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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 2 WEDNESDAY the FIFTH - 5:45 PM The
Ivona rent-a-cop sidled by – third time in ten
minutes. Knew the skell
slouched against his wall didn't belong… Andy Morrison was certain of this…
burying chilled hands deeper into the pockets of his disreputable old brown
corduroy coat. The Twin Peakly patterns of Ivona’s lobby carpet waxed frightfully hypnotic; Andy Morrison was
certain he'd stumble if he ventured on another trip to the phone bank - where
the empty stalls indicated where the public phones used to be but the mobile
reception, at least, was better. |
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Pushing
himself away from the wall, Andy focused, marched, again, past the Coffee
Shoppe and Oak Room... still closed... and concentrated on keeping his focus
off of the Ivona’s pulsating floor. Lifting the
receiver of that sixth phone, he pumped five Reagan quarters into the slot and
stabbed a finger into the anachronistic rotary wheel, dialed and then spoke
hastily, almost angrily; a man possessed of small tolerance for the weak things
of life.
"Yeah...
what's this shit? He is? Well, why right now? Yeah!" He lodged the phone between ear and shoulder,
removing and lighting the lesser half of a home-rolled cigarette while an
electric (surveillance?) hum and occasional shouts from the Sanctuary massaged
his ear through the aether until someone else picked
up the phone. "What's that?" Andy replied. "Dead? Aww... fuck.
He was a holy little old gomer, Eddie. Yeah, wait a
sec..."
The
interruption was the point of a nightstick, jabbing him low on the back...
kidney shots: one, two, three… introductory, harder
and harder still. Andy turned and the
security guard gestured with his stick towards one of those "No
Smoking!" signs in eight… no,
nine… languages that the UN Peacekeeping Forces had put up above the American
“No Smoking” signs in all public places since coming into the city. He nodded,
curtly, letting the shelter news roll on; Eddie, the night manager, editing the
stale, sour recriminations of the Sanctuary’s beaten men and women with
fucked-up lives that sluiced through his head as snubbed out the butt on the
chromium counter of the once-upon-a-time telephone booth and held it up for the
guard to see before dropping it into his shirt pocket for a better time.
The
guard remained, pounding his black-gloved palm with the nightstick like prison
guards do in the old movies Andy sometimes watched, late - before the cable
company disconnected the shelter. Now, the only programs its muted TV received
over the freewaves were the talk shows and religious
broadcasts, the infomercials, Western movies and graying reruns of Andy
Griffith and Gilligan left to such free, public stations as were accessible to
those with antique analog sets, connected to second-hand, stolen or handcrafted
black market converter boxes.
"So
I guess we gotta deal with his stuff... get plastic
garbage bags? I dunno... call the Catholics maybe? He
was Catholic, right?"
The
coin phones.. whether in a gesture of contempt or
maybe in an attempt to be cutesomely retro before
being yanked out of the Ivona long after their
removal from most public places... truth was, some government agent had ordered
a few token public phones retained as a sop to the technologically or
financially challenged in certain places where busybodies had complained to the
government... had had a rotating dial, across which the hallucinatory faces of
shelter regulars and their drab departed used to spun like cars on a Ferris
wheel Andy remembered from two years ago, when he’d sneak into the hotel
lobby’s restrooms with a gallon jug in either hand to steal water when the City
had cut off utilities over late payments during one of his brief, enforced
absences. Then he remembered who the
dead man was; also that his earthly possessions would be of no use to even the
shabbiest charity store. In the polished metal of the booth he saw the
reflection of the guard behind him, still slapping his palm with the stick.
"I
don't know," he answered Eddie’s voice in the receiver. "Have to see
these people and... Yeah, well what happens happens.
There's only so much... yeah. OK, I'll be coming by later tonight, I dunno, eight or so? Yeah."
The
security guard blocked his way out of the phonebank,
raising his cudgel to attack mode. "You finish your call," he said,
"now you go. Phones for customers and guests. Not bums."
Then
he poked his stick lazily at the duct tape covering a rip just above the elbow
of Andy's coat.
"I'm
waiting on some of your customers," Andy said, taking measure of the
rent-a-cop. Big, brown... Hawaiian maybe, or from
another of those warm islands. Big head, like a coconut, hard, probably, small,
mean eyes. Belly hanging over his belt. Probably let him eat out of the
kitchen’s garbage pails to supplement his minimum wage.
Go
downstairs. He could take the fuck, Andy decided, but there'd be others; they'd
drag him back to jail and he'd miss Glenn and Anne.
The
guard clamped a meaty palm down on Andy's shoulder and he slapped it away with his
left hand, making a fist with his right to come down low and bury itself in the
flab while, at the same time, turning so that the stick would catch him on the
back or shoulder instead of his head. But the guard stepped back... instead of
flailing out with his stick, he removed the radio from his belt, still blocking
Andy's escape route from the phonebank. Smarter than
he looked. Fuck!
"Ten
fifty six come in, come in," the guard wheezed and an inaudible bark,
sounding more like static than a human voice squawked back. "Got a
six-seventy-one situation, six seven one; I need backup at the Millard
elevators. Assault on an officer. Aggravated assault on an
officer. Four twenty..."
Beyond
the guard, Andy spotted the people he was waiting for as they rode up the
escalator from the ground floor. Their hairlines became visible first, then
faces and chins, then the rest of Glenn Savitt and
Anne Kazelka, impeccably clothed and coiffed, just
the slightest traces of executive-gray sprinkling Glenn's temples. Impossible
to believe that they'd all attended, let alone graduated, from the University
here what was it… more than a quarter-century ago, now?
The
rent-a-cop glanced over his shoulder, too, and, seeing nothing out of the
ordinary, rewarded Andy with a cruel smile. "No Turks," he said.
"Too bad… for you!"
"Those
are the people I'm supposed to meet," he pointed. "You just going to
stand there, rubbing your wood, beat me up or what?"
Glenn
and Anne passed; Anne with a wave as another security guard, a real City
policeman and a balding hotel official in a maroon blazer converged on the phonebank. The elevator door opened, and a bellhop in the
white Ivona uniform struggled with a handtruck of Vuittons.
"You
know this bum?" the guard grunted and Anne stopped, lowered her
shades, removed one of her gloves, raised a pale blue
manicured nail to her chin.
"Him?"
she replied, wide-eyed.
"Thought
so," said the City cop, right hand on his holster as the other guard
jabbed his baton into Andy’s stomach again. "OK buddy, let's see some ID.
And move your hands slowly so we can all have a good look. Wouldn’t want to have to… George Floyd, you
know…"
"Isn't
he the dealer Paco said would be waiting?" Glenn
suggested, a twinkle in his eye behind lightly tinted
aviation glasses. "Tiene la coca, amigo? La kat?"
If
it was a joke, it backfired. Annoyed, the rent-a-cop turned to confront Glenn
and Anne. "How 'bout I look at your
ID and reservations?"
"Oh
Christ! Glen... you child... you can
watch me give them to the check-in girl, if you have to," Anne said,
waving an envelope before the uniformed faces. "And a
card from our attorneys. Yes,
he's with us... God forbid! So why don't you all go somewhere outside and... I
don't know, fight crime or something?
Isn't Commander Cuatro supposed to be hiding
out in one of your suites, up here? Or
that school shooter, from Dayton…"
“He
assaulted me,” the burly guard whimpered as the cop handed Andy’s National ID
card back. “Well, he attempted
to assault me…”
The
uniforms conferred with the hotelier… he looked rather like Don Knotts, Andy recalled from the TV Andy and/or one of those
old Western movies on the GRIT… they muttered, then dispersed. Anne continued
towards check-in, Glenn waved real-life Andy towards two prim, Ivona chairs.
Andy
could have sworn he saw Barney Fife wince over his shoulder as he settled the
disreputable coat with its duct tape (and, probably, numerous microbes) across
the Ivona’s silk upholstery.
"Still
always in trouble with the pigs," Glenn clucked, his own brief
discomfiture conveniently forgotten. Andy's appearance of height was illusory
owing to a persistent scrawniness... Glenn was legitimately tall, looking down
on Andy in all respects. He sighed, cracked his knuckles.
"The
day that cops stop fucking with me," Andy swore earnestly, "is the
day I really start to fear for my immortal soul – if there is such a thing.
Africa?"
He'd
gestured towards the pile of luggage; some of the suitcases festooned with
stamps from overseas airports and the remains of quarantine certificates.
"Pretoria,
then Uganda," Glenn answered smugly. "With all the poachers, Presidents’
boys and renegade dentists playing Hemingway, we wanted to see the wildlife
before it all got decapitated and hung up on some wall or eaten, like in Somalia. Conk business
for the ol’ expense account... plus a little sightseeing on the side."
"Like
the mountains of skulls."
"Gone.
All cleared away since Big Daddy Dada got kicked out. It's just AIDS and CV
Flivver now... AIDS and mosquitoes and Monkeypox Five
crowding the Corona, pushing Ebola back down to third-rate plague. Since the UN
took over, all the dead get cremated and, according to the IMI and Don Jones
Index, conditions in Uganda are better than in eighteen other nations… well, at
least as regards inflation. And as long as you’re not gay. Unemployment… well, the CIA sent a team out
to check on that but they disappeared and have been presumed killed and
eaten. But their inflation rate is tied
with Pakistan’s, and the social freedom status is better than Somalia,
Venezuela or Iran, unless you’re queer. Give 'em that..."
"Any
more?"
"Nope!"
Glenn replied. "Plenty of rumors that some of the smaller tool and
appliance firms, for an example, plan to set up outside
"Bar's
closed, but I think they're opening the coffee shop. Time for caffeine, before Tillerman outlaws it."
"Your
Catfish said he'd ban caffeine too," Andy reminded them, lifting his body
out of the sleek, French faux-antique chair with an
arthritic groan. “Like Ben Carson or all
those Republican Mormons. Or Bloomberg…”
"Oh...
you know that's a rhetorical maneuver. If the President rules out amending
the Constitution for a third term, if the former Veep
wins another nomination with his thirty six approval rating and dozen
indictments or the current Vice can pull off nomination with his thirty three, if the worms spill out of
Bobby Junior’s brains, Jack runs and gets elected, if he gets his referendum
legislation through Congress… if the voters want the Health Nazis
banning everything. President Parnell
would be setting up the New Sobriety for a crash by phasing his prohibitions
in... tobacco, liquor, caffeine, sugar... he knows the public will revolt
within three years of implementation at all the black market gang violence and
money flowing into the pockets of local officialdom; then he can pivot,
legalize drugs and hookers at the Federal level, collect sin taxes, start up a
national lottery based on NFL scores like the Spanish do and banish the deficit. Fake news!
False flags! Hey… when Trump said
he’d support that two thousand dollar handout in order to kill the six hundred
one and leave the suckers with nothing?
Jack paid attention; he’s not as crazy as that Attorney General, nor as
crooked as… you know… everybody!
"Really,"
Glenn continued explaining – never could shut up, Andy remembered, "the
Coalition's about prickening the conscience of a
sleeping America that still can’t make up its mind who won the 2020 elections
and then gave up on 2024. I mean we
know… but the lawyers have everything tied up in a cats’ cradle of lawsuits
while we’re staring down 2028. Wake up
and smell the rubes! You know... there's still a place for you in it, our side,
of course. Jack Parnell is not so far off what we all used to believe in, once
you get down to the bedrock of his programs.
And the money’s good..."
"You
believe that?" Andy
whistled. "Then what I hear about all that drinking and doping and groping
and whoring going on in his Catfish plane must
be true!"
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