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BLACK HELICOPTERS EPISODE 21 FRIDAY the SEVENTH - 11:32 AM By
midmorning the six-man holding cell that Andy Morrison languished in held
thirteen prisoners. Dirty foam flecks now covered most of the floor space, an
ancient Perry Mason rerun flickered on the television mounted high up on the
wall... seven times, every minute, the red light on the box beneath blinked,
allowing the deputies an opportunity to watch the prisoners as they watched
Raymond Burr dissect his witness. Until two deputies marched a scrawny, twitchy newcomer to the door. |
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"Yo',
my man," one of the unlucky thirteen challenged... a relative newcomer himself,
having been tossed in at six in the morning... "do we get out for
recreation after lunch?"
"Not
today," a deputy smiled, jangling his keys. "Lockdown."
"Whuffo'?"
"Guy
hanged himself last night, down on the fifth floor. People stop killing themselves
here, you get the recreation."
"People
never get out for recreation," the guy persisted, "all they can
do is suicide."
"Life
sucks," the deputy summed up as the twitching man, scratching at real or
imagined bugs at the base of his neck, was shoved across the threshold.
"And then, for you, it gets worse. In you go, Tweaky! Watch out for this
one, likely to shit the floor..."
"You
stink, man!" said the prisoner in the Cleveland Browns shirt. "Get away
from me!" Others took up the complaint, the skinny hype bouncing from
corner to corner like an infected pinball.
"Hey...
Andy!" the freak recognized, "long time, no see. Kin I sit down with
you?"
"Over
by the facility, Tweaks," Andy lifted a finger, pointing towards the
clogged toilet. "Don't get any closer."
"S'cool.
Hey man, I don't need this, I'm clean," he began babbling.
"They wanted some other guy. Wouldn't happened if I could've stayed at the
Sanctuary..."
"Stuff
it!" Andy cut him off, loud enough to be heard over the QualMart
commercial. "You got thrown out for the same reason nobody here wants you
round... you stink. And steal! What did happen to Izzy's shoes, lose 'em?"
"Wasn't
me took them, must've been some other dude. I don't need this shit, you know? I
went to the U. We been in school together. I's a Professional..."
"Professional
crap artist. Keep it shut. You're making us miss the show."
"He
walks. They always walk on Perry Mason, thing is... there ain't no Perry Mason,
man, jus' like there ain't no Santa Claus. Hey... I'm somebody. I am
somebody!" he repeated, staggering up... the only reply being that someone
bounced a crumpled styrofoam cup left over from breakfast off his leg. "I
was an imporrant... once. Me 'n Andy, we were tight wit' Mark Cobb. The famous
radical. Close persn'l frens."
One
of the few prisoners old enough to care spat out through the bars into the
corridor.
"The
famous asshole," he said. "Siddown, shut up and stop movin'. Stinks
less when you ain't movin' around."
Tweaky
tried to sidle towards Andy and sit down, but Andy kicked out, knocking him
back towards the toilet.
"Wha'd
I do? You're fucked. Fucked racist, like the rest of you, all but Cobb. He
was for the people..."
"Yeah,
like that chick he cut up..." the old jailbird spat again.
"He
was framed! By the system! He's a hero, rev'lusionry hero, not a
bum, like you or me. You so smart, how come you're in here?"
The
spitter turned away, nobody else answered. By and by Perry Mason wrapped the
case and, in competition with the pop-ups for investment schemes, lawyers
seeking class-action clients and public service messages against drinking,
smoking and smuggling prescription drugs, the noon news wafted through the
cell.
"I'm
Celia Morrow," said the thin, hungry-looking anchorwoman, "with Benny
Takajima, Dennis Monroe with Eleven Weather, and this is News at Noon. Police
Chief Ahearne, this morning, defended the city's "quick arrest"
policy that has filled local jails and unspecified auxiliary facilities with
homeless and transients protesting the Coalition for a New Consensus..."
A
chorus of groans, styrofoam and curses greeted the image of the Police Chief.
"We have given people every opportunity to exercise their First Amendment
rights and they've responded violently. But they'll be made to adjust, very
quickly, and lives will be saved. It's a clear test of our police minds,"
Ahearne declared, tapping his brow.
"Inside
Masty Hall," continued Morrow, "almost two thousand delegates and
guests continue meeting, searching for a common vision that, said keynote
speaker Congressman Morton Scow, may... or may not..."
"I
doubled my investment in twenty one days!" a full-screened,
peppy real-estate foreclosure specialist popped up...
"...include
the existing parties. Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, Florida, doctors are weighing
the decision whether to perform life-saving surgery on Baby Claire Hoskins,
after assurances that her parents' dramatic appeal for funds has raised over
seven hundred thousand dollars to date. Details after these messages..."
But,
before that, the Sheriff's deputies returned... one pointing at Andy.
"You!
Over here..."
Andy
rose on sleepy, tingling feet, taking a visible deep breath as soon as he'd
passed through the door and stood at least six feet distant from Tweaky. The
cell door slammed shut again, one of the deputies pointing the way towards the
small, black door at the end of the corridor. Tweaky shouted after him.
"He's
dang’rous! We killed lots of cops together, me an' Andy... and
Mark Cobb. Come back! Can't run away from the past! Asshole! You can't run away
from your past!"
Andy,
hoping the deputies were too young to mind the druggie's ranting, let them
march him round a corner or two, then down an unfamiliar corridor. The deputies
stopped before an unmarked, barred metal door.
"You'll
bunk here, cop-killer," one told him.
The
room was windowless, furnitureless and, when the door slammed shut, pitch
black. Andy felt his way around the floor, determined which corner was driest,
then lay on his back... looking upwards into the nothing, hovering between
sleep and wakefulness, not merely exposed to but... actually... welcoming the
phantoms of his memory that descended from the ceiling like a blanket of
mosquitoes.
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SUNDAY the NINTH - 10:03 PM
Dannie, the kid with the earring foisted on Nelson by
his father, the big time advertiser, and station management, was not quite so
dumb as he looked. Figuring any good riot footage would have to have come from
years before, and probably would have been saved... if at all... on film stock
(difficult to convert, and more than likely to explode) he'd taken down the
logbook: ANNIVERSARIES & COMMEMORATIVE PROGRAMS, 1995-2000 which was,
fortunately, indexed. Quickly, he'd located an hourlong documentary from 1998:
"VIETNAM and RACE RIOTS of 1973, A QUARTER-CENTURY AFTER THE FIRE",
located and vetted the tape, then ran it up from Archives to Nelson.
The
news director didn't exactly thank him, but he did take the wet cigar out of
his mouth. "Jeezus, I remember this shit," feeding the tape
into the number two monitor, "got OK stuff on it... stores burning, gas.
Little over the top, but it'll do if Bill doesn't move his ass back here. Thank
Pinhead that the fuckin’ South End never changes." He fast-forwarded the
video. Faces flew past... burning
buildings and flags, police horses and more faces. Lots of faces.
"Look
the fuck at that!" he pointed, freezing the video as a
cameraman, probably dead now or, at least, retired, circled round a figure at a
podium outdoors at the U., showing a tall man with the droopy black moustache,
modishly long hair and polyester threads that had come into style just as the
hippies were fading away and disco still remained the province of the gays and
colored. "Mark, fuckin' Cobb!"
"Who?"
Danny scratched his earring.
"Our
own answer to the MicroTime plane bomber," Nelson whistled and, when the
expression on Dannie's face remained unchanging, added, "...like the
Oklahoma people? Abbie Hoffman and Patty Hearst – Osama Just for Madmen or
Jonny fuckin' Walker. Terrorists! Nine eleven.
Like the Costa Rica protesters, the Unabomber, George Metesky... ah,
what the fuck! History's wasted on you young people!"
"Did
he blow something up?" Dannie said, squinting at the old image.
"Naw,
talked a lot of bull, but never did shit. Until he fucked up one day, big
time!" Nelson smirked. "Fuggeddaboudit! I don't need footage with any
faces someone can recognize, just go through this and mark down where there's
long shots... buildings, gas, cops. Get some police horses if you can but not
any cars, people look at this, they see all the cars are old and we're
screwed!" Nelson held the cigar up and, for a moment, Dannie thought he
might thank him, even tell him he'd done a good job, but the news director
curled his lip and plugged his face with the stogie.
Dannie
took up a pencil and one of the writing pads with the Eleven logo, unfreezing
the monitor and then speeding up the tape, keeping the sound low so its
chittering would not disturb the rest of the working newspeople in the Eleven
at Eleven studio. Faces flew by, crowds and buildings. Sometimes he'd see a
scene that could have come from anywhere in space and time, he'd stop the tape
and write down its location, then speed up again. Faces... cops and people with
hair holding signs, Vietnam, fires, the races, Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh and Chairman
Mao.
Immortalized...
in image, iron oxide, if not flesh...
Yesterdays!
"Because
fuckin' Bill isn't back!" he heard Nelson chewing out the
anchorman with the wavy hair... Bobby Weeks, that was him. "I'll get you
copy based on what we have, five minutes to eleven. Riots and fires, somebody
getting killed, I hear. An' callers, sayin' Unapissers got in the middle of it,
the way they always do. Serves 'em right! Don't sweat it, Bobby, you're the
man. I got the new kid workin' on it... he'll get you something to go. An' if
we hit awkward spots, we'll just paste it over with pop-ups. Cover ass and make
the station money at the same time!"
"Yeah,"
Dannie said to himself, I'll save your asses. More faces flew by,
more yesterdays.
I'll be the one saving your asses, Dannie fancied.
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