KILLING MARTHA

1

You are flying through the forty-weight traffic north of Los Angeles.  The normally tawny hillsides are covered in quilts of roses, whose scent wafts through the dash vents to mix with burgers from Tommy’s and Lucky Strikes.  The Crown Vic isn’t a nimble car, but experience has taught you to use its heft to your advantage.  Traffic gives way to you, diving and screeching like a murder of crows around a hurled rock.  Your partner, Special Agent García, wanted to hit the lights and siren, but you need to hear the dispatch coming in from your destination.  Five minutes ahead, something like all hell has broken loose.

As you leave Highway 101 at Lompoc, a sign gives you the option to turn left toward the rose cultivation hub of California, or turn right toward the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary.  Lompoc is a medium security facility that also serves as a wayside for prisoners in transit between the federal, state and local systems.  You pop the blinker wand from underneath as you slow down to meet the stopped cars ahead.  A figure floats like a mirage among the plumes of exhaust.

The form coalesces into a sun-browned kid with oranges to sell.  Your partner hails him, and the kid saunters between a Subaru and a Ducati toward the gesture.  It’s a girl.

“Want an orange?” the partner asks me.

Sure, how much?

“On me,” he says, turning to the girl.

“Say hoss, how much for two?”

“Ten for the bag.”

“What do we look like, tourists?  Come on, I grew up in Lompoc.  Give you a buck for two.”

“Five for the bag.”

“Deal, hoss.”

The girl smiles a pretty smile and pulls out a smaller bag from the one hanging on her shoulder.  The partner scowls behind his glasses, but reaches for his wallet anyway.  A flash of leather and nickel plating snatches the smile from her, and she drops the bag through the window like we were contagious.

“S’alright, hoss.  We’re the good guys.”

“Migra?”  Her body tenses like a gazelle.

“No te preocupes.  Somos la efe.”

Her face drops back into neutral and she steps back more gradually.

“Federales.  A qué sí.  Where’s the five?”

She leans forward to snatch it and gives a word of parting advice.

“It’s poke, hoss.  Lompoke.”

2

The local trucks are barricading the entrance road, satellite antennae sporting steel-mesh flower tipped heads while reporters bitch about the angle and how old Jennings and Rather are getting.  You are tempted to ram them before the national trucks arrive and really lock everything down.  Instead you settle for a siren squawk and emergency-brake left turn.   The siren overloads their mic feed, forcing them to yank out their earpieces in pain, which screws up their hairdo, not to mention what the dust does to their sport jackets and the light meter.  Your partner looks down and grins.

“All this, and we get to shoot people too.”

Beats working for a living, you reply.

IDs come out at the entrance, they take your piece and your back-up, and you meet the Assistant Warden.  His name is something-or-other, which doesn’t matter anyway because he’s got about a week left before he’s going to be fired or sent off to guard secreters in Pelican Bay or Soledad.  No more roses for AW Dumbass.  The only descriptors about him that will linger are sweat and moustache.

García introduces us in his clipped Latin American diplomat manner, asking for the AW Dumbass’ assistance in several completely useless yet time-consuming matters.  AW Dumbass is eager to comply.  García’s last request is that someone show us to the galley kitchen, where less than two hours before a convicted felon by the name of Martha Helen Stewart escaped federal custody for parts unknown.

3

Our guide to the kitchen is Corrections Officer Dubh, who looks like he puts himself into his uniform with a pressurized applicator.  There isn’t an acute angle to be found anywhere on him.  But he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut when you ask who the hell thought Martha Stewart ought to be left alone in a kitchen.  You can tell he knows exactly who to blame, but that keeping quiet has probably kept him happy longer than having a good story to tell.  Even though the call had to come from in administration, García laughingly prods CO Dubh.

“Was it you, Dubh?  Were you promised paper-wrapped pickled hummingbird testicles in butter-lemon-dill-aspic sauce?”

CO Dubh just smiles and opens the door for us.  He’ll still be here in two weeks.

The galley kitchen is an industrial affair, designed for a minimal number of cooks and inmates to prepare 1200 meals at a time, four times a day, every day of the year.  Forensics teams are already scuttling to and fro like crabs after a capsized cattle boat, and you wonder aloud why you’re here.

“Ain’t you fellas from Home Security?” asks CO Dubh.

“Homeland Security.  Domestic Intelligence Counterinsurgency Homeland Disruption and Surveillance.”

CO Dubh starts to slice and arrange first letters, but you stop him.

“We’re here for the letter.”

CO Dubh smiles again, seemingly without a second thought, and leads you to several vats of steaming, greasy carbohydrate mush.  Between two of the vats something peeks out; a wad of handmade mauve paper inscribed with the steady hand of a society matron, or a practiced sociopath who’s had practice writing on uneven textures in organic media.

You and García ‘bag up,’ blowing into latex gloves before putting them on and selecting an appropriate size evidence bag.  García carefully slides white adhesive paper onto the ground underneath, in case something falls out in the process of removal.

Ten minutes later, you are dictating the contents of the letter into a hand held tape recorder, while García is screaming at someone to get him a secure line and the phone number for Secret Service.  You hear the same five words repeated in an array of orders, tenses and conjugations, but all sharing a similar histrionic punctuation.  The words are: right, fucking, now, deputy and dawg.  Word Five is only used to follow Word Four, sometimes preceded by Word Three.

While most of the forensics guys probably have secure phones, García has already alienated them with a fountain of adjectives surrounding the noun ‘propellerhead.’  Luckily for everyone, CO Dubh remains calm and ready to escort García to AW Dumbass’office.  He has already dialed the phone, and  First Lady Edwards’ chief of security is waiting on the line like a leashed police dog at a George Clinton concert.

4

5

At home three days later, your headache has finally receded, and then the phone rings.  It’s García, and he has news, despite the complete disappearance of fugitive Stewart.

“Bel Air Field Office got a letter today.  Looks like the paper is the same as what we got from Lompoc.”

Always a quick study, García is pronouncing it poke, like the kid said.  He’ll probably never pronounce it incorrectly again.

What about handwriting?

“Completely different, and there’s no attempt at disguise here.  This is a different writer.”

Time and place of recovery?

“It was mailed to the reporter at the Times who’s been covering the Stewart case . . . . “

Wait for it.  A symphony is composed.  Childhood sweethearts fall in love at a barn dance, he goes off to war, only to come home less three fingers, but he’s got a ring.  She bears him nine children, and doesn’t realize until their 58^th year together that she never found out how he lost those fingers.  He dies unexpectedly, and she is left to wonder.

“. . . and this guy says the letter came in two days ago.”

What?

“Postmarked the day before Martha julienned herself into a federal fugitive.”

Where’s the letter now?  Have the propellerheads gotten it yet?

“It’s going to the Q for a work up, but it hasn’t left the Bel Air Field Office yet.”

It’s at BAFO?  What the fuck?

“That’s where Martha lived until the recent government assisted living thing kicked in.  The letter was postmarked from the Bel Air Post Office.”

Can we get a look before it goes to Quantico?

“My friend Ray at BAFO says we can see it now or wait five weeks for the Q to get to it.  So long as we don’t fuck up the chain of evidence, he’s cool.”

You meet your partner and Special Agent Ray Torkelson at the Bel Air Field Office.  SA Torkelson ought to be wearing a horned helmet, watching monasteries burn from the stern of a Viking drakkar, and cleaving his enemies’ skulls in twain.  Instead, he invites you to BAFO and makes a predictable insult about García’s sexual practices.  The three of you wend through cubicles and hallways toward a surprisingly cheery forensics lab and evidence locker.  The door is decorated with several federal regulations stickers and a cartoon of a rabbit in medical garb counseling a human patient to eat more carrots.  SA Torkelson has timed his musings to end coincident with your destination.

“But you’re aware that he’s a ‘Dirty Sanchez’ man already, aren’t you?”

Your face fakes a knowing grin, while your eyes scan and find it on top of a lab table.  The single sheet is almost bereft of writing, but the texture and color of the paper are indeed identical.

I know we don’t want to break chain of custody.  Pictures okay?

“Of course.  I already made you photocopies of letter, envelope and the timeslip from the Times that shows when their mailroom sent it to Williams.”

Is Williams the agent who got the call?

“No, Glenda Williams is the reporter who the note was addressed to.  When they called us, SA Palacios and I went on the retrieve.”

For a brief moment all of your focus crashes headlong into the name.  Palacios.  Jesus, of course he’s at BAFO.  You wonder if Torkelson knows everything about you and Palacios, if he’s flicking the name before you like a barbed treble hook smeared with Velveeta that leaves an irresistible iridescent trail through the water before you.  Involuntarily, your head jerks a tiny bit, as if there were a long scar on the inside of your mouth, warning you away.

You put your camera away as Torkelson hands you a manila folder with the photocopies.  The question you’ve been wondering, been burning at, is right inside.

What does it say?

But that’s actually not nearly as important as the details you already have.  If it were something that needed immediate attention, BAFO would have seen to that.

You take a quiet breath, open the manila folder, and read a ragged hand:

By the third reading, your headache is firmly back in place.

On the way out to the Crown Vic, the sun feels like a reprieve.  And then the roofs caves in.

Special Agent, no wait a fucking minute- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Angel Palacios is leaning against the hood of the cruiser, smoking one of García’s Lucky Strikes.  You know the smoke is García’s because Palacios hasn’t bought a pack of cigarettes since he was fifteen.  García is as always, the well mannered diplomat.

“ASAC Palacios, is it?  Good to finally meet you, sir.”

“A pleasure, Agent—a quick glance at ID—García.  You two are out of SFV, aren’t you?”

“San Fernando has us working with Homeland Security on the Stewart thing.  That’s why we’re here.  Hope we haven’t overstepped, sir.  Just trying to get a look at this second pink letter before it disappears up Quantico’s asshole.”

Palacios’cigarette is about to burn a hole in his lip, but he makes no move toward it.

“Long time no see, Agent—“

You interrupt him.

Is this a problem?

“Did you screw with the chain?”

No.

“Then I’ve got great news for you.”

Whatever is coming next will not be anything remotely like great news.  This is assured.

“I talked with SFV and the dickheads at DCHDS.  We all agree that you to go under here at the Stewart residence, see what the neighbors or the garbage man or whoever the frickdaddy sent this thing might know.”

Normally, spending a couple of weeks undercover in a rich woman’s house, with a serious chance of getting closer to her capture, would be a swell idea to you.  But if you work in Bel Air…

“You work for me now.”

6

The e-mail from SFV is simple.  You’ve been secunded to the Bel Air Field Office (BAFO) to find out what you can from Ms Stewart’s erstwhile neighbors.  Several of them have made sympathetic public statements about the case, and it is decided that you will work undercover.  Your cover is that of a screenwriter, which will provide you cover for erratic notetaking and talking into hand held recording devices.  It will also serve to explain your sudden presence in such an upscale neighborhood without anyone having ever heard of or seen you before.  According to the agents in the BAFO, it is very common for screen writers to briefly appear out of nowhere in high socioeconomic circles, only to disappear weeks or months later, replaced by another nameless “talent.”

You arrive at the BAFO early next morning and meet Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) Carl Moyer.  ASAC Moyer wastes no time in providing you a thin dossier and operation outline.

“The house itself a incredible.  Of course, Stewart practically gutted the thing as soon as she bought it from Superfreak.”

Superfreak as in Rick James?  The Superfreak?

“None other.”

You begin to wonder if the propellerheads didn’t find a trove of secret storage and surveillance space in the house, none of it attributable to Ms Stewart.  You want to ask, but you may as well check yourself while you’re there.

“ We’re gonna start with the neighbors,” Moyer says, “and keep your eye out for the this Nugent character.  Our surveillance crew says he gets up just before dawn every morning, makes a duck blind in his front yard and just waits there until ten o’clock or so.”

“Do we know what he’s waiting for?”  you ask.

“According to him, California Condors or illegal aliens, whichever he sees first.”

You make a note and quickly scan the 302s on the neighbors.  According to reverse telephone directory entries and escrow records, Ms Stewart’s neighbors of the past twelve months were:

1.      Theodore Nugent, AKA Ted Nugent AKA The Nuge; musician and hunting enthusiast.

2.      Andrew Dick AKA Andy Dick AKA Daphne Aguilera; actor.

3.      Rip Taylor; vocation unknown.

4.      Brian Warner AKA Marilyn Manson; pantomime artist.

5.      John Charles Carter AKA Charlton Heston AKA Moses AKA Bright Eyes; past president of National Rifle Association.

6.      Roseann O'Donnell AKA Rosie O’Donnell AKA The Trojan Horse; no verifiable employment.

Someone had a sense of humor writing the AKAs for in the 302, but wonder what the Trojan Horse means.  Moyer explains.

“She snuck into straight America and popped out, then did the same with gay America.  And everyone on both sides wishes she would just get back into the fucking thing and roll away.”

Surveillance and billing records show that Ms Stewart and her neighbors have hired 30-40 persons in various domestic capacities such as neighborhood security duties and grounds maintenance over the past 24 months.  Of these, Social Security and FICA information exists for two persons.  These subjects have been identified as:

James Carroll, an itinerant handyman originally from New York City who currently resides in Mr. Warner’s utility shed.

Thomas Waits, an itinerant handyman originally from Indiana, who currently resides in Pomona, California.

Included in the dossier are directions to and house keys for Stewart’s primary residence.  As you exit the BAFO, ASAC Moyer reminds you to provide a situation report (SITREP) every morning and to,

“Remember to watch out for the Nuge.”

7

Thirty minutes later you have completed the four mile trip from the BAFO to the subject’s residence (SUBRES).  As mentioned by ASAC Moyer, there is indeed a large duck blind in the home adjacent to the SUBRES, and several dozen dead or dying birds and small mammals strewn throughout the area.

“Hey man, what’s up?  I’m Ted Fucking Nugent!”

“Hello there.  Is all of this . . . yours?”

"... First thing I slayed...I was nine years old.  It was a squirrel, these ladies were feeding it, you know, and I said, 'excuse me, BAM!'  It wasn't a pet squirrel.  I had it stuffed and petted it for years after that." [1]

I took note of his weapon of choice.

“Do you usually hunt with a bow, or are there gun restrictions here?”

“Only a coward supports gun control. You know how to stop carjacking? Shoot the carjacker. If someone is going to kill me for my Buick, I'm gonna shoot until I'm out of ammo - and then I'll call 911." [2]

Nugent takes a moment to adjust the feathered headdress he wears as if Tuesday were Feathered Headdress Day.  He is a tall, handsome man with a mild complexion, chestnut eyes and hair, and a grin you rarely see outside of the Mustelidae family of polecats, badgers, skunks and wolverines.

With Garcia arriving any minute you decide to bring up the topic of diversity.  It’s gravy.

“We should put razor wire around our borders and give the finger to any piece of shit who wants to come here.” [3]