note in her book and stared off into space. Simpson was a interesting twist to the problem--since she drove off the property twice that day she couldn't be discounted. And whether or not she disliked roses she might have resented the others getting them. As far as her uncle's death--it couldn't be overlooked that she gained the most. But that would leave Tyson's death unrelated.
Andi tussled silently with the idea of confronting Gould, but abandoned it for the moment. Gould would stone-wall and Andi would lose the faint advantage of holding a possibly overlooked pieces of puzzle. That Gould and Rex were together meant nothing to the case other than his possible complicity in the rose's disappearance--no more evidence than for suspecting Gould alone.
Andi felt an urge to drive to Tyson's again. His locked study was like an itch she couldn't scratch. There was still the nagging feeling that something was being overlooked. Even Ramirez conceded that there must be something about the setting that facilitated the murder, something allowed the killer to escape unnoticed.
"I'm driving to Tyson's..." she told Lena vaguely.
"Don't forget your meeting with Mrs. Knowles to show off our new snooper dish...two o'clock..." Lena reminded her brightly, her computer clicked and beeped as if putting in its own two cents.
Andi growled under her breath. "Why would anybody want to listen in..." she grumbled rhetorically.
"Safer sex..." Lena murmured without turning around, her fingers steadily tapping her keyboard.
"What? Safer sex?" Startled, Andi stopped short, her hand on the doorknob.
"Safest sex there is, my dear...somebody else's..." Lena lifted a hand over her head and wiggled her fingers while still working away. "Que' va..." .
"Right..." Andi muttered sullenly as she closed the door behind her.
A steel-pipe gate had been swung across Tyson's private drive, but its padlock wasn't hooked or locked. Andi swung the yellow barrier, drove through, and remembering Gould's comment on gate etiquette, paused to swing it closed before driving up to the house.
She turned off her engine and waited in her car a moment. The grounds appeared deserted, no cars waited on the paved expanse before the garages, there were no sounds of music or radios coming from inside. Bird songs and the scratching and clicking of insects seemed inordinately loud, implying an absence of human activity. Echoing from across the hills came a slow-paced, hollow thwack of axe against wood.
Andi opened her car door and got out. The sun broiled as warm as summer and only the barest breath of breeze stirred the air. She nonchalantly strolled around the garages and peeked into their curtain-less windows. The farm equipment waited as it had been the day Rex showed her around. The second garage held the jeep, the yellow convertible, the pickup and Mercedes; they might have been moved since she'd seen them last--if it turned out as important she might figure it out from the photos. The third garage housed the station-wagon and, surprisingly enough, Rex's dark green 850 BMW.
A tingle of apprehension caused Andi to shiver slightly, she could feel a cold sheen of sweat on her arms and back. She peered back in the garage for another look then snuck a fearful glance over her shoulder.
"Can I help you..." demanded Rex Nimitz from the corner of the garage. He stood in a defensive pose, three-quarter's toward her, both hands on a large-bored automatic pointed at her chest.
"I came up to see Mr. Tyson's roses..."
He blinked, but didn't respond.
"I'm still hired to investigate Mr. Feight's roses..." she ad-libbed. She lifted her arms slightly away from her body, palms forward so that he could see she wasn't armed.
Rex paused, as if considering his options. "This is private property..." he stated flatly.
"...I had permission from Mr. Tyson to come look around...his authorization should still be valid." It was tenuous legal ground, but Rex probably didn't have authorization to be there himself--odds were good he wasn't legal heir.
"What are you really doing here?" Rex asked levelly, the gun didn't waver, but it dropped a notch to point at her abdomen.
Andi pondered Rex's mental state and considered possible answers. Running wasn't an option. The most obvious half-truth she had he hadn't bought--she debated whether repeating or changing the story would be the safer course--she opted for the latter. "I wanted to see where Mr. Tyson died...his friends asked me to look into his death..." Andi held her breath hoping Rex wouldn't be threatened by that mention of the murder.
"...anything else?" Rex asked nervously--the gun remained solidly on target.
"Well...the gun makes me uncomfortable..." Andi admitted.
The gun swung down and away. "OK...you want to see the Colonel's study?" He stepped toward her and gestured that she should walk ahead.
Ill at ease, Andi walked around the garage. As they passed her car she hazarded a glance behind--Rex followed, his pistol still held in two hands, but trained low and off to a side. She continued around the house to the three-sided courtyard-patio, trying to remember the study's location. It was on the far side of the house, a southern wing facing the patio, two or three rooms in from the end of the hall.
She wondered if Rex turned off the security cameras or if the cops forgot to turn them back on after taking the tapes for evidence. If Rex had reloaded them this walk would be recorded...it would be that much easier to investigate her disappearance, she thought morbidly.
Half-way across the patio Rex asked, "Why do you want to see his study?"
Andi paused and half-turned, Rex's voice wasn't demanding, but the gun compelled an answer. "There's some debate whether it was a suicide or murder..." the words were out of her mouth before she considered whether they might be a trigger point. She nervously chewed her lip.
"Sure, why not..." was all that Rex replied dismissively. "It's the next window down." he pointed with the barrel of his gun.
The flower bed outside the window was trampled to a muddy mush. Andi stepped close and peered inside. Sections of security bars were wrenched to either side, one of the bars' snapped its weld and was bent outward and to the right. The work left a gap wide enough for a person to slip inside. Too small to get a body out--they must have dusted for prints with the body in place, then opened the study door from the inside. Across the room she could see the metallic sheen of the slide locks Ramirez mentioned--one high, one low.
The window was closed, but she didn't touch it. Three or four feet in from the window, the couch faced inward, its end about even with the edge of the window, with an end table set beyond it. If the body was beyond the couch, it was implausible that he could charge the window and back away before dying--that left him in the middle of the room with the gun and the killer standing...where? Andi traced the walls looking for closets or something giving a way out, but the cops had done that from inside and come up with nothing. The desk and display cabinets showed signs of obvious, untidy searching. The framed pieces on the walls hung askew as if someone looked behind them for wall safes or hidden cabinets.
It did seem far fetched for him to have come in from the hall mortally wounded, bend high, then low locking the bolts and then wander through the furniture to where he was found--and if he had, how would the note have gotten in? If the police couldn't find secret doors or priest-holes, how did the killer get out? She pondered whether bolts could be nursed shut via magnets or wires, but gave up. Why think she could figure what the experts couldn't?
Rex stood beside her, the gun now dangling in his hand on the side furthest from her.
"How do you think it happened?" Andi asked quietly.
"Suicide...what else could it be?" Rex replied simply. "No one else had the combination for the security system. Bolts seal the steel door shut. The cops say the bullet came from a gun with his prints." Rex shrugged, "What's there to question?"
"The why..." Andi stated practically.
"...yeah..." Rex admitted with a casual shrug, riveting Andi's gaze with his own. "He'd planned a full day. He was eager about political projects...in great spirits. It doesn't add up, does it?"
"Did he have enemies?" Andi asked routinely.
Rex looked aggrieved at the question. "He was an officer in the patriot underground...that made him a target for liberal hate-groups...any of them would have liked to silence him..."
Andi pinched her lips together to keep from smiling. Liberal hate-groups was a new concept to her, she wondered if he'd shared the theory with the Sergeant Talbert. She stepped away from the window and surveyed the courtyard. The surveillance camera was mounted under the eves aiming across the patio and down the hillside toward the road. With the other covering the front entrance, neither would catch anybody standing where she stood or anybody coming around the west side of the house--a surprising hole in Tyson's security.
"If it was murder, why do you think somebody would do it?" Andi asked, wondering if Rex would unwittingly betray knowledge of counterfeiting.
"Politics..." Rex spat the word as if it were a virulent plague, then continued blandly, "...new world order-socialists." he responded simply. "You got to remember...the police are just as much a part of the government as the liberals...they're all anti-patriot..." His cleanly shaven face was relaxed--to him it was obvious truth.
"Did he receive threats?" Andi asked, casually brushing a bit of cobweb from her sleeve.
"...everybody in the movement does." Rex fixed her with a hard stare. "The Colonel quietly supported the fourteen words, but the liberals knew him. Why bother to warn him by making threats?" Rex laughed at the preposterous notion and kicked a broken branch against the foundation.
"What are you going to do now?" asked Andi, changing the subject and exuding friendly concern.
Rex shrugged, "I've requested re-assignment..."
"How about friends like Jennifer Gould..." Andi asked helpfully.
Rex's lip curled in derision before he replied with surprising vehemence. "Gould...the bitch. The Colonel ordered me to get her to trust me." He shuddered slightly as if reliving the uncleanliness.
"Did she steal the roses?" Andi asked point-blank. His opening up a bit seemed encouraging and wondered if the outburst could be over Gould rejecting him.
He shrugged. "Might have..." he didn't meet her eyes, "...wanted 'em bad enough. I don't really know about that crew and roses, Colonel Tyson didn't reveal much, but they were fools over them." Rex's faced twitched once as if he'd remembered something painful.
"Fools?" asked Andi, "Even Colonel Tyson?" Andi noted that he wasn't meeting her eyes. She'd better back off a little, it was a delicate line she walked. Better not ask what he'd been doing with Gould the day Feight died. Her gaze flicked down to the gun.
"Roses weren't important..." Rex stiffed to attention as if in restitution for disloyal thoughts. "...they didn't make profit...they cost him every year. He said himself they were a waste of money...considering the cause's needs..." He looked up, gave a crooked smile and shrugged, resigned to the fact that she wouldn't understand.
"You know Alison Simpson well?" she watched his face as it flashed recognition, then fear or guilt--something strong before returning to a neutral stare.
"Darrel Feight's niece." he stated flatly. "I've met her..."
"Were she and Mr. Tyson friends?" Andi asked lightly.
"The Colonel was nice to everybody..." Rex allowed grudgingly.
"The two of them were friendly right up to his getting killed?" Andi crowded slightly, asking her questions just as he finished answering.
Rex blinked and glanced up again as if puzzled. "Up to just before that...a few days maybe..."
"What happened?" Again she asked on the heels of his answer. She felt it safest if he kept talking.
"I don't know..." he shook his head and looked genuinely perplexed. "She just froze up. She used to like him a lot...maybe he was a father figure. She'd follow him around, trying to talk to him. Then suddenly she changed...I saw her at her house and she almost spit nails when I mentioned his name."
"You and she were friends too?" Andi asked lightly.
"We talked..." Rex admitted grudgingly. "We'd have coffee and talk about the weather..." She could believe they talked about weather, there was an all-American, mid-western tone to both of them that made it credible.
"She's a nice woman." Andi prompted. "I understand you're one the few people talked with..."
Like a petulant teenager, Rex didn't respond, but his face turned grim again and his eyes flashed angrily about. He wouldn't meet Andi's eyes, glancing down at the gun in his hand, then staring at the hills across the road while nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.
"What are you going to do now?" Andi asked again, concerned that he'd fallen silent. The veins in the hand holding the steely-blue automatic bulged.
He didn't respond.
"Going to move on?" Andi tried again.
There was another long pause before Rex answered. "Soon, but not right away..." he traced the line of the hills as they touched the sky.
Andi grew anxious and grasped for a response. "You going to stay here in the meantime?" She pointed to the house with her thumb.
"Maybe a few days...I'm locking down some media work...can't have it falling into the wrong hands..." Rex's face regained it's steel-jawed look of resolve, his eyes flashed with purpose. "It's my duty..." There was pride in his voice.
Andi nodded without responding and took a step toward the garages. "Good luck..." she finally offered with as much conviction as she could muster. She stepped slowly away, "Do you mind if I look at the roses...I really am obliged..." She took another step, then another keeping both hands in plain sight.
"It's OK..." he said quietly.
Andi took three more steps, then half-turned, afraid to fully turn her back.
"I'll walk you to the front..." offered Rex gallantly.
"Fine." said Andi forcing a smile. "Then I'll be out of your hair."
Rex left her by her car and went inside. Andi could hear the front door's lock click home. To keep to her story, she made a quick garden tour, making a show of looking through the roses, keeping in sight of the house. That obligation met, she traced a bee-line to her car and sped away, taking care to close the gate behind her at the bottom of the drive.
There was no doubt in her mind that Rex Nimitz was dangerous--she was grateful to have escaped with nothing more than a scare. Politics was highest in his mind when suggesting motives for Tyson's death. Unlikely as it seemed, it was possible that he didn't know about Tyson's counterfeiting--not having access to Tyson's study made it at least plausible. He'd had a strongly negative reaction to questions about Gould, but that could be explained as male bravado as easily as complicity with the missing roses.
Andi drove back to Portland deep in thought. Nimitz said Alison Simpson was "nice." Was there something important hidden under his discomfort at the mention of her name?
Back at their office, Lena announced that they were going out for lunch. "Sonny, Paco and Francois'll meet us...Francois says he's got something already..."
"He works fast." commented Andi vaguely. She had a far-away look in her eyes and bit nervously at her lower lip as she sat in her swivel-chair.
Lena favored Andi with a concerned smile, "Funny stuff at Tyson's?"
"Rex was there...pulled a gun, showed me where Tyson died and discussed their Christian patriot thing...there he was, gun in hand with a glazed expression showing me the death scene...I was scared..." Andi admitted that last quietly; it wasn't something she'd share with the world.
Lena came around behind and hugged her shoulders. "Do you have to continue?" she asked in a little voice.
"Sure...of course..." responded Andi defensively.
"I'm scared for you..." Lena admitted.
Andi didn't respond. How could she admit that she liked being scared and liked pushing hard sometimes--it wasn't safe, but it was effective. She liked the image of dancing at the edge of the void.
"Lunch 'eh? Where we going?" Andi changed the subject smiling up to Lena and turning back to her desk.
"Thai-Thai's...one o'clock..." answered Lena a bit primly, returning to her table. As if synchronized, they each looked at their watches at that moment.
Eleven-fifty two, time enough to do something before heading off. She called Ramirez to leave a voice-mail.
"This is an anonymous message regarding the whereabouts of Rex Nimitz..." she reported where he was and that he was armed. Ramirez would recognize her voice and call if he had a problem. The message should keep him happy--he could pass it on to the West Linn police and say that the informant hadn't left a name.
She sank into her chair scribbling notes about her trip to Tyson's. It was hard to focus on roses with Feight and Tyson's deaths, right-wing politics and counterfeiting hovering unresolved in the background.
Andi glanced at the box holding the new audio-spy disk she had to acquaint herself with before showing to Mrs. Knowles. She chuckled under her breath--it's not like she was short of frustrating work.
Sonny and Paco were waiting at a table when Lena and Andi arrived at Thai-Thai's. Sonny sat upright peering around like a bird, one knee pulled up before her. Paco somewhat absently read a paperback and nodded at Sonny's comments. Andi and Lena chose seats beside one another and buried their noses in the menus.
Francois showed up a few minutes later in dark slacks and a floral-print shirt, his shoes tan-towards yellow, his hat, a wide-brimmed, low crowned Mississippi-gambler type in golden-chestnut with a coat in a subdued brocade laid across one arm.
He took off his dark glasses and hung his coat over the back of his chair. After an obligatory wipe of his hand over the chair's seat he slipped in and bathed the two of them in a warm, open smile. "Have we ordered yet?" he asked flippantly as he set his hat on the corner of the table.
They agreed on ginger chicken with minimum negotiation, hot and spicy coconut-milk soup with shrimp, broccoli in oyster sauce and pad-thai with a Chinese beer apiece and salad roll appetizer to share.
Lena asked Paco about his plans for tomato plants.
"Two years ago I had so many tomatoes I couldn't give 'em away...last year I stuck in three plants and they did horrible. So, what do I do, over-react again and put in a dozen?" The corners of Paco's mouth twitched slightly upwards--for him it was a beatific smile.
"Split the difference..." mediated Lena with a Solomonic sweep of her arm. "...plant seven or eight."
"What sort of tomatoes?" asked Francois as he absent-mindedly rearranged his silverware into acceptable order.
"Beefsteak and cherries...maybe romas...got suggestions?" asked Paco indifferently. He nervously glanced to the door as a new party of three came in.
"The expensive ones in the supermarket are hydroponic." inserted Sonny helpfully. She squirmed and fiddled with her fork, seeing how easily it bent backwards during the following moment of quiet.
"You're clients haven't fired you yet?" asked Paco.
Andi grinned shyly. "No...we're still going--just not making progress."
The beer came and conversation lagged as they savored first sips. "Anybody know what "the fourteen words" mean...it's some militia term..." Andi threw the question out to the table in general and drew lines in the condensing drops on the outside of her glass.
Paco held up his glass as if assessing the clarity of the brew. "The `fourteen words' stand for `We Must Secure The Existence Of Our People And A Future For White Children.'"
There was a moment of shocked silence around the table.
"No shit?" asked Andi finally. "I can see why they don't go saying it in public."
Francois chuckled. "You hadn't heard that before?"
"Where have you heard it?" asked Lena, a puzzled expression furrowing her brow.
"I..." stated Francois with a little bow, "...frequent the Angry Eagle chat line and other patriot-type web-sites."
"But you're a..." Lena paused, with a confused purse to her lip. "What ethnicity are you?"
"Me?" Francois looked around the table in faux-surprise. "I'm an Afro/Korean/German-Jew/Anglo-Irish with some Seminole and Italian tossed in...some of us consider that full-blooded American." He smiled proudly.
"Far out..." smiled Sonny as she struggled to perch on her foot.
"So why is it you do white-supremacist chat rooms?" asked Andi with a incredulous grin.
"Because they're there..." Francois replied flippantly. "Taking their stands to ludicrously logical conclusions has made me an expert on The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion and post-millennial tenth-amendment freedoms." he smiled and batted his eyes with obviously posed pretention.
Lena, Andi and Sonny stared in wonder.
"What's your moniker?" Paco leaned forward, suddenly serious.
"Gideon." Francois replied humbly. "I scream about the ZOG government's black helicopters coming to strafe Christian women and children and how we should claim `quiet title' emancipation. I've even been a featured writer on the Posse Comitatus web-page." Francois chortled.
Paco almost choked with laughter.
"What are we talking about?" complained Lena suddenly.
"You follow militia stuff?" Francois asked seriously.
"Why?" was Lena's response, her mouth screwed-up in a sarcastic smirk.
"Well...they're liable to be a issue ahead. Know thine enemy..." Francois raised a finger in quiet warning.
"So what were you saying just a minute ago...?" Lena asked, a sardonic smile splitting her face.
"Well, let's see..." Francois touched a manicured finger to his temple to gather his thoughts before looking back to Lena. "...ZOG is Zionist Occupational Government...because our democracy is really run by a conspiracy of Jewish businessmen in Switzerland. `Quiet title' is a legal myth of seceding from state and federal regulations. In right wing nightmares, black helicopters haul God-fearing white Christians to concentration camps."
"...people believe that?" asked Lena with a shocked expression.
"Believe it?" laughed Paco. "Real right-wingers center their lives on it...it's why there are survivalist communities."
The others around the table groaned.
Francois smiled smugly, "Hey...it's great...I take things way past what's believable and nobody ever challenges it...though I do have a smooth and subtle literary style..." He paused to quietly inspect his nails, breathing on them affectedly and polishing them on his shirt.
Andi didn't know whether to encourage him or not--luckily the hot and spicy soup arrived and the subject was left behind.
As feasting slowed and conversation revived, Francois leaned to Andi and said. "I dug into Tyson and Nimitz..."
"Yeah?" replied Andi through a mouthful of pad-thai, unsure about talking in public. She glanced around--no tables close were occupied.
"Mr. Tyson was a funding conduit for right-wing causes...arms sales, legal and not. The Treasury department has a file documenting illegal arms transfers and stolen armaments in eighty-two when he was active duty Air Force."
Andi glanced to Paco. He sat back, his shadowed face impassive--only the flick of his eyes, showed awareness. "You know who the Treasury department has files on?" she blurted.
"Let's just say I know where to look..." Francois responded simply, "...Tyson went to survivalist conferences, hung with the affluent equivalent of skin-heads...always had a bunch of overlapping schemes like the counterfeiting thing..."
Andi shot a censoring look at Lena.
Lena smiled back and shrugged.
Francois continued. "Being quasi-legal for twenty years he developed a cover so tortured it'll be nearly impossible to nail it down, but rumor has it he was into discipline in the erotic sense..." he put his chin to his chest looked up past his eyebrows at the others.
"Nobody cares about his erotic life...especially since he's dead." quipped Sonny, as she slurped up some pad-thai.
Francois shrugged and continued. "He was a competitor in the very worst sense of the word; obstructive, unethical, unsporting...buying into the cliche that winning was the only thing that mattered...cheating in competitions and business, dealing from bottom of the deck. His illegal arms business broke down because he repeatedly short-changed on deliveries. It's said his basement target range is set up with deceptive lighting...and he gave guests bullets with off-center slugs..."
"What a nice guy..." observed Andi derisively.
"Yeah, generally an all around shmuck," admitted Francois.
Andi drained the last of her beer and set the glass carefully before her. "Anything illegal that involves the rose breeders?" That Tyson was a jerk was neither news or helpful.
"Not so far...you said you wanted juicy stuff quick."
Sonny shook her head in disbelief. "You got all that this morning?"
Francois snorted a laugh, "Most of this is routine, easy stuff...I got back doors into some real nasty data bases; this isn't primary research, I tapped other people's...I got his shoe size from credit card records...he buys sharp cheddar cheese...doesn't check out many library books, but sticks with non-fiction military when he does. His movie rentals..."
"How about Rex Nimitz?" interrupted Andi. She drained her water glass and set it beside the empty beer glass.
"Rex...Rex is a big-time victim who doesn't know it...third generation army officer brat...stuck in year-round military academies since age seven. Evidently strings were pulled to get him into officer's training at nineteen without any college...he was mediocre at best, then suddenly released with a honorable discharge after only twenty-one months total service. That's suspicious, but there's no notation of problems. One suspects his family might have facilitated a cover-up. He considers himself a Phineas Priest and plugged into para-military groups immediately after the army. He seems to be passing through the upper levels of the underground as a aid-de-camp underling."
"Phineas Priest?" asked Lena, perplexed.
"...a Patriot sub-group justifying itself from a Biblical verse where this guy Phineas murdered a man and his wife because of racial intermarriage...it was an atonement that turned away the wrath of God, so he was a righteous Biblical hero..."
Another stunned silence reverberated around the table.
"...Numbers 25:1-18..." Paco interjected after a minute.
Sonny swung around to stare at him. "How do you know that?" she demanded.
"I read a lot..." Paco gave a dismissive bob of his head.
"Phineas Priests...I'd never heard of them." admitted Andi.
Francois quoted, "`As the kamikazi is to the Japanese, the Shiite to Islam, and the Zionist to Jews--so the Phineas Priest is to Christendom'...they're a pretty marginal group, but they believe their violence defends God's law."
"Back to our issues..." Lena broke in with a small, sweeping wave of her hand. "Was he involved in Tyson's counterfeiting?"
"I ran out of tea leaves and don't do chicken entrails..." returned Francois sarcastically. "I know he's never excelled in anything...seems a regular drone, likes to follow orders...has a lot of experience in that. One source noted rude suggestions about him and Tyson, but he's probable too inhibited for sexual deviance..."
Andi glanced around the table, all eyes were turned expectantly toward Francois.
He flicked a microscopic bit of lint from his tastefully turned up shirt-sleeves and reached for the last of his beer. "He doesn't use credit cards, never bought a house, never had a traffic ticket, only accepts a token visible salary...he's off the grid as far as he can be without attracting attention. He doesn't go to rallies--since he travels in powerful circles, important people come to where he stays."
There was another long moment of silence. Francois glanced from one of them to another, evidently at the end of his spiel.
The busboy must have caught the lull in their table's intensity--he seized the moment to haul dishes and ask if they wanted desert.
There was a quick meeting of eyes across the table--all of them declined. Lena grabbed the check and insisted that their office was going to pay--no objections came from the others. She rose and retired to the cash register, leaving Andi to gracefully leave a tip and follow the others to the door.
Go on to Chapter 8
Go back to Chapter 6
Go back to Andi Wicksham Series page
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL.
Last Updated 5/24/97
For more information, contact Webmaven Lena Kovid, at:
geekgirl@cafeunderground.com