Tinker and Blue

by Frank Macdonald

  “Now get rid of those bastards but get those plans to me, not the FBI or any other government agency!”

  The rest of the tape, thanks to Capricorn’s editing, continued to run with conversations between Reginald Regent III and the heads of three other oil companies discussing price-fixing and how to gouge the American car owner of millions of dollars with unnecessarily inflated prices.

  As the radio broadcast went on with Wise squealing behind his gag, the Plymouth pulled to the curb in front of a telephone booth two blocks up from the van. Tulip got out and stepped into the booth, dropped her dime and began dialing.

  “Time to go, Bud, old buddy,” Tinker said, pulling the FBI agent to his feet, leading him blindly from the van onto the sidewalk where Blue opened one of the handcuffs, placed it around a No Parking sign and snapped it shut again, tying Wise to the metal pole. Blue got back into the van and pulled away. Watching in the rearview mirror, he saw the doors of the television studio open as cameramen and broadcasters, curiosity raised by an anonymous phone, found Special FBI Agent Bud Wise in front of their building. What they found, and filmed, was the special agent in his tie-dyed underwear, face painted in peace signs, the graffiti on his chest and back reading “Make Love Not War” and “Hoover Is No Groover” respectively.

  While still handcuffed to the pole, one woman thrust a microphone in his still blindfolded face and asked if he was the person who made the phone call to Fucdepor Petroleum president Reginald Regent III’s office. Wise made a fervent denial, but his distinctive voice, the very voice the news people had aired not ten minutes ago, convinced them that he had indeed made the call.

  As the van and the Plymouth disappeared from the proximity of Wise’s release, the newscasters were asking the FBI agent if he had already carried out Reginald Regent III’s orders to kill Capricorn and Tinker.

  63

  Media interest in San Francisco rapidly focused on Special Agent Bud Wise and Fucdepor Petroleum president Reginald Regent III. Wise had been suspended without pay for the duration of an investigation into his handling of what the papers were calling the Tinker Affair. Both the FBI and the Attorney General launched investigations into Reginald Regent III for corrupting one of its agents, issuing execution orders for Tinker and Capricorn, and for price-fixing.

  The heat on the two Human Rainbow Commune members continued to drop like a thermometer in a deep freeze when the chief of the FBI branch in San Francisco held a press conference to announce that Wise’s obsessive pursuit of Capricorn over the years appeared to have been a personal vendetta. The statute of limitations had run out on the arson charges in the factory fire in New York for which Capricorn had been a suspect. As far as the FBI was concerned, the Human Rainbow Commune would receive no more surveillance than any other organization that protested the official policies of the United States Government.

  As for the inventor known as Tinker, the FBI chief reported, all the agency had been able to establish was that he was an illegal alien and, as far as it was concerned, his presence in the United States was a matter for immigration officials. His invention, if it existed, suggested nothing illegal.

  Neither Blue nor Blue Cacophony merited any mention.

  “The least he could of done was said that Blue Cacophony was just as innocent as Tinker,” Blue moaned as he read the paper. “Now this is going to be just Tinker’s story when we go home because he’ll have the documented proof and I won’t.”

  “Blue,” Karma reminded him, “you’ve got half a scrapbook of clippings about Blue Cacophony. Your picture’s been in the paper and you have a hit song. You have lots to tell people back home.”

  “I’ve been singing with a dog, for the love of God. But the FBI, Karma! Tinker’s the first Cape Bretoner on the FBI’s Most Wanted list since Baby Face Nelson, although there was this one guy from back home who used to ride with the James brothers, and Farmer told me once that the first cattle rustler ever hung in the state of Texas was from Cape Breton. Couldn’t remember his name, though, but he swore it was true. Must of been the Texas Rangers that caught him, since there was no FBI back then, but that wasn’t a bad way to go, I guess. Getting caught by the Texas Rangers is as good as being chased by the FBI who weren’t even around when Jesse James was a legend. Tinker’s story’s going to shrivel mine like a dick in ice water, to quote the other fellow.”

  —

  Fretting over his undocumented role in the saga of Tinker and Capricorn was a waste of Blue’s time. While he was lamenting the unfairness of it to Karma, Peter? was already coaxing his connections in journalism to feature Blue Cacophony’s role in the events that took down one corrupt FBI agent and a petroleum president. Within days, stories about Blue Cacophony appeared in two newspapers, both based on interviews with the band’s manager. There’s nothing like associating with an exonerated victim to improve one’s image, Peter?, who was enjoying the risk-free romance of being in the spotlight without worrying about police search lights, explained to Blue. What other bands, Peter? had asked reporters, had the courage to write and sing songs like “The Ballad of Tinker” while he was the hottest criminal in the country? What other band member went on the radio to talk about Tinker’s and Capricorn’s innocence? And, he mentioned to one reporter, Blue and Tinker had history, a friendship reaching back to the island nation from which they had journeyed together to explore the United States of America.

  Blue read the newspaper accounts of the band’s underground exploits while sitting on the front step. For several days now, and for the first time since the commune moved across the street, its members were entering and leaving by the front door, free people. Karma and Tulip, standing on a staging of chairs and boards, had painted above the front door the words Human Rainbow Commune.

  “Hello,” said someone passing by.

  Blue, looking up from the paper, replied, “Hello again yourself.”

  Lighting a cigarette, Blue asked Karma, who was sitting beside him sketching ideas for her ninth life into a small pad, “Know what this reminds me off?” Exhaling thoughtfully, he formulated the answer to his own question. “Summers back home sitting on the show hall steps watching the cars drive by. A whole convoy of cars driving over street, tooting when they went past and everybody sitting on the step waving back, then they’d turn at the Fina garage and toot on their way back to the Irving garage where they’d turn again. This is not much different, you know. That guy who just went by? Five times he said hello. Coming or going, everybody says hello here just like home. If we don’t say hello back they’ll think we’re stuck up or mad at them. But look at this Ford Falcon,” Blue said, drawing Karma’s attention to a slow-moving vehicle very unlike the Haight-Ashbury choice of transportation. “This is his third or fourth time going by, but he hasn’t been waving. He’s parking.”

  Out of the Falcon stepped a heavy-set man dressed like a construction worker. He made his uncertain way toward Karma and Blue.

  “Excuse me, but is this where Al Dempsey, ah, Tinker lives?”

  “You a cop?” Blue asked.

  “No, he used to work with me in the tunnel. I need to see him about something.”

  “Hey, Tinker,” Blue hollered into the open door, “there’s a guy here looking for you.”

  “Mike!” Tinker called from an upstairs window. “What’re you doing here? I’ll be right down.”

  The two tunnel workers walked away from the curiosity they had raised on the front step. Blue kept a close eye on them over the top of a page he had time to read several times before Tinker and Mike shook hands and parted. Mike got into his car and drove away nodding acknowledgment to Blue, who nodded back.

  “What was that about?” Blue asked as Tinker neared the step carrying an envelope.

  “He brought me my back time. I don’t have a job anymore, of course, being illegal and all that, but when Mike saw my picture in the paper and read about me and Capricorn and the c
ommune, he told the boss he would bring me my pay. Good thing, too, because I’m about busted. They didn’t have to pay me, you know. The company could have just kept it and there’s nothing I could do about it, but they gave Mike my cheque and my vacation pay, anyway.

  “But that wasn’t the only reason why he was here, Blue. Remember last fall, I told you about this guy at work who was going to invite us to his daughter’s wedding? Well, that was Mike, and one of the reasons he was here was that he read in the paper about me having something to do with Blue Cacophony. He’s not into rock music, at all, strictly Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Ryman Hall stuff, your kind of music. But his daughter is a big fan of rock and roll and Mike thought that if he could get a famous rock band to play at her wedding it would, well you know, he’s a father—” Tinker ended, letting his Acadian hand gestures finish the statement for him. “I told him you’d be glad to do it. It’s in June.”

  64

  “Tinker,” Blue said to his best friend after returning from a rehearsal, “I bet you can’t guess where the band is going to be playing.”

  “I give up.”

  “Woodstock.”

  “Woodstock! Wow! That’s great, Blue.”

  “Yeah. Peter? says there’s a good chance we’ll be hired to play there this summer. Some people were talking to him already. The Dead guys are going, too, so Peter? wants to talk to them about crossing the country together, touring, as the other fellow, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Blue said, slipping the beads aside and taking a chair in Tinker’s room.

  “What is it, Blue?”

  “Well, I ... uh ... I....”

  “When it’s this hard to talk to about, Blue, it’s usually Karma. How are things going with you two?”

  “Good, I guess, but I never lived with a woman before so, like I said, that’s just a guess, but I think Karma cornered herself this time, Tinker. She hasn’t painted a word of her next life yet. Remember her eighth life was during the First World War? Well, she never said anything about getting killed in that war, so if she lived through it, well, she might of lived a long time. A lot of people from that war are still alive, for the love of God.”

  “I don’t get it, Blue.”

  “What I mean is that if she lived through World War One, hell, even if she didn’t, that doesn’t leave much time to cram a life in between that one and this one, does it? If she doesn’t have a ninth life, then maybe she didn’t have any of the others either, so the Catholics win – beat the Buddha, as the other fellow says. But that’s not it, what I wanted to talk about, I mean. Remember the time I ran away?”

  “Yeah. You came to my house with a can of soup in your pocket and the old lady let you stay for the weekend.”

  “It’s not how far you run, according to the other fellow, but how well. Tinker, do you remember why I ran away?”

  “You pissed in your mother’s stove.”

  “Right. How could I forget that? First time I ever got drunk. Farmer and some guys were feeding the wine to me down by the old mine. Big joke to get a little kid drunk, I guess, but I walked home straight as a poker, figuring the stuff didn’t affect me at all. My mother was making something in the kitchen, biscuits or supper or something, and I just pulled a chair away from the table and dragged it over by the stove and lifted the lid, took out my bird and pissed into the fire. There was this big puff of coal smoke and then ... well my mother.... There was no explaining it to her, Tink. I had no choice, I had to run away. I remembered running away, but I couldn’t remember why, but I don’t think I’ll be telling it to anybody around in the near future. They probably won’t get it and just tell me I’m gross again.”

  “You thinking about running away, Blue?”

  “I don’t think so, but that time I ran away keeps coming back to me. Sometimes I think maybe it’s a song trying to get written, and sometimes I think maybe it’s not, that it’s just telling me it’s time to grab a can of beans and split. Something’s coming, buddy. I can feel it in my bones. If I’m wrong then you know what the other fellow says, it must be arthritis. But I don’t think so. I’m not that lucky these days, and there’s a lot of good things that can go wrong, Karma, the band, the record. And then there’s—”

  “Home,” Tinker said.

  “Know what all those things are, Karma and the band and all that? Roots, Tinker, little tiny roots growing down through the cracks in the sidewalk right here in San Francisco where you see little scraps of grass trying to come out.

  “Roots. I’m a guy who knows about roots, Tinker. I took agriculture, remember, and agriculture is the story of roots. They go down under the earth and gnarl up down there, and you see this weed in the grass and you say to yourself, I think I’ll pull up that weed, so you bend down and the next thing you know, you’re in a tug of war ’cause all those roots want to hold that flower in the one same spot. Tinker, what if June comes, or July even, and we’re still here?”

  “I think about that, too, Blue, but I try not to worry about it. Of course, you’re worrying about things that might happen. I’m so glad about all the things that didn’t happen that I’m not going to start worrying about what might happen. My biggest worry right now is how to make some money. Maybe I’ll have to go back on the street singing for my supper.”

  “That’s where I got my start, Tink. Nothing wrong with the street, buddy, long as it’s an honest dollar, to quote the other feller, but when you’re sitting out there singing your songs and waiting for people to throw money at you, give some thought to how we are going to escape this town and get home in one piece instead of like a couple of knights of old getting drawn and quartered along the way by their own hearts.”

  “Sounds like a song to me, Blue.”

  “Saddest one since the other fellow wrote ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’.”

  —

  It was well after midnight when Capricorn walked into the kitchen where Blue was consulting Barney on the lyrics to “I’m So Lonesome It Isn’t Even Funny.” The title itself was just a working one, Blue explained to Capricorn, but the song, if he could get it written, might tell him a lot about what was going on his life right now.

  “Is there a lot going on in your life, Blue?” Capricorn asked.

  “Buddy, me, you and Tinker have been on a magic carpet ride with the rest of the commune hanging on and flapping behind like underwear on a windy clothesline, and we never lost one of them, not one. Nobody quit on you, Capi, nobody. That tells me more than I thought I knew about you. Getting people to follow you when you take them off into the mountains and the woods in Colorado to hide where everybody’s safe is one thing. But when they find out they aren’t safe, the way Cory did, then it’s rats from a ship, as the other fellow says.”

  “Cory isn’t a rat,” Capricorn argued.

  “Did I say he was?” Blue asked, reflecting on his own words. “That’s not what I meant. Cory’s the first guy in that whole commune of yours who I believed, even back when he was loving those sad excuses for horses up on the mountain. Still do. Hell, if it wasn’t for him risking his own freedom to come here and tell us about Wise wanting to kill Tinker, Tinker might be dead now. What I mean, Capi, is that these people stuck with you. To be honest, between you and me, I stuck with Tinker. I really don’t know what I would of done if it was you all alone in that mess. I hope I would of done the same thing, but I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “I do,” Capricorn said, getting up and taking a bottle of Tulip’s wine from the cupboard. “And I would like to drink a toast to what I know,” he added, pulling the cork from the bottle and reaching for a couple of glasses.

  “And just what is it you know?”

  Capricorn passed Blue one of the glasses, looking deep into his eyes in a way that made Blue look away. Without answering, Capricorn raised his glass, inviting Blue to clink. They did, then drank.

 
“There’s something else we need to talk about,” Capricorn said, pulling out a chair and sitting down for the first time since coming into the kitchen. “The record has run its course, Blue, but it did a lot better than anyone would have predicted. I thought we would be lucky to get rid of the first run, but we had to press off two more batches after that. We’re down to our last box now and it’s not moving at all. The market is saturated. It’s time to wind it down.”

  “It was a good idea, though, wasn’t it? We didn’t lose our shirts or anything like that, did we?” Blue asked as Capricorn pulled a narrow notebook from his shirt pocket and began thumbing the pages. He place it in front of Blue.

  “On this page is the expenses, the equipment we had to buy, paying somebody to press them for us after hours, packaging. On this page is the money we took in, and that last figure is the profit, but I shouldn’t need to explain this to you, Blue. You studied economics, after all.”

  “Yeah, I sure did. Look, what’s this figure? It says over six thousand.”

  “That’s right, Blue. It does say over sixthousand. And I mean over because if you look closer it says—

  “Sixty thousand!”

  “Sixty-one thousand, seven hundred and three dollars, to be exact. Once ‘Failure To Love’ hit the radio stations we could hardly keep up. There’s a lot more money to be made selling records than singing on them, Blue. If your album was selling under somebody else’s label, Blue Cacophony’s share would have been maybe five thousand total, so obviously, you’re not the only horse trader in the music business.”

  “That’s twelve thousand bucks apiece, Capi, twelve thousand!”

  “Not bad calculating for somebody who avoided math in school.”

  “First thing Farmer told me was to learn to do head figuring. If you’re going to be in this business, he said, you have to be able to work with money in your head while you’re standing on your feet looking some guy in the eye. Twelve thousand bucks! I don’t believe it.”