Sotello: Detective, ex-FBI, ex-Secret Service (DeLeo's Action Thriller Singles Book 1)

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “There should be plenty of humor in a campaign with me as a candidate,” Sotello said. “No doubt about that.”

  “You underestimate yourself, Jim.”

  “That’s fear talking Darren,” Sotello said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I have a lot to lose in terms of business and family. This will be about the biggest gamble I have ever taken.” Sotello paused to run a hand through his short-cropped hair. “I worry mostly about Ellen and Craig. I tried to explain to them about what happens when your privacy disappears.”

  “That will take some getting used to,” Sanders admitted. “They’re young though, and youth loves the spotlight.”

  “Maybe, but with the enemies in the left wing media, I will make right from the beginning, they will be taking a lot of the heat.”

  “I have some influence in the media area, Jim,” Sanders said. “We can get our own positive campaign points out there to counter the smears. I would not have asked you to do this if I could not control some of the parameters involved. I have guys working for me who can make any of the slime diggers Clinton had look like Dominican Nuns.”

  “Well, I will get going and leave you to plot this adventure,” Sotello said. “Let me know if you run into a brick wall, and want to call this off.”

  “Get the place you want to launch your campaign picked out, because next week you will be our new bright and shining candidate for Governor of California,” Sanders replied.

  “That soon, huh?” Sotello remarked. “Lord have mercy. In two weeks, there will be a hell of a lot of pissed off people in this state.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Chapter 23

  The Campaign Begins

  The auditorium, filled to capacity, buzzed with a loud hum of different pitched voices, in varying stages of passion. Although many different ethnicities were represented in the crowd, most of the faces in the Oakland audience were black. Ellen and Craig sat on the right hand side of the stage, next to their godfathers, Tank Simmons and Jay Watson. Sotello, Adrian Phillips, and Damon Wilkens sat on the other side of the lectern. Phillips leaned over to Sotello from his chair next to him.

  “I have been in politics for many years Jim, but I have never seen a more hostile crowd than this.”

  Sotello smiled, and nodded his head. “If I can’t handle myself with a crowd of people out of my own town, why would I think I could handle anyone in a different part of the state? They must have read the rumors of what I believe in.”

  “Yes, and I do not think they came here to pat you on the back,” Phillips replied. He looked up as the local head of the Alameda County Republican Party walked to the lectern.

  A black man, in a gray, pinstriped, three-piece suit adjusted the lectern microphone to his six foot three inch height. The man looked out, smiling at the huge turnout. Jacob Stanton owned two restaurants in Oakland, and had raised his family of two girls and a boy in the shadows of one of the most violent areas of East Oakland. His wife of thirty-three years sat in the front row of the auditorium, smiling her encouragement to him. Part of the reason he smiled lay in the fact, for the first time in all his years within the Republican Party, he had met a candidate, in Jim Sotello, who did not care what anyone thought of his beliefs. After meeting with Sotello for three hours the week before at Sotello’s Detective Agency, Stanton knew he had finally found another man, who believed in the same ideals he did: God, Honor, and Country. Sotello had convinced him he would not lie to be elected, and if elected, he would spend the next four years upholding every promise he made to the extent of his ability. Although Stanton had heard this spiel before, he believed Sotello, and he knew this would be an exciting two months until the election.

  “Good evening,” Stanton said in a deep bass voice, which hushed the crowd up almost instantly. “We come here tonight to hear the words of the Republican candidate for Governor of California. He has owned a business in Oakland for over two decades. Although I have just gotten to know him, I believe he will make an exceptional Governor. Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome James Sotello, who I hope will be the next Governor of California.”

  A smattering of applause echoed in the auditorium as Sotello stood up, and shook hands with Stanton, before taking up his position behind the lectern. Sotello surged with an excitement he had not felt in years. He believed he could get a message out during this campaign, which he felt would resonate with many thousands of people in the state. The choice to start his campaign in Oakland had met with unified opposition, except from Sanders, who had merely nodded his head and laughed. Sotello saw the TV cameras, and reporting crews around them. He knew they planned to make this into a circus, and he planned not to disappoint them.

  “Hello,” Sotello began easily. “I am Jim Sotello, and I will not bore you with a long speech, outlining my beliefs, which none of you have any reason to believe anyway. I will answer your questions over the next hour or so, and hopefully show you what I will be doing if elected Governor. Please raise your hand, and the usher at the center aisle will bring you a portable mike to ask your question with. Keep in mind, this is not the Jerry Springer Show. I can get a lot more information out to you, if you allow me to answer.”

  A tinkling of laughter swept over the crowd, and then many hands raised in response to Sotello’s direction. The young, well dressed black man in a suit, acting as the usher, chose another young black man near the front, wearing the loose clothing popular everywhere with his generation. He took the mike from the usher with a scowl, and looked up at Sotello defiantly.

  “What do you propose to do for the black community?” The young man asked belligerently, with some encouragement and anticipation from the crowd behind him.

  Sotello took up the portable mike, and walked out in front of the lectern, near the front of the stage. “I have no intention of promising the black community anything. If any of you folks hoped for another race baiter, making promises, no one in his right mind could believe, then I am here to disappoint you.”

  Some angry shouts echoed down to the stage, accompanied by pumping fists from many of the throng. The young man with the mike, angrily pointed his own finger at Sotello. “Well what the hell did you come down here for in the first place man?”

  Sotello vaulted down off of the stage. The young man cringed involuntarily at the menacing figure, Sotello presented, with scarred face and six and a half foot bulk. Sotello walked right up to him and held out his hand, which the young man looked at in confusion for a moment before shaking. Sotello looked down at him and grinned. “I’m here to meet you all, not lie about promises I cannot keep.”

  Sotello looked up, and all around at the crowd. “This young man asked a great question. I am here to promise to work on a few things, which will mean a lot to everyday life here in Oakland. I am going to go to war with the gangs and drug pushers in this city, and every other city in this State. No longer will they swagger down our streets, as they shoot up and pillage our neighborhoods. You have all heard this cheap talk before. Well, if I am elected, the gangs will wish over the next four years I had been making idle chatter and campaign talk.”

  Sotello paused and looked back at the man with the mike. Sotello gestured for the mike. “May I?”

  In answer, the young man gave Sotello the mike he held, and sheepishly sat down. A chorus of boos and angry clichés cascaded down to Sotello as he strode up the isle a few steps. “I enjoy asking a key question, which never gets answered, in this day and age of gun banning, and confiscation. When will they ever take the criminals’ guns away? If they can send a hundred FBI and ATF agents to a place, in the middle of nowhere like Ruby Ridge, to execute a man’s wife, son, and dog over a shortened shotgun barrel; why then can they not send them into East LA, or here in Oakland, to known gang hideouts, and confiscate the guns of real criminals?”

  “It stacks up a lot of anecdotal evidence, in my opinion, to our government needing the criminals to keep having guns, and committing viole
nt crimes, so they can keep passing laws to strip away the Second Amendment rights of innocent citizens. If this were not the case, why would they not stop flaming religious groups in a place like Waco, and spend the time and effort to enforce the gun laws on the books, against gangs and other criminals in our cities.”

  “The law abiding citizens of the United States need to quit pointing fingers at each other; and figure out why, with thousands of gun laws on the books, the only people the government seems willing to take guns away from, are those same law abiding citizens the government claims they want to protect. In reality, their efforts succeed only to disarm us in the face of an increasingly violent, and well armed criminal element, and an eerily incompetent government, with a very inscrutable agenda.”

  A middle-aged woman stood up angrily, just in front of Sotello, and gestured for the mike. Sotello handed it over to her, and then backed away to give her space. “Why the hell should we get killed, doin’ the cops’ job for them.” A chorus of agreement reverberated in response.

  “You all are getting killed now,” Sotello pointed out. “Let’s face it, the police can only show up with the body bags, and write reports after a drive by. I want good, decent folk, who want to take back their neighborhoods, and protect their families, to finally be able to do so. It’s okay for some limousine liberal like Rosy O’Donnell to shoot her mouth off about taking guns away. She can afford armed guards watching out for her kids and property.” Sotello paused, as there were more than a few in the crowd who jumped up, shouting agreement at his statement.

  “I promise you this,” Sotello said with his fist held up. “There will be no more people executed by a bunch of cheap thugs, because they turned down the wrong street. If that happens anywhere in California after I become Governor, I will move in the National Guard if I have to, until I bring the group to justice. I will hound their asses until they cannot gather two members together without being arrested. Someone does a drive by in broad daylight, as happened on 38th Avenue just up from my agency a few years ago, I will have not only the people responsible brought to justice, I will demand a crackdown on the area until the gang dissolves. Look, I don’t want the Wild, Wild West here, but good Lord, you have to be as tired as I am of watching these belligerent young dregs of excrement force you all off of the streets after dark.”

  He knew he had them as he looked around. Sotello could see the rage at their situation in the faces around him. They had quieted, and were listening for him to go on. “Does it help to have idiot politicians pumping money into education programs for drug ridden cesspools they call public schools, with gangs roving around the perimeters, hounding your kids and making the classrooms into a joke?”

  “The Teachers’ Association does not own me. I don’t care what kind of mealy-mouthed crapola they spout about public education. We need a voucher system in California, where you can take your tax money, and send your kid to a clean, goal-oriented school, where they teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history. We do not need any more social experiments in our schools, where they teach alternate life styles, and how to put a condom on a banana.”

  “By God, the schools will perform, or you will be able to take your child out and put him or her in a place that does perform. Teachers will produce, or they will be terminated. Hoodlums, who disrupt classes, and hold your kids in terror, will be expelled from school and put into juvenile detention or special reform school.”

  The middle aged black woman with the mike said, “it doesn’t sound like you plan on making friends, but it at least sounds like the truth.”

  She handed the mike back to Sotello with a smile on her face, and shook hands with him, as others did around her. The rest of the crowd was quiet, as if stunned. Sotello looked around, and spotted another man gesturing for the mike. He looked to be of Latin origin, about five foot eight inches tall. His thinning black hair was combed back straight around his angular face. Sotello handed him the mike.

  “Do you speak Spanish?” the man asked in Spanish.

  “Yes,” Sotello replied. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” the man answered.

  “Good,” Sotello stated, looking around again. “English is the language of business and commerce throughout the world. Now, what question would you like to ask?”

  “I wish to know what your feeling is on immigration,” the man replied.

  “Legal immigration remains the cornerstone of what this country stands for. Illegal immigration, and porous borders, will devastate an economy. Without people who wish to be Americans first, last, and always, we cannot survive as a Nation.”

  “I will tell you this Sir, I would march Alec Baldwin, Barbara Striesand, and any other idiot who claims they would disavow their citizenship if they do not get their way politically, and trade them for any man or woman at the border who wishes to be an American first, and forever. I will not tolerate illegal immigration into California. The federal government does not wish to patrol our borders here, or pay for the resulting costs of a growing flood of illegal aliens crossing into California, accessing our benefits, health care system, and doing bodily harm to our citizens. With the results of 9/11, and the War on Terror, we must defend our borders.”

  “Well, what would you do then?” The man asked angrily. “Shoot us down on sight?”

  “How did you get into this Sir?” Sotello snapped. “If you are an American citizen, you should be concerned, as an American, for the sanctity of our borders. I will not have to shoot illegal aliens on sight. They will be taken into custody, photographed, fingerprinted, and put into work camps for three months hard labor for the first offense, and returned to the country of their origin penniless. I will add three months to their punishment for each offense until they stop coming.”

  “You mean slave labor?” The man asked in astonishment.

  “Slave labor? No one said anything about slave labor,” Sotello replied. “The choice will be simple and posted. If you do not wish three months hard labor without pay, stay out of our country. If you wish to become a citizen, go through proper channels. We won’t be kidnapping anyone from their homes to put into work camps, but we will be putting criminal aliens, crossing our borders illegally, into work camps.”

  “Sure, as long as they come from South of the border,” the man said angrily.

  “Listen up,” Sotello said loudly, sweeping his gaze across the crowd. “If I am elected Governor, I don’t care where you come from, or what color your skin is. If you come here illegally, I will have you put into a work camp for three months the first time you sneak into California and are caught, and three months will be added on each succeeding time we catch you. The Russian Mafia, the Chinese, the Dominican Nuns, or the Little Sisters of the Poor, I don’t care. Stay out of California unless you come here legally. God help the gangs made up of illegal aliens, because I will have those little nests cleaned out.”

  “You wish to disregard our rights and throw us into your prisons without due process,” the man shouted into the mike. “What does that make you?”

  “Illegal Aliens have no rights here Sir,” Sotello stated. “Putting the illegal alien criminals into labor camps is a simple, and direct form, of reminding them of that point.”

  “They are not criminals,” the man continued shouting, as he gripped the mike in both hands.

  “They are criminals in the United States the second they cross over into our territory without proper documentation,” Sotello retorted. “Here’s another point I have never understood. Why on earth do people from Mexico, or anywhere else for that matter, try to import their third world cesspool culture into the United States? Look, if Mexico, or China, or Russia, or any other country in the world is so great, stay there. Why pack up everything, and everybody, and come here? And if you do, why bring that third world crock with you?”

  Stunned silence greeted Sotello’s statement, as even his family and friends on the stage shifted uneasily.

  “I hope you brought
a weapon,” Tank whispered through the corner of his mouth to Jay.

  “It ain’t going to do us any good, my brother,” Jay whispered back. “Just kick back, and enjoy the moment, while we still draw breath.”

  “You’re a racist!” The man with the mike screamed finally, his hands beginning to shake, as he twisted the mike in open rage.

  “No Sir,” Sotello said loudly, as he surveyed the crowd. “I am an American Nationalist, and at least I have the courtesy to profess my beliefs in my own country, and not in yours. I am not here to uplift the world’s poor on the back of the California economy. I am no racist. As I stated, I would march Alec Baldwin to the border, and exchange him for anyone, honest to God person, who wanted nothing else but to come here and be an American.”

  Sotello walked over to the man. “Give me that mike. You have taken up enough time with your private diversity training session.” Sotello held out his hand, and the man, after a moment, relinquished the mike. He then stormed out of the auditorium. Sotello lifted the mike up.

  “Anyone else?” Sotello asked, smiling. “All you will get is the truth of what I believe, and what I will do if elected. It probably won’t be pretty, but it will not be a lie. If you think I care whether what Jesse Jackson, the NAACP, La Raza, or any of these other hate America first groups have to say about me, then I need to keep talking until you know how little I do care about what they think.”

  A well-dressed black man towards the rear of the room stood up, and gestured for the mike. Sotello walked down the aisle, pausing to the complete shock of his stage group, to shake hands with people jumping out into the aisle to pat him on the back. Tank and Jay watched in wonder, thanking God once again for the metal detectors at the door. Sotello handed the mike to the man, who stood close to Sotello’s height, but was much thinner. His head was shaved, and he wore a well-groomed mustache.

  “How do you feel about affirmative action?” The man asked in a booming bass voice.