Recluse
11-27-2013, 01:17 PM
It's been a rough month healthwise. I've only checked in here a few times and will begin replying to my PMs as time and energy allows. Hopefully I can get through the majority of them today and on Thanksgiving.
So far as the cancer and adrenal gland tumor situation, we're now down to having the docs look for a surgeon and anesthesiologist who are inheritently familiar with this kind of tumor and the removal of it. The problem is that despite the plethora of tests and endless chemistry experiments that are being done on me, the tumor remains stubborn in that it is not giving up any "secrets" in terms of telling us what kind it is and what its intentions are.
Net result is that progress on False Gods has been somewhere between slow and non-existent. I've sent out the first third of the manuscript to the editor and have received it back this week, along with some suggestions and notes of which I'm incorporating as we speak.
Surgery will be happening in December and I'm hoping/planning that during the recovery period, I will have reduced pain (whatever is left from the surgery) and medications along with some increasing energy to finish this thing out.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=88760&d=1385569110
Here is an excerpt from one of the chapters. *WARNING* I have tried to edit some of the saltier language, but inevitably I will miss some. If you are offended by such language, I suggest you not read any further.
Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts and well-wishes. My wife and I truly feel they are making a significant difference.
:coffee:
IT WAS A BLOODY SLAUGHTER. Texas Tech’s much vaunted “Air Raid” offense took the opening kickoff in their own end zone for a touchback out to the twenty-yard-line. Three plays later and the Red Raiders scored their first touchdown—the first of nine that would be scored that evening, along with three field goals. The real shocker of the contest was the defense holding the visiting Lobos to just one field goal. A final score of 72 - 3 capped off the game and gave the Red Raiders a solid second place standing in the Big 12 South division with a 6 – 1 record. The young new coach’s debut season at his alma mater, where he was an architect in the Air Raid offense, was setting the Tech faithful on fire and attracting the attention of college football fans across the nation.
Dillon thoroughly enjoyed himself at the game. The only thing that would’ve made the evening better would have been if Vicki could have been there. She was from a little paper mill town in south central Maine and an alumnus of the University of Maine. When they first met, she had little interest in football, college or pro. But when the Dallas Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson rebuilt the dynasty, Vicki found herself caught up in the excitement. After the couple had retired in their early forties, Dillon bought season tickets to Tech football and basketball games. Vicki still cared little for basketball, but college football had captured her interest. Downstairs in their hangar, they had a twelve foot square rug in a corner with a large screen Sony television and sound system set up with some recliners and couches around the TV and on Saturday afternoons, it was a perfect place for the Coles to relax and watch college football.
Sitting around the table at Gardski’s Loft, an old-time staple of the Lubbock dining scene, Dillon, Brittany, Cody and Holly looked over their menus while the waiter took their drink orders. “Any appetizers?” he asked.
“Still have those famous fried cheese sticks y’all were famous for back when I was going to school here?” Dillon asked.
“Yes, sir,” the waiter nodded. “One order?”
“With some ranch dressing dipping sauce,” Dillon said. “And then give us a minute for the meal.” After the waiter had left, Dillon looked around. “The place doesn’t look like it’s changed a bit since I was here,” he announced. Gardski’s Loft was a restaurant that sat in one of the old large converted multi-story homes that lined Broadway Avenue in Lubbock east of the university. Most of Broadway was paved with bricks and the street was a throwback to the olden days of the west Texas city. During Christmas and the ensuing annual Carol of Lights, all of the businesses decorated and hung lights and the light poles and trees along the avenue were lit up, forming a grand entrance into the main Broadway entrance to Texas Tech, which itself had all the main buildings dressed in tens of thousands of multi-colored lights. There was always something magical about Broadway Avenue, Dillon recalled fondly, managing to push back the memories of bitterly cold winds whipping across the campus, raging sandstorms that deposited sand and dirt into every orifice your body and the broiling sun that made the streets literally melt in mid-July.
“Earth to Dad, Earth to Dad, hello!” Brittany said, waving a hand across her father’s face.
“I’m sorry, what?” Dillon said.
“We lost you for a bit,” his daughter laughed. “I was asking if you wanted to split some fries?”
“As in share?” her dad asked. “No way. Been too long since I’ve had Gardski’s fries. Fresh potatoes, hand-cut, deep-fried. You’re on your own, kiddo. Maybe your boy—” Dillon stopped himself just in time. Criminy! “Maybe Cody will share some with you,” he finished.
“Sure,” Cody said, seeing a blush come across Brittany’s face.
“When are you coming back to Lubbock, Mr. Cole?” Holly asked, saving everyone from themselves without even realizing it.
“Couple of weeks, for homecoming,” Dillon said. “It’s also conference game against Iowa State—and they hung an ***-whooping on us last year, right after we went into Norman and beat up on Oklahoma. Should be a good weekend. I made reservations months ago. But we’ll be coming in on Thursday night instead of Friday night.”
“Why’s that?” Cody asked.
“Craig—Dr. Anders—asked me to speak to your class,” Dillon said as the waiter came back to take their order. “I owe Craig a lot, plus I think the world of him so I jumped at the opportunity. And who knows? Maybe we can help really jump start this project of yours.”
The waiter took everyone’s order and shortly thereafter, four plates of delicious food arrived. To add to his nostalgia, Dillon had ordered the Oldtimer with cheese, even though as of late, dairy products hadn’t been sitting well with him. Cody joined him with a burger, although his was the Chili-Cheeseburger with bacon. God bless that young man, Dillon thought. A meat eater, an athlete, decent-looking and not a sissy bone in him. He supposed if his daughter, who like Holly, had ordered some chicken concoction, was going to be interested in a young man, she could do a helluva lot worse than Cody Lanier.
* * *
In Cooks Falls, outside of Binghamton, the Carters, Devreaus and Brooks, sans Natalie who was working, were pushing their plates back at the Stationhouse—a rustic restaurant built inside an old passenger train dining car. As the after-dinner coffee arrived, so did an older black man, who upon seeing Leon and Helen Brooks, broke into a wide smile. “I heard I had me some VIP guests tonight and sure ‘nuff, the wife was right for once.”
Leon stood and took the older man’s outstretched hand. “Fan-damn-tastic food tonight, Jesse. Simply fan-damn-tastic!”
Jesse gave a playful poke at Leon’s bulging stomach and laughed, “I’ll take that as a compliment seeing as how your gut shows that you’re an authority of fine food.”
“Not just fine food,” Helen Brooks chimed in, “but fine quantities of food in general.”
As the table erupted in laughter, Leon announced, “Want you to meet an ol’ Army pal of mine. Most mess hall sergeants try to stay away from the food business when they retire, but not this old mule. No, he took his pension and used it to build this place over ten years ago and now it’s one of the most popular eating spots in a fifty-mile radius. Meet Jesse Thompson.”
“Well, I suppose, sergeant major, that you have a few guns around your place, too, eh?” the restaurant owner chided his friend. “Thirty years you spent in weapons and you still love them.”
“That’s why the Army kept us around,” the retired sergeant major confirmed. “We were too stupid to learn how to love doing anything else.” Changing subjects, Leon asked, “So how’s your daughter doing? Heard she finished pharmacy school and is back in the area. Found work yet?”
“Sure did,” Jesse said. “Tonight is her second night. She’s working at the AHS out on the Chenango road.”
“That’s where our daughter Natalie works,” Helen Brooks told their longtime friend. “In fact, she’s working there tonight.”
“Well, so is Arlee. Let’s see, Nattie is a technician there, right?”
“Sure is,” her father said. “She’s saving up for nursing school, but ultimately she wants to end up in med school. But enough of that, let me introduce you to some of my other longtime friends.”
As the introductions were made, Jake’s phone vibrated. Glancing down at it, he read the text and shook his head. “What’s up?” his wife asked.
“Trouble down in Texas,” he replied. “Down near where Dillon and Vicki live.”
“What’s going on?” Cam asked, suddenly concerned. He knew Dillon and Brittney were in Lubbock at the game and that Vicki was at home sick, but he also knew she was in good hands because—
“Ramon Alvarez just whipped a couple of people’s asses but good,” Jake said, now pulling up an e-mail. “They’re both in the hospital and will be arrested as soon as they’re able to be moved. It seems those Chicago thugs that came down to Gainesville and tried leaning on the pharmacist that’s friends with the Alvarezes and Coles bit off more than they could chew. Way more.”
* * *
“OK, Carter, tell me what happened again,” Cooke County Sheriff Carl Nolan said to the shaken man in front of him.
“It’s like I told your deputy,” the pharmacist said. “My wife and I were having supper in town at the new catfish place that opened up across from the Walmart. She gets up to go use the ladies room and these two big guys come up to our table and sit down. I recognized the big guy right off the bat.”
“How so?”
“Oh, he’s been down here to Gainesville several times in the past month with another guy trying to intimidate me into selling the pharmacy to his employer,” Carter explained. “The last time he was down here, he had another guy with him that was packing a gun.”
“G********, Carter!” the sheriff exploded. “Didn’t you think about maybe calling me so I could come check these two guys out?”
“Thought about it, Sheriff, but I pack a gun myself. Besides, these two boys and their employer are too slick to get stuck with any serious charges.”
“OK, go on,” the sheriff ordered. He’d known Carter’s dad and he was every bit as hardheaded and stubborn as his son. “So these two guys sit down at your table.”
“They sit down and the bigger one gets in my face and tells me I can either sign the contract to sell my pharmacy and patient list or else I’m going to have an accident before the night is over. My wife comes back from the ladies room and asks what’s going on, and I tell her it’s the same two thugs trying to get us to sell our drugstore. She gets ugly with them and tells them to get the hell away from us. So they leave.”
“And then?”
“The last time that big guy was here, Dillon Cole and Ram Alvarez happened to walk in on us. Those boys tried to bully Ram and Dillon, but—”
Sheriff Nolan snorted in semi-amusement. “I can only imagine how that went over,” he noted dryly.
Carter Goode cracked a small smile. “Yep, Ram and Dillon helped those two thugs out the door and to their car. Told me to call them if they showed up again.”
“G********, Carter!” Nolan swore for the second time in less than a minute. “I’m the law around here, not Dillon Cole and not Ramon Alvarez. You should’ve called me.”
The old pharmacist simply nodded. “Yes, sir, you are,” he acknowledged. “But what could you have done? What could you have really done, Carl? Not a damned thing and you know it. These boys are working for some high powered, highly connected people in Chicago who probably have more lawyers and politicians in their pockets than we have people in all of Gainesville. I couldn’t get a hold of Dillon, but I did get a hold of Ram and told him what was going on and he rushed into town.”
“Then what?” the sheriff asked, reaching into his front pocket and pulling out a cigarette.
“He finds us inside the restaurant and tells us to go ahead and go on out to our car, that everything will be fine.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what happened to those two men?” the sheriff asked, lighting his cigarette and taking a long draw.
“Well, they come up to me and the wife and got in our face. My wife tried to open the car door when the big guy grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the side of the car, then knocked her down.”
Nolan was writing everything down and scowling. Peering over his reading glasses, he flipped his ashes into the wastebasket and then said, “And that’s when Ramon showed up?”
“Ram came around and helped my wife up and the big guy shoved him then called him a wetback and told him he’d better just leave or he’d get added to the ambulance ride.”
Sheriff Carl Nolan grimaced. He was one of the few people in the U.S. who knew the majority of Ramon Alvarez’s background before he married Felicia Romero Garcia and found religion. “And then?”
“And then I didn’t see anything, Carl. That other guy slugged me and it knocked me out for a bit,” the pharmacist replied, subconsciously rubbing his swollen jaw where he’d taken a pretty good lick. “When I came back to, Ram was helping me and the missus up and had called an ambulance for us. He was pretty worried that we’d been hurt worse than we were.”
“Did he say what he did to those two guys?”
“Damndest thing, Carl. I seem to recall him saying how those boys must have been on dope or drunk or something because they kept running into the side of the building and falling down, and every single time he helped them back up and over towards their car, they got dizzy all over again and ran back into the wall and fell back down. He said after five or six times of that, he finally had to give up trying to help them to their car.”
* * *
“How long until we reach an even half-a-billion?” Aris demanded of the man in front him, ignoring the sifter of forty-year-old cognac.
A chuckle. “You are always so petulant and impatient,” Howard Keeling observed, trimming the end one of his contraband Cuban cigars and dipping it in his sifter of brandy.
“Cut the s**t, Howard,” Aris snapped. “I’m gambling a lot of money with you and you’re getting rich from it. So answer my g**damn question.”
Keeling smiled. “Yes, Roger, you are funneling a lot of money our way and yes, we are making a handsome commission. Of course, our commission is a few percentage points higher since what we’re doing is highly, should I say, irregular? But never forget this my friend, I also know that not all of the money in the Community Reinvestment Resources charity account comes from AHS.”
The retail CEO opened his mouth to fire a response back and then shut it. “What makes you think that isn’t all my money?”
“When, pray tell, did you begin working for the Department of Health and Human Services, Roger? Or the Department of Commerce? I knew you were a talented individual, not to mention a world-class schemer, but really, I never saw you as a lowly government bureaucrat, although I must say you do enjoy exerting your control over people and so a government appointment would fit you wonderfully.”
The AHS chief executive officer looked as though he were about to explode. His predecessor, the crushed and deceased Andrew Sterns, once referred to Roger Aris as the most “humorless and impossible to satisfy son of a b**ch the world had ever seen and a man who after experiencing a non-stop five-minute mind blowing orgasm would bitch about the sheets being crumpled.” The namesake of the Keeling House saw all of this wash over the executive’s face and smiled benignly. “I know what you’re thinking, Roger,” he said cheerfully. “You’re thinking you can have me whacked by some of that Chicago crime family thuggery you so love to associate yourself with. Or maybe you can get that ex-FBI goon, Marco Delgado, to pull some strings with some of his past associates and open an investigation on me.”
Roger Aris possessed a number of attributes, but a poker face was not one of them. “If you keep screwing with me, you might want to ramp up what you believe I’m thinking. You run one investment house here in New York. One house,” Aris sad, holding a finger to accentuate his point. “I, on the other hand, run just under ten thousand profitable retail pharmacy convenience stores all across the U.S. and western Europe. When NIMA finally kicks in, I’ll be the most powerful businessman in the entire country because me and my company will literally control one fifth of this nation’s economy. A few quite words among my friends and they’ll take their investments away from your house so fast it’ll make your f**king head spin right off your scrawny neck.”
Howard Keeling puffed on his cigar and refilled his brandy glass. The only other individual he’d dealt with in the past decade who had an ego and an abundance of arrogance to match this son of a bitch was the sitting president. But both the president and Roger Aris were brand new to the millionaire’s club. Keeling was a long-standing member in the billionaire’s club, and as such, was not about to let a paper-pushing wannabe wise guy threaten him. “How was your golf game with the president this morning?” he asked evenly, deliberately thumping the ashes off the end of his cigar into a silver plated ashtray with a quietly humming smoke buster attached to it. “I understand the president’s short game was particular effective this morning, while you, on the other hand, had a propensity to slice your tee shots into the rough.”
Aris felt a chill run down his spine. How in the hell did Keeling know he played golf with the president this morning? He flew in under an unused alias on a private jet with an altered n-number registration and checked into the Adams-Hay hotel under yet a different alias and paid for it with a credit card issued to a shell corporation that only existed on paper. Delgado had assured him there was no way he could be traced or identified. Similarly, the president had ordered all Secret Service personnel away from the course except to sweep the entire course for bugs and listening devices, which didn’t set well with the Detail members but for which POTUS had literally told them tough **** and do it anyway. A Temporary Flight Restriction, or TFR, had been placed over Burning Tree and even the east-west commercial traffic was being re-routed to and from their destinations at Dulles. The Area Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ as it is known by and absolutely despised by private and commercial pilots alike, had all non-essential and non-military traffic in the northeast sector shut completely down. So how in the hell did this brandy-swilling stuffed shirt know that Aris and the president had met, let alone played a round of golf, and incredibly, how they had played?
As the color returned to Aris’ face, he took a healthy drink of the aged cognac. Looking over the crystal sniffer, his eyes met Keeling’s, whose expression never changed. It didn’t have to. Roger Aris understood the message loud and clear.
E/C
So far as the cancer and adrenal gland tumor situation, we're now down to having the docs look for a surgeon and anesthesiologist who are inheritently familiar with this kind of tumor and the removal of it. The problem is that despite the plethora of tests and endless chemistry experiments that are being done on me, the tumor remains stubborn in that it is not giving up any "secrets" in terms of telling us what kind it is and what its intentions are.
Net result is that progress on False Gods has been somewhere between slow and non-existent. I've sent out the first third of the manuscript to the editor and have received it back this week, along with some suggestions and notes of which I'm incorporating as we speak.
Surgery will be happening in December and I'm hoping/planning that during the recovery period, I will have reduced pain (whatever is left from the surgery) and medications along with some increasing energy to finish this thing out.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=88760&d=1385569110
Here is an excerpt from one of the chapters. *WARNING* I have tried to edit some of the saltier language, but inevitably I will miss some. If you are offended by such language, I suggest you not read any further.
Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts and well-wishes. My wife and I truly feel they are making a significant difference.
:coffee:
IT WAS A BLOODY SLAUGHTER. Texas Tech’s much vaunted “Air Raid” offense took the opening kickoff in their own end zone for a touchback out to the twenty-yard-line. Three plays later and the Red Raiders scored their first touchdown—the first of nine that would be scored that evening, along with three field goals. The real shocker of the contest was the defense holding the visiting Lobos to just one field goal. A final score of 72 - 3 capped off the game and gave the Red Raiders a solid second place standing in the Big 12 South division with a 6 – 1 record. The young new coach’s debut season at his alma mater, where he was an architect in the Air Raid offense, was setting the Tech faithful on fire and attracting the attention of college football fans across the nation.
Dillon thoroughly enjoyed himself at the game. The only thing that would’ve made the evening better would have been if Vicki could have been there. She was from a little paper mill town in south central Maine and an alumnus of the University of Maine. When they first met, she had little interest in football, college or pro. But when the Dallas Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson rebuilt the dynasty, Vicki found herself caught up in the excitement. After the couple had retired in their early forties, Dillon bought season tickets to Tech football and basketball games. Vicki still cared little for basketball, but college football had captured her interest. Downstairs in their hangar, they had a twelve foot square rug in a corner with a large screen Sony television and sound system set up with some recliners and couches around the TV and on Saturday afternoons, it was a perfect place for the Coles to relax and watch college football.
Sitting around the table at Gardski’s Loft, an old-time staple of the Lubbock dining scene, Dillon, Brittany, Cody and Holly looked over their menus while the waiter took their drink orders. “Any appetizers?” he asked.
“Still have those famous fried cheese sticks y’all were famous for back when I was going to school here?” Dillon asked.
“Yes, sir,” the waiter nodded. “One order?”
“With some ranch dressing dipping sauce,” Dillon said. “And then give us a minute for the meal.” After the waiter had left, Dillon looked around. “The place doesn’t look like it’s changed a bit since I was here,” he announced. Gardski’s Loft was a restaurant that sat in one of the old large converted multi-story homes that lined Broadway Avenue in Lubbock east of the university. Most of Broadway was paved with bricks and the street was a throwback to the olden days of the west Texas city. During Christmas and the ensuing annual Carol of Lights, all of the businesses decorated and hung lights and the light poles and trees along the avenue were lit up, forming a grand entrance into the main Broadway entrance to Texas Tech, which itself had all the main buildings dressed in tens of thousands of multi-colored lights. There was always something magical about Broadway Avenue, Dillon recalled fondly, managing to push back the memories of bitterly cold winds whipping across the campus, raging sandstorms that deposited sand and dirt into every orifice your body and the broiling sun that made the streets literally melt in mid-July.
“Earth to Dad, Earth to Dad, hello!” Brittany said, waving a hand across her father’s face.
“I’m sorry, what?” Dillon said.
“We lost you for a bit,” his daughter laughed. “I was asking if you wanted to split some fries?”
“As in share?” her dad asked. “No way. Been too long since I’ve had Gardski’s fries. Fresh potatoes, hand-cut, deep-fried. You’re on your own, kiddo. Maybe your boy—” Dillon stopped himself just in time. Criminy! “Maybe Cody will share some with you,” he finished.
“Sure,” Cody said, seeing a blush come across Brittany’s face.
“When are you coming back to Lubbock, Mr. Cole?” Holly asked, saving everyone from themselves without even realizing it.
“Couple of weeks, for homecoming,” Dillon said. “It’s also conference game against Iowa State—and they hung an ***-whooping on us last year, right after we went into Norman and beat up on Oklahoma. Should be a good weekend. I made reservations months ago. But we’ll be coming in on Thursday night instead of Friday night.”
“Why’s that?” Cody asked.
“Craig—Dr. Anders—asked me to speak to your class,” Dillon said as the waiter came back to take their order. “I owe Craig a lot, plus I think the world of him so I jumped at the opportunity. And who knows? Maybe we can help really jump start this project of yours.”
The waiter took everyone’s order and shortly thereafter, four plates of delicious food arrived. To add to his nostalgia, Dillon had ordered the Oldtimer with cheese, even though as of late, dairy products hadn’t been sitting well with him. Cody joined him with a burger, although his was the Chili-Cheeseburger with bacon. God bless that young man, Dillon thought. A meat eater, an athlete, decent-looking and not a sissy bone in him. He supposed if his daughter, who like Holly, had ordered some chicken concoction, was going to be interested in a young man, she could do a helluva lot worse than Cody Lanier.
* * *
In Cooks Falls, outside of Binghamton, the Carters, Devreaus and Brooks, sans Natalie who was working, were pushing their plates back at the Stationhouse—a rustic restaurant built inside an old passenger train dining car. As the after-dinner coffee arrived, so did an older black man, who upon seeing Leon and Helen Brooks, broke into a wide smile. “I heard I had me some VIP guests tonight and sure ‘nuff, the wife was right for once.”
Leon stood and took the older man’s outstretched hand. “Fan-damn-tastic food tonight, Jesse. Simply fan-damn-tastic!”
Jesse gave a playful poke at Leon’s bulging stomach and laughed, “I’ll take that as a compliment seeing as how your gut shows that you’re an authority of fine food.”
“Not just fine food,” Helen Brooks chimed in, “but fine quantities of food in general.”
As the table erupted in laughter, Leon announced, “Want you to meet an ol’ Army pal of mine. Most mess hall sergeants try to stay away from the food business when they retire, but not this old mule. No, he took his pension and used it to build this place over ten years ago and now it’s one of the most popular eating spots in a fifty-mile radius. Meet Jesse Thompson.”
“Well, I suppose, sergeant major, that you have a few guns around your place, too, eh?” the restaurant owner chided his friend. “Thirty years you spent in weapons and you still love them.”
“That’s why the Army kept us around,” the retired sergeant major confirmed. “We were too stupid to learn how to love doing anything else.” Changing subjects, Leon asked, “So how’s your daughter doing? Heard she finished pharmacy school and is back in the area. Found work yet?”
“Sure did,” Jesse said. “Tonight is her second night. She’s working at the AHS out on the Chenango road.”
“That’s where our daughter Natalie works,” Helen Brooks told their longtime friend. “In fact, she’s working there tonight.”
“Well, so is Arlee. Let’s see, Nattie is a technician there, right?”
“Sure is,” her father said. “She’s saving up for nursing school, but ultimately she wants to end up in med school. But enough of that, let me introduce you to some of my other longtime friends.”
As the introductions were made, Jake’s phone vibrated. Glancing down at it, he read the text and shook his head. “What’s up?” his wife asked.
“Trouble down in Texas,” he replied. “Down near where Dillon and Vicki live.”
“What’s going on?” Cam asked, suddenly concerned. He knew Dillon and Brittney were in Lubbock at the game and that Vicki was at home sick, but he also knew she was in good hands because—
“Ramon Alvarez just whipped a couple of people’s asses but good,” Jake said, now pulling up an e-mail. “They’re both in the hospital and will be arrested as soon as they’re able to be moved. It seems those Chicago thugs that came down to Gainesville and tried leaning on the pharmacist that’s friends with the Alvarezes and Coles bit off more than they could chew. Way more.”
* * *
“OK, Carter, tell me what happened again,” Cooke County Sheriff Carl Nolan said to the shaken man in front of him.
“It’s like I told your deputy,” the pharmacist said. “My wife and I were having supper in town at the new catfish place that opened up across from the Walmart. She gets up to go use the ladies room and these two big guys come up to our table and sit down. I recognized the big guy right off the bat.”
“How so?”
“Oh, he’s been down here to Gainesville several times in the past month with another guy trying to intimidate me into selling the pharmacy to his employer,” Carter explained. “The last time he was down here, he had another guy with him that was packing a gun.”
“G********, Carter!” the sheriff exploded. “Didn’t you think about maybe calling me so I could come check these two guys out?”
“Thought about it, Sheriff, but I pack a gun myself. Besides, these two boys and their employer are too slick to get stuck with any serious charges.”
“OK, go on,” the sheriff ordered. He’d known Carter’s dad and he was every bit as hardheaded and stubborn as his son. “So these two guys sit down at your table.”
“They sit down and the bigger one gets in my face and tells me I can either sign the contract to sell my pharmacy and patient list or else I’m going to have an accident before the night is over. My wife comes back from the ladies room and asks what’s going on, and I tell her it’s the same two thugs trying to get us to sell our drugstore. She gets ugly with them and tells them to get the hell away from us. So they leave.”
“And then?”
“The last time that big guy was here, Dillon Cole and Ram Alvarez happened to walk in on us. Those boys tried to bully Ram and Dillon, but—”
Sheriff Nolan snorted in semi-amusement. “I can only imagine how that went over,” he noted dryly.
Carter Goode cracked a small smile. “Yep, Ram and Dillon helped those two thugs out the door and to their car. Told me to call them if they showed up again.”
“G********, Carter!” Nolan swore for the second time in less than a minute. “I’m the law around here, not Dillon Cole and not Ramon Alvarez. You should’ve called me.”
The old pharmacist simply nodded. “Yes, sir, you are,” he acknowledged. “But what could you have done? What could you have really done, Carl? Not a damned thing and you know it. These boys are working for some high powered, highly connected people in Chicago who probably have more lawyers and politicians in their pockets than we have people in all of Gainesville. I couldn’t get a hold of Dillon, but I did get a hold of Ram and told him what was going on and he rushed into town.”
“Then what?” the sheriff asked, reaching into his front pocket and pulling out a cigarette.
“He finds us inside the restaurant and tells us to go ahead and go on out to our car, that everything will be fine.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what happened to those two men?” the sheriff asked, lighting his cigarette and taking a long draw.
“Well, they come up to me and the wife and got in our face. My wife tried to open the car door when the big guy grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the side of the car, then knocked her down.”
Nolan was writing everything down and scowling. Peering over his reading glasses, he flipped his ashes into the wastebasket and then said, “And that’s when Ramon showed up?”
“Ram came around and helped my wife up and the big guy shoved him then called him a wetback and told him he’d better just leave or he’d get added to the ambulance ride.”
Sheriff Carl Nolan grimaced. He was one of the few people in the U.S. who knew the majority of Ramon Alvarez’s background before he married Felicia Romero Garcia and found religion. “And then?”
“And then I didn’t see anything, Carl. That other guy slugged me and it knocked me out for a bit,” the pharmacist replied, subconsciously rubbing his swollen jaw where he’d taken a pretty good lick. “When I came back to, Ram was helping me and the missus up and had called an ambulance for us. He was pretty worried that we’d been hurt worse than we were.”
“Did he say what he did to those two guys?”
“Damndest thing, Carl. I seem to recall him saying how those boys must have been on dope or drunk or something because they kept running into the side of the building and falling down, and every single time he helped them back up and over towards their car, they got dizzy all over again and ran back into the wall and fell back down. He said after five or six times of that, he finally had to give up trying to help them to their car.”
* * *
“How long until we reach an even half-a-billion?” Aris demanded of the man in front him, ignoring the sifter of forty-year-old cognac.
A chuckle. “You are always so petulant and impatient,” Howard Keeling observed, trimming the end one of his contraband Cuban cigars and dipping it in his sifter of brandy.
“Cut the s**t, Howard,” Aris snapped. “I’m gambling a lot of money with you and you’re getting rich from it. So answer my g**damn question.”
Keeling smiled. “Yes, Roger, you are funneling a lot of money our way and yes, we are making a handsome commission. Of course, our commission is a few percentage points higher since what we’re doing is highly, should I say, irregular? But never forget this my friend, I also know that not all of the money in the Community Reinvestment Resources charity account comes from AHS.”
The retail CEO opened his mouth to fire a response back and then shut it. “What makes you think that isn’t all my money?”
“When, pray tell, did you begin working for the Department of Health and Human Services, Roger? Or the Department of Commerce? I knew you were a talented individual, not to mention a world-class schemer, but really, I never saw you as a lowly government bureaucrat, although I must say you do enjoy exerting your control over people and so a government appointment would fit you wonderfully.”
The AHS chief executive officer looked as though he were about to explode. His predecessor, the crushed and deceased Andrew Sterns, once referred to Roger Aris as the most “humorless and impossible to satisfy son of a b**ch the world had ever seen and a man who after experiencing a non-stop five-minute mind blowing orgasm would bitch about the sheets being crumpled.” The namesake of the Keeling House saw all of this wash over the executive’s face and smiled benignly. “I know what you’re thinking, Roger,” he said cheerfully. “You’re thinking you can have me whacked by some of that Chicago crime family thuggery you so love to associate yourself with. Or maybe you can get that ex-FBI goon, Marco Delgado, to pull some strings with some of his past associates and open an investigation on me.”
Roger Aris possessed a number of attributes, but a poker face was not one of them. “If you keep screwing with me, you might want to ramp up what you believe I’m thinking. You run one investment house here in New York. One house,” Aris sad, holding a finger to accentuate his point. “I, on the other hand, run just under ten thousand profitable retail pharmacy convenience stores all across the U.S. and western Europe. When NIMA finally kicks in, I’ll be the most powerful businessman in the entire country because me and my company will literally control one fifth of this nation’s economy. A few quite words among my friends and they’ll take their investments away from your house so fast it’ll make your f**king head spin right off your scrawny neck.”
Howard Keeling puffed on his cigar and refilled his brandy glass. The only other individual he’d dealt with in the past decade who had an ego and an abundance of arrogance to match this son of a bitch was the sitting president. But both the president and Roger Aris were brand new to the millionaire’s club. Keeling was a long-standing member in the billionaire’s club, and as such, was not about to let a paper-pushing wannabe wise guy threaten him. “How was your golf game with the president this morning?” he asked evenly, deliberately thumping the ashes off the end of his cigar into a silver plated ashtray with a quietly humming smoke buster attached to it. “I understand the president’s short game was particular effective this morning, while you, on the other hand, had a propensity to slice your tee shots into the rough.”
Aris felt a chill run down his spine. How in the hell did Keeling know he played golf with the president this morning? He flew in under an unused alias on a private jet with an altered n-number registration and checked into the Adams-Hay hotel under yet a different alias and paid for it with a credit card issued to a shell corporation that only existed on paper. Delgado had assured him there was no way he could be traced or identified. Similarly, the president had ordered all Secret Service personnel away from the course except to sweep the entire course for bugs and listening devices, which didn’t set well with the Detail members but for which POTUS had literally told them tough **** and do it anyway. A Temporary Flight Restriction, or TFR, had been placed over Burning Tree and even the east-west commercial traffic was being re-routed to and from their destinations at Dulles. The Area Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ as it is known by and absolutely despised by private and commercial pilots alike, had all non-essential and non-military traffic in the northeast sector shut completely down. So how in the hell did this brandy-swilling stuffed shirt know that Aris and the president had met, let alone played a round of golf, and incredibly, how they had played?
As the color returned to Aris’ face, he took a healthy drink of the aged cognac. Looking over the crystal sniffer, his eyes met Keeling’s, whose expression never changed. It didn’t have to. Roger Aris understood the message loud and clear.
E/C