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Monday

June 13, 2011

Why I am not a

Progressive

It comes down to my feelings about the welfare state:

(1) It centralizes power, and that creates a system of privilege rather than preserving the existing one based on merit.

(2) It undermines moral character as the decades and generations go by, since if the government gives the necessities of life to people just for the asking, then those recipients’ ability to be responsible for themselves will naturally atrophy.

(3) It causes an attrition of personal liberty, in that with a colossus for a government, the product of your labor will be taken from you. You are now either at the table or you’re on the menu.

(4) The welfare state is very expensive, even as it diminishes the capacity of the economic engine.

(5) I don’t like the deceptive arguments of welfare proponents. They say they are in favor of it because everyone deserves a decent living and that furthermore the welfare state will pay for itself. But it won’t pay for itself, as a matter of empirically observed fact, and might it not be the case anyway that the local level would do a much better job at charity for those truly in need than some distant government? The actual motive for welfare’s proponents is to use the present power of government so as to obtain and preserve yet more power for themselves. They irresponsibly use government as a stepping stone.

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Saturday

May 7, 2011

Hawk poem

Little hawk, infant life,

Fledgling tries the

Sky of strife;

Trembling voice,

Wings aflutter,

Oh, was ever a

Purer stutter!

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_________________________________________

Friday

April 29, 2011

Howard Zinn:

Why

Did He Write

“A People’s History”?

There is a mutually exclusive relation between freedom and privilege. As one of these comes into the world, the other goes out of it.

Howard Zinn might have written A People’s History of the United States in order to pursue justice, or altruism, or just a corrected version of history. But there is evidence of omissions and distortions in the book (see the article on Zinn on the site Discover the Networks) that lead us to question his motives.

So, another possible motive for Zinn (and for Chomsky) is the obtaining of privilege for himself and for his social class, the intellectual elite. That is, Zinn liked to say, “See what happens when the market is free?” He meant to say that the sins of America took place in a decentralized America, in a free-market America. But, the thinking goes, if only we will agree to socialism, to a planned economy and to a planned society, the ancient ills would be surpassed, and a juster society by far would be realized.

But it should be pointed out that the basis of individual freedom is economic freedom, economic opportunity. If economic freedom is undermined, so is the basis of personal liberty. But that precisely is what a planned economy does: It undermines economic freedom by eliminating entrepreneurship. So, freedom is exiting the world in this system of an economy planned against competition.

As freedom exits the world, though, privilege enters. This is the only opportunity that really exists in a planned society. So a possible motive for arguing that America is sinful is to argue indirectly for a planned economy, and thereby position oneself to obtain the privileges in that new society that will open up.

___________________________________

____________________________________________

tuesdaY’s

april 26, 2011

poeM

the shadows of my life

grow longer, stretching

further across the land

inexorably, and the spring

wildflowers bloom and die on

the hills, sprinkling the green

briefly with yellow and white.

___________________________

__________________________________________

Tuesday

April 26, 2011

Howard Zinn

And

Noam Chomsky

For centuries, even millennia, the human race suffered in hierarchical, stratified, suffocating, and administrative big-government states that offered little space for personal freedom. But with the emergence of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, and additionally with the rise of commerce in northern Italy during the Renaissance, there was a new emphasis on, a breathing space given to, individual liberty and the preferences of the individual. We were allowed to pursue happiness, and we were relatively free of overarching government: The individual was no longer subordinated to the state apparatus. The American Revolution is the jewel in the crown of this historical tendency.

But in the middle of the nineteenth century, people such as Karl Marx came to the fore with great influence, and attempted a reactionary countermovement back to the suffocating style of government that would have as many industries as possible nationalized. The chief idea of this style of governance is collectivization, the gathering of power into a centralized bureaucracy in the capital city.

Now, it used to be that this nationalization of industry was the hallmark activity of this type of state, but since that type of thing has been thoroughly discredited by its inability to produce anything other than empty shelves, the new hallmark activity of this manner of state is the creation and expansion of the welfare state.

But the problem here is that this means the redistribution of wealth from those who earned it to those who purposely did nothing. This then is the attrition of economic freedom, and it just so happens that economic freedom is the basis of personal freedom. The welfare state is an attack on economic freedom and on personal freedom and is therefore an attack on the basis of Western Civilization.

Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are jive talking, pretending to be the truth when in reality they are part of the propaganda stream of the old Soviet Union, a stream that started in the 1930′s. They are all about saying, “See? Do you see what happens when the market is free? Do you see the injustice that results? Do you imagine that anything other than government can address the injustice?” This is all just a way of getting through an agenda of centralized control over society.

________________________

_______________________

A Joe Downing Mystery
Story 

The following is fiction:  

The Taciturn

Hottie

“Down these mean streets

a man must go

who is not himself mean.”

– Ray Chandler

PART TWO:  

I STOPPED IN FOR SOME LUNCH AT HAL’S 24/7 BURGER TEEPEE IN SOUTH PASADENA AFTER THE MEETING WITH
MRS. B. I looked around as I entered into the icy air: Neon, shiny stuff, babes. The sound of plates clinking and silverware tinkling filled the whole busy place. Young men and women in yellow long-sleeve dress shirts continually whisked plates laden with hot food off the raised counter under the heat lamps, the chefs in there somewhere kicking it. The plates endlessly made their way to their ultimate destination of your table and your big pie-hole. The front window of the place boasted an “A” grade in cleanliness from the County Coroner as you came in — (whoops! I meant to say the County Health Department, sorry…..).    

Good to know the place was clean, though, all kidding aside. A long, straight, pristine white counter for the single people ran longitudinal to the main axis and then took a suicidal ninety-degree turn, whereupon it crashed neatly into the wall. I sat down there so I could lean back lazily against the wall and look out onto California Boulevard. (I’m so enthralled with traffic continuously going by, you see.) I ordered a bowl of chili and lemonade from Uma Thurman and sat back and waited.  

An older black man appeared, and he was slowly making his leisurely, labored way through the two sets of double doors. He was clearly a regular and was ordering some take-out stuff, like burgers and onion rings. Gwyneth Paltrow was taking his order and giving him a free cup of coffee while he waited. This gave me a chance to see him: He was gray and wizened, like a sturdy, battered, hollowed-out old oak tree refusing to surrender to the depredations of Father Time. He wore a dusty, grimy, sable-colored old Stetson jauntily, having it pushed back, Clark-Gable-in-The-Misfits-style, upon his white hair. Maybe he was an actor. Between roles. He sported a full grayish-whitish curly beard, stark and low against his smooth dark skin, making him appear like an Afro-Grecian god about to reach again for a thunderbolt or two to hurl down at the dumbass mortals on the Peloponnesus.

Long navy-blue Dickies pants covered his legs, and ended just above rugged black work boots and the two swaths of the white socks. His dark green, open, and waist-length nylon jacket partially covered a brown-and-white checkered flannel shirt, which was itself opened to about the fifth button, just above his navel, and which formed a big, confident, badass “V” across his hairless, flat chest. You noticed right off that he was really cheerful. Amiability oozed from him like molasses from a split-open Maple tree in season in Canada. He had a life-loving, melodious voice, and he used it to spread goodwill to all. But then he noticed me, sizing me up expertly:  

“I ain’t seen y’all here befo’ — I’m Lester,” he said, looking me smack in the eye before continuing with, “good to meet ya, sir.” He leaned over, extending his brown, leathery palm, and we shook hands melodramatically as he sat down on one of the swiveling seats, three clicks from me.

“I’m Joe,” I said. “Yeah, I’m not here too much…..first time actually.”  

“Is that right? First time?…well then, Joe, welcome to Hal’s. Whatcha gonna have?”  

“I ordered some chili. Then I gotta get back to work.”  

“Uh-huh, I understand that only too well, my friend,” Les nodded and chuckled in a friendly way, and looked down at his cup of coffee just arriving from Gwyneth. He put an incredible amount of sugar in it. She then withdrew and retreated towards Uma, and they started laughing at something, pretending, unsuccessfully, to be not laughing. I felt like it had something to do with me, and it got me bent out of shape. I kept glancing over at them.

People came in and went out all around us, moving through their day, paying at the cash register, going to the restroom behind us to the right, and leaving through the double doors out into the torrid light and torrid heat of South Pasadena. A dry whoosh of hot air (hopefully it wasn’t from me) hit us whenever the doors opened. Stylish white people mostly, not dressed up exactly, but very California Casual. A huge contrast to the wholesome, family atmosphere of the Hal’s in Rancho. I continued:  

“Yeah, I gotta get back to the grind in a minute: Macarthur Park.” He looked surprised:  

“Man, you know they had a killing?”  

“Sure do. Just making sure it’s all done right, that’s all, everything above board.” I looked into the distance defensively at the retro photos they had on the wall of old-time Hal’s from the 50′s. Sixty years in business. Pretty good. Killings in the park back then, too? Well, does a dog know where the bodies are buried? Uma arrived, smirking, with my chili and set it down, then refilled my lemonade. That kinda won me over, the lemonade refill. After a pause, I said, eating and nodding:  

“Guess it was those Diablos.”  

“Yeah, Joe, I guess it was, too. I’m with that.”  

“Some kinda turf war with the Saliciamon guys, I bet.”  

“Yeah, yeah, that would be my thinking, too.”  

“67 stab wounds, must’ve been crowded.”  

“Yep, musta been.”  

“And the guy was strangled, too — why would you strangle a dead body? Unless that came first and went wrong, so that a bunch of ‘em had to gang up on him and go at him like piranhas with blades to finish him. So it was probably pretty messy.”  

“Yeah, that’s good thinking,” Les agreed, turning in his seat towards me and going on, intensely: “Yeah, maybe the victim gets on top of the strangling, and gets the one what was sticking him. Maybe wounds the man. Got back what he was giving out.”  

“Yeah…..that’s my hunch…..that victim must’ve been pretty tough,” I replied, then added, musing, “but I thought they were in cahoots, the Diablos and Saliciamon.” I then took a humongous scoop of chili and downed it like a drooling, rabid wolf. I stared, motionless, at the oracle.

“Not no more,” Les warned, “but they was. It’s the distribution — the Diablos done it a long time, but now Salicia do it theyself – got the soldiers up from Guatemala. They do the job now, do it right. No need for no Diablos no more: Big trouble.” Les shook his head and nodded grimly.  

“Gotcha…..” I said, absently, “but I wonder now where I can meet this crazy-ass Pancho Rodriguez cat?” Les shook his head again.

“Not in the park. And he ain’t went to the killing, neither. Never do go. Try Pico/Union. But watch yourself, chief, he’s a live wire, a real-ass live wire. You gots to be precautious or you gonna end up dead. And don’t be telling those muthafuckas I talked to you.”  

“I won’t, I’m not fucking crazy, Les. And I’m definitely gonna be careful with this gang dude. Yeah…motherfuckers, that’s about it.” I paused then, a little uncomfortable. I ate in silence, just to play it safe. After a while, when I was ready to go, I finally just said,

“Thanks for the nod.”  

“Forget it.” He waved me away. He knew he had said too much. He was pissed at me and at himself. He brooded over his coffee, calculating the damage. I was done with the chili (not bad), so I got up to leave slowly and dramatically. I passed by him sitting there, and he grabbed my arm. I felt like tearing it away from this crazy loon. I was a little scared. I half expected to crap in my pants. I felt bad about drawing him in. He looked me in the eye again like he was the kingpin of downtown. I felt like I had to let it go on, since he had helped me. He just looked. But then he says to me, squeezing tighter,

“Those bitches hurt me.” He looked away angrily and abruptly and let me go. He practically shoved me away. I moved away slowly, gazing at him, a little dazed, a little uncertain what to do, my lips parted probably in confusion and fear. Who was this guy? And what in the blue-fuck was I getting into? I made my way over to the address Mrs. B. had given me for Ingrid. I decided I would save Pancho for later — I didn’t have my gun. I was gonna fuckin’ need it. I had no choice now but to work around the edges first. It’s a method I hate, though, I like a more direct type of thing. I didn’t glance back at Uma and Gwyneth as I left Hals.

************************************

The address Mrs. Biddleman had given me for Ingrid was in downtown L.A. in some two-story crapshoot shit-pile of a building. What a place. It sure wasn’t South Pasadena, to say the least, guys. It was on skid row, and it looked like the apocalypse of the damned. The spotted white sidewalk reflected the brilliant, blinding sunlight of early afternoon, and the cream-colored building itself was dingy and residential, to be sure, but it looked like some industrial thing. Not very inviting, not very savory. A loozers paradise – where they come to die. San Pedro Street. A drug dude and a homeless guy loitered and lurked around the front of the entrance, looking like walking corpses. I guess this building was the jam place if you’re an addict. They avoided eye-contact, as if not knowing you were there, yet still managed to be threatening. I don’t know how, since they looked weak. Kind of a mystery how they pulled it off. Bravo, guys. The still, calm, silent heat did not dissuade them from wearing coats.

It was quiet there, I remember that. You could hear your footsteps on the walk, it was so still. And I was pretty worried about leaving my car at the curb with those dudes right there. That time my tires got slashed in Gorge. Right at the entrance, a sleek new black Beamer was parked at the curb, shiny in the sun to the point of eye-pain. I couldn’t imagine having to touch it, it would be so freakin’ hot. A bumper sticker on it read:

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we will all know peace.”

Jimi strikes again! I remembered the girl at Bristol. I also remembered then that the Dalai Lama meditates six hours a day. I remember stuff all the time! I entered this eye-sore, and walked over the dilapidatedness of threadbare carpeting to the directory on the wall to confirm that Ingrid lived there as Mrs. B. had said, on the fourth floor: She did indeed.

I approached the elevator to go up, since I couldn’t find any stairs. The small lobby was like something out of an art movie — it was pretending to be street-smart — made over in a very self-conscious, cool tackiness. A tall glowering white man in his 40′s then came striding over to me hard and mad-dog like he wanted to tear me limb from limb. He was dressed in a dirty white short-sleeve tee and old, formerly-pressed trousers — not jeans like me. He had work shoes on his large feet, dirty white socks easily showing. Flood pants, basically.    

“You here for someone?!” he said, as if to kill the intruder.    

“Yeah,” I replied, unconcerned, “I’m just paying a little visit on the fourth floor.” I didn’t look over at him.    

“Yeah?! I’ll just bet you are, buddy!” he responded, staring, then continued sternly with: “Wait a minute!” as if I had fully made a sudden move to kill him. I hadn’t moved a muscle, of course. I could tell he was a lunatic from the padded room, I’m not gonna provoke him. He walked over and looked up through the seam of the elevator door into the shaft, as if he could see through into the cool, dark emptiness there. He pushed the button precisely, ludicrously, like he was using some secret knock to summon the ancient old pile.    

“Gladys!!!” he yelled in through the crack in the elevator doors, “Are you up there?!” He fell silent and still and listened to the fascinating interior of the elevator shaft: No sound forthcoming, however. Then another loud sally to Gladys, but again to no avail. He was just about to give a third go, when I stopped him by glancing around and asking,    

“Are there any stairs?” He responded to me quickly by pointing irritably at the corner of the lobby, around the corner. I saw for the first time that stairs were there. He surely felt defeated that the elevator hadn’t worked — he slumped, and watched me sullenly as I departed. Possibly he had done some maintenance, but it hadn’t taken.    

I exited the stairs on the fourth floor, emerging curiosity-struck into a hallway through a creaking, beat-up wooden door. I walked down the dark carpeted hallway. Let’s not talk about it. I soon stood before a smoky brown door, number 444, Ingrid’s. It was about 1:00pm by now. No sounds from within, but I knocked anyway. I was here. No response. Big surprise there. Druggies aren’t exactly known for jumping up to get the door. I knocked again, not so intrepidly this time, and waited in the silence of the moist, dark, Gothic hallway of the old building.

Finally something shuffled forward. Was it a dog? About to puke and die? After about a century, there was some fumbling with the doorknob. I felt half-inclined to help from outside. Was she retarded? (Sorry…..that’s just anger talking. Won’t happen again. But wait to see how I get it in a minute!)

The deadbolt turned, the door opened, sticking, and then the chain jangled taut and jarring. A sleepy face peered out at me. I could discern enough to figure out who it had to be. A tawdry, haggard, yet really beautiful young woman was slouched before me. She had short and chic black hair covering her pale forehead, and shapely ears tilting out elegantly from within her unruly locks. She had sharp, fine features and delicate skin. She wore faded jeans with holes in the knees, dirty pink socks without shoes, and a tight, filthy white top exposing her waist. She looked up at me, bored to death. Then she looked down, chagrined, as if to say “how long is this gonna take?” And then she looked up again, and spoke first.    

“Are you ‘Mr. Joe Downing?’” she asked. I nodded and added,    

“Yes, Ingrid, I am.”    

“Yes, Ingrid, I am,” she repeated instantly. She made a grimace at me. Then she went on:

“Yeah, well, my fuckin’ mother told me you were coming, but why don’t you just do me the favor of fucking off instead? Huh?! Punk-ass bitch! Are you listening, motherfucker? Just go away, asshole! Got it?”  

She stared bullets and she leaned forward. There was a pause as she fell into a depressed silence. My response sorta hung in the air. Well, in retrospect, I can now say I really expected that Hawaii thing with the lei. But beyond all doubt, this girl was a cartoon. First of all, she looked so coked-out that she was incapable of lifting those proverbial two stamps. I think a new-born kitten could have won a Smack-Down on her white ass. Her face was white and wan, a sickly hue that could only come from a long time of lame health. Her sharp nostrils, sculpted originally out of beautiful white marble, were now red and irritated, and looked likely to bust out into pus at any moment, so scintillatingly and painfully abused they were. Scrofulous, yeah.

Her voice was hoarse and strained, but still musical like her mother’s and sister’s. Her long arms were slender like two toothpicks. Her feminine hands shook violently with the longing for her white medicine, and perspiration glistened on her pasty, silky forehead. She finally let me into the place in a resigned way, and shuffled over to a lumpy, tatterdemalion couch and collapsed tiredly.

Bizarrely, she sat upright all of a sudden, seemingly poised and confident. Then her knees bobbed up and down frantically without stopping as she sat, her hands all the while moving nervously up and down the length of her blue-jeans, getting caught in the scattered threads. It was very sensual and weird. It was quiet in the room, too, not just outside. Her breathing was desperate. Her nails were spotted, shattered, and brittle, her hair dull and a little frizzy. She threw her head back to breathe, closing her eyes. She was the picture of sickness. After I got past the initial shock, though, I could hear a brave noise wandering within her voice, a misguided posturing somehow suggesting a just-barely-discernable sincerity underneath the hypocrisy and the F-bombs. “Make life mean something to me,” the tea-leaves in her tone implored.

I could see she was Aly’s sister, too: a demonic determination exuded from her every pore. This family was a piece of work. But she was obviously destroying herself. Mrs. Biddleman was right to be worried, but what had taken her so long to act? Her daughter was on the edge of obliteration.    

“So, Ingrid, how long have you known Pancho?” I asked, as I sat down on an upright chair across from her.    

“A few years, not that it’s any of your business, fuckin’ asshole.” She sneered at me. I had had enough:    

“Would you give it a fuckin’ rest?!” I shouted, and glared at her. A family picture was in a nice frame on the pine bookcase against the greasy wall. It showed Ingrid, Aly, Mrs. B. and a man, probably the father, Phineas, all standing together and smiling broadly.

“If you’re so smart, why are you addicted to that stuff?” I gestured at the personal stash she had on the low coffee-table. “Your mother can’t stand it that you’re on it,” I added.    

“I don’t care what that thief thinks, she can go to hell. I’ve got Pancho, and that’s all I need. I love him. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”    

“Did Pancho order the murder of Gomez?”    

“No! Of course not! He’s not a murderer, he’s an entrepreneur, but not a capitalist business man thug. He’s a philanthropist. He brings justice to the people, not mayhem. But did you order the murder of Gomez, asshole?”    

“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s it, Murderer! Get him! Hey, everybody, I caught him!!!”    

“Why did you say your mother was a thief?”    

“Because she is. That bitch skims 20k a year from the endowment.”    

“What endowment?”    

“My father,” she pointed at the picture in the bookcase, “Phineas Biddleman, asshole extraordinaire, founded the Pasadena Old Heritage Museum in the sixties. It now has an annual endowment of $4 million. Mostly from the John Jakob Jones Living Trust. My mother has been skimming her 20k for years. To make ends meet, she says.”    

“Does your father know?”    

“He’s got Alzheimer’s, dude. He can’t tie his fuckin’ shoe.”    

“Why are you so cruel to your family, Ingrid? You were once a close family,” I said, motioning to the picture, “what happened?”    

“Mind your own business, motherfucker! WHAT THE FUCK are you here for, anyway? Are you a chaperone? Get the hell out of my apartment!” She pointed a slender white finger, indignation all over her strained, tired face.    

“Your mother thinks Pancho is in on the murder in the park, and wants me to find out. That’s why I’m here. The rest is up to you and yours.”    

“Oh, boy! Isn’t that touching! She wants Pancho gone for my sake! What maternal care! But Pancho cares far
more about me than she does! He’s the best thing to ever happen to me! She, on the other hand, is full of shit! Pancho bought me a Beamer! How’s that?!”
   

“Isn’t that a capitalist pig car?” I joked.    

“No!…..it’s a…..it’s a…..it’s a ‘La Raza’ car!”    

“Oh, I see. But let’s do move on. Do you see any of that 20k your mother skims?”    

“What?” her voice cracked nervously and a little hypocritically. She pretended to be appalled. She sat up super-straight on the couch, crossing her legs in defense, and stared at me, astonished. Her hands spread out on the couch now like a sprinter’s on the track.    

“How much do you take?” I persisted.    

“What!!!” she shrieked, and asked, “what are you saying, dude?!”    

“I’m saying $4 million is a lot of white powder. Obviously. How much do you get, if your mother gets 20k?” She was at a loss as to how to respond. She looked around the apartment, which was full of dirty dishes piled up in the sink of the small kitchen, a mottled cat sleeping curled-up in an old easy chair of the same color, and junk furniture everywhere. Ingrid squirmed uncomfortably. She glanced enviously at the cat. Lying through her teeth didn’t sit well with her. She tried her best, anyway:    

“Nothing! I get nothing! I mean, just….just a little…..like her…..how did you know that, anyway?”
   

“How much does Pancho get?”    

“Oh, now, wait a minute! Where you going with this? Are you some lawyer?”    

“How much does Pancho get?” I asked again, deadpan.    

“What?” she asked, irrelevantly, a little scared.    

“Pancho. How much?”    

“He…..he…..he gets some…..” she said, looking around. After a pause she then blurted out: “He gets more than us. But he sort of gets Reggie to do it for him. It’s Reggie’s fault!”    

“Who’s Reggie?” I asked.    

“Reggie Colombo, the curator of the museum. Pancho has him siphon off the funds from the endowment.”    

“OK, I’ll have to talk to him at the museum. But why are you telling me all this?”

“What?!” she almost screamed, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I started to laugh:

“I’m just joking. A little humor, that’s all.”

“A little is right, asshole.”

“So how does the war between the Diablos and Saliciamon come into all this?”    

“I don’t know,” she shrugged sincerely, “who says it does?”    

“Oh, I dunno, I guess I do. So did Saliciamon find out about the endowment skimming, and want in on it, too? Just like Pancho found out about it?” Her face grew more and more astonished as I went on, and then she thundered at me:    

“Now how did you know that, dude?! Is there anything you don’t know?!”
   

*********************************************

 The meeting ended after some more revelations, mostly not very enlightening. Ingrid had to go out somewhere, so we went down together. First she disappeared into the bedroom, then re-emerged wearing some orange hat.    

“I guess you couldn’t find your hat,” I kidded her. She glared, incredulous. We exited the apartment out into the hall. I moved over naturally to the stairs. She looked at me quizzically.    

“There’s an elevator, dude,” she informed me, motioning at the thing.    

“It’s not working,” I said, “the Commish downstairs tried to get it to work, but it wouldn’t.” She laughed in triumph.    

“He’s a fucking blithering idiot. Didn’t you see that, dude? It works perfectly. Everybody knows it but him. It’s just the contacts in the switch downstairs on the lobby level. Up here it works fine — the switch is intact. Watch.” Ingrid summoned the elevator, there was a whirr, and soon here it was. I nodded in affirmation and got in. Then outside, on the sidewalk, there was indecision and tension. The stillness was only in the air.    

…..to be continued…..

—————————————-

_____________________________

Thursday

March 24, 2011

The Moral

Compasslessness

Of the

Radicals

“You only know what they want you to know…

open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya…”

Lords of the New Church,

“Open your Eyes”

Why do some people insist on criticizing religion? Is it because of their devotion to truth, feeling it necessary to point out that religion is factually incorrect when it says the Earth is only six thousand years old? Indeed, we know from science that the Earth is something like four-and –a-half-billion years old.

The supreme reason for this fashionable denigrating of religion concerns something other than religion’s being incorrect about how old the Earth is: the noble denigrating is actually about the war between the unconstrained vision and the constrained vision, as Thomas Sowell has characterized the two schools of thought.

That is, religion is the foremost exponent of the constrained vision, and it thereby is public enemy number one for some people. For them, nothing shall be allowed to hinder the progress of their unconstrained vision, and so allies such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Rousseau, and sometimes Hegel must be recruited to the cause. It’s all about self-interest, not about devotion to truth.

The unconstrained vision surely has a lot at stake, to be sure: lavish pensions, pleasures, power, moral vanity, control of thought and culture, etc. And it will never be defeated, because in order to overcome it in oneself, one must give up the falsity of the ego-image we entertain about ourselves, and instead embrace a less falsified selfhood. Not likely that a mass conversion will take place in this regard.

But on the other hand, the tragic vision of life, the constrained vision we have from Judeo-Christian religion, that too, can never be defeated, but for a very different reason: it has an obviously closer connection to reality. There will always be a market for the clearer perception of reality: the constrained vision believes that human nature is fixed and that it is permanently flawed, whereas the unconstrained vision believes that human nature is in flux and can be indefinitely improved.

Now, the ironic thing here is that this idea of historical necessity, this idea of being in the process of making a better world for the future, is exactly the excuse for all the violence committed against innocent people. But that’s the unconstrained vision! Hardly an image of progress or utopia.

Nevertheless, Christopher Hitchens, a clear advocate of the unconstrained vision, goes so far as to blame – in his desperation – even Hitler and Stalin on religion. But that is absurd, Hitchens. Those two were obviously immersed in the unconstrained vision, whereas religion is the opposite, the nemesis of those two and their wild visions. Religion’s goal would be to stop them, not urge them on.

Do you want to be on the side of kindness? On the side of decency and the highest values? Then embrace instead the constrained view, and avoid the professor’s dialectic stuff about the Brave New World. We should keep in mind that the purpose of religion is not to be factually correct about questions better left to science, its purpose is rather to put us in contact with our true selves, in contact with the most important moral strains in our nature, our better angels.

George Orwell wrote that the coming future is just a dystopian vision of a boot stomping on a human face forever. Orwell was one of our greatest visionaries, and he had no illusions about human nature. Beware, then, the unconstrained vision and its self-righteousness: it’s the vehicle of nightmarish dystopia, coming soon to a heart of hearts near you.

___________________________

A Joe Downing Mystery

  The following is fiction:      

The streets were dark with something more than night.

– Raymond Chandler

 Part One:

I HAD TO GO TO PASADENA.
Mrs. Biddleman was pretty decent, and this turned out to be a very wild case. I just barely escaped with my body parts intact, to be honest. I awoke that first morning unshaven and grungy, but no surprise there. I was just on my way to the shower, hands laden with stuff, when the landline rang back in the office. I let everything fall with a nice plop. A white, soapy, oozing mess ensued.    

“Is that how you treat the shampooed carpet?” This, Sammy, the custodian of the building, demanded to know of me as he calmly, slowly came up behind me (since slow is about as fast as he can go).

“Oh…..” I said, looking down at the mess, “My bad, Sammy, I got a call right when my hands were full of all this.” I continued, gesturing towards the crap: “Sorry. I’ll clean it up in a second.”    

“Oh, that’s all right, Joe,” he responded, “I didn’t mean nothing by it…..no right to cry…..go answer the phone. And where you been hiding, boy? You know you’re killing me, Joe.” Sammy then hobbled away, saying to himself,    

“I been trying to figure that sucker out…..that white dude…..”  

********************

The San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California run kinda on an east-west axis and sit patiently behind the patios of L.A. and Pasadena like a backdrop to a puppet show. The puppet show called “L.A.,” of course. Why a puppet show? That would be because of the strings attached. But the rugged undulations really make a great backboard for the city itself — those hills, those tall, brawny, scratchy, scrub-oak filled and Manzanita-monopolized hills, they do know where all the bodies were buried in the shadowy founding of the City of Angels. It’s like those mountains are the seats to the show.

So I picked up the L.A. Times newspaper at the Bristol Farms Café in Pasadena after getting off the freeway. I was a little early for my appointment with Mrs. Biddleman, my prospective new client. It was a warm, pleasant morning in July, so I sat outside at a heavy silver table for breakfast. I stretched my legs out and glanced over the paper. The Metro-Link train came clanging by from Claremont and from even further away, come to think of it, from Berdu. Wonder what’s going on over there? Car accidents on the 10 freeway? Now, on page two — what’s this?  

Body of Saliciamon member found

in dumpster downtown: Macarthur Park

“The Times learned early this morning that the mutilated body of Ramon Gomez-Gonzalez, a reputed member of the Honduran drug cartel ‘Saliciamon,’ was found yesterday morning by a homeless man digging through the trash of a dumpster in Macarthur Park. 

 “The LAPD spokesman, Lt. William Braxton, did not immediately respond to questions whether the apparent homicide was gang-related, pending the investigation. He did speculate, however, that the steady, six-month trend charting increased violence downtown was most probably due to the recent influx here, studied by the University of California Los Angeles, of undocumented persons from cartel-controlled territory in the tri-state area of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

“The county coroner issued a preliminary report giving the time of death as approximately 72 hours ago as of 2am this morning, and the cause of death as strangulation and multiple stab wounds, 67 in all, to the stomach, back of the neck, chest, and the small of the back…..”

OK, wait — meanwhile, in the sports section….you know, I had just passed by the park on my way here. That park ain’t the place to be at 2am, not even when the big one hits. When I finished eating, I paid the nice-looking young lady wearing the black Jimi Hendrix tee, got back into the Corvette, and proceeded finally to the old Biddleman place in the heart of old Pasadena: to the residence of Elizabeth Anne Biddleman, that is, nee Astor, 60 years of age. When I at last met her, I knew she was the whole package from FedEx – the big hair, the suffocating fragrance, everything.

First, though, I stood on the public sidewalk looking over at the outside of this big house of hers. It was a tall and dun job with second-story windows peering down at you sternly and implacably, and there were several inset granite pillars supposedly holding up a faux-Renaissance front. A wide, neat, and meticulous lawn stretched out in the front and in the back garden, too, it turned out, with yellow, white, and red roses climbing six feet high and more on prickly, skinny, slanting, tensile vines. Pasadena is famous for its roses. They got a parade for them.

Mrs. B’s house was set back from Colorado Boulevard a good thirty yards, so much so you could have a scrimmage. I finished climbing up the steps to the porch. I walked up to that porch on a walkway of wide, blonde-colored stones, like so many trapezoids, under the sycamore, eucalyptus, and ash trees, which made sketchy patterns on the immaculate lawn. It was inviting. So, should I practice my putts here? No! Not now! So dive putts, down to my soul!  

A medieval light structure thing hung down portentously on a long electric cord from the porch ceiling. It looked like it could pull the cord and everything down onto your head, it was so heavy. I kept my eye on that thing. The light was still on at 10am, feeble against the morning light of a hot day in July. A very quiet woman, dressed all in white (I named her “Guadalupe” for the moment), answered the doorbell and let me into the dark, muffled, huge interior: I was certainly expected (but for what, though?!).

Once in, Lupe led me down a long, gloomy, long (did I mention it was long?), silent, and carpeted hallway. My eyes were still full of the dazzling, splashing sun of Pasadena, so I didn’t catch a lot: some Renaissance-style paintings of some old honchos in suits, beautiful Asian earthenware poised on delicate, curving, gold-leaf tables which were themselves poised under humongous mirrors — things like that — a general sense of clueless old money, in short. The air inside, too, must have come wrapped up as an addition from medieval times — a bit stuffy and sickly.   

Lupe led me into the library and motioned me to a chair: I thanked her with a nod and sat. She nodded pleasantly in return, half maid, half nurse, and went out without a sound. I busied myself with curiosity about the place while waiting for Mrs. B’s arrival. The library was barely illuminated, with bookshelves crammed with hard-cover stuff all the way up to the top of the high ceiling. More reading than you’d care to do, but it looked good. I’ve always like libraries, ever since being a kid. They’re like a church or something. The books looked carelessly put away, which made it better.

I twirled my neck all around, peering at all the strange stuff. Dark wood was everywhere. Rugs with Far Asian and Middle Eastern designs were all over the floor of the comfortable, capacious room, giving an impression of being in a crazy bazaar. I half-expected some guy named Gideon to pop up out of nowhere and try and sell me a red beret. There was certainly a lot of old junk and stuff from decades ago, still hanging around, sacred. You weren’t allowed to ever throw anything out in this household. I’m not a packrat, so I immediately notice those who are, in amazement that you could keep so much worthless nonsense around you. This room was like a giant, comfortable, old shoe. The house itself was old, too, and must’ve been built just after WWII — it had the august aura of the long-ago, talking first impression. I just sat there and waited. This went on for a while.

But as my eyes finally adjusted to the dim, I thought I beheld Miss Havisham herself perched elegantly and stiffly in front of the lacy, cloistered window which looked out onto the front lawn and onto Colorado Boulevard. Miss Havisham sat so very regally and inaccessibly behind a gargantuan wooden desk that was stained dark brown. Her eyes were closed. Then, after an interval, they slowly opened. She spoke pleasantly to me:

“Mr. Downing, I should like to thank you for arriving so very promptly, and on such short notice, too. It’s very kind of you.” Her voice was predictable sounding, a pretentious aristocratic ring to it.  

“Oh, not at all,” I responded, “it’s easy as could be, Mrs. Biddleman. I’m sorry, though, for intruding on you, and that I didn’t speak up. I didn’t know you were in the room at first. The sun!” I laughed. “My eyes weren’t used to the dark yet. A very stupid start to a case for a detective!” I looked down at my hands in my lap and chuckled in self-deprecation. My voice was a little nervous.

“On the contrary, Mr. Downing, I must beg your pardon — I was the one who neglected her manners. I was meditating overlong. I apologize. But you needn’t worry, Mr. Downing, I don’t really believe it all. But you no doubt perceived my efforts?”  

“Well, yes, I did, Mrs. Biddleman, after a while,” I replied, “and I really was taken by your meditating. Maybe I should learn it myself! Got to relax sometimes, that’s what I always say!” She beamed and smiled beatifically. I think she liked me. I wasn’t really gonna try it, though, I just said that. Being nice sometimes makes people say more than they should.     

“Indeed yes, young man!” she said eagerly, “It works wonders for the spirit in these times of trial! I feel transcendently serene after my morning efforts. Do you know, the Dalai Lama meditates six hours a day?” Putting her hand on her upper chest as if to calm herself, a feminine habit of hers I came to notice in time, she then exclaimed, breathlessly, “Goodness me!” (Effulgent praise, to be sure, but ”transcendently serene?” O, dive thoughts!) She continued presently, the kindness in her eyes turning serious now:    

“Mr. Downing, I’ll relate to you now why I called you. It’s my Ingrid. I’m concerned for my dear lost daughter, my foolish Ingrid. I’m concerned for her very safety. She’s twenty-eight, but she has a wild streak, shall I say, and she also has an awful boyfriend, this Rodriguez fellow in a drug gang downtown. He’s horrid, Mr. Downing. I think he’s a murderer and a drug-sniffer. I want you to investigate him and I want you to discredit him and I want you to find him guilty of murder so my Ingrid will forget about him. I believe he committed the murder in the park the other day, and I want you to gather the evidence and give it to the police so they can use it for the guilty verdict!” Now, is there anything else you want me to do? Light your cigarette, maybe? Wow! This was amazingly detailed for any client to be. (Not complaining.)  

“Well, Mrs. Biddleman, that’s a tall order, you know,” I began slowly, “I’m sure the LAPD homicide unit and forensics team have already gathered all the evidence and will move to make an arrest. They probably already have a good idea of who it was, or at least of who is close to who it was. There aren’t a lot of different patterns that come up. It’s surprisingly uniform. They know who they’re up against, I would bet, and it’s just a matter of playing a little chess game to make it come out clearly. They know the lay of the land and who the likely players are.You have nothing to worry about. The wheels of justice grind slow, but they do grind.”

I sat back and waited. I suspected that what I had said was a horse that wouldn’t run, as far as she was concerned, and, indeed, she sighed, annoyed, and then countered:

“Mr. Downing,” her tone evincing a little impatience at this point as she sighed, “we both know the police have always had their own reasons for what they do. They do as they please in this world. Who would stop them? Who would presume to police the police? If they find out it’s a gang-fellow (and how could it be otherwise?), they’ll just arrest anyone they wish in the gang. It doesn’t matter to them which one. But it does to me — Ingrid is in love with this wretched Rodriguez. I want you to supplement them and their information so they arrest the right one this time. They’ll believe you. It’s this Pancho Rodriguez — that is the one who did it.” She spoke with conviction, to say the least. I lifted myself up in the chair from slouching.   

“But how do you know so certainly it’s exactly this Pancho guy?”    

“Because he’s horrible, Mr. Downing — believe me, sir! I know him personally, haven’t you been listening? And because he had to be in on it: it’s his gang, he’s the chief of it, he’s the chief of the horribles!”    

“The ELD — the East Los Diablos?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr. Downing, the very same. I do believe that is the correct name of those hideous, vile people.” She crossed her legs slowly in her leather chair for the first time, pronouncing “correct” by trilling the r’s. Her countenance was ruffled with the emotion, and so was the white dress she was wearing that was like a wedding gown.

She went on: “I want you to rid my dear lost Ingrid of him since she is too far gone to manage it herself. She is utterly a cocaine addict.” I had to turn my head away from her and gaze out through the window past her head onto Colorado Boulevard and its traffic. Things seemed so normal out there, in contrast to what I was listening to now. Traffic whizzed by, heedless, on its way somewhere innocently in the bright, friendly sunshine. In a few months the Rose Parade would come meandering by — but not now, not in the heat of July with a gang war raging. Mrs. B. grew quieter, and adopted an historical tone:

“Mr. Downing, my husband, Phineas Biddleman, came to Pasadena in 1933, during the Great Depression. He was a child of three years of age. His father, Asa, was an oil man in Wyoming, and he followed in his father’s footsteps. We became rich, and we lived well. Life was wonderful. Southern California was the jewel of the country. Everyone wanted to come here. Then came these awful times, this violence, this Brave New World. My husband was unable to compete with the bigger companies, and he foolishly and stubbornly refused to sell or merge.

“We have surely fallen on leaner times, I concede, but I expect you to bring a little justice to us at least. Grind away, man! I want this man’s head on a platter! This Rodiguez! I want Ingrid free of him!” Mrs. B. glared a bit. Fire was in her eyes. This gal wasn’t kidding, and she knew what her opinion was. You couldn’t get the upper hand on her, too smart. So, eventually, after a little more back and forth, I agreed to see what I could do for Ingrid. I agreed to investigate this imbecile Rodriguez dude.

We were just about to close the meeting. But behind me, as I sat on the dark embroidered cloth of the walnut chair, the great oak door to the library cracked open a tad. In slid a small, lithe cat, except that it was not really a cat at all — it was actually a very young girl, doing all she could to look older than her twelve years, unsuccessfully (if you’re twelve, you’re just gonna have to live with it). It turned out to be Mrs. B’s daughter.  

She kept to the walls, moving laterally, eyeing me relentlessly, checking out what I looked like. She already knew what her mother looked like. And a very small, white, Bichon Frise dog had come in with her, a quiet, cute, and worshipful thing. Very unassuming creature, just glad to be included at all. And the girl knew every inch of the library, easily avoiding, without ceasing to stare me down, the green, Byzantine-patterned chair up against the mahogany panels which rose to the eleven-foot high ceiling.

This girl looked at me a ton, implacably. I glanced at her a tiny bit, quickly. She was slender, about five feet tall, athletic and svelte, wearing pistachio Capri pants, flat shoes, and a short-sleeved white top ending over the thin waist. She had long, long mahogany hair, straight as a string, like the long grooves in those mahogany panels against which she stopped, fifteen feet from me. Her delicate, fluffy dog, plodding along like a walking bathroom slipper, followed her everywhere, looking up at her from her ankles, waiting for instructions. Mrs. B. was indulgent, but not too.

“Are you talking about my sister?” the girl asked, calmly, like a grizzled, experienced trial lawyer. She took five slow steps towards me after speaking, looking deep into my eyes. (The famous Magic Johnson look-off pass was decidedly not her style.) I looked at Mrs. Biddleman briefly, then said, with mock gravity,

“I’m sorry, Miss, that’s confidential. But may I know the name of such a pretty girl?”

“Aly, don’t bother Mr. Downing, he’s–” 

“What’s ‘conn-fee-den-tial’?”

“Oh, no, please,” I replied to Mrs. B., ”it’s OK; she’s not bothering me at all.” I then smiled benevolently, trying to smooth the rift between mother and daughter. I went on: “I’m sure you know what ‘confidential’ means, Aly,” I said amiably.

“I do not,” she insisted.

“Yes, you do,” I resisted.

“No, I don’t,” she persisted.

“Are you holding out on me?” I asked her, joking.

“Don’t say that.”

“Aly!” Mrs. Biddleman exclaimed, horrified.

“You’re right, Aly, I’m sorry,” I conceded: “You’re certainly right — I thank you for pointing that out to me…..but do you spend a lot of time with your sister?”  

“No!” she said abruptly and decisively, as if everyone knew something so obvious, then walked fully up to where I sat, put her hand possessively on the arm of the very chair, leaned down to my face, and put her eyes about two inches from mine, like she was an eye doctor now. She absorbed herself in looking at the sides of my eyes as I looked over, amused, at Mrs. B., who sighed irritably at the interruption. Aly was so serious and so painstaking as she examined my eyes, so totally deadpan, that I couldn’t help chuckling. She had a likeable charisma.

Soon she was putting both hands on the arm of the chair, in single file, and still searching in my eyes for something, when she suddenly leaned forward confidentially (I was right!) with the news: “You’re outside a lot.” 

“Oh yeah?” I answered, “How’d ya know that?”

“Your eyes aren’t completely white anymore,” she answered, with finality. Her eyes were mischievous and confident of their wisdom.

“Well,” I smiled, “you’re right about that, Aly. You’re smart to notice that. Are you some kind of detective person?”

“Yes,” she proclaimed, “I read Encyclopedia Brown.”

“Really?!” I said, sitting up enthusiastically, “I love those books! I read them too when–”

“Aly! Leave us! We’re discussing business, and this is no time for a young girl’s silly shenanigans!” Mrs. B. was venting. ”Take Flapper out in the garden and be a good girl, please!” Aly slumped a little for the first time, her posture flagging a bit, but she shot me another deadpan, conspiratorial look as she slid her hands over the cloth of the chair upon exiting: “Don’t betray the cause!!!” her eyes said to me. I nodded knowingly in assent.

Aly thereupon picked up ol’ Flapper and went out unceremoniously. Flapper barked a little out in the hallway in excitement at going outside. Then I had to scream a little myself outside in the car as I finished the meeting and left the house and got back in the Corvette: the sun had made the steering wheel and the ignition switch super-hot to the touch. I could barely start the engine the switch was so hot. It was about a million degrees in that car. Anyway, now I had to go talk to dear Ingrid (and to Aly, too, but later.) Mrs. B. didn’t mind. She said that Ingrid lived in South Pasadena, a completely separate city from regular Pasadena. Well, old girl, old South Pasadena, you’re so chic, so haute couture, so nouveau riche…..you’re so something that begins with “R”….gosh, I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. I’m at a loss for words. But at any rate, in short, it was now South Pasadena or bust.

…..to be continued…..

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Saturday

February 12, 2011

eight reasons

why the welfare state

won’t work

(1) It breaks the connection between productivity and reward, between laziness and missing out. You really have the right to do that?

(2) It confiscates legally acquired wealth and gives it to those who have done nothing to earn anything.

(3) It centralizes power in its own hands in order to gain momentum for itself: but that’s surely too much power in too few hands.

(4) It slows economic growth.

(5) It creates bad attitude, an entitlement attitude, an attitude looking for a program rather than looking to self-reliance. This attitude is based on fiction, and thus it undermines moral character.

(6) It diminishes a sense of personal liberty, since the government is involved in just about everything – too much is mediated by the impersonal touch of government. I don’t need some government program in my shorts.

(7) It’s an attack on our Constitution and on the meaning of the American founding
in that it goes back to Woodrow Wilson’s book of 1885, Congressional Government, in which he says the Constitution is out of date and inadequate to the task of governing. Are you kidding me? You have the authority and the smarts to rewrite the US Constitution?

(8) The real reason for the welfare state is not altruism anyway, but power-seeking: Politicians compete for your vote by offering you programs, jobs, handouts, etc. It’s all motivated by the desire to erect a patronage system. Goodbye, soul of mine, in other words.
   

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”

– Federalist 51

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Saturday

January 29, 2011

Egyptian Protests

When the Chinese filled Tiananmen Square in 1989, we supported them. Nothing really happened to reform the Communist Party in Beijing, though. When protesters filled the streets more recently in Tehran, Iran, we supported them, too. But nothing really happened to reform that government, either.

Now protesters fill the streets of Cairo, and so we support them as well. But, again, nothing is really going to happen to change things in those countries. There might be cosmetic changes, maybe even the premier will have to step down in an extreme case, but still the ruling class will continue in power as before, and the oppressed will still live the way they always have.

These protests don’t aim at the ruling class, but only at the government, and that’s why these protests fail. The larger point for us Americans is that, since we don’t realize that the protests are almost always destined to fail, we just get people, the protesters, in trouble when we support them. Given that we do not possess the will to go in country and really eliminate the ruling regime, we should just shut-up.

That is to say, our existing foreign policy, in which we verbally (and very publicly) support the protesters, but don’t really do anything substantive, could truly be called: “speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That is absolutely the worst mistake you can make in foreign relations.

Either crush the ruling class or do nothing at all – those two moves are both defensible moves. But by all means don’t, on the other hand, just talk a lot and then do nothing forceful or compelling. That failure only gets the protesters in a heap of trouble with their government since they are now branded as pro-American, and an international confrontation has been set in motion.

In addition, we must remember that the protesters are naïve and think that when the US supports them in front of the entire world, good things cannot fail to happen. But they are in for a shock when, at the moment of truth, our foreign policy establishment quietly draws the curtain and retires from the scene, leaving those “pro-democracy” demonstrators to their grisly fate with a brutal government.

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Wednesday

January 26, 2011

Why Nation-Building

Can’t Work

(1) You can’t impose your goals on others as if they were simply empty vessels for you to fill. Alexander the Great tried to Hellenize the world he had conquered, but to no avail: That world threw off the Greek customs just as soon as he died. To think that foreign people have no preexisting customs or goals of their own is hubris, thus let us learn from the mistakes of Alexander.

(2) To impose democracy on foreign people or to nation-build in their country is a utopian impossibility. Where are you going with this? Do you actually imagine you’re going to impose democracy on the entire world? Do you know what you would have to do to accomplish that, the amount of force that would be required?

(3) The project of nation-building is a cop-out: We only engage in it so as to cover-up our lack of will to really take care of the problems we have with certain other countries in the world. In other words, we are afraid of killing the somebodies in troublesome countries and so we content ourselves with killing the nobodies. We have the deadpan nerve to call that wisdom.

(4) Nation-building actually keeps alive the very problem it was slated to take care of. In other words, when you go in to nation-build, you naturally keep the domestic factions apart and thereby prevent them from coming to a settlement among themselves. The very logic you’ve set in motion by invading you then prevent from being played out to its conclusion. This then keeps the existing ruling class from being defeated and annihilated. You’ve kept the troublesome people in power by sheltering them, and you’ve essentially taken their side by nation-building. (If you had the sense to simply crush that ruling class, you would certainly also have the sense to leave forthwith after that, and not get involved in their domestic tangles.) And oh, yes, please don’t mention elections sponsored by us in the foreign country: I just ate, and I don’t want to vomit. Clean clothes, you understand.

(5) It’s too indecisive. Americans naturally want short wars, not long drawn-out ones. Nation-building gets indecisive for two reasons: Domestic factions in America will start to clamor, with some of them taking the side of the enemy. This will pressure our government to be more gentle with the enemy, that is, with the ruling class, the foreign regime, than is necessary to defeat it. This will draw-out the war. Also, to nation-build, you must use the military as a police-force, to act as crowd-control basically, and it is most certainly not that type of animal. The purpose of a military force is to crush. But this mere policing will result in a stasis that draws things out, too. In fact, it’s the actual image itself of drawing things out: The military reduced to patrolling the streets indefinitely.

(6) It harms our national security. We will use up our resources in a mistaken, profligate way, and in addition simultaneously spout pieties about universal peace. The latter activity makes us sitting ducks for the unscrupulous, who will take advantage that we are not pressing our own advantages or emphasizing our self-interest. We will get taken to the cleaners by eschewing natural self-regard.

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Tuesday

January 11, 2011

poem

   The high cloud table

Of the orange sunrise,

Admonishing us into silence

As it glows through

The limbs of sycamore and ash,

Stops time in its tracks –

But merely a moment, my love

____________________________________________________

Friday

January 7, 2011

Winter poem

The dark of winter reigns,

And it’s late now

Judging by the perishing sky,

But still I linger alone

In the piercing cold;

Out with the mountains

And with the stars,

With the desolate ether

 Of unmoving midnight,  

Still stubbornly alone, like an animal,

I remain;

With nothing but the owl

To perceive

In the horrible stillness,

I truly have nothing but

The shudder of those wings

In my heart

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Thursday

January 6, 2011

On Big

Government

The big government model is a wrong turn. As it takes over the responsibilities of the individual, it undermines personal morality by relieving the individual of accountability. It effectively eliminates competition, and thereby eliminates the chief motivator to excellence. All this costs a lot of money, too – it will all be paid for through the seizing and confiscation of privately, and legally, earned wealth.

If you think it’s all okay because it’s the right thing for government to do, that it’s the moral thing to do, the humane, altruistic, idealistic way to go, then you are a gullible dupe. In fact, of course, there is no moral obligation to be in favor of big government at all, or in favor of its various programs.

Big government is not what it claims to be – it says of itself that it’s helping the disadvantaged, the oppressed, but that’s just talk. It’s really a patronage system. It’s a system of favors sought and favors granted. As it grows bigger and more multi-faceted, it concomitantly increases its power to dole out largesse and it further ensconces itself and its members in a guaranteed life-style, sheltered from the empirical world.

For example, the issue of global warming – it clearly is false, exaggerated science, designed to lure more people into the tentacles of government, into being government clients, and is therefore designed to make them dependant on government. The same is true of Obama Care and gay marriage – a disingenuously emphasized issue is put before us, with a putative moral obligation to agree, but it’s all untrue.

In reality you are being taken for a ride: you give them your personal liberty and your personal integrity and the freedom of your mind in exchange for not much, just a subsidized life at the expense of the private sector.

This thinking seeps into our foreign policy, too. That is, a strong policy of international relations needs the will to seek outright victory at times over the neighborhood bully, and not just stand pat forging compromises with him (he is, after all, merely a child testing the limits of his parents).

But, with a government dedicated to favors and patronage and subsidies and clients, are we really capable of mustering the will to win from the Oval Office or from the State Department? Or will we rather just seek out more ways to grant favors and reach a paltry settlement with those who threaten us?

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Monday

December 20, 2010

Hibernal poem

A frost in the dew covers all

the abandoned landscape,

sighing a lonely lament

for me of lost joy

and lingering heartache

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Saturday

October 23, 2010

The Diverse Meanings

of the

French and American

Revolutions

The difference between the two revolutions consists mainly in the French Revolution being concerned to create a nurturing government structure for the purpose of providing services for citizen-subjects, whereas the meaning of the American system was to create a wholly new manner of citizenship based on self-reliance. The American Revolution was fought on behalf of personal freedom and responsibility and therefore rejected the welfare-statism of Europe, which takes away the illustrious status of citizen and replaces it with the status of mere subject.

But we are losing the meaning of our revolution here in America – we have a superior system at first view, in that individual accomplishment can be pursued, but our country is now ever more rapidly turning into a patronage system just as in Europe. We are turning in and exchanging the meaning of our own revolution for that of the other one, the inferior one. So it’s not so much merit now that matters, or individual worth, but instead the lucky state of being connected to people who are in positions of power. Thus, the larger government grows, all the more does it become a system of corrupted patronage. That means a culture of recriminations.

We lost our way in foreign policy first, with Woodrow Wilson, who was a good man but a naïve, ego-driven one. He believed America should spread (read: smear) its democracy all over the world through the League of Nations. This is mistaken, we now see with the hindsight of historical vision, in that it’s about as possible as landing a man on the sun. That is, the vast majority of the globe is governed by a thuggish system, not by the rule of law and respect for the rights of property. There is not a peaceful transfer of power. “Who can do what to whom” is the dynamic that rules most of the world, as Lenin put his own view of how things should be done. We are in danger of taking on that same state of affairs in our country, which was originally meant as a refuge from that type of thing.

We should content ourselves in foreign policy with merely protecting our own, and be loath to get involved in the local politics of miserable places. If you think we’re helping oppressed people by intervening, then you don’t understand that their system is a game of King of the Hill. We’re just helping the underdog thug at the expense of the reigning thug. Nation-building is a wrong turn; it’s a horse that doesn’t run.

We lost our way then in domestic policy with Herbert Hoover and FDR. The latter, of course, implemented the gigantic welfare state that consumes an enormous part of our GDP. This welfare state has a voracious, rapacious appetite for dollars, in addition to creating a system of favors sought and favors granted. It breeds dependence and bad attitude (some of it justified, actually), and ruins everything that was formerly based on free competition and merit. It creates a ruling class, in sum. The mentality of “It takes a Village” is really one of government usurpation of personal and family issues. The talk about “unity” is the same thing – smoke and mirrors for depredations and for expropriations of personal and family life by the Brave New World of modern governance. If you think you’re working for idealistic motives and for justice, then you are unaware that, high above you, you are in reality merely working for a patronage system of entrenched interests.

Thus Barack Obama is the culmination of one hundred years of mistaken policy in America. He is armed to the teeth, to be sure, with fancy theories to prove he is doing right – but that’s exactly the point here: he’s armed with theories. The deleterious effects of theory on reality are blatantly discernable in the social malaise of our cities, and in the aggressive bad attitude that defends it. It looks as if the country the founders intended is gone forever, given over to the blindness of the French Revolution. Thus, Benjamin Franklin was once asked by a woman, “What have you given us?” Franklin answered, sensibly, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” (We didn’t.)

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Thursday

October 14, 2010

George Orwell

and

Franz Kafka

In Orwell’s novel 1984, a totalitarian state is already up and running. How did it come into being? What was the mechanism? The citizens in that sad country have absolutely no freedom whatsoever. The only reality is the state. Therefore, the greatest sin one can commit in this society is to have a relationship with another person, that is, you are forced into a situation that demands that your closest relationship be with the state and with its totalitarian managers.

Two people named Winston Smith and Julia fall in love and meet at their hideaway on the other side of town. The administrators are watching this in secret, it turns out, letting it go on for awhile. Then, one afternoon they burst in on the two, beat them, and arrest them. Their offense, of course, is in having a more intimate relationship with each other than with the shadowy government, personified by the fictitious Big Brother.

During interrogation, indoctrination, and torture at the hands of O’Brian, Winston breaks down under the threat of being sent to Room 101, and says, “Do it to Julia, do it to Julia!” At this point the state has won, since we witness a complete undermining of loyalty on Winston’s part for Julia. Now Winston’s most fervent loyalty is reserved for Big Brother and the state, and that’s why he’s spared Room 101. The totalizing government destroys friendly relationships, those relationships are its enemy.

In the old Soviet Union, in fact, children were encouraged to inform on their parents if the parents were not sufficiently ideologically correct. There was even a statue erected to little Pavel, who had done just that, informed on his parents. The point here is that when you give up responsibilities, when the state relieves you of the burdens of life in any way, you are giving to the state something in return: your relationships with people, with family and friends. The responsibilities that once were met by the family are now the purview of government.

In Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, Joseph K. is arrested and tried without knowing why. This is another warning about the arbitrary power of big government: they can do what they want to your life, you gave them the power to do so when you let the government take over the difficulties of living.

Big government wants something in return: your intimate relationships. It cannot allow a loyalty to something besides itself. When you hear people at an international sporting event chanting, “USA, USA,” you might feel a pang that something isn’t quite kosher. That’s your sense that the chanters are demanding your selfhood from you. Maybe they are, maybe not. But nationalism is not patriotism because nationalism is not citizenship. Indeed, nationalism is all they have in post-Soviet Russia and in the five central Asian satellites, former Soviet republics themselves. It is big government that is surely the path to weakened intimacy, to forcibly transferred loyalty. The totalitarian nightmare consists mainly in the loss of loved ones to an oversized, administrative, bureaucratic state.

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Monday

October 11, 2010

________________

A Foreign Policy

for

the Rest of Us

What follows is a basic rundown of what I believe is the proper conduct of international relations. I am indebted for the basis of this to Angelo Codevilla, a fellow of the Claremont Institute in southern California, and a frequent contributor to the Claremont Review of Books.

First realize that not all instances of peace are the same: There’s his peace and then there’s your peace. You can certainly get peace at any price – including that of your peace of mind – but that’s no way to live, with a gun to your head.

Don’t consider peace as something you are entitled to by right of birth – you have to fight for it and earn it. If you think of it as an entitlement, you will be loath to exert yourself for it, and will then surely lose it.

Don’t be too troubled at being disliked or even hated. Sometimes you have to do things that will alienate others, and they will not find you a particularly likable guy. No matter. Do it anyway. Your sense of yourself and of your freedom is more important than being universally well-liked. Besides, the latter is impossible.

Don’t try to change the world, that is, stay out of nation-building. The world doesn’t care about your paradigms, and will just use you. The majority of the globe is now and always has been governed by a system of “who can do what to whom,” as Lenin put his own view of politics. It isn’t governed by a respect for private property or for the rule of law, nor does it want to be. Stay away from democracy-promotion. Just punish the depredations, and then get out.

Don’t call for conferences and negotiations and summit meetings as a substitute for real resolution. The problem with the former is that they are used as a way to avoid real confrontation — but if you are to get real peace, you must eventually face hostilities unwaveringly.

Don’t show fear. That encourages your adversary to move in. Keep him back at a polite distance by exuding confidence and indomitability.

Don’t be self-destructive, don’t feel guilty about existing or about having a self-interest. Don’t capitulate to your adversary’s point of view all the time. It shows weakness to do so, and he’ll move in on you mercilessly.

Focus on the Somebodies, not on the Nobodies. We kill hundreds of thousands of nobodies to no purpose, when we could kill fifty times fewer people and get so much more out of it for our national security — if we would only concentrate on eliminating the regimes, the ruling class in renegade regimes, and forget to bother the non-entities.

Take advice from your staff with a grain of salt – they may have a personal agenda. For example, George W. Bush was too easily led by the Department of State to change the mission in Iraq to one of occupation, nation-building, and democracy-promotion. He also provided hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out private corporations on the say-so of the Treasury Department. He didn’t ask himself whether the advice was self-interested or not. He just acquiesced, he gave power to the same sort of people who had caused the problem in the first place.

Foreign policy primarily is the quiet art of informing your opponent what will happen to him if he doesn’t cease and desist. And if he fails to cease and desist, you must go through with imposing on him the consequences you warned of. International relations are not about being polite, not about calling for talks. They are rather about fighting for your peace in a world unequivocally given over to competition and strife. Speak softly and carry a big stick, indeed.

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Saturday

August 28, 2010

________________

Tony Downing’s

Opinion Page:

Thomas Sowell and his

Two Visions

In his book A Conflict of Visions, Sowell presents us with two philosophies for looking at public policy and social engineering: the unconstrained vision and the constrained vision. This analysis is fascinating and rewarding, and makes one feel that there is a new and unique way to view these things. One sets oneself the task of deciding where one stands on this, and then one is enabled to trace all one’s opinions in politics back to that paradigm. To say that Sowell has given us a helpful schematic is an understatement.

The unconstrained vision is represented by, among other things, Plato’s philosophy, the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Condorcet, William Godwin (the father of Mary Shelley), and liberals in general; the constrained vision is represented by Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, the American Revolution and US Constitution, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and conservatives in general.

The unconstrained vision believes that human nature is malleable, and can be indefinitely improved – but the constrained vision, on the other hand, believes human morality is unchangeable, and is not to be trusted. The former believes history has a destiny to reach, the latter does not, and that that is a positively dangerous idea anyway.

You see already how easy it is to find out where you stand. It’s interesting to note that the constrained vision has a bit of a disadvantage nowadays in attracting people to its ken: it has a tendency to assert unflattering things about the morality of the human race, and therefore about you, too. The unconstrained vision, alternatively, asserts quite a few nice things about you. One can see its attractiveness.

But I am a staunch believer in the constrained vision. I believe it faces reality and the grim standards thereof, and that the sooner we face this reality, the sooner we will be able to handle its various difficulties. The unconstrained vision is a fantasy world that keeps us in moral childhood. The welfare state of the present time is an example. How much weaker we are now than when we first became a nation, and wanted nothing more than just to have the right to pull our own weight!

So how do you feel about it? Unconstrained or constrained?

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Saturday

August 21, 2010

______________

Tony Downing’s Opinion Page

The Iniquity

Of the

Ground Zero mosque

The reason why the backers of the Ground Zero mosque want the mosque to be placed so near to the site where Islamism murdered so many Americans, is that the mosque can serve all the better then as a monument to the victory of Islamism over America that day. And Islamism, a pathetic, sick specimen of human reality, really needs to boost its self-esteem, having precious few accomplishments to boast of in the real world. The 9/11 attacks were the humiliated reaction of a group of people unable to accept their failure to kill the truth.

Last night on the news John Roberts had a report on the Ground Zero mosque along with a report about how many Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. Now, we all know the story that many people think Obama is a Muslim is an old story, and so the inference arises in the mind that John Roberts dusted this story off purposely, and merely wants to discredit those who are against the mosque: He coupled the mosque report with another report immediately about how bizarre it is to think Obama is Muslim. So, obviously, the same bigoted crazies who are against the mosque are the self-same who think Obama is Muslim. God ever draws like to like. But this is surely journalism at its absolute most unscrupulous. This is surely journalism brought to the fever pitch of activism and indecency.

I don’t happen to think Obama is a Muslim, but I do think he is too sympathetic to Islam, and not sympathetic enough to the America people. Enough with the false, nauseating moral posturing: We are not obligated, by any moral standard in the universe, to allow some ugly, disgusting mosque to come into the neighborhood of Ground Zero. The Imam Rauf is a fraud and a liar. If you don’t know that, you don’t know much. (By the way, he believes American society is “sharia-compliant.”)

Moreover, this mosque is for the purpose of blackmail: With this mosque in place, Islamism can practice its most favored art by saying to America, as did the Soviet Union with its missiles in Cuba: “I will stop intimidating you if you grant me concessions.” But of course that’s a lie: Every capitulation will lead to a progressively more confident and assertive blackmailer.

But if you still support this mosque, you are adhering to a fictitious, damaging moral principle for the sake of your vain, irrelevant ego, and you are caving in to the most odious, indecent, and violent extortion possible. Now, what’s the proposed name for the mosque? It’s “Cordoba House.” That’s the name given to Islamic conquest, to commemorate the eighth-century A.D. victory of Islam in Spain over Christianity.

We are being manipulated by our disingenuous moral and intellectual elites in the media, in academe, and in the courts, to give up all self-interest and to refuse to defend ourselves. But a much more healthy response would be for the body politic to be allowed its normal immunological reaction, and to run the good Imam Rauf out of town, as of old, on a rail, as he so richly deserves for his aggression, ugliness, lies, anti-Americanism, and moral turpitude.

Saturday

August 14, 2010

Tony Downing’s Opinion Page

President Obama Caves on

Ground Zero mosque

President Barack Obama has again capitulated to Islamism and has come out in support of the Ground Zero mosque. He claims that religious tolerance is his rationale.

But that is a depressing, disingenuous ruse to divert one’s attention away from the true reason he has so ruled. His foreign policy overall is one of accommodation of the enemy, in the belief that that enemy can be mollified if treated well enough. And that is true. They can be mollified eventually. But at what a price for our freedom!

Not all instances of peace are the same. We are giving up our peace and giving in to theirs – we will live with a threat, the sword of Damocles, as it were, hanging over our heads. In short, this decision to support the mosque, based on a misleading and cowardly narrative, is another despicable chapter in America’s history since the end of WWII in which we are more eager to please the enemy than in protecting the American way of life. This willful naiveté is culpable and outrageous. The dishonest pieties sound like the ignorance of the egotistical Ivory Tower.

Moreover, this decision speaks volumes about how Obama sees America: Just one nation among many, nothing special. But America is certainly unique: Our system is based on free competition and opportunity (just not for murderers), and it is one of the few nations to practice a constrained vision (Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions).

That is, most other countries have either the authoritarian system of Asia or the childish, unconstrained vision of Europe that believes anything is possible in human morality. But America, on the other hand, is remarkable in traditionally practicing a realistic, mature vision of moderation in public policy.

This decision of the president is nothing more than the sad, now all-too-familiar and all-too-human appeasement of the calculating, encroaching enemy, and yet another bizarre instance of affirmative action, parading itself as fairness. But how is it fair to insult the memory of the murdered Americans of 9/11? By erecting a tacky monument to the inspiration of the murderers?

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Saturday

August 7, 2010

________________________

Tony Downing’s

fiction blog presents:

A Joe Downing Mystery Story

The Education

of a

Bookworm

the following is fiction:

One Saturday morning I was coming out my apartment building, on my way to the grocery store (or something similarly scintillating). I didn’t have a case at the time, so I was pretty relaxed. Anyway, as I walked over to the curb to the Corvette, a guy I had never seen before lifted his head up from under the hood of his car. This car was parked at the curb, and was an old gray wreck of a thing, pretty hopeless looking, and it had been on the street in the same spot for days. It seemed like a 1970′s model, long and wide and low and confident. Primer spots all over it. I had concluded earlier that it’d been abandoned and would be picked up eventually by the powers that be.

The guy was tall and scruffy, wearing gray Dickies workpants, a dingy white tank top, and old sneakers of some sort that I didn’t really notice. He was about late-twenties in age, pushing thirty. As he lifted his head up to look at me, he bumped his head painfully against the inner surface of the open hood of the car, but smiled self-deprecatingly and rubbed the place on his scalp where the impact had been. He continued to look at me and smile amiably.

To be sure, his look was somewhat imploring. He appeared as if he was in a jam concerning the car, and needed somebody to pinch hit a little bit. I was just like a deer in the headlights, just kinda staring neutrally at him. He was inclined forward from the waist, over the engine, as he lifted his chin at me in both greeting and wordless supplication. I was annoyed at the interruption, but there was still an aura about him, he was a true vortex: he was a real homie, and I was just a whiteboy. I could prove my street cred to myself by talking with him.

He waited patiently, still looking, as I stood there deciding. The neighborhood was quiet right now, no activity whatsoever. No cars roared by, only inches from you, as they would tonight when we started flying. The luxurious trees hung over the sidewalk a bit here and there, what few of them there were. The ancient asphalt of the narrow lane was pretty maxed-out by now from neglect, practically white where it had once been sable black. The temperature even now promised it would be a hellish scorcher of an afternoon, even now at about 9am. 

Well, I knew that he had chosen me exactly because I was a whiteboy in search of confirmation. He knew that about me. He wouldn’t have bothered with anyone else. Others would have been too confident in themselves to respond. But I liked adventure, on the other hand, you know, that part about curiosity killing the cat, and I had become accustomed to it, not to say addicted, through my business as a private sleuth. I pondered on the spot. The air was still as could be, sorta encouraging me to say yes. No sound or breeze stirred the hot waves of heat beginning to rise up from the street surface. Nothing told me not to do it except common sense. Lacking that in spades, I walked over to him to see what was up.

…..to be continued….

Monday

August 2, 2010

Tony Downing’s Opinion Page

George W. Bush:

The Almost Great Man

George W. Bush was on the brink of forging a great foreign policy when, after having invaded Iraq with the intention of deposing the entire anti-American Sunni Baath regime in Baghdad, he was about to leave the country in the hands of the formerly oppressed Shia majority. But that didn’t happen. It should have, sports fans, but it didn’t, to our great regret.

Instead, America tragically embarked on a mission of nation-building, to no gain whatsoever for our national self-interest, and, with more than four thousand American lives lost, we are still at it after seven years plus. Why did this happen? Why did we change a correct course for a tragic one?

First, let me say that what America needs to do to solve its terror problem is precisely what Bush started to do: pull down the anti-American Arab regimes, starting with the Sunni variety in Baghdad, Damascus, and Riyadh, then hand power over to the newly-empowered, and get out after eight weeks in country. That’s it! Rocket Science: not! Bush started to do this, then stopped. He was on the brink of really doing something dynamic and forceful and useful. A real accomplishment. So what happened?

Saudi Arabia happened. They were soiling their robes with fear that a Sunni regime was about to really fall, and not just the henchman Saddam but the whole ruling class, and they panicked. They got in touch with the CIA and the Department of State in America, and convinced those that count that it would be a calamity of untold proportions if the Sunni fell in Iraq, that a general conflagration would ensue in the Arab world, etc, etc.

But who cares if there’s a general conflagration and the people rise up against their worthless masters? Who cares if the Sunni in Saudi Arabia fall? I’d love to see it. They are incapable of defending themselves against a kitten, they are corrupt beyond imagining, they can’t even get up out of a chair, so why do we prop them up? We get nothing out of it! Let them fall!

But Bush listened. He let State and CIA get to him. He was not his own man, and he fell short of greatness. So nothing has changed. It was all a waste. The soldiers’ sacrifice let down yet again. Win the war, lose the peace. Same old. Terror is just as strong as it ever was. It comes into your life primarily through the Sunni Arab regimes that sponsor it through their TV stations, through their laissez faire, through their domestic propaganda learned from their Nazi alliance in the 1930′s, and through billions and billions of petrodollars busily building anti-American mosques throughout the world. Had enough of the State Department? Had enough of Sunni regimes? Me, too.

Thursday

June 24, 2010

A Joe Downing Mystery

the following is fiction

Don’t Ask a Sinner about God

Part 2 of 2

I got back home about 2:15pm, and by then I had pretty much moved on emotionally from the bike-stealing incident. It was still nagging at me, but only a little by now. How long am I gonna hang my head about it? Forever? But as I got out of the Corvette, I decided to take a walk around the block, to see if I could see a bike-stealing cartel underway…..I would apprehend the wrong-doers immediately…..I would bring them to justice for their crimeful deeds…..I did have a sincere longing in me for something, though, a need to do something about it – I had something to prove to myself. I walked up the narrow sidewalk of smooth white stone. Some fairly mean streets, you could have an unpleasant time. All the houses were one-story, different pastel colors. The whole area was flat and suffocating, like rats in a maze, so there was a sense of falsity, of being on a movie-set. At the corner I turned…..what? Left? Quiet weekday, middle of the afternoon. I could hear some music. As I got closer, it was easy to recognize Dre’s voice singing:        

Now let me welcome

everybody to the Wild Wild West

a state that’s untouchable,

Like Elliot Ness

Some G’s were hangin’ in the front yard of one of these close-packed houses. This one was a cheerful yellow and it was where the music came from. They looked at me as I went by. Gettin’ noticed. They were both amused and curious about me, I think. They were probably slightly bored, and wanted to play a little cat-and-mouse with me.

“…..sucker ain’t got shit…..” was the missive one of them breathed at me as I strolled past. I glanced reprovingly at him some in return, without alarm, just to show-up for the game a little. He was shirtless, with shaved head, the usual insignia on his skin, and his white jeans were worn down pretty low, revealing gleaming, overflowing white boxers. It was all about the boxers for him.

But was there the slightest trace of uncertainty on his face, after insulting me and therefore making himself vulnerable? I had answered the insult to some extent, had let him know there was a limit. And I had done it immediately. But it was still amazing to me, if he felt somewhat uncertain of me. But I kept on toolin’. What was I gonna do to more-or-less real G’s? Who were just drinking beer and listening to music, anyway?

Oh well, no bike-cartel on the horizon. I hung it up. Those guys back there were most likely assholes, but at least they had a defiant ego that was admirable, taken in isolation. They were better than capitulators maybe, even if they were evil jackals. If they could somehow be turned? With all that pride, energy, daring, and longing for self-esteem and glory?

Back home in the driveway, Ernesto and Juan were playing dodgeball. They asked me to join, which I did. They made me stand farther back since I throw harder. They like the hard-throwing, though. It’s boring otherwise. They laughed and gyrated and shouted and cheated and accused and did everything else ten-year old kids do. I was a little down emotionally, but the game got my energy up and my blood flowing from the competition. Kids throw themselves into it so completely, it’s contagious.

A man walked through the game on purpose. I had seen him before, a newbie to the neighborhood. A real jerk and jackass, though.

“Got a problem?” he said, absurdly, looking at me, some fear clearly evident on his face.

“No!” I averred strongly, somewhat outraged. He kept on walking out the back end of the driveway around the back of the building to the cross-street. What a loozer. Ernesto and Juan laughed after he was out of sight, repeating sarcastically what he had said. We went back to the game. Juan, the elder of the two brothers, was especially competitive with me, just dying to nail me with the ball. I was too quick and sure-handed.

Then another man, this about 30 years old, came up to us about the same time that Ana, the boys’ little sister, about 6, was rolling by through the game on her bike, pink tassels dangling from the handlebars.

“Is that your bike?” the guy asked brusquely, pointing at her bike. She stopped, surprised. Fear enveloped her young face. She said nothing, frightened. The guy continued, just as rudely:

“My bike was stolen, and I think that’s it.” He ignored both me and the absurdity of his implication that a grown man would ride a child’s bike, and just stared at Ana. Ernesto and Juan closed ranks around their sister, shoring her up, circling the wagons.

“That’s her bike,” I said, coming over from the street-edge where Juan had deployed me. “I’ve seen her riding that bike for years,” I stated categorically. It was true, I had. Sure as anything it was her bike. The charge was ridiculous. He looked at me for the first time. I didn’t recognize this guy. He didn’t like me, that was clear from the chilliness of his eyes. He seemed to have arrived from up the street, up where I had gone walking. He glared. A fairly beefy guy, bad posture, unathletic, black stubble from about 10 days ago on his pasty, indoors face. He wore a black tee with Carlos Santana imprinted on it, black jeans, and white Nikes.

“My kid’s bike was stolen, and I think this is it,” he persisted, a bit too vehemently to be convincing, and he pointed at the bike again, as if racking up all those points on us. He kinda hovered over Ana. The kids were all nonplussed that someone could believe something so obviously a mistake. A new experience for them.

“No, it’s not your kid’s bike. It’s hers,” I said, coming closer. “She’s had this bike for a long time. I’ve seen her on it since forever,” I countered, stepping closer still, preparing myself internally. He looked at me, disgusted. He already knew by now the outcome of this, and it sickened him with the ego-blow. He walked away, resigned and furious, without a word. The kids looked at me without expression after he was gone.

“Well, are we gonna play dodgeball or not?!” I asked them. They smiled knowingly and started up again without a word. Ana recommenced her slow recon through the game, totally deadpan, drawing exasperated groans from her brothers. Watching all this, I felt affection for them for their spirit and for what they had to go through. Nothing could help them reach adulthood intact from here but their own heart-of-hearts and a ferocious love of life. No social program from on high would suffice — this neighborhood was a ship of fools and a rogue’s gallery. Hey! Dude! QED, asshole.        

The End

Thursday

June 24, 2010

A Joe Downing Mystery

the following is fiction:

Don’t Ask a Sinner about God

Part One:

That morning I was coming out of my apartment building down the steps into the street. I had taken a job recently at Hal’s 24/7 Burger Teepee as a dishwasher to help with paying the bills, and I was on my way to Rancho Verde for that purpose. It was 5:30am and autumn, so it wasn’t very light out yet. As I crossed the quiet, sleepy, residential street in Gorge over to my car parked at the curb, two men on 10-speed bicycles happened to be tooling by together. I had never seen them before in six-years-plus in this neighborhood. Well, sirs, how do you do, on your way to work, too? Or just leaving it? I noticed that one of them had one hand on the handlebars of a riderless second bike he was steering awkwardly, so there were three bikes in all.

As I passed in front of them, about 30 feet away, the man with the second bike in tow bore down on me hard as I looked over at him and crossed. He was trying to run me down, distract me, so I wouldn’t look at or remember his face. He clearly pumped-up his pedaling and ramped-up his speed so as to make me scatter, fast. It worked. I scooted out of the way spontaneously, as the complement of three bikes and two men whizzed by. They traveled at a good clip now after the more leisurely pace of before. I looked after them, astonished. All this took place without a word in the heavy predawn silence and gloom. All I heard was the gears of the bikes and the hum of the tires.

*******************************

A few minutes later, at work, I clocked-in at the computer and got to work on the dishes. The bright lights were pleasant. Not many customers yet. The waitresses cleared the dishes and scraped them off into a trash can, then put them in tubs for me. Not rocket science. I carried the heavy tubs to my sink ten steps away. First I had to spray them off, put them in rows in a little cubicle dishwasher up on the counter level, and then close the door and activate the dishwasher magic. The latter took about ten seconds. Lots of time for reflection. So, who were those fuckers? Were they stealing that bike? If so, did I know the kid who was victim? Homie-on-homie crime always held a fascination for me as a whiteboy, somehow, as if maybe they just do it to anybody, and not necessarily just to me. I leaned over my dishes with a bowed back.

I had a troubled conscience. I had done nothing. All I had done was save my own skin, and that at considerable cost to my pride. I kept going over the incident obsessively in my mind, employing different alternative scenarios as to what I could have done different. The one I kept coming back to was the one where I just stopped in my tracks in the middle of the street and let them do their worst. What would they have done? Run into me? Probably not – they would’ve tumbled, too. I could’ve pushed them if they had chosen that. They most likely would have taken some evasive action and cursed me. Maybe they would have stopped, maybe not. What would I have done at that crisis point? It’s all a moot point now…..

“Joe, angel, could you get change for me at the pay station? I’m sorry to bother you.” My dark ruminations were abruptly cut short by a most agreeable blonde intruder. It was Brandi. I’m not sure if she was in a relationship or not, but lucky guy, if so. She was, of course, one of the waitresses, and she had a bunch of 20′s in her hands that it was my job to turn into 1′s, 5′s, and 10′s. Would that I could turn them into Benjamins, though, and take her away to the sunny islands of paradise somewhere with no ill-mannered customers or dirty dishes. But she’ll probably end up with some heart-of-ice asshole who voted for the Brave New World. I’ll get left in the lurch, the way I’m going.

“Sure, Brandi,” I gushed, my heart hammering nervously against my chest. I reached out with shaking hands to receive the proffered bills. She smiled so benevolently at me she seemed the wisest soul in the universe, and her calm demeanor touched me. Her blonde hair was pulled back for work, revealing her face fully. So different from the man who wanted to run me down. I think the women who don’t have pretensions to greatness are sweeter and more significant. I just happen to like them better. They’re more like me.

“Thanks, Joe,” she whispered.

“No problem, Brandi,” I replied awkwardly. I proceeded then to the little shop, still on the same lot, which took care of the gas payments. Both the restaurant and gas station were owned by the same dumb lazy codger. The most difficult thing he did all day was waddle into the restaurant from the office to get his next meal. I had a slip of paper with Brandi’s instructions for the cashier (when he got around to it, that is). While I was waiting, I poked around the potato chips and stuff. On the counter over to the side, the cashier guy had left a crossword puzzle still a’building from the Los Angeles Times newspaper. 23 Down, kids: a six letter word, beginning with “C,” for an actor whose first name was: “Noel.” Could it be: “Coward?” Shit! The universe is after me! It knows! I returned to the restaurant and gave Brandi the change, no Benjamins.

…..to be continued…..

——————————————-

—————-

Monday

June 7, 2010

——————————-

The foothills raise their

Eyes without envy

Towards the mountaintops,

Now that the foothills are more

Accustomed to disappointed wallowing

——————————————————-

June 4, 2010

Originally: December 19, 2008

The following is fiction:

The Triangulation Station

For the second morning in a row, I didn’t want to get out of bed. The orange sun glowed portentously as it loomed beneath the rims of orange rock of St. George. The sun always thinks so much of itself. Patty was fast asleep, I was slowly awakening. Finally we were up and on the road, the Interstate 15 once more, our home away from home. My bee-stung hand was much better. I could touch my fingertips to my palms now, and my forearm was looking pretty normal. We both felt unsure now, though, that we had done right in stopping for the night. Was it too late to save Hodge’s body from dismemberment and mutilation? Tossed all over the four corners of Utah?

We hurried up the road, 80-90 mph. The State Troopers seemed to spend most of their time in border areas between the states — now that we were headed for the middle of Utah, we might be okay. It was Sunday morning at dawn, August 16. We stopped in Scipio to get a quick bite to eat, then we stopped in Provo to buy a new gun. Somehow mine had been misplaced, what do you know about that?

We got a new Glock 17, precisely nine millimeters of self-protection, at a place called “Rosie’s Guns and Industrial Supply,” of all things. Open at 10am even on Sunday. We didn’t speak very much as we rode, Patty driving, and I still in recovery. Fifty miles to go from Provo. As we drew near to the capital city, the Wasatch mountains surrounded us as if engaged in a pincer movement on us. The elevation rose to over 4200 feet. Then at last we rolled into Salt Lake City, exiting the interstate and drifting along nondescript streets until we hit the middle of the city, and the big black statue of Brigham Young. It was only about 11am. The Temple of the Latter Day Saints and the accompanying Tabernacle dominated our curiosity. Churchgoers in abundance. We sat at the visitor center on the Temple grounds.

“How do we find them in this huge city?” I asked, stupidly.

“We go to Spencer’s. We ask the druggies where is Manny.”

“I hope they get up and about early.” It took a little doing to find Spencer’s on the outskirts, in the less expensive part of town, since Patty hadn’t been there but once, and several years ago. But then finally there it was, the sprawling grocery store. No one hanging around outside, though. I went inside the store to buy a soda and some “health” food, as Dean Martin’s voice sang through the speakers embedded in the ceiling. I came back outside to lean against the car.

“Well, sugar,” I said, looking around at nothing in particular, “we’re at a standstill here.”

“It’s too early. They’re asleep still,” Patty answered.

“Yeah, noon is pretty darn early to get up out of bed.”

“Especially when you a druggie man.”

“Who’s that guy? Know him?” I asked her.

“Don’t think so, but let’s ask him about Manny.” We walked over a deserted street to The Golden Lotus restaurant, “closed for renovation,” where a slovenly young white guy was shuffling along in old, baggy jeans and filthy, blondish dreadlocks. He wore a baggy, industrial, button-up work shirt. Ready for the proletariat meeting. Somehow he had a girlfriend in tow.

Excuse me, sir,’ I started, “we’re looking for someone, a man named Manny Quintana. It’s very urgent — do you happen to know him?…..you could really help us out…..”

“Manny Coon-Tana? I don’t know no homie with no name like that.” Laughter.

“He’s our supplier…..D.D……we’re really hurtin’ bad…..can ya help us out, home?”

“Can you help me out?” he countered. Patty pulled out a ten, hiding her purse as she did so. (The bill itself was indiscreet enough.) She gave it to me to pass along.

“Does this make a dent, Dreadster?” Evidently it did. Two dirty, pink, soft fingers emerged just barely from a soiled sleeve, and snatched the bill away from me like a sewing machine bobbin at full tilt. He was a little annoyed, though — he had been expecting a double sawbuck, not a single.

“Park City.” That’s all he said. That’s all we get for a mere ten. We stood there expectantly in anticipation of more hints, but none came. We really should have pressed for more info, but we weren’t functioning at full tilt like the sewing machine was. It was an away game for us. The interstate takes its toll. Well, okay, so it’s off to Park City, then. It took a little while to get there since the maintenance crews were out in their orange regalia working on the Interstate 80 to Park City. Sunday was their best chance to get something done.

It was only about 20-25 miles but it was almost 2pm by the time we got there. The sun was dry and hot. How do we find Manny now in Park City? We had no leads. Just start askin’. We went to Arby’s for a sandwich. We talked to people. Other Arby’s people, like us. Nothing came of it. Our earlier optimism about finding Manny now seemed dumb. When we came out of Arby’s it was around 3pm. We were really depressed and tired.

“Let’s just go back to Salt Lake…..” I said, “I think our white homeboy back there just gave us a place far away so that he couldn’t be nabbed when it turned out wrong. We fell for it.”

“…..yeah, probably…..Joe…..I don’t feel good…..” The driving was getting to her.

“Let’s go get a hotel room in Salt Lake and do some real thinking for once…..” I took the wheel now. Patty rested, enjoying the view of the “Sasquatch” mountains. We checked into the Best Western hotel in Salt Lake, and collapsed from fatigue and frustration. We got cleaned up after catching 40 winks. It was 7pm. We had pretty much given up. Pessimism took us over as we got more comfortable. It had been several days now that Hodge had been missing, and the Rollerz had most likely done it all by now. 

The local newscast was on T.V., talking about the dragnet the Salt Lake P.D. had finished in the area near Spencer’s grocery store, the known stomping grounds for the illicit. The report expressed the anxiety that the area would again become the same haven.

“I guess that was the right place, at least. Just our luck they cleaned it out right before we needed it…..” Patty looked over at me.

“What are we gonna do?” she asked glumly. I sighed.

“Well, we’re here. We just try some more, and some more after that. Arty deserves better from us than this…..he saved you from those guys, so we gotta do that for him in return…..” Patty then said sharply:

“Let’s go to Spencer’s again. They’ll be there.” We drove over there, and, sure enough, she was right, a motley crew of addicts and nincompoops were gathered by The Golden Lotus. It was about 8 o’clock. Our white homie was holding court, and he gave us a knowing, coy smile, a smile sort of like, “what are you gonna do about it?” We walked over to  him.

“Hey, Dreadboy, we didn’t find Manny in Park City like you said.”

“Park City?! Dude, he’s in Ogden! Don’t you know that?” Uproarious laughter all around. The king was on. I just gave him the finger calmly, and we sauntered back over to our side by Spencer’s, the motley crew spitting derision at us. “What a world” went through my mind. I had to use the restroom, so I took Patty into Spencer’s with me — I wasn’t leaving her outside with that scum. We were at a standstill again.

We came back out of Spencer’s. But then, how to express it…..thunder rumbled in my mind…..the clouds parted, lightning flashed in my thoughts, a mixture of revelation and fear came over me…..what was on that toilet seat? What had I just seen?…..the etchings…..those little gang scratches etched onto the toilet seat…..I bolted back into Spencer’s, dragging Patty with me, and jogged to the back of the store, getting glares as I brushed past the other shoppers. I had to get back into that restroom and into the stall before some dumb fool locks himself in for an hour…..

I pushed through the double doors to the loading dock, I skinnied past the tall metal crates with the abandoned stuff on sale for 2 cents, and then over to the stall door and into the stall. I threw down the toilet seat…..my eyes blazed with anticipation, and there it was, larger than life, in his quotation marks. We knew now how he had gotten his start in the nefarious arts:

“Caliente”

12th St. SLC

At last. It was unbelievably lucky. I couldn’t move at first. I just stared. But we knew where to go now. All we had to do was do it. We took State Street north back towards the Temple, on Patty’s instructions as the navigator.

“How do you know he lives on 12th?” Patty asked as I drove, “were you reading tea leaves in the toilet?” We got to 12th, and started looking for the big black Lexus SUV. Up and down we drove on 12th street. Tightly packed houses. About 9pm by this time. Everybody inside finishing up talking about 60 Minutes and getting ready for bed and ready for Monday. We, on the other hand, were already going to work. We had the night shift tonight…..and then, lo! there it finally was…..a huge, gleaming, black SUV with those orange Utah plates with
the Arches National Monument design.

Now, at last we knew we had arrived: all the way from Gorge to SLC to Park City and then back to SLC. We parked quietly in a vacant handicapped parking spot…..we might qualify for it later…..the burning sun had now descended upon Utah, mercifully, but the air still shimmered with waves of heat. It was dark, no street lights, and we fumbled nervously as we got out of the car.

We saw white Dread boy coming out of the illumination behind some glass double doors, a portent telling us that we were indeed in the right place, but that our visit had been announced by our good friend and staunch ally. Ralphie gets around, don’t he, though? He saw us and pretended to be annoyed, as if we were following him around SLC. He’s such an interesting guy, who wouldn’t? He grimaced, but moved on.

We entered the apartment building he had just exited. Is this a trap? It probably was. I guess Manny owned this building, too. We padded down the carpeted hallway. Very quiet. But here we go: Glock at the ready, Hearts pounding, Steps measured. We had to guess which door since there wasn’t any directory.

We listened for the voices: most doors evinced no sound whatsoever. Up and down the hall we walked carefully, just as we had driven up and down 12th street…..we felt heavy and numb with exhaustion…..was Park City a way of tiring us out? It sure had worked…..but then, in the near silence, some murmuring became evident, over there…..we approached carefully…..fear swirled in our chests and butterflies swarmed in our stomachs. It was hard to keep going for the anxiety. It was hard to concentrate and stay focused and efficient. Patty trooped behind me, staying near. But then she fell into me, quailing, losing strength from the fear…..and I could hear that guy Caliente’s voice…..I sure didn’t want to know it was really him…..I was hoping to hear an incongruent tone, a discordant something, to show it wasn’t him after all, that I was mistaken, and that we could leave, pride and integrity intact. But it certainly was him, unmistakably: the language, the voice, the creepy giggling – the unholy glee in that giggling could’ve woken the dead…..yeah, he was in there — Manny, too.

I took a breath…..I looked at Patty and nodded encouragingly and smiled lamely…..this is what we had driven 700 miles for, all the way from Gorge…..we stood before the very door…..I went up, sighing, and knocked on that thin-paneled door, behind which was big trouble.

There was a sudden, surprised cessation of movement from within. (Now they would believe Dread boy when he gave them a tip for his drugs.)  There was a long pause…..slow, cautious, getting-up sounds…..whispers, it was apparent strategy was being planned…..the door finally opened a crack…..a hideous face appeared in the yellowy light…..before me stood a man I knew, a deeply-disturbed man, one who had tried to kill me for interfering in his disturbance, and it was this Caliente, standing there big as life, as I also stood next to the woman who had saved my life from his little gun.

The face spoke: “What up, home?” This in his best, slow drawl. No sense of alarm or surprise or: “what are you doing here?” You could either burst into laughter or take off running.

“We need to talk to you, Cali. Let us in.” I could barely speak. I got it out though, in a husky tone. Must’ve been the nerves, distorting my voice. Cali smiled a bit, sardonically. There was a melodious voice then from deeper within the room…..instructing Cali…..Cali yielded to these directions without ever having turned around from us, and then opened the door wide for us, with a resigned manner, curiously elegant for a man so irrational and violent.

We walked through the proffered space without making a sound, right through a brief, enclosed entryway, and then turned right into a spacious room. We then looked before us and found ourselves suddenly gazing upon a man of about 40 years of age, extremely brown and muscular, who possessed sharp, chiseled, classic facial features. He wore a tight-fitting, radiant white tank top, haute couture blue jeans, and white Nike high-top leather running shoes; he had tattoos covering him solid from his neck and shoulders down to his wrists, his hair in the form of a single, sleek, jet-black braid stretching down to his waist. He sat comfortably and confidently upon a dark brocaded couch embroidered with byzantine-like patterns — a gun was cradled familiarly and casually in his hand, as he tested the balance. The gun was like his alter ego, so affectionately did he caress it. But this was surely Manny Quintana, head of the DGC Rollerz and king of the Rocky Mountains, too. I admit I was taken aback. He was indeed formidable. He looked like the most violent dude in the universe.

“You must be the Down Syndrome, or the Downing Syndrome, that is.” He stared at me, bemused. His voice was deep and resonant, smooth and charismatic. Judging from the emptiness of his sensuous, brown eyes, you could sense he was a killer. Everything about him glistened, like a woman. He motioned to Cali, and spoke quietly.

“Juanito, sit with me.” (That was Cali’s real name? Juanito?! Oh, man! I began to remember from the prostitute-ring case.) Caliente obeyed wordlessly and sat on the brocaded couch. Now Manny motioned with a jerk of his chin towards me, and spoke again:

“What are you doing here, and why did you bring that thing?”

“We’re looking for her husband. He’s gone missing…..we think he might be dead.”

“Oh…..?” Manny answered, “doesn’t he live in Portuguese Hills? Why come up here?”

“You’re a business partner of his…..’ I replied, “we’re asking around…..even that Dread boy thing of yours. So, dude, ya seen Hodge lately? Know anything?”

“About the business? About Hodge’s business? Isn’t that what you really want?” Cali snickered at Manny’s sublime (or just ‘slime?’) wit. I glanced at Cali. I went on, going with it:

“Well, yeah, home…..about the biz.” I paused for effect, then continued with, “you know, for example, I was wondering, how do the drugs– I mean, the products, get into Catalina? Why no problemo there?” Manny and Caliente looked at each other, amused. (They could tell us but then they’d have to kill us!)

“Because there’s no unloading, that’s why ‘no problemo there,’” Manny began, explaining that “a boat comes from Nicaragua, with product from Brazil, which originates in Asia, and meets our boat coming out from Catalina, and they transfer the cargo at sea from their boat to ours. Then our boat just goes back to its slip in Avalon Harbor at Catalina. Just a little pleasure cruise.”

“Oh…..! Hodge’s idea?”

“Everything was his idea. That’s why the motherfucker wanted too much.”

“But what about the waterline?’ I protested, “won’t someone notice eventually that the waterline is always coming back a lot higher on the hull as the boat is weighed down by the drugs?”

“Nope — we took care of that. We just put weights in from the other boat — we just trade cargoes — the product for the weights.”

“Oh, so there must be a lot of weights accumulating in Nicaragua.”

“What?”

“Yeah, D.D., the weights are always going to Nicaragua and never coming back from Nicaragua.”

“So?”

“Just a little flaw, babe. Eventually you’re gonna run out of weights stateside, and then Manny crash-and-burn, motherfucker. Whaddya gonna do then, asshole?” Patty grabbed my arm and squeezed, remonstrating. We sat uneasily on a couch opposite Cali and Manny. The tan carpeting had dark, angry stains of some sort from long ago. I was pushing my luck purposely so he would say something impulsive out of anger, something about where the body was. Well, I had my new Glock, anyway. I could feel it against my skin. Manny then nodded his head gravely, in mock high-seriousness, and the gloves were totally off now. He spoke soothingly, with great concern for all creatures:

“But, ya know, homie man, yeah, actually I did see Hodge just the other day, in fact…..yeah…..” Manny nodded his head significantly, and wagged his finger in the air knowingly, as Cali burst into spontaneous and uncontrollable satanic laughter at the show.

“What…..?” I said weakly. I blanched. I anticipated the worst now. My confidence was gone, and a sinking feeling came over me. Patty pressed against me hard, clutching my arm frantically, her head in my shoulder, her soul in purgatory. We were gonna face the music now. Manny played it out:

“Yeah, you know, I did see him…..gosh darn it, I did, I really did…..now — Juanito, I can’t remember exactly, so you tell me – you have a better memory than me: was Hodge going through that giant paper shredder or just through a regular, humongous brush chipper when we saw him whizzing by, all red and shit?” At this Cali positively exploded into inane giggling again and Patty cried out. Cali thereupon redoubled his mirth, seeing Patty’s suffering.

“Fuck you, scum!” I said, standing up, livid with rage. Patty pulled me back down, pleading and crying. Cali calmly responded for Manny:

“You’re gonna end up dead with a prick in your mouth if you keep talking like that.”

“Oh, is that right?” I replied, disagreeing, since “I was thinking you was gonna end up dee-myzed with a hole in your fuckin’ forehead, little bitch…..”

“Don’t blame us, Downing Syndrome,” Manny said tranquilly, “the Portuguese did it, not us.” I was now confused in addition to everything else. Cali was smiling and fingering my USC cap, producing it from somewhere. Manny went on:

“We just took him to Catalina, alive, like we wuz told, and the cops did the rest.” Confusion and revulsion then flooded me at once.

“…..wait, wait…..” I said, gesturing, “you didn’t bring the body up here? In the SUV?” I wiped the sweat from my brow. I watched him.

“No, sir, Mr. Senor Down. The body went to Catalina. The cops told us to just drive up here to draw you up here after us. That way you’d be out of their hair while they whacked Hodge and we whacked you.” At this cue, Caliente suddenly threw my cap at me with all his might, hitting my face with it, then pulled his gun on me, and promptly shot me with the gun tilted sideways, twice in the chest and once in the leg. Manny and I both aimed simultaneously at each other, and I got Manny in the shoulder and stomach, using the Glock with my right hand. Manny missed me, just hitting the wall. I then pointed the new Glock at Cali, shot, and missed. Then I fell…..Cali, unhit, walked over triumphantly to me to finish me off with one to the face, but Patty jumped up energetically like a cat and scratched at his eyes ferociously, clearly trying to grab them right out of their sockets. She started screaming:

“Leave him alone!!! Leave him alone!!!” It was a tone of voice never heard before or since upon planet Earth, so desperate it was. Years of hatred for this man came out in one moment, this man who had made life a nightmare. Patty shrieked and screeched like a banshee during the fourth quarter of Armageddon…..she clawed and clawed at Cali’s craggy face savagely and repeatedly like a rabid animal…..her screams of rage shook the building and roused the Avenging Furies.

“Get awaaay!!!” she yelled, and flailed away at his face like a school of feverish piranha, while red lines and seeping blood appeared all over his face. He screamed in outrage.

“Bitch!!!” he informed the world. He tried to see her through the blood, to pummel her, to annihilate her, to crush her utterly…..one of his eyes was completely blinded by blood, detached horribly, and merely pointed at the nothingness, useless…..he punched and slapped and grabbed at the air, looking for her, desperate to knock her into next payday. Patty moved back nimbly out of range, then moved forward to attack. She finally stumbled with the desperate fatigue, then, hesitating some while underneath him, picked up his nine from the bloody floor and shot him dead, right through the forehead. His eyes gazed but did not see. With a shudder she got up and flicked the gun off her finger and onto his crashing body with a quiet thud, and then ran, sobbing bitterly, out the door and out into the hot summer darkness of  Salt Lake City. She wept for herself and she wept for the whole human race. I never saw her again.

***********************************

Manny and I were both in the ICU in a Salt Lake hospital for quite a while before recovering. The FBI Field Office for the West Coast finally got interested when Arty’s absence became clear at the golf course and at the Chamber of Commerce board meetings. The Bureau finally shut down the triangulation station and the business after nearly 40 years, and the Portuguese Hills P.D. was put under the supervision of the Gorge P.D. Manny eventually got the death penalty in Federal Court in Los Angeles for the Camacho murders, and I was subpoenaed like crazy: I testified everywhere.

And Hodge had, ironically, been nominated by the selection committee of the Peninsula Cities Commerce Association for recognition as the Portuguese Hills Peninsula Man of the Year, for his ongoing philanthropic efforts on behalf of Darfur and the mentally ill homeless of L.A. Needless to say, they yanked the nomination…..a guilt-ridden man, a complicated genius, a tragic, tortured, self-destructive figure of a man, he had paid with his life in the most gruesome way possible for his crimes and wrong turns.

His marriage to Patty had not included physical intimacy, since he was too much a gentleman to force himself on a woman who couldn’t possibly want him, but that marriage did certainly include ebullient affection, gratitude, and even a platonic love. Patty’s anguish at his death and at the manner of it was deeply felt, and sincere. He had been looking for redemption in something for a long time, and he had found a measure of it in saving Patty, someone in whom he saw something unsullied, from a life of further self-abasement.

I got back to my office in Gorge about a week into September. I walked into the bright white courtyard of the building. A little Golden Retriever puppy, just a few weeks old, tooled around sniffing, and toggled up to me happily as I reached down to pet it. The puppy took my wrist in both paws, and pretended an epic struggle. I heard Sammy’s voice behind me.

“Well, howdy, howdy, howdy…..haven’t seen you in a while. How’s everything, Joe?”

“I’m okay. Getting back to work, I guess — same old, same old, ya know?”

“I do know — I heard about the trouble ya had with them Rollerz.” I sighed.

“Yeah…..”

“They’s evil people. That D.D. fella is Lucifer, that’s for sure…..I heard about the good things ya done.”

“Well…..I could’ve done better…..” I lamented.

“You done just fine, boy. Be proud of yourself…..how are ya feelin’?”

“I’m okay. I’ll pull through. It’s all over but the mending.”

“And you will mend, Joe. God will see to that.”

“Thanks, Sammy…..” I was unable to say more.

“And you know what else?” he continued, “they done made it.”

“Who made what?” I asked.

“The Besiegers — in 2011, they’s Major League.”

“Oh, wow…..seriously?”

“Yes, suh. Mr. Cruikshank signed the deal today with Mr. Bud Selig. It’s all go and no stop. One more season in Triple A, and then the show in twenty-eleven.”

“That’s great.”

“That puppy’s yours, by the way.”

“–uh…..yeah, I guess I could take it…..seems to like me.”

“No, I mean it’s yours, Joe. Pretty Oriental lady came by looking for you, about two weeks ago, in an awful tall hurry — said it’s for you.”

“whoa, really?…..man, she’s out there somewhere.” I looked vaguely. Sammy went on, chuckling:

“She said it was a Golden Reliever, all over her new clothes.” Oh, Patty, you’re maybe going back to your Philippines right now…..to Manila, or….. wasn’t it Quezon City? If Patty can be redeemed, and I can be redeemed, then why not money, too? I’ll make sure it doesn’t go back to its old ways. She had paid me pretty well.

Sammy then walked up to the third floor, still spry and healthy at 75, to fix the faucet in the hall bathroom. I walked to my office on the second floor to catch a catnap on the couch. And the puppy? Let’s just call it “Rookie,” like the Besiegers in 2011.

*********************************

Blue waves roll in towards the shore of the Portuguese Hills Peninsula, and neighborhood children run awkwardly for the small crabs that scurry quickly out of reach. The children’s delighted peals of laughter at the strange creatures fill the beach, and the clean white surf mingles with the rocks with the energy of the first day of spring.

THE END

June 2, 2010  

Originally: December 13, 2008

   The following is fiction:  

The Triangulation Station

Part Three:
 

It was hot even in the morning in Deep Gorge City in August. The sunlight forced its way through my eyelids. I didn’t want to yield to it, or go back to the world. But it slowly was dawning on me that I had to. I opened my eyes, and saw Patty’s beautiful face. 

 “You need to get a new USC hat,” was her first salvo at me. She was sitting in a straight upright office chair, leaning over me kindly, as I lay on the old couch in the old office in the old building. I’m saying I felt lame, if you’re not paying attention again. I groaned, feeling sore and defeated, and propped myself up.

“That guy really worked me over…..and, well, I guess you could say I got rolled by a Roller.” Patty laughed as I came to full alertness from sleep. Hers was a surprisingly coarse laugh, more like a guffaw, and it made her even more likeable. A chink in the armor plate of her perfection. I smiled a little at the sound.

 “You’re very brave, like Arty. And I think you got stung by a bee, too.” She pointed to my left hand. It was swollen totally, from the palm up to my elbow, and very tender to the touch. I looked like the elephant man. 

“Wow…..I’ve always been allergic to bees, but that’s just ridiculous,” I said as I looked myself over, continuing, “did the rattlesnakes get me, too?” I asked. She just chuckled. (I hoped that meant “no.”)

“I better take something that will help with the swelling,” I said, “and you could’ve told me about that Caliente being there, Patty, you just let me walk right into an ambush.” I hadn’t raised my voice to her like this at the first meeting. She was so abashed, so ashamed, and so sincerely remorseful, I had to feel for her.

 “I suppose I shouldn’t take it out on you, though,” I said, “I’m really the moron who let him do it, and you did tell me it was the Rollerz.”

 “No, I’m sorry, Joe…..I blew it…..I know…..don’t be mad at me.” But it really was my fault, not hers.

 “I guess Caliente is celebrating right about now with that D.D. guy…..no more competition…..he thinks I’m dead, probably…..but what were you saying about my hat?”

 “The Portuguese police called when you were asleep…..they have your hat in custody…..and they know you’re involved now, Joe. They’re in on it, too…..they’ll be looking for an opening on you. You have to be careful.” I waved my hand and said,

 “Wait, wait…..the Portuguese Hills P.D. is in on it? In on the drugs, you mean?!”

 “Yeah…..” she said, and I sighed.

 “But what about that bullet I stopped from his stupid little gun?” I pulled my shirt up — painfully, mind you: “Is that still in me?”

 “No, I had a friend take it out Wednesday night. He’s a surgeon at Harborview. You were bleeding and bleeding — you were such a mess! But he won’t say nothing to nobody.” I could see the stitches now as I pulled my torn, bloody shirt up, a spot of blood here and there seeping through.

 “We better go to the All Drug now and get something for this. I’m off the charts over here,” I said, looking at myself, and then continued, ”I’m a southpaw, too, I can’t hold my gun like this…..the bee had to get me in the left hand…..so what day is today?”

 “It’s Saturday, homie. I came and got you Wednesday night with the surgeon. When you didn’t call, I figured you been hurt.”

 “I didn’t find Hodge, I guess you know that…..and you could’ve told me you’re in on the business! I had to find that out from that trash Cali. So is that why they killed Hodge…..he was in on it, too? Is that how you got in on it, or was it the other way around? Did you get him in on it? And who’s this surgeon? Do you…..you know…..have some kinda thing with him?”

 “You’re cute, Joe — but he’s sixty-five years old, and I’m married. At least I was. You’re jealous. And I’m not in the business. Not no more. I’m out. They hate me now. I just want Arty’s body back, so he can be buried right. He was good to me, and…..I’m sorry, Joe — I’m sorry I lied to you…..” I relented, knowing it was all my own incompetence, anyway, letting myself get pissed at that Caliente and losing focus on who he was. Patty was so sincerely remorseful, I felt bad for her that I had gotten hurt.

 “I guess at least you came and got me, I’ll give you that. I was so roadkill. You didn’t just leave me there like a dead dog. The cops would have, if they’re in on the biz, too. I suppose that’s the same thing we gotta do now with Hodge — just go pull him out so he doesn’t have to die like some dog in the gutter, or out in the weeds somewhere like me. Who knows what those guys would do to the body, and the Portuguese obviously don’t care. I’ll help you find his body if you promise to get out of that drug business.”

 “Done. Let’s go to drug market.”

 “Okay, but I can’t drive. Where’s the ‘Vette?”

 “Outside. We got it Thursday morning. They left it alone, but there was a parking ticket…..” she frowned a little, expecting some anger from me.

 “They actually gave me a parking ticket? After shooting me and leaving me to die? Oh, yeah, but it’s a hardball world!” I shook my head.

___________________________________

Coming back outside from the All Drug, Patty pulled the Corvette out of the parking lot, and I scarfed down 75mg. of the stuff for bee stings. We decided to see what we could see. We cruised around Gorge a little. The fresh, warm air of the morning was good for me after having had the crap beat out of me by a psychopathic thing that had also plugged me and tried to off me. It was mid-morning, Saturday, August 15.

 “I wonder why Cali only shot me once,” I ventured as we drove.

 “Maybe someone was coming, he got interrupted sudden.”

 “Yeah, possibly, makes sense…..someone in a Mercedes, maybe,” I said, significantly.

 “What?” she replied, a little vulnerable.

 “Were you watching over me, guardian angel?” She was the one nonplussed now.

 “So? Everybody knows where is that place. I just happen to be there. I just do it like that.”

 “Oh, I see…..but thank you. I probably would’ve died otherwise. Like I said, you sent me in there, but at least you pulled me out. Now, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why did you leave me there so long, if you were gonna watch over me and scrape me up?”

 “Cali didn’t leave. He just moved into the bushes to hide until a cop came. Maybe he called it in…..they talked, and took your hat…..finally Cali left. They just wanted you to die or something.”

 “Maybe they weren’t sure what to do with me,” I answered, “they certainly didn’t want to make it worse, if shooting me was a mistake. So they just let me lie there. If I died, all the better for them…..they could make up any crap about it they wanted to. They’re the cops…..” I paused a moment, thinking, and then said, “but I wonder why they took my USC hat. Why do they care about that?”

“Maybe they like UCLA better,” Patty said, but I shook my head, saying,

“But that would be a reason why they wouldn’t take it.”

“They wouldn’t take it? How do you know they wouldn’t take it?”

“Forget it. Why don’t we go pay that little creep a visit – that Caliente, I mean.”

 “Right now?” Alarm was in her voice as she put the brakes on at 12th and Mission for the red light.

 “Yeah…..let’s just sort of tool by. You know where Manny lives when he’s down here, right? Let’s buzz Manny’s house. We don’t have to stop — just look at whatever’s there. It’ll give us our marching orders. And maybe something will stick out.”

 “Yeah — like maybe their middle finger,” Patty exclaimed, deadpan, and I chuckled. We turned right eventually on 23rd St., off Mission Ave. This was the southernmost big street in Gorge, and it was bad enough all by itself. The further south you went here, the more badass it got. Knifings, shootings occasionally, and always the intimidation trip. Now we were descending into the really tough neighborhoods. Getting close to Manny’s, we passed by a steel curtain of cars packed together and parked tight on both sides of the narrow lane of 23rd street on a day off. Kids playing dodgeball and football in the street.

 We got close to Manny’s apartment building. Patty informed me that he both owned it and lived there as manager while down here. We had to slow down for some kids playing right in front of the big blue building. I wanted a little vindication, but it was like being trapped by those kids, when we had to slow down like that right at that point. We were kinda handcuffed. We slowed almost to a stop, about 1 mph. This allowed us to easily see the license plates. A new, huge, black Lexus SUV was in front of Manny’s place, with Utah plates. Patty gasped for breath.

 “Oh, my God…..no way…..“ She put her hand to her mouth. Anxiety came over her, she knew these people, you could see that.

 “What?” I said, as she carefully, but quickly, pulled the car away through the kids, drove through the stop sign, and then back up to Mission, on 24th St. now. Another one of my obvious questions.

 “Did you see those Utah plates?…..do you know what that means, Joe?”

 “They’re his out-of-state plates.”

 “Yes!!! Manny’s from Salt Lake City! That car was his mule come down here. They’re taking Arty’s body back to Salt Lake to get rid of it. Right now! Manny always has California plates for himself when he’s down here, but those were Utah! That means it’s the mule!”

 “…..oh, man…..seriously?”

 “Yes, that’s how they do it — up in Utah, not here.”

 “I’m not ready for this yet, but what are you gonna do? That’s life…..we gotta turn around, Patty! We gotta stop them now or it’ll be too hard later.”

 “Are you crazy, dude? They’ll kill us! You don’t even have your gun.”

 “What?” I shrieked, and patted myself — no gun. I hadn’t noticed. I practically shouted,

 “That guy stole my Colt, too?!” There was a pause. I was steaming. Then I leaned over towards her, and said gently,

 “We gotta do something, Patty, sometime soon. The Gorge police…..” She looked over at me now.

 “They’ll arrest me, Joe…..would you turn me in, Joe?” Never have I been put so deep into conflict than I was by that question. Of course she was guilty as could be. She was a drug dealer of several years standing. She looked at me aghast, and we almost crashed. She turned back to drive. But was I to turn her in while Manny and Cali went free? That makes a lot of sense.

 “Well, of course not, Patty,” I said, a little surprised, “I couldn’t turn you in.”

 “Swear!”

 “Okay, I swear.”

 “You better!” She glared bullets, and a scowl of hatred came over her face. It made her look much less beautiful, even ugly now. In spite of this, I saw in her face just a girl from the Philippines, a little Chinese girl who had probably known nothing but violence, born into vice involuntarily, and having emerged pretty normal and likeable in spite of it. Had she fought it more than she had given in to it? Who knows?

 She had come to America five years ago for a new start, had met the same old same old, and now there was an uncomfortable silence descending into the newly emerging gulf between us. She had a look on her face of perpetual uncertainty. How could I turn her in when Manny and Cali might go free? I finally spoke first.

 “We’ll just have to follow them up there or something. Do you…..do you know where Manny stays in Salt Lake?”

 “No…..but I know where his addicts hang out up there. They never let me get very close to things, but once I was there to meet the others and I saw them, the addicts.” It was decided. We packed our bags. I was a little woozy from the drugs for the bee sting. I had taken too much. I finally got to see her house, though, when we went there for her things for the trip. Unbelievable! There were even Peacocks and Peahens foraging for food on her front lawn. 

 When Patty was ready, we checked back for a glimpse at Manny’s place in Gorge, but more discreetly this time, from a little distance — the Utah SUV was gone. We immediately took the 110 freeway north out of the peninsula to the 10 freeway east, then to the Interstate 15 north, which would take us all the way to Salt Lake. She paid for everything along the way, an arsenal of credit cards you wouldn’t believe. California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah — the miles were all one. I was hurting from the beating and the gunshot wound.

 Who is she? I wondered, as we drove. Exciting to be with, certainly, but from a different world than mine. She possibly felt contempt for me, being from a less violent world. I was sitting a foot from her and thinking about her. I had never been in such deep water…..these Roller boys played for keeps — but at least I felt alive again. Patty made me feel alive. Even her disapproval was electrifying. I was really in it good, so I was gonna have to keep on trusting her. I never did get around to doing that Internet research I had planned on Hodge and Patty.

 We stopped in St. George, Utah for the night since I was too beaten up to go further. It was about 8pm when we got off the 15. Blazing is not the word, it was so hot. Blood was seeping through my stitches pretty good. I got a shower in the $24 a night motel room we rented, and it was weird to be in St. George for a totally different reason than all the other visitors. They were there for Brice and Zion — we were there for…..

 “Patty, ya gotta tell me about the biz now, and about the triangulation station,” I said to her after fixing the bandages. She had done the job with the new bandages we got from the grocery store. She sighed, resigning herself to it. And then she told the whole truth.

*************************************

“Arty was in Vietnam in 1968, and he got addicted to heroin and pot,” Patty began, situating herself on the bed. She went on after a bit, saying, “he was in Army Corps Engineer and he was a survey dude for building stuff over there. So when he come back to California he just started the business on the peninsula ’cause he knew the engineering and drugs. The problem was how to get the drugs in from the south. He explained it to me, but I didn’t understand it…..he said something like:

 “‘Patty, it is simplicity itself. Allow me to explain: problem — how to get our wares in to our agents without interdiction or confiscation or governmental interference or loss at sea — solution: triangulation. That is to say, in 1936, the Chief Surveyor of San Pedro County established a triangulation station atop our hill in Rancho Verde for the general purpose of determining distances for ships at sea, as a navigation aid. The site was free to use since it was not yet a military installation or a missile site. 

 “‘The Surveyor also kindly established the same type of triangulation station atop Cape Dume, easily accessible and visible across the water in Bay City. Now, both the stations were abandoned as triangulation stations during World War II, with the installation of a Coast Guard facility here in Rancho with its superior, modern equipment, and then, with the subsequent Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, it was again forgotten in lieu of its transformation into a Nike missile site.

 “‘When that, too, was dismantled, it was just empty land, thrice utilized, but still not finished…..it had one more task: our business! You see, don’t you, it was too perfect: with its superior vantage point, and by means of the axioms and postulates of elementary trigonometry, we can guide our shipments effortlessly in and out through darkness, fog, heavy waves, rain, and endless governmental interference.

 “‘The principle is this: the County Surveyor of the 1930′s has very graciously determined the distance across the way to the Cape Dume triangulation station in Bay City. That line, from here to there, forms one side of a triangle we’re building. Next, one of our boats from nearby Catalina Island comes along, right on time, bearing our shipments. That line from us to the boat forms another side of the triangle.

 “‘Our associate on Cape Dume does the same — then we have our triangle. We know at this point the precise location and distances to our sea craft. We radio our code to the pilots, and voila! Free market enterprise! They come into whatever harbor we wish, safe and sound.’” Patty leaned back in bed, and concluded,

 “that’s sort of what he said. I never got it about the triangles.”

 “I think I have it, more or less. You explained it good. It’s pretty devious, though. It sounds like an air traffic control system or something for drugs. Or like a global positioning system. It’s worked all this time, so it must be good. And since both Rancho Verde and Catalina Island contract police services from the Portuguese Hills P.D., there’s an extra buffer zone right there for the business.”

 “A what zone?”

 “So how did you meet him, this super triangle-meister?”

 “I was a whore in Bay City with the Roller dudes. They offered to Arty to let him get in on that and sell in Gorge, if he would let them become partners in his business. Arty and the Portuguese said okay. Arty just wholesaled to the Rollerz. So, anyway, one time Camacho, you know he was the first Roller guy, he brought me to a meeting to show me off to Arty. He liked me, I guess, Arty, I mean.” Patty reminisced, and paused some, going on,

“he was nice to me…..kinda egghead, but nice.”

 “But how about the Gorge police — are they in on it too like the Portuguese P.D.?”

 “No, the Gorge police are always trying to get everybody put in jail.”

 “And they can’t manage it?”

 “They’re too small — they’ve tried to get FBI to help.”

 “Did that work?”

 “Yeah, every once in a while, but it never shut it all down. Arty’s too smart for them, at least.”

 “But what about Bay City? Do they know?”

 “Only what they been told. That city so huge, the cops never get to know the people.” We sat back in silence, together, both our minds racing about what we were doing. Patty finally spoke.

 “Do you mind I was whore?”

 “Nah…..you had to make money once you got here, right? I’m no saint, myself. I won’t be redeemed anytime soon, except maybe by this. I wonder, though, maybe I helped break up your whore-ring when I got the D.A. to take Cali out.”

 “You did. I remembered you and your name from back then, and that’s really why I picked you for this. But I do like your name…..is it Filipino?” She smiled.

 “Yeah, it’s Filipino…..or Irish, I can’t remember. My great-grandfather was sorta like a stowaway like your grandfather was.”

 “Really?”

 “Yeah. So, when did you marry Arty?”

 “Well, he got tired of seeing me still a whore, since Camacho started me up again in Gorge when that fuckin’ Cali was inside, so he told Camacho to pull me out of it. Arty married me so I couldn’t be used as whore no more. Arty was amazing that day.”

 “What happened?” I asked.

 “Arty and Camacho were having some meeting at our house, or, just Arty’s house back then, about shipping or something, and Camacho brought me since he knew Arty had a crush on me. Camacho wanted to offer me to Arty to make the deal go better. So Arty says to Camacho,

 “‘This woman is not a prostitute, Mr. Camacho. You will not further employ her as such.’ Then Camacho says, ‘Way I look at it, Hodge, don’t sweat it…..it’s not your thing, so shut the fuck up, if you don’t want it.’

 “So Arty goes, ‘Oh, but it is my business, Mr. Camacho. You are in effect an employee of mine, and you are treating your own employee incorrectly. I must instruct you in proper labor relations and insist that you release her from this whoredom you have her in!’ So then Camacho pulls out some gun, and points it at Arty – and Arty walks right up to Camacho, real slow, I couldn’t believe it, and he slaps him across the face like throwing a Frisbee — Camacho couldn’t believe it either.

 “He started laughing, then he got real mean suddenly and put the gun in Arty’s stomach and said horrible things about me…..Arty tried to get the gun, I think he would’ve shot Camacho, but Arty wasn’t enough strong. Camacho pushed him down and kicked him in the face…..Arty was all bloody…..he got up real slow and walked over to Camacho and says, ‘If you ever touch this woman again, I will kill you with my bare hands, as God is my witness!’ He was all trembling and shaking…..he hated Camacho. Then he goes, ‘She is no longer in your employ, Mr. Camacho, leave this house at once!’

 “Camacho was laughing again, and he spit on the rug, and then he says, ‘You can have it, Hodge,’ as he was flinging door open and knocking stuff over…..” Patty finished speaking. I just sat back and looked at her, amazed. She looked down, avoiding eye-contact.

 “What a life you’ve had…..” I said, shaking my head, “and Hodge, I mean, Arty, just kept on calling him Mr. Camacho? Man! So then Manny killed this Camacho and his wife?”

 “Yeah…..Manny come down from Salt Lake. He heard things in prison about the business, and wanted it up there in the Rockies. But he and Camacho got in a fight about it, and Manny knifed him and the girl, the wife. Manny chopped up the bodies and threw the bits all over Utah out the window of the car…..”

Patty shuddered at knowing such a thing. Silence came over us in the heat. I turned off the T.V. and the lights. Tomorrow we would be up with the sun and drive over three hundred miles to Salt Lake City and pay a little visit to those nice Roller boys. In the stillness and in the silence, trepidation watched over our sleep.    

 …..to be continued…..

June 2, 2010  
 

Originally: December 10, 2008

The following is fiction:

 The Triangulation Station

PART TWO:

Blue waves roll in towards the Portuguese Hills Peninsula. Relentless, they know neither cessation nor temperance. But upon those heaving waves rides a bark, a little bark rising and falling with the briny swell and just as relentless, and heavily laden with gifts for man. The endless train of sickness and tragedy it carries to the rocky shore has not suffered attrition for many glowing, midnight moons, and the drones who work the rigging and work the sails labor without pause, eager for their riches.

 The brawny face and cliff of the promontory high above, blonde and aged, both stand sentry, glowering down onto the dark Pacific. $25 million homes boldly creep to the edge to overlook the cerulean mass, as if almost reckless enough to consider jumping in from the craggy tops. Deep Gorge City, where I live, was inland, though, on the other side of the tracks, as they say, near enough to be on the outside looking in, but just far enough away to need being tough. 

****************************************

Patricia Hodge, of Portuguese Hills, City of, sat in my office, delicately poised and elegant on the tatterdemalion couch, with her pleasing accent and sometimes ungrammatical English. Her slender shoulders seemed burdened overmuch with care, but wow! How could I not notice what an Eastern beauty she was! Sometimes I just had to stop the feast and look away for a second from her illumination, so intimidating and vaporizing it was — the Ansel Adams wall calendar sufficed: a photo of some Yosemite mountain far in the distance, and, by the way, today was Wednesday, 12 August 2009. It was 2pm. 
 She began: “I think they took my husband to that stupid Marine base.”   

 “What base?” 

“That stupid Army place by the water. In Rancho Verde.”
 “Oh…..do you mean that old Coast Guard installation from World War II?”

 ”Yeah. He is there, I think.”

 “It’s possible he was taken there,” I said, as if thinking out loud, “there’s lots of room there, it’s deserted, and there’s about a billion places to hide stuff…..So, now, tell me, who is ‘they?’ The Rollerz?”

 “Yeah, those dirty Roller boys.”

 “Oh, just great.….I just love going up against them. Last time I almost got off’d.”

 “Aren’t you a man, dummy?”

 “Give it a rest, Mrs. Hodge…..Patricia.”

 “You call me Patty. I don’t like Patricia.”

 “All right…..that’s easy enough…..now, do you know if that’s their little Home Depot for the drugs, that Coast Guard installation?” She hesitated this time, not sure of how to proceed. She glanced around, playing for time. The office she surveyed with artificial intensity was somewhat out of date, a bit dreary, and a bit over-the-hill. Funny how the persistence of the past just-so into the present characterizes that present. Or something.

 “Uh…..yes…..I think so, anyway…..” she said finally, then paused, then continued with, “I mean…..everybody knows that about those Roller guys, right?…..yeah, they put stuff there…..I think…..” She looked away, not making eye-contact now for the first time. No wallflower, she.

 “Aren’t you supposed to know?” I asked, somewhat aggressively.

 “What that means, stupid?”

 “Nothing, I’m sorry. I’ll save that one for later. Just something to chew on in my mind, just a hunch. So! — do I get to know your maiden name, or not?”

 “Park.”

 “Yeah, okay, that’s Korean. I know that. The L.A. Dodgers once had a pitcher named Park, and he’s Korean. I think he went to the Texas Rangers, though – ”

 “I’m not Korean! Park isn’t my name. Concentrate, dude.”

“So you’re not Korean? But are you an immigrant, though, or born here?” (I knew the answer, I was just getting the ball rolling, to get her to talk freely. Little trick: ask obvious questions.)

“No, not born here! I was born in the Philippines. I came to America five years ago and met my husband, Arty…..but I’m Chinese, really.” (Taking deep breath at this point. Me, that is.)

“So you’re from the Philippines, but you’re actually ethnic Chinese, and your last name is ethnic Korean, but it isn’t really your true last name, which, I’m guessing now, you never knew?”

“That’s right. You’re a good guesser.”

“Well, the Rangers aren’t gonna give you a spot in the starting rotation with a resume like that.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just another dumb comment. But why the Korean last name?”

“My grandfather did it. He changed it. I don’t know my name. He not tell me. He was stowaway on a boat from China to Manila when he was eight. He change the Chinese name to Korean name to hide better…..so I grew up in Quezon City.”

“So you’re saying your grandfather was a stowaway on a boat when he was eight?”

“Yeah. He became smuggler in Manila.”

“At eight? Man! What did he smuggle?”

“I don’t know — maybe women. I wasn’t part of it, and nobody talked about too much.”

“You said he changed the family name to hide better. Do you mean he knew he was going to do illegal stuff, so he was hiding because of that?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t, you’re right. ….but what about your husband? What does he do?”

“He was an engineer for some industry heavy company: Bab and Wilcox or something like that.”

“I see. How old is he?”

“He was seventy-three…..I’m thirty.”

“That’s quite an age difference for husband and wife. And so I’m only eighteen years older than you, not twenty!”

“What?”

“Anything else?”

“He was in Vietnam. He was very patriotic. He hated those Communists.” Patty said this proudly, as well she should.

“That’s okay…..I’m not all that crazy about them myself. What does he look like?”

“He was very good dresser…..pretty rich…..pretty tall…..white hair…..cute…..he had Mercedes, too, like me.”

“Okay,” I replied, nodding encouragingly, then asked,  ”you seem so sure he’s dead — why?” She fidgeted some. She sighed some. Then she replied, irritably:

“Because! Those Roller boys! They’re bad! Like Manny!”

“Who’s Manny?”

“Manny Quintana. His nickname is ‘D.D.’ He’s the boss of the Roller guys. He’s from Salt Lake City.”

“But I thought that Camacho guy was still the head Roller, Carlos Camacho.”

“Manny killed him. ‘D.D.’ means ‘Deception.’ Don’t you know anything, mister?”

“Well…..I can’t keep up with everything…..so why the two ‘D’s?’ ‘Deception’ has just one ‘D’ in it.”

“Manny killed Camacho and his wife — two ‘D’s’ for two dead druggies.”

“Oh…..I mean, wow!…..we’re in for a real ride now…..” I said, shaking my head, then continuing, gravely, “I think I have enough now to get started on the case. I’ll take it! So first, I’m gonna go check out the Coast Guard place and a few other things, and I’ll get back to you on the phone. I captured your cell number when you called, but let me have your e-mail. And here’s my terms.” I reached into the mahagony desk drawer on top, and pulled out a neatly-typed sheet. I had worked long on it, trying to make it look as professional as possible. She took it, looked it over, and then turned the sheet over, dubious, as if expecting more text:

“That’s all?” she queried, surprised.

“What?”

“That’s all you charge?” I looked at her blankly, nonplussed, and didn’t answer. She then burst into laughter at the sheepish, embarrassed look on my face. But in the silence ensuing, she smiled benevolently:

“I like you, Joe.”

***************************************

I stopped in at the All Drug Market, still in Gorge. I had to get a new magazine for my Colt pistol in the hardware part of the store at the corner of Mission and Helprin Avenues. I didn’t want to get started researching all this now, in the office, in case Hodge was still alive and in real trouble and needed help fast. Patty and I had chatted each other up too much, though, my fault. There was chemistry between us. I was going to trust her for the moment and just go see if Hodge was there, at the above-mentioned installation. Check-out and pay the pretty Latina girl, then back in the ‘Vette up Helprin to Footfalls Boulevard, left turn, and then straight all the way through the City of Indian Valley to the peninsula. Getting close, I took Los Verdes Drive West winding down from the peninsula’s high summit to the sun-splashed City of Rancho Verde, overlooking the ocean.

Presently there loomed before the sight the old military installation from during the war — it was an old recon facility, mainly, for eyeing the invaders. Lots of stuff for looking out. A skinny old asphalt road, broken up and overgrown with weeds, led down to it. The site was on the edge of the cliffs, looking down onto the lazy, majestic waves meandering far below, just so many whitecaps headed heedlessly for the rocks. This installation was used first during the war so as to anticipate attack on the Pacific Coast, but also, during the fifties, it was put to use as a Nike missile site. A taste of the Cold War. It was a fun, eerie place to stroll down memory lane: I used to play “Army” here very occasionally as a kid with my friends. I hadn’t been here in many years. Nobody had.

The sun beat down like hammers on me and my old Corvette. I was wearing wool pants, but a change was called for there. It was really hot. The air was still. Nothing moved save the lizards in the bushes. No trees provided shelter. Burgeoning, fat acacia bushes were everywhere, along with scattered ice plant, cactus, licorice plant, and wisps of grass, trying hard. It was a soft, lumpy place. I put my USC cap on against the sun. The occasional gravel was light-colored, and reflected back the sunlight. Foghorns sounded off somewhere for some reason on a clear day, and distant tankers out to sea strolled slowly past the eyes on the horizon. A hawk jumped silently and portentously from a high, creosoted pole, and cruised the cliffs regally, beginning a wispy, high-pitched call. Bees hummed, engrossed in their work. I took their advice. I got started working, too.

At first I just sort of meandered around, like the whitecaps. No one here but me, apparently. Was Patty giving me a line? No sign of anything being cached here: no fresh footprints, no discarded packing material or crates, no drug stuff, no spent rounds, no tire tracks, no cigarette butts, no mashed-down grass, no torn branches, no baggies. No paraphernalia of any kind. But there were some old, cracked, concrete platforms, round, about forty feet in diameter, weeds in the middle. Stonehenge, maybe? Or the Nikes?

Towards the cliff there were bunkers like cells looking out over the blue. Then there were six brand-new, thick power cables extending down from the top of a high pole in an arc to the hook-ups and switches by some double doors: these were forbidding, beaten-up, locked-up, ten-foot-high metal doors of aqua blue, forming a tall, concrete closet forged out of the hill. The U.S. Coast Guard had a sign on the doors:

WARNING

All persons are warned not to trespass on this property

or to injure or disturb any property of the U.S. Coast Guard

All violations will be prosecuted

Well…..I guess I won’t violate, then. I continued exploring. There were a lot of winding trails in and out of the acacia. Then a lower bowl-like area. The gravel sounded pleasantly under my walking shoes, and it was actually a pretty enjoyable place to be, all in all: quiet, peaceful, evocative, a little mysterious. Then there was a small medallion, or a kind of round metal plate, embedded in the ground near one of the creosoted poles. About four inches in diameter, greenish with the decades. Some writing etched into it…..I leaned over to read…..

 ”HEY!” A voice, heavy with menace, broke the peaceful silence. (This voice wasn’t quite as charming as Patty’s, though.) The voice then went on:

 “What are you doing, bitch?” A phony “huh?” was all I could manage in response. My heart began to hammer, just like the sun. (first fear crowds out anger…..)

“I’m talking to you, bitch! What are you doing?!” A husky, brown, muscular man of about Patty’s age was walking furiously towards me, wearing a white tank top, denim shorts down to his calves, and long white socks pulled up correlatively. A little sliver of skin interrupted the final summit meeting of fabric. But I knew this guy: “Caliente.” When the Rollerz were recruiting a prostitute ring out of Portuguese Hills and Bay City, bringing them back to Gorge, I helped the cops put this thing away. But it got out, evidently. I hoped to hell he wouldn’t recognize me…..

 “What the fuck! Why are you here, Downing? Is she your client now, punk?”

 “Stop calling me your idiotic names, Cali. Save them for yourself. How’d you get out?”

 “Miranda. They forgot it.”

 “If I read you Miranda right now will you go back in, cuzz?”

 “Take off, Downing, while you’re still alive.”

 “Fuck you. Who is ‘she?’”

 “Patty, you punk bitch, obviously. Now blow, fool.”

 “You know her?” I asked. 

“I’ve only worked with her for four years, genius. Fuck yeah, I know her. Fuckin’ crazy bitch.” 

 “You know Manny, too? I mean, D.D.?”
 “Leave, Downing, or I’ll mess you up. Don’t take her case…..I’ll kill you, bitch.” 

 “What’s this thing?” I pointed at the little circular medallion plate. He had been edging closer to it, as if to protect it. Even I’m smart enough to get suspicious at that. “DGCR” was tattooed on his neck ornately, in green Gothic lettering: “Deep Gorge City Rollerz.” He was OG. Thus he answered me:

“What’s this thing, bitch? Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” (…..and then anger crowds out fear…..) I responded thus:

“Oh…..you’re such a nice guy, Cali, a real nice little guy. So now, tell me, how many rapes have you committed today so far, asshole?” I was bent out of shape by now. I then made the error of squatting down to read the little plate at this point, so taken with curiosity and pissed off I was. The thing was unobtrusive, and formed a convex hump out at you:

San Pedro County Survey Control System

Triangulation Station

County Surveyor 1936

Caliente pretended to be curious too, then unloaded with a vicious kick to my face with his steel-toed boots. I reeled back, stunned and bloodied, and he proceeded methodically and savagely to kick my ribs, face, and the small of my back. He pistol-whipped me ferociously with a short-barreled pocket pistol he pulled out. I was defending myself some with my arms, and somehow reaching for my nine in all this, when he put that little gun deep into my belly and fired a single shot into me. Then he left me to die.

 I lay there in the sun, semi-conscious and semi-alive, my USC cap off somewhere. What was I doing here, I asked myself. I should have been a CPA or a librarian, not a detective. I blew it. I just lay there bleeding, bruised, broken, and burned, as the sun slowly made its long way down to sunset. I didn’t move all that time. Nothing moved at all in fact but the lizards in the acacia. No sounds broke the stillness but that of the rattlesnakes a’rattling, sunning themselves on the old, broken down, little asphalt road.

   …..to be continued…..

 June 1, 2010

(a story brought back by no

particular demand at all)  

Originally: December 5, 2008    

The first Joe Downing Mystery  

The following is fiction:  

   The Triangulation Station

PART ONE:

I stood over an ugly dead white rat in the courtyard of my office building in Deep Gorge City in Southern California. Ugly as anything could be, pecked to death by crows or by a hawk. Snapped neck, too, like the broken neck of a doll. It must’ve just been dropped from the air by some choosy, or butterfingered, avian predator. I craned my neck up at the pale sky. I got a shovel out from the maintenance closet and put the guy to rest in a trash can, then quickly put the shovel back, all without being seen by Sammy, the custodian. Talkative older man, comfortable in his skin at 75 (“no right to cry”), but I had no time now to talk about the Bay City Besiegers, his favorite triple-A baseball team. (He’s thinking that maybe with the next major league expansion, they’ll get promoted to the Bigs.) I had gotten a message on my cell requesting a meeting at 2pm in my office. Unbelievable — some work!

——————————————-

My building was in the old style common in Gorge, with two fat white circular pillars crowding you as you went in through the arch, and white stone just about everywhere in the courtyard. It was built in the 40′s, during the war. There were some concessions made at that time to ornate style — but just a few, though, since materials were rationed back then, I guess. Up a few steps to the second floor, down the dark and carpeted hallway to the left, old-time stench of the decades included free of charge, and then I stood in front of my office door:

       
Joseph Patrick Downing, Private Investigator

I could see a figure through the pebbled, smoky glass waiting inside the office lobby, moving graciously (as it seemed at least), like liquid perambulating vertically.  I was looking through the distorted lens of the window. I glanced at the time on my display: 1:46pm.
I thought I was early, but apparently not. The phone message she left had been short, very utilitarian, and unusually direct for a female client: usually they want to explain endlessly and vaguely, and apologize for taking my time. Not this one. I went inside.

After cautious intros, I asked: ”Why did you pick me?” of a transcendently beautiful young woman with Far East Asian facial features.

“I liked your name. It seemed like someone with good background.” She had a thick accent, Chinese or something, very charming.

I motioned her to sit on an old couch as we moved inside to the main office from the reception room. She had really picked me, I would wager, because I was a good bet to be cheap, or anonymous. (And that would be right — I am cheap or anonymous!) I wasn’t exactly successful, that is, if you’re not paying attention. I sat down behind a dark mahogany desk, in front of the window looking down onto the bright square patio of white stone outside. The old office building was in a tough residential district.

“Well, what brings you here today to see me?”  I asked her. She adjusted herself on the couch slowly, wearing shimmering jeans that probably cost more than my monthly rent here. (I sleep on the floor, against the rules of the rental agreement, since having an apartment too would be beyond my means right now. I won’t tell if you won’t!)

“I have a little problem,” she said. I didn’t speak, careful as one of the blocks of white stone. She cocked her head in disapproval, not at my silence, but in anticipation of a smartass response.

“That’s unprofessional,” she scolded.

“But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything,” I countered.

“You were thinking comment.”    

“All right, I concede the point. But let’s keep going. Please continue.” ( I started thinking to myself, as a bachelor, that is, that if she was 28 or so, then I was only about 20 years older than she…..well, yeah, I suppose you’re right…..but she was a lot better looking than the rat, at least.)

“Well…..I live in Portuguese Hills City, and my husband been missing 3 days. I think he might be kinda dead.”

“Why come to me? Why not the cops?”

“They’re too slow. It’s not high priority of them. I need someone who will move fast.” I chuckled, but more professionally this time, nevertheless, and I responded by saying,

“A dead body is not high priority for them?! C’mon! I can only do so much…..I can’t interfere in a pending homicide investigation, if that’s what this turns out to be. The Portuguese Hills P.D. won’t appreciate me stepping on their brown shoes any more. If you agree to that, I’ll listen to your story.”

“I’ll agree to it for a moment, and tell what happened. Then we see.”

“Okay – go.”

“We have known gang member in our neighborhood (Via Capri), and my husband stands up to them when they try to deal some drugs in the street. He makes them leave. He’s brave man. I think they did something to him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Arthur Aloysius Hodge.” She said this with difficulty, but got it out pretty good, really. Better than I could speak Chinese or whatever.

“What’s your name?” I continued, finally remembering to ask.

“Mrs. Hodge, Patricia Judith.”

“What’s your maiden name?”

“Why do you need to know that?!” she said, annoyed, then went on petulantly, “it’s none of your business, and it’s not necessary.”

“It’s just pro forma, I assure you. I need to know who I’m working for….. I just need it to check out who you are — no worries, Mrs. Hodge.”

“Check out who am I?! Are you crazy?…..” she paused, in a snit, then regrouped by asking calmly, but without confidence, “how could you do that?”

“Oh, various methods,” I said expansively, “the DMV, the Internet, Intellius.com. Whatever. Even just asking people the old-fashioned way. You know, for a fee. Anything you want in information is out there.” She sat back for the first time, not having realized this. She had to plan new tactics in light of this revelation. I watched her quietly — she was definitely very likeable, and certainly easy for a man to look at. I didn’t care how much time she took, which wasn’t a lot, really, as it turned out – she thought quick on her feet in a difficulty and was always in a hurry, as I was to learn later. But I figured I might ease the pressure a bit by changing the topic, and deferring the issue. I gently intruded upon her ruminations. 

“Patricia, let’s move on — just tell me your story — just tell me all about Arthur Aloysius Hodge.” 

……to be continued…..