The Mentor (35 page)

"Dude,
stop digging back there.  You're messing with my
funyun
-shway."

You don't
want to mess with a man's funyun-shway, now.

For as long
as I knew him, almost two years, we'd never taken an extended drive together
anywhere.  Pavan is a courteous driver and he told me one time he drives
as if his mother was watching him.  She died some years ago and he
believes that she might actually do that.

"You
think she's passed through the pearly gates, living in light of God's love in
the halls of heaven, but leaves to watch you drive?"

"She
doesn't like rude people.  Her big thing.  And on the road, easy to
be rude.  So, I drive not-rude.  In case, you know, she's checking up
on me."

I opened
the window and looked outside.  The trees were set back from the road a
little as if they knew better than to get too close to our cars.  Maybe
the deer told them.

"Is
she watching you now?"

He shook
his head.  "Sure, why not, maybe."

"So,
is it just when you're driving?"

"Ah,
man, don't do that."

I kept
quiet for a moment and could tell he was thinking about his mother, who he
cared very much about.

"Does
she watch you in the shower?"

"DUDE,
shut up with that!"  He actually swerved a little.

"Oh,
rude
swerving.  She won't like that."

Taking
another drag from his third joint since we left he said, "You have
something very wrong with you."

At the two
hour mark we stopped to leak, and I filled up his car.  After years, I'd
finally cracked the seal on my savings account, the money I'd gotten from the
hospital lawsuit, and preferred spending in on Pavan than me.

That got me
thinking.

Why would a
group of ultra-wealthy people be after me?  Not after me, but after
something I… had?

After the
forty dollar fill up, I still had well over four hundred thousand dollars in
the bank.  Not rich but certainly not broke.

"I'm
thinking they're not after my fat bankroll," I said to my reflection in
Pavan's back window, which seemed to agree with me.

What do
people with money want?  Stock answer: more money.

Okay, if
that were the case… what did I have-- and I didn't have
anything
-- that
would be worth a lot of money?

When we
started seeing the signs for Nashville, I'd fallen into a sleep-wake coma.
 I was very comfortable and began to think I'd picked up a contact high
from my driver, Puff the Magic Dragon.

Pavan (aka
Puff) on the other hand was looking a bit agitated.  
Impressive
after
a half dozen joints.

"So,
what are you going to ask these people when you get there?  Is that Wayne
guy there?"

"I
doubt it," I said and grabbed the pages Pavan had printed up from the
library.  "They've got eight regional offices and a main one in New
York.  I think if he goes into any of them, it'd be that one."

"I
don't wanna go to New York, man."

"Nah,
I doubt the guy even goes there.  He's too busy giving secrets to the
Chinese, paying a nickel a day for labor and selling shitty computer chips to
U.S. government."

Pavan
nodded.  "Yeah, he sounds busy, man."  He drew in a deep
breath of smoke-- tobacco this time-- and blew it out the window.  That
stuff, he blows out the window now.  Sure.  "So, what are you
going to do, then?  At the place?"

"Ask
around.  What do you think I should do?"

"I
don't know, man!  You're the one trying to get all Scooby-doo on ‘em.
 I'm just the driver."

The night
before I'd had trouble sleeping and was rolling
that
very question
around in my head.  I'd come up with a couple scenarios but Pavan was
right-- this was detective territory (cartoon dog detective or not)-- I don't
know much about storming a place, shining someone on to get me something I
wanted to know.

Especially
when I really didn't know what I was hoping to find out.  Anything, I
suppose.

One of the
few friends I have left from college (or at least one I can recall) works for the
big news network, downtown.  She's an "associate producer" which
is a pretty cool title but it really just means she’s a bit of a gopher, gets
video clips for whatever show she's assigned to.

On rare
occasions, she gets to tag along with a field producer who needs an extra set
of hands for a shoot somewhere.  A few months ago, when I bumped into her
at a
Disturbed
concert at Lakewood Amphitheater, we talked for about
twenty minutes in the beer line.

Steve
Martin, the comedian who used to be funny, wrote a pretty good autobiography.
 In it, he told a story about the greatest of TV hosts, Johnny Carson
who'd leaned over to him, going to commercial break, and said, "You'll use
everything you ever knew."

That
guy was brilliant.  

Then, I
remembered the woman back at the police station in Marietta and hoped things
had worked out for her.  It'd be nice if Jay Leno were incarcerated and
couldn't do the show anymore.  Johnny would have wanted it that way.

I walked
through the revolving door of a glass atrium a few moments after Pavan assured
me he'd keep the motor running.  I subsequently assured him that wouldn't
be necessary but, his car, he was the deciding vote.

"Try
not to look suspicious," I'd said, holding open the passenger side door.

"We're
in Nashville, and I’m from El Salvador.  Unless I'm washing dishes, I look
suspicious."

"You'll
be fine," I said, confirming the numbers on the building up the street
matched the ones on the print out in my hand.  "Just act a little,
you know, 'Country.'"

"I am
a little bit country," he said.  "And, you know, a little
bit--"

I'd slammed
the door before he could finish.  Low hanging fruit.  Seriously.

Inside the
offices of Solomon-Bluth, the young guy with the thirty dollar haircut greeted
me pleasantly enough, and I gave him my real name but fake employer (the
Atlanta news network), in case there were any instance where I had to whip out
an I.D., not that I expected that.

"Hey,
I was just burnin' through here coming back from St. Louis where we were doing
a story, a feature piece, on the family of one of the Doctors Without Borders
guys."

"Oh,"
he said, and put his thin hand to his chest.  "I love those guys.
 Very brave, every one of them."

"Absolutely.
 And their families have to be brave, too.  Any given day that phone
could ring, right?"

"Oh,
wow.  Yeah."

"So,
they're like the unsung heroes, in a way.  The, uh, ‘wind beneath their
wings’ sort of people.  They worry constantly but no one even knows their
names."

He blinked
a couple times, his eyes a little damp.

"You'll
have to tell me when that runs, that's really beautiful, Dexter," he said
and switched gears, got to business.  "What can we do for you
here?"

I nodded,
looked around-- I had no idea how a producer "scoped" out a potential
interview and tried to look a little distracted, constantly.

"Same
sort of vein, right?  Solomon-Bluth puts millions towards all sorts of
great causes--"

"Absolutely,
Solomon-Bluth is synonymous with medical advancements and achievements for the
food and financially insecure," he said, a veritable talking brochure.
 "Folks in this country are worried about having health insurance,
and they have every right to be.  But we've got people on this planet
worried about dying from diseases we cured fifty years ago!"

Leaning in,
I said quietly, turned my total focus to the young man who, according to the
small, upright nameplate, was called Timothy.

"Timothy,
you see… I don't mean for this to sound cold, and I swear it's not… but you say
Solomon-Bluth is synonymous with medical advancements and achievements for the
food and financially insecure, and I don't think many people realize
that."

His face
drooped a little.  Sad clown, I'd popped a balloon.

"Oh."

"Well,"
I said, smiling.  "We need to change that right?  That’s why I
stopped by.  I knew you guys had a regional here in Nashville.  Maybe
your company can be part of our series?"

He lit up.
 "Wow."  Then: "But you guys just did a big piece on
Mr. Bluth a couple months back.  Some of my counterparts at the home
office got on T.V., even.  It was very exciting.  I’m not
sure--"

"No,"
I said, dancing as fast as I could, "this wouldn't be told in the light
of, you know, coloring within the lines as we worked up a sketch on a national
figure like Mr. Bluth."

"
Inter
national
figure."

"Absolutely.
 This, again, would be along the unsung lines-- we love people like the
big man there-- but there are a lot of little folks who never get the
limelight."

A slow nod.
 Closer.

"And,
this office in particular,” I continued, “some of your recent work has not gone
unnoticed.  At least not by my colleagues and me."

The nod
continued for a moment and stopped.

"What
work?  Us?"

"Yes,"
I said through a terrified smile, beaming brightly.  "This office
here, ol' Nashville regional for Solomon-Bluth.  Your work here, well we
were just talking about it a few weeks back, maybe a month or two ago, in the past
year or so… in the newsroom."  I wondered if my teeth were sweating.
 "I'll admit, and we're supposed to be impartial, but you've got a
lot of fans over there on the fifth floor."

His eyes
grew for a moment.

"Oh
my,” he hooded his eyes, then lifted a hand to cover his mouth.  “You're
talking about the coffee mite eradiation project in Patrocinio."

"YES. 
That is… right?  Exactly."

"Brazil?
 How do you all know we were heading that up out of this office?
 That, Dexter is supposed to be a semi-secret.  Or at least not
really
public knowledge because everyone at Solomon-Bluth, all the offices, you know,
is a part of the coffee mite project.  Sure, we’re lead project managers.
 You know, make the big decisions, and push the funds.  The buck
stops here."

"Ha,
right.  Well, well, right?  We're, you know, I know because, right?
 It's news and, I’m a news
person
.  So, we know all about
it!"

He stood up
and walked to the wall, proudly pointing out a row of black and white
photographs.  

“Here are
your unsung heroes.”  Waving me over, his face beaming, he said: "These
are some of our people-- out of this office-- down in Patrocinio and the
outlying area.  You know, years ago the local farmers were told to
introduce phytoseiid mites to the coffee beans!"

I shook my
head.

"One
mite to take out another mite,” he said.  “You want to put a creature, a
bug, essentially, into an ecosystem that doesn’t belong there-- I don't care if
the darn thing cured heart-break-- not on our watch!"

"See,
what a mess that could have been.  You guys-- so great."

The next
several photos showed tall, white people with clipboards and huge floppy hats,
posing with little brown folks who looked like they just wanted to get back to
planting, sowing, picking coffee and being away from assholes for a while.

"Here's
an aerial shot.  Look how low he is!"

"Amazing."

"That,
I think… yes, that's the third application of the insecticide, an
herbal
of
course, developed in our state of the art lab-- we're just testing it on one
farm right now and the farmer has been
totally
compensated, trust me.
 But, so far"-- he crossed his fingers-- "so good."

Timothy
named a couple people and looked at me as if I should be writing it down.
 I assured him that my memory was rather good, never forget a name.

The farther
down the wall one walked, the older the pictures.  The last one of the set
he stopped at and grinned wide again.  And again, the hand went back to
the chest.

"Oh,
that's the very first day of the project…" he continued on for about three
or four minutes.  My subconscious was taking it all down but my
here-and-now
conscious needed a break from the coffee bug talk.

It's funny.
 I have no idea how long I'd been staring but it'd obviously been long
enough to warrant an explanation.

"Ah
ha!  Those are the
real, original
heroes.  Those three men,
for years, were responsible for, oh gosh, vaccines and antibiotics and
herbicides, insecticides!  That was the most expensive private lab ever
built."

"I…
yeah?"

Timothy
pointed to the row below and said something about the new lab and some of the
similar accomplishments.