by Unknown
“I want them all, William, and believe you me you’re right about Atlanta being a major city for the drug trade but I guess after you’ve stalked someone for as long as I have you kind of take it personal.
I don’t know if you recall asking me some time ago about why I became a DEA agent to begin with. Anyway, I was running short on time then and I couldn’t really explain but if you can bear with me, I’ll do my best so that maybe you can get a better understanding and see the whole picture.”
As he began to explain, the cook returned pushing a little tray, with their dinners that resembled a snack tray on wheels. He was having hard time getting through with the young couple’s chairs in his way. After he left they had moved their chairs back together the way young lovers do when in love and sat holding hands and nibbling at each other’s earlobes.
So occupied were they with each other that neither saw the cook as he tried to maneuver past their chairs, which were directly in the aisle and in his path. He may have been an outstanding cook but he was certainly no navigator and before either of them could make a move to save the couple the humiliation and embarrassment that was to follow the carafe of red wine was on the floor and the cook in an unmitigated rage.
“I told you before to move your fuckin’ chairs to make room. Now look what you have done with your stupidity. Take you kissin’ and touchin’ some-where’s else. This is a restaurant! This is not the place for that! Now get out!
Leave my restaurant and don’t come back until you can behave betta’!” He shouted, arms flailing in anger. “Tonight, your dinner is on me. And may you make a thousand babies.” He then waved, summoning the bartender who was there within seconds.
“Yes poppa?”
“Clean this mess up for me, Guido, and bring these men a bottle of our best wine,” he commanded.
“Yes, poppa.”
The waiter and cook, who William now gathered was the owner, too, then turned to William. “I am sorry about your wine. I hope I did not get any on you. Please forgive my rudeness. It has been a long day.”
Placing the food in front of the two men, he took the bottle of wine form his son and poured each of them half a glass before leaving the table.
“You were saying,” William said, ignoring the fiasco that had occurred only moments earlier.
“Oh, yeah, I was saying that of all the cases that I’ve worked on during my twenty or so years with the bureau, Ol’ Man Morris has been the most elusive.”
“No, Terry. What I’m curious to know about is the driving force, the motivation that makes this particular case so much more enticing, so much more alluring than the rest of these assholes selling poison out here in the streets.”
“I think you and I both know what motivates me, William, but if I understand your question correctly as to what drives me or as you so aptly put it why I have a hard on for Morris in particular, I guess it’s because Morris had no need for the money. Hill and Morris are one of the top firms in the country, no, the world. It’s listed in Forbes and Fortune 500, as one of the top grossing companies in the world, making Morris a millionaire many times over. So there’s no reason, not that there’s ever a legitimate reason, but there’s absolutely no reason Morris should be peddling that shit on the street. Maybe, if he had kids he’d have a better grasp of the pain and suffering he’s causing. But then again I don’t know. It’s obvious there’s something other than greed that’s driving him but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. I’m no closer to understanding his motivation than you are mine. Funny thing I’ve learned about people though, William. Just because they’ve mastered one aspect of life, doesn’t mean they have a grasp on other aspects. Take your cook here. Tell me that’s not the best veal you’ve ever tasted.”
William, his mouth full, nodded in agreement.
“I thought you’d like it. I think he’s one of the best chef’s, Italian that is, what I’ve ever had the occasion to sample. But he’s a complete asshole. Doesn’t know what people skills are. Doesn’t know that when you’re in business, your livelihood depends on your customers. And to be honest, I don’t think he cares. Anyway, my point is that we all have certain gifts or blessings and, because we have those, we’re sort of expected to have common sense and everything else that goes along with possessing those gifts. But that is a supposition that doesn’t carry much weight. You know I’ve seen Ben Hur, you know the movie, a dozen or so times. Loved it. All the critics deem it a classic and I was inclined to agree with them. And you know what made Ben Hur? Charlton Heston—. Charlton Heston was Ben Hur. He made the movie! Excellent actor—. Every year the movie would come on right before Easter and every year I found myself glued to the T.V., watching Charlton Heston playing Ben Hur and say, ‘Wow’, now that man’s an actor. He’s mastered his craft.
Then, a couple of years ago I was working a stakeout on the Eastside. We ran up on a couple of teenagers trying to get into the game as they call it. I think it was their first buy. And we had this sting operation in effect. We were going to bust them with a little over three kilos of some low grade coke. It would have been the first bust for most of them. With the legal system set up the way it is, the most they would have done was a couple of years of probation but they panicked and started firing. Bullets were flying everywhere. It remained me of my second tour in ‘Nam. I kid you not. It reminded me of the time my unit was ambushed along the DMZ. Anyway, in all the chaos and mayhem, I ended up shooting a seventeen-year-old kid that day. I don’t know how long it took me to get over that. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m over it yet and that was thirteen years ago.
Sometimes, I wake up in a cold sweat and see that boy’s face as clear as day. Sometime after that, I picked up a newspaper and saw Charlton Heston in front of this huge poster, lauding the NRA and it’s opposition to tighter gun controls. I couldn’t believe that Ben Hur was the president of the NRA. I couldn’t believe that Charlton Heston, a man who had the opportunity to travel the world ten times over, could be oblivious to the pain and devastation that guns are causing right here at home. But he was and he is. I never watched Ben Hur again. My point is that it took some time before it dawned on me that because a man was good at one thing, didn’t necessarily make him cognizant of other facets of his life and those around him.
Still, that didn’t make me want Morris any less. But of course there was more than one or two motivating factors that caused me to join the bureau and if you’ve got a few more minutes we can order dessert. I’d like to tell you a story that I think will help you to understand even more.
CHAPTER 18
At nineteen years of age, Mary Ann, a promising young medical student in her senior year at New York University, crossed the busy Manhattan Street and entered Washington Square Park. Once in the park, she hoped to purchase just enough, China White, to take the edge off and help her relax before she started studying for her midterm exams later that evening.
A day earlier, the very same, Mary Ann, who also carried the needless burden of being senior class president, had enclosed a New York University application in a large manila envelope and mailed it to her younger brother. Two years older than he, Mary Ann adored her only brother. She was truly hoping that he would join her the following semester. She knew he would love the Ivy League school, known to be one of the best in the country and New York as well.
After all, how could anyone from the little hick town of French Lick, Indiana not love New York City? Oh, how she hoped he would make N.Y. U. his choice after graduation. She would take him to the East Village to see the Bohemians and the artists. She would take him to the coffeehouses where famous writers met. She had written him about it all but there was nothing like being there. How could she write about John Coltrane’s horn? Like Coltrane’s horn, New York, all too often, defied words. She’d written him several times, in the past wee alone, hoping to sway his opinion but had yet to get a response. So, she’d sent him the application, with the hope that he would see just how badly she wanted hi
m to join her. She loved the city but it was easy to get lost and, more often than not, she felt alone. She was treasurer for the young Communist Party, a member of the 52nd Street Jazz Ensemble, played volleyball at the YWCA on Tuesday nights and basketball at the YMCA on Thursdays. On Friday nights, she would go barhopping, with her sorority sisters on Bleecker Street and she was constantly trying out for a role in some off-Broadway play. Then there was the matter of being senior class president while maintaining a 3.75 grade point average. All this she could handle. What she could not handle was her constant fear of being alone, a loner in a strange place—an outsider.
The same day her brother received the application, he boarded a flight for New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Upon his arrival, he took a cab into Manhattan with all intentions of surprising Mary Ann. He’d finished high school a semester earlier and had already been accepted at N.Y.U., where he planned to study law.
After a good deal of exasperation, supplemented by a twenty dollar bill, he was finally able to convince the Resident Advisor in Mary Ann’s dorm, that he was indeed her brother and that his intentions were honorable. Entering his sister’s dorm room that day would impact his life forever. Sitting with her head resting on her chest, thick white globs of saliva from the corners of her mouth, a bloody needle still dangling from her arm, her body still warm, sat Mary Ann Shannon, medical student, senior class president, her future now behind her, dead at nineteen years of age, a victim of a heroin overdose.
“It was at that moment, that very day, that my life changed,” Terry Shannon said. “I dedicated my life to my sister’s memory and to all the Mary Anns of the world. That was twenty-four years ago. And since then little has changed.”
The evening, which had begun so optimistically for William, had suddenly taken on a grave overtone and the darkening skies peering through the worn, red and white curtains of the little Italian restaurant did little to lift the som-berness.
“I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” was all William could muster. Pushing his dessert aside and sipping the last of his wine, William sighed and thought for a moment of all the Mary Anns that he had contributed to since his trip to Lagos.
“Tell me something, Terry. Why does your department allow this shit to hit the streets? You told me yourself that DEA has known about Morris and these shipments for years. How many innocent kids just like Mary Ann have to die before anything is done?”
“William, understand something,” Shannon confided. “Simply because I’m a contingent of DEA, does not mean that I either condone or understand their practices. In the case of your boss, who has political ties with both parties, all the way up to the oval office, it’s imperative that this thing be done correctly. If he had any knowledge of you or I sitting here discussing his foreign affairs, chances are we’d be dead by morning. Are you getting the gist of the gravity of the problem? If our case isn’t airtight, he could bring DEA to it’s knees. That’s how much power he wields. But this time I think we have him. I know the plan seems a little unorthodox, and it probably is, but it’s the only plan we’ve got. All I can suggest from my vantage point is to say a lot of Novenas, William.”
Terry Shannon paid the waiter, tipping him handsomely. Still, his demeanor did not change.
“Thank you and come again,” the waiter said beneath a heavy Sicilian accent.
“You think he means that?” Shannon said.
Both men chuckled as they headed for their respective cars.
A week later, William had Melinda drive him to Fulton County Airport. Several hours later, William arrived at Heathrow in London. To William it seemed like an eternity. He hadn’t had any hard liquor since that night at Dante’s and was determined not to drink now despite his fear of flying. Once in London, he decided to take advantage of the sights and see as much of London as he possibly could. He had become since his dinner with Terry Shannon cognizant of how precious life really was.
In between flights, he was able to visit Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey. Not knowing what tomorrow would bring, he strolled the streets thinking of Oliver Twist’s London and how much the city had actually changed from the dank, damp and cold of Dicken’s time. Five hours later, William Shannon boarded a British Airways flight on the last leg of his journey bound for Lagos, Nigeria.
On his arrival, Nigerian customs officials welcomed his return and quickly escorted him to a waiting limousine almost as if he were some foreign dignitary. Someone in government scrapped his hotel reservations and he was driven to a tiny villa overlooking Lagos. The panoramic view of the bustling city of Lagos was magnificent. That evening an entourage of smiling black waiters brought in tray after tray of Nigerian delicacies. He wondered if such a grandiose reception was the result of his last visit and his treatment of young Alex or was this just the government’s way of insuring that they receive a fair market value in the upcoming negotiations? If it were, they certainly had endeared themselves in his eyes. Unsure of how to handle such fanfare, William offered the headwaiter a hundred dollar tip at the end of the evening to split among his entourage. His refusal to accept it, left William with a plethora of questions he simply could not answer.
On his second day in Lagos, William was picked up at eight o’clock in the morning in a black chauffeured limousine and driven at his requests to the outskirts of town, then transported by land Rover to Alex’s village in the country. Everyone was busy with their daily chores when he arrived. Dismissed as another stalwart government official with another new decree, William found the village atmosphere in sharp contrast to the very festive mood he’d experienced only six months before. In the broad daylight, the stench of abject poverty filled his nostrils much the same way it had on his first trip to the back streets of Harlem in the early Nineties.
He found his way to the one-room hut Alex’s family occupied only to find it abandoned now. After a good deal of inquiry, which consumed the better part of the morning, an elderly woman who remembered the American from his last visit, approached him. From what he was able to gather from the bits and pieces of broken English, government officials, tired of complaints from hotel management, conducted a citywide crackdown on panhandling. Alex and one of his younger siblings were arrested. When their father tried to intervene, he was beaten, thrown into the back of a paddy wagon and hauled off along with his children.
Alex’s mother, after searching for months to no avail for her husband and children, was also threatened with incarceration if she continued to annoy the authorities. Unable to locate her family and unable to pay the rent, the property owner evicted what was left of the family. Heartbroken, she packed up the few belongings she could carry and walked the twenty some odd miles with her six remaining children in tow to her sister’s village.
“She went to the bank where you set up trust fund for Alex’s education in hopes of contacting you but the bank people would not help her. We tell her to take money out to pay officials for her rent. She say, this money for Alex education. I tell her, ‘Education hell, pay rent. Get you husband and children from the jail,’ I say to her. ‘What do we know of education? I tell her she a fool. The educated ones are the ones, which cause so much hardship. I tell her: ‘Pay the rent.’ But all she say is, ‘Money is for Alex to go to school.’ All she keeps telling me is that my Alex will go to college. I tell her: ‘He is in only college the authorities will allow him to go to; but she just keep shaking her head saying, ‘No.’”
William and the old woman hugged, tears streaming down both of their dark cheeks.
“I will do all I can, I promise. And, you in return, must promise me that you will not allow anyone to move into their home. When you see the landlord, tell him I, William Stanton, would like to speak to him. Tell him I will make it worth his while,” William said.
He gave the old woman his business card and scribbled a number on the back where he could be contacted then hugged her again, tightly.
“You are good man, Mr. William,” said the ol
d woman. “The village has given up hope but as long as there are men like you, my friend, there is reason to live; there is still reason to hope. I know you will bring our Alex back to us. I know you will make it right, Mr. William.”
Climbing back into the Land Rover, William picked up the cell phone and called Davenport Enterprises.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport’s in a very important meeting and does not wished to be disturbed,” the secretary informed him.
“Tell him it’s William Stanton from.” before William could telling the voice on the other end the agency he was from, Davenport was on the line.
“Davenport here. That you, Stanton? Good to have you on board, son. Morris tells me you’ve got one helluva proposal for the government. Tells me the yield over the long term could very easily run into the hundreds of millions. Funny thing, though, he wouldn’t elaborate. Just kept telling me, ‘It’s your baby.’ First time I’ve ever known him to be that close-mouthed about anything and I’ve known Jonathan going on close to thirty-five years. He’s taken a real likin’ to you, son, and I think it goes beyond the dollars you’re bringing in. Tells me you’ve got some head on your shoulders and could come back a partner, despite what that crazy board says. That’s some kind of an accomplishment for a young man after only a couple of years with the firm,” Davenport said, pausing before continuing. “You know, William, Jonathan and I have been around for awhile. I guess we’ll both be bowing out in the next couple of years and let you young Turks run things. But from what I hear, you look to be that son he never had. The way it looks right now, you may just inherit the whole shebang, if you play your cards right. He told me to look after you while you were here. ‘Nothing but the best is the way he put it’.”
William was almost back within the city limits and Davenport was still yakking. “Are the hotel arrangements to your liking?” Davenport inquired.