On Wednesday June 22, when we were informed the jurors had decided, my heart began to race and I was trembling when I rose to face them. They wouldn’t look me in the eye. I knew what that meant. I turned to Brad, but he just squeezed my arm. I felt like a shadow of a person, so much had happened, and today, I knew the worst would come. The foreman of the jurors seemed to glance over with pity, as did the truck-driver, the young teacher, and the homely oil-rigger. I looked down at my hands even as they shook, then I heard the dozen or so words: “In the criminal action, 8753 - 07,” the foreman read out, “the United States of America versus Christian Donald Briner Tappet, we find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Guilty! It hit me like a physical blow to the stomach and I doubled up in pain. The endless continuation of the nightmare that had started with The Family of Truth on that hot July day in 1979 now came to its fruition. I felt like a specter as the noises of the courtroom receded.
“It seems like your impeccable winning streak is over,” I said bitterly to Brad, but my biting remark had no effect on him.
I watched my parents, Una, and Andy approaching from their seats. I knew that appeals would be made as a matter of course and I’d be out of jail in two days or so. I had heard from Brad that the papers had already been drawn up and would be signed immediately. Brad had told me Judge Anderson believed that professional polygraphs were seldom ever wrong except with psychotic liars and felt I wasn’t in that category. Mary threw her arms around me, weeping, and Andy rubbed my back in encouragement. I nodded to Stan who was pretty grim-lipped.
“I’ll get Lloyd for this,” I swore. “He should be made to suffer, and The Family of Lies should be destroyed for raping and killing Sally.”
“Shush,” Una said, sternly.
Susan came and hugged me. “I love you,” she whispered. Una and Mary held my hands. I knew what kind of toll that this took on everyone. I suspected that soon they’d have had enough. I remember that day that I didn’t cry. I was done with crying. I saw Brad readying to leave. “If you still think that I’m innocent,” I said, “and are ready to fight, so am I.”
“We’ve just begun,” he returned with enthusiasm. He stepped over and hugged me. “You’re innocent Christian, remember that, and keep up your spirits.”
My guard came over and timidly stood behind everyone. He was a quiet older man named Jonathan. “I love you all,” I said softly. Jonathan handcuffed me and passed me over to two guards I had never seen before. As I was led away, a feeling of complete undefiled hatred for Lloyd and The Family of Truth came over me. From my cell, where I was kept alone, one guard, and God knows how much this cost Stan, let me use a Sursheita made cell phone. I talked to Una as soon as she got home and made her promise to have Peter Burgess come by the cell first thing in the morning. “I’ll be damned if I sit around and do nothing,” I said to her.
Peter came to visit me. He looked in fine decorum, but I could see Una had told him what I wanted and he’d come to turn me down. “I’ve Josh if I need someone young and foolish,” he said firmly when I asked to help, “and he has training. For that matter, Ray and Marshal Veld are with us on this one. Plus, my daughter is in town now.”
“I don’t know what you’re planning,” I begged. “but let me help. This is my neck. Please! I can’t stay at home and do nothing.”
“But this work is 90% boredom,” he returned. I stared him down. “I’m not making any assurances that you can be of any assistance,” he said at length. “We’ll just decide it as we go. This is what Una wants as well, and I’ll try to live with it.”
I thanked him and shook his hand. The two nights that I spent in jail were the loneliest and longest ones of my life, but the judge had ruled immediately on our motions for an appeal and I was released on five million dollars bail. When I arrived home Friday, it was nearly suppertime.
The next day at 11:00 a.m. at JFK International, I found myself with Peter watching no other than Grave Revelation. He was the one who Sally had called hollow and lazy, “The one with the creepy smile,” she had said. He was now, Blood Justice and belonged to The Hostility Branch of The Family of Truth, but whose real name I had since learned was James Pup. His beard was gone. He had a protruding stomach with a short balding grey head of hair. It gave him an almost sleepy forlorn look, but she was right, he had a creepy smile. I was quite close to him as he waited for his bags on the luggage carousel. I wore a scraggly fake beard and a baseball cap over my head. Ashe had disguised me and had brought me along. No one would have recognized me. I thought Ashe exceedingly pretty and her defined face had her father’s intensity. She was tall like him too, and had a lovely figure. She wore her black hair curled in elaborate folds to the back of her head, it was wonderful. Without being detected, Peter had flown in with Blood Justice and Swift Retribution from Los Angeles. Swift Retribution was the former head-elder – Thought Jacob – the blond lean young man with a sparse beard.
Peter had been spying on them for days. Swift Retribution came over with a bag. He had changed even more, and at first, I didn’t recognize him from the file pictures. His head was completely shaven and his body had developed a muscular form. Only his pale blue eyes gave away his age, but I must say, he looked lethal, not at all like the former hippy-image of himself.
Josh Burgess waited nearby in the arrival area with a car. Peter had phoned him on his cell but there had been no answer. Swift Retribution and Blood Justice both wore plain white t-shirt and new blue jeans. Perhaps, because I knew what they’d done, they both looked like real mean deals. Why they were in New York City and who they were to meet with, remained to be seen, but Silent Righteousness, the former Holy Truth, the fat friendly squad leader, and Proud Punishment, the former Goodness Tranquility, the burly enforcer who Sally had said meted out all the physical punishment inside the Family at the Denver Location and enjoyed it, were also arriving in New York City, but at La Guardia from Denver. Ray and Marshal Veld trailed those two.
“Don’t let them get out of our sight,” Peter whispered after they had received their bags.
He tried his cell again and this time spoke with Josh. We followed them out. It was exciting and I was totally focused on the job at hand. Swift Retribution hailed a taxicab and we hastened after them in Peter’s car which Josh drove. “They’re heading to La Guardia,” Peter said after a while.
“I wonder what’s up with the separate airports?” Josh asked.
“Maybe there’s a loose end to clean up,” Peter replied “We could get lucky and catch them in the act. They think wonderboy here is still in jail and that we are no longer working for the Tappets. Despite using two airports, they seem awfully sloppy to me.”
Their taxicab pulled up in the arrival area in La Guardia and waited. Peter tried to phone Ray but received no answer. “Circle around once,” he said. “No, wait. Look who’s heading this way.”
Proud Punishment and Silent Righteousness stepped out from the large automatic sliding doors with their bags in hand. They weren’t thirty paces from us. Proud Punishment, the burly enforcer, was still a husky man whose eyes were full of hate, but now he was clean-shaven and his hair was short. He looked like a military man.
“I remember Sally telling me that the big one on the right,” I said, “smiled the whole time that he raped her, as though he was revenging himself against all women. It’s Silent Righteousness who I don’t recognize,” I continued. “If he’s supposed to be the former Holy Truth, then he’s lost major weight.”
“The one with the red t-shirt?” Josh asked.
“When I last saw him he was fat.”
“Look’s mean enough to me.”
“His real name is Rob Tuck,” Peter said, “and yes, he has lost a ton of weight. He possibly weighed as much as three hundred pounds at the time of the rape. He’s buff now. How it’s possible? I don’t know.”
The four members of The Family’s Hostility Branch sped off in a single cab. Ray jumped into the back seat an
d Josh followed the taxi out of the arrival area. “Where’s Marshal?” Peter asked.
“He’s already on their trail,” Ray said. “Welcome on board, Christian.”
That had been the first time anyone had said something positive about my presence. I could tell they weren’t happy about it, but I was determined to be involved. Una told me to ignore it and reminded me that the Tappets were paying the bills. We followed the four suspects to The Algonquin Hotel at 3rd and 44th Streets.
“Four assassins dropped off in Midtown, Manhattan,” Ray said, “now I call that exceptionally interesting.”
We watched them enter the hotel and then Peter turned to Ray. “Have Marshal book a room. This is where watching four people gets hard. We don’t have much time and we need two more cars. The one with the shaven head is the leader, Swift Retribution, whatever happens, don’t lose him or our work is toast.”
Ray phoned his son and gave him instructions. “The office isn’t too far away,” Peter added.
Josh pulled out into the street and drove us to The Clapper Building on Redmond Road in Chelsea. Peter and I rushed back in his Mercedes just in time to see Swift Retribution hop into a taxicab. “We just made it,” he said.
We followed Swift Retribution to Canton Park. He got out and sat in the sunlight on the front steps of an old apartment building, The Tanner Place, as though he owned it, and just waited around. We sat on a cedar bench on Ninth Street no more than seventy-five yards away. “I know this area,” Peter said. “Stay here. I’m going to get us some coffee. I’ve got major jet-lag kickin’ in.”
He walked north to a donut shop and came back with a New York Times and two large coffees. “He’s waiting for someone,” he whispered to me, “and he’s watching closely.”
Thirty feet behind us, Canton Park had a sharp decline to a treed area on the east side, and on the other side of the park, there were three small baseball diamonds. Three-story old semidetached houses sandwiched The Tanner Place. A man in the park was throwing a tennis ball for his well-groomed Golden Retriever who fetched it at an amazing pace. Off to the west side of the park, there were rundown public restrooms, and to the right, a toddler’s playground. Peter read the first section of the paper, peeking up now and then to keep his eyes on Swift Retribution. The din of the traffic on Ninth Street remained constant, never faltering. Two old ladies on the other side of the street passed by very slowly.
“I walked this beat for a year or so when I was with the force,” Peter said at length. “It was a playground for white upper-middle-class teenagers back then. This building, if I remember, was the sight of a double homicide in the spring of `68.”
“That was the year the Tappets adopted me,” I said.
He read the sports section and an hour later, rose. “There’s a small pizza place at the corner, Benny’s. I’ll see if they still make good pizza.”
I grabbed his arm. “There’s Lloyd Mills,” I said, astounded.
Lloyd had just come out of the front of the building with another man, possibly a Chinese man. We quickly returned to the car and watched them from binoculars, hidden by tinted windows half rolled up. Peter took pictures of them as they shook hands. “There’s something familiar about that Chinese guy,” I said.
“Looks Korean to me.”
Then I remembered. “He’s Kwong Katigbaki. Lloyd knew him when he was on the streets.”
Peter wrote down the name. “Good going, my man. I’m glad you came.”
They crossed the street and met with Swift Retribution. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a hell of a breakthrough!” Peter said.
I saw he was elated and in turn I grew excited. Lloyd soon sped away in his Jaguar after talking to the men only a few minutes. “At last, physical links from the Family to Tappets. Now what to do?” He phoned Ashe and told her the news. “Ashe said that it’s becoming clear that a multinational consortium is engaged in an illegal plan to takeover Tappets and has used The Family of Truth as partners. Doesn’t that sound ludicrous?”
“That doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.”
“Let’s find out.” We took the Midtown tunnel to an area in Brooklyn, Kings Regency Heights, not far from Coney Island where the offices of The Zortichii Group stood in The Wyn Hewlett Complex. By then darkness was falling. “The security system here’s a piece a cake,” Peter said after a moment of watching people come and go.
He covered up his license plate number and pulled the Mercedes close up to the building’s plastic-arm car stop and waited. He left enough room for a car to pass between him and the auto car attendant and pretended to be studying the newspaper as though waiting for a resident. Not long afterwards, a car drove up and we sped in behind it. Peter found an underground parking spot and we waited for five minutes before leaving the car. From a sports bag in his trunk, he put extra pistol clips into his jacket pockets and took out a briefcase, then he put on thin black leather gloves. My heart was racing.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked. I nodded and he threw me a bag to carry. Truth was, I was having an almost out-of-body experience, or something, and it felt great. All my worries had left me. It was like a mini-holiday.
On the twenty-eighth floor, we stopped at what should have been door number three. It was instead disguised as a bathroom door. It had been padlocked and a smudged hand-written sign, ‘Out of Order,’ was taped to it.
It looked almost funny. He knocked on the door and waited a minute. I stood out of the line of vision. He knocked harder the second time. I could see no electronic security. He easily unlocked the padlock, but I noticed he was being careful. He took a small tool and drilled out the door lock and peeked inside through the hole. “Stacks of metal file-cabinets,” he said happily, rubbing his hands together.
He put on a ski-mask and stepped inside at once, stopping me from following him with a warning wave even though I was still disguised. Opening his briefcase and working rapidly, he took a receptor and quickly attached clamps into each link of the security wires; one on the door and one on the frame.
I could see that he’d done this sort of thing before. He turned the device on and waited for a green light, putting the handle back into the door. He signaled me to get inside and then pulled the dangling wires inside with us. He turned on the lights and scanned the place. It appeared no more than a retainer for files and documents and not a working office at all.
The drywall hadn’t even been painted. Slowly, systematically, we began going through the file drawers, working quickly. They’d been filed in alphabetical order, but hidden with a code of some sort, so that whoever had organized it, knew by rote, or by some other method, the file-headers. I took a quick count: at least one hundred metal file drawers in the file cabinets.
“It’s not likely that someone knows the specific order by heart,” I said.
Peter agreed and searched a desk at the front near the door for a legend. He found a template word-chart with corresponding Japanese symbols. I looked through the list for the word Lloyd or Mills, or some other clue. With the chart at hand, I opened the top file drawer, and started with the first file, a dossier on a Company, Aaron Electronics. It comprised the company profile, with pictures of executives, notations on any particularities, also, it held the company’s performance on the world stock markets, ideas on how to scandalize them, how to manipulate their weak points, and many other confidential facts. “This one,” I said, holding it up, “Aaron Electronics, is actually an in-depth profile of The Sony Corporation. Zortichii spies on huge conglomerates.”
I went back to the master chart and restudied it. We heard a noise out in the hall and sat perfectly still. Then we heard voices. Peter attached a silencer to his gun and my heart fluctuated wildly. Without meaning to, I studied the chart and one word caught my attention, Moses. When the voices receded, I went to the ‘M’ drawer, a bottom one, and sat on the floor going through it. In the first folder, I found a thick file under Moses.
I passed the f
ile to Peter. It was a complete dossier on Tappets with pictures of our senior people, and my family, Hiro Nakamura, and even Una. Moreover, it even had a photograph of Andy’s family. But what was also amazing was that there were pictures of David Moses, the leader of The Family of Truth, whom I recognized from photographs, pictures of Sally with her Family of Truth’s Denver squad of flower-sellers, and pornographic pictures of Love Israel, Divine Love, naked and making out with some of the elders. I remembered Rick Edwards making fun of David Moses. ‘Lies, lies, lies,’ he would sing, mocking his high-pitch and lifeless voice, and ridiculing what he called the hokey-pokey Divine Principle of the Family of Truth. Reading through it quickly, we saw that the name Zortichii came from David Zortichii, Moses Truth’s birth name.
“Why isn’t the place guarded?” I asked.
“From David Zortichii to David Moses to Moses Truth,” he whispered with a shrug. “He evolved just like the members of the Hostility Branch. But how could Lloyd Mills be in league with these guys?”
After we left, he phoned his son and we headed straight to the Tanner Place in Manhattan, and when we arrived, I could see that not much security existed here either. The front entrance, remained unlocked. It was two a. m. We found Kwong’s apartment number and took the stairwell to his floor. I was surprised to see Josh waiting for us. Both father and son put on ski-masks, I still wore my beard, and Peter unlocked Kwong’s door. We crept in and closed the door quietly behind us. Peter and Josh attached silencers to their pistols. My heart felt like it was going to explode, but I was happy as well. I saw a handgun on the coffee table in its holster near a vase of fresh flowers and picked it up. It was a Thompson. We snuck down the dark hallway and saw the strewn clothes on the floor in the corridor.
The door of one of the bedroom stood ajar with the lights on. We could here a couple making out. I moved behind Peter in such a way that the bed came into view first. I saw a Korean woman with Kwong. They were both naked and he was on top, pumping her rapidly and hard. Peter jumped forward and pointed his Biretta to Kwong’s temple. “Stay perfectly still,” he shouted, but not too loudly. The young woman looked like she might scream and he put his index finger to his lips in warning. “I need a name,” he said to Kwong, “then we’ll be gone without anyone being hurt.”
Stealing Flowers Page 31