Further Adventures (17 page)

“Old business.” Newberry stretched across his desk to hand me a flimsy piece of paper.

I read it over it was a bill for $918.85 it is on my kitchen table in front of me this Moment.

“For the work on your car. You can pay it off in installments if it’s easier Ray.”

“I didn’t expect such a high figure. Didn’t you haggle?”

“Got you a special agency deal. But I can’t let the taxpayers cover your expenses can I?”

I read over the Items on the bill. “Do I get a guarantee with this?”

“Parts,” he snickered. “Labor you’ve got to pony up.” He watched me stuff it into my wallet & he said, “Let’s get a few vital statistics. Full name.”

“You people know it already.”

“Tell Shelley. Of your own free will. That’s the way we do things in the big city.”

“Last name first,” Shelley asked me.

My reply, “Green. Ray.”

“Residing at?”

“You mean now?”

“To what address do you have your mail delivered?”

For informal this was sounding very Formal all of a sudden. “What is this an intelligence test?”

“Only if you fail,” Newberry said.

“My address—I don’t remember the Zip Code.”

“We can look it up,” Shelley informed me.

Out of the fog in the back of my Mind I pulled out the bits & pieces. “My address is—Apt. 8—1819 Pecan St.—Mason in New Mexico. I don’t remember the Zip.”

“Not important,” Newberry allowed me.

“Hair. Gray?” She checked with Newberry not me.

“Silver.” I pointed this plain Fact out very firm also something else: “You can get all this off my driver’s license.” Which I took out of my wallet I handed to Shelley. She did not even glance at it she handed it direct to Newberry.

He eyed it up. “Expired in 1986. You aware of that?” I shrugged. A real hardboiled criminal. “I can get you a brand new one. You don’t even have to take a test. Any state in the Union.” He held onto it for a second & waited for my Answer which he did not get out of me. So he passed my license back to Shelley. “You can take the rest off this.” Which meant Leave Us Alone so she did.

Then Newberry picked up where he left off with me before. “I’ll do you a favor. You do me one. Give and take. Then we’ll get somewhere.”

“I want to get out of here.”

“After we talk.”

“You start.”

“How did you meet Amelia Vasquez?”

This Innocent Question will lead to that Innocent Question & before I know what end is up I reveal already certain pieces of her personal puzzle. Which Newberry will fit together into the Big Picture he will see Amelia’s survival plan so my Duty appeared clear as a Guiding Light before me.

There is a time to Attack and a time to Defend also there is the time when you have to make one of them look like the other. Nor I did not forget that a sworn duty of The Green Ray is I must be the shining
example of Truth & Honesty if I am in the company of a cop or a criminal or neither or both. In the company of John Newberry a true answer from me could bring harm befalling upon Amelia ALSO a lie was going to besmudge the character of The Green Ray so while I figured out how to play this for laughter or tears I ad libbed—

“In a Lonely Hearts ad.”

‘Whose ad? Hers?”

“No. I put the ad in.” I lowered my face from him I did not want to look him in the eyes for the part coming up. Very tender I touched a photo of his sons I tried hard to squeeze a tear out to land on it. “They’re beautiful children.”

“Thanks. That’s Joseph and Primo in that picture.”

I touched another picture. “This is their mother?”

“Last time I checked. Her name’s Chantal.”

“French name.”

“Her grandmother’s from there.”

“Where did you meet her?”

Newberry let a beat go by to let me know he did not mind this line of talk but there is a Limit. “In D.C. When I started with the Bureau. She was a clerk in Records.”

“She’s in the F.B.I. too? So I guess it’s twice as hard if you think about two-timing her. I don’t mean disrespect I’m just saying in theory.”

He turned the picture frame away from me. “Chantal quit her job when we got married. Anyway. Your ad in the newspaper. Which newspaper?”

“You get to my age…My entire life I lived alone so far. It hasn’t been terrible. I thought that’s how I liked it then one day I woke up and I recognized something else.” Another big sigh here. “I recognized I’ve just been tolerating. So what the hey I figured. Put a ad in the
Examiner
.”

“Being lonely’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Who said I was lonely?”

“I’m interpreting.”

“Don’t interpret me please.” I did not plan what I was going to say next which is the Actor’s Secret behind ad libbing so your Audience believes it when it comes out of your mouth. A Actor must go forward and save himself the Woe of going around in the same sad circle. “I’d like to get off the subject now.”

“Let me understand it,” Newberry followed me. “Amelia answered your ad. Then you met her somewhere.”

“We went bowling. We drank a few milkshakes.”

His laugh said he doubted it. “Amelia Vasquez and milkshakes.”

“You know better?”

“We’ve met,” he said. “I know for sure a milkshake isn’t Amelia’s favorite drink.”

I looked over the plaques that decorated his wall with the Certificates of Merit and so on the Official Honors he got for his F.B.I. services. Maybe he is Straight and both of us obey the same Code. If I am plain & true he will be plain & true to me out of Respect. So I asked him no tricks, “Why do you want to know such personal things?”

“To understand what kind of relationship you’ve got with her. I want to know how you’re involved in her business.” He said this all Courtesy but no Respect came after.

“I’m tired Mr. Newberry. I don’t know what’s happening here.” I dropped down in my chair I sank back in my Old Age.

“What did she tell you she was going to Gonzales for? Come on Ray. This is one of the easy ones.”

“We came to Gonzales…So I could meet her uncle…Who is her only living family…Amelia wanted me to meet him…before…” What I came up with on the spot under this Pressure was—“…before we get married.”

“You don’t mind if I say right out—I don’t think so.”

“Jump in a lake.”

“Ray? Are you a millionaire?”

“Me? No.”

“You have a big dick?” (This I did not dignify.) “So what does a woman like Amelia want from a man like you?”

“How do you know what she wants out of life?” I asked him sincere.

He held his thumb & fingers apart like he was holding a sandwich. “I got a file on her this thick. What are you doing with her Ray? Are you her new business partner?”

From a head on Easter Island he would get more information!

“Then what are you?”

“Her protector,” I said. “You did enough harm to her already.”

“What do you think you know?”

“Plenty!”

“I don’t care what kind of twisted crap Amelia Vasquez fed you. I’m going to do you a big favor Ray and forget what I just heard. I advise you to sit back down in that chair. You and I are going to reason together.”

“You going to break my arm for a warning?” I taunted him.

To calm down he went over to the window & dragged in a couple of deep breaths. “Why on earth should you take her word for anything? Why trust Amelia Vasquez instead of me?”

“I met her first.” I was not trying to be a Weisenheimer it was the honest Truth besides—“I don’t have to take her word. I saw things with my own eyes.”

“What would that be?”

“Those dumb gunsels of yours in Mason. How they punched her—”

“Name names.”

“How they threw her in their car—”

“Name me some names!”

“And locked her up in a rat trap in the East 8th and had her helpless. I heard them call you up on the phone so you could come and take her away like a order of sweet & sour pork!”

“You know a name? Or is this more B.S. you got from Amelia?”

“Nilo! You like that one? Perry. You like that one better?”

With his finger in Thinking Position on his sealed lips Newberry backed off very casual. Then a laugh like a Chihuahua bark escaped from his mouth. “What did you call them? My what? My dumb
what?
”

“Gunsels.”

GUNSELS tickled him harder than PEP did before. “Gunsels.” He smiled over at me my fond friend for sure. “If you want to stay out of serious legal trouble Ray you’ve got to tell me something. And tell me true.” Newberry sat on the edge of his desk 6 Inches away from me. “How did you and Miss Vasquez end up in the same house in Mason?”

“Fate.”

“Believe it Ray. You’re going to tell me true or you’re not going to walk out of here today.”

I do not know by Anatomy but by my experience the Human Conscience must live in the rear lobes of the brain because that is where I felt the pressure building up. Same as the pressure in my stomach when I forget to eat lunch or on my eyes when I suffer some Insomnia. That kind of thing or pressure on my groin I can not relieve unless I push. I can eat a sandwich & satisfy my stomach I can take a snooze & ease my eyes. If I want to satisfy my Conscience I must Defy. Newberry is a pervert of the Law he uses the F.B.I. for camouflage so he disguises his rotten intentions mainly. I believe he made Amelia a personal Item on his list so my duty was the pressure of my Conscience to defy & defend and this forced out of me the Voice of The Green Ray—

ME: If I took heat from Lionel Horvath I can take it from you.

NEWBERRY: I’m about an inch away from arresting you Ray. Who’s Lionel Horvath?

ME: You can’t arrest me! J. Edgar Hoover presented me the key to the city!

NEWBERRY: Sit back down. This business isn’t concluded yet.

ME: I’ve had too much of you for one day Newberry. You
bush leaguer
.

I had my hand on the door but the next cold blast out of his mouth froze me on the spot.

NEWBERRY: Are you aware of the immigration laws of this country?

ME: I’m twice the American you are.

NEWBERRY: Did I touch a nerve?

ME: I’m still here.

NEWBERRY: Yes you are. And before I let you go you’re going to tell me what you’re doing with Amelia Vasquez.

ME: I’ll stand up to you and a dozen like you! Justice makes all men equal and
you’re
going to be around to see criminals who cower behind the false fronts of law-abiding citizens bow down to cleanse the soiled garments of those whom they trod in the dirt!

I was shaking my finger at him when I recited those words I felt the Blood shaking my ribs loose. Newberry did not come up with a smart line back I think I surprised him by my Fury. He shook his head only & punched the button on his phone to call his secretary. The whole time he waited for her to answer his beckon call he kept his eyes on me. Then on the other side of the glass door Shelley picked up her phone.

NEWBERRY: Conference room! Take him down!

In the
Reader’s Digest
I saw a artist’s impression of a Conference Room it had a walnut table in it with individual lamps for each chair maybe a dozen chairs. In the picture window behind was the skyline of Manhattan roofs of skyscrapers near & far since this was a illustration next to a Story behind the Scenes of High Finance. I will say the Conference Room he put me in did not measure up to the name the word BUNKER is a closer description.

Cement walls they gave a coat of white paint which did not cheer the place up. No walnut table a bridge table & 2 chairs nor they did not decorate with any individual lamps either just the fluorescent one on the ceiling. I folded my hands on the table & it teeter-tottered so while I waited I got underneath with a folded-up business card from my dry cleaners and made the short leg even. When I was down there I noticed in the middle of the floor a drain which hit me very peculiar. What do they need to hose down after a Conference?

For escape it was a worse Predicament than the notorious Chinese Box Room where they imprisoned me with water leaking in up to my neck in The Adventure Of Emperor Zero when I fought against a nest of Japanese spies & suicide saboteurs in Santa Monica by the Pacific Ocean during the dark days of World War 2. So the drain in the floor calmed me down since no water could enflood me there not even as far as my ankles.

I hereby confess it did steam me i.e. the bare Fact I was at John Newberry’s mercy how I let him box me in to this Dead End. This nickel & dime Napoleon who beturds his Badge with his crooked morals & sneaky behavior what am I doing waiting on his hand & foot? No I did not need a nap to think about it fresh—by my own Free Will I yanked open the door then there I was cheek to cheek with Not-So-Special Agent Newberry again!

A cardboard tray got crushed between us and he juggled it and stopped the sandwiches & beverages etc. from spilling all over. “Care
ful,” he said, “or you’ll miss out on a free lunch.” Mr. Cheerful he was now smiles all over. “Break bread with me Ray. Boloney and cheese or tuna salad?”

So escape was off the menu also I figured Food = Strength so I pretended I caved in in case the moment came when I had to slug it out with him. “I’ll break boloney.”

Maybe this occurs to you likewise as it did to me—So what is it going to hurt if I stick around for a bite & by sly conversation I find out why Newberry wants to treat me with fond Affection—

The plastic wrapper on my sandwich had its own ideas about its Purpose in the world it fought hard to keep this particular boloney & cheese out of the grip of Human teeth. Newberry reached his open hand across the table. “Let me help you with that.” In a flash he flipped open a silver cutthroat Razor. So smooth & sharp he did not disturb even a lettuce leaf. He tilted the handle so I could admire. “Heirloom,” he said & showed me the painting of a racehorse running down the ivory. “My grandfather gave it to my dad. My dad gave it to me. When I graduated from the Academy.” After my eyeful he folded it up & dropped it back in his side pocket. “I found out something about you.”

“Not bad,” I said i.e. the enjoyable sandwich.

Newberry slid a Xerox page over he nudged my fingertips with it. A page from the Classified Section of the
Mason Examiner
with a red circle around the ad I put in. “How come ‘Peter Tremayne’?”