Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  went and found a man hiding in the car under an old

  blanket and she arrested him. He was all dirty and

  ragged and skinny and he smelled bad. His hands were

  all big and red. Mother said that he was a drunk and that

  he was sick in the head but he wasn’t very old. He’d

  made a hole in the bottom of his car and put a lot of duck

  food on the ground beneath it so the ducks would come

  underneath where he could grab them by the neck and

  kill them without anybody being able to see what he was

  doing. Mother said that Daddy’d arrested him for doing

  the same thing once back before the accident. She found

  five dead mallards and seven of the brown ducks and two

  white ducks under the blanket with him but they were all

  already dead.

  JAMES PATRICK DUBIC

  I. From the SAND C ITY SHORELINE RAG

  AND TATTLESHEET, May 22, 1981:

  DUCKNAPPER NABBED YET AGAIN!

  by RAG Staff Writer Thom Homart

  The RAG learned yesterday that twenty-nine-year-old

  aerospace heir James Patrick Dubic, a former part-time

  instructor in the department of computer sciences at

  Monterey Peninsula and Chapman Colleges, was arrested Monday evening by Police Officer Mrs. Virginia Matson on multiple charges stemming from the alleged

  theft and slaughter of fourteen ducks from El Estero Park

  in downtown Monterey.

  Officer Matson, who was recently promoted to the

  head of the Monterey Municipal Police Tac Squad

  (where she replaces her husband, Thomas Philip Mat-

  son, paralyzed in a tragic skateboard accident during

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  the Parent-Teacher Day celebrations at Monterey High

  School last fall), was off duty at the time of the arrest. She

  had taken her daughter Julie, four, to the lake to “get her

  out of the house for a while” when Julie noticed that

  there were a lot of ducks going under an old car parked

  near them but that none of the ducks that went under the

  car ever came out again! She told her mother and Officer

  Matson investigated, only to find James Patrick Dubic

  hidden under a blanket in the backseat. With him under

  the blanket she found a cloth sack labeled Dewer’s

  Duckfood containing fourteen recently killed ducks. The

  floorboards of the car had been removed and duck

  pellets scattered on the ground beneath it to attract the

  birds.

  Dubic is currently out on bail on previous charges

  stemming from the alleged sale of a large number of sea

  gulls and a smaller number of cats to five ethnic restaurants here on the Peninsula and in Salinas. The restaurants in question— Casa Miguel, La Poubelle de Luxe, ■

  The Ivory Pagoda, Shanghai Express and Ho’s Terrace

  Cafe— have been charged with serving the sea gulls,

  which are protected by state, federal, county and city

  law, as duck and chicken in a variety of dishes such as

  Cantonese duck, Polio Mole, and Duck a Vorange. The

  cats are alleged to have served as the basis for a number

  of beef and rabbit dishes.

  Dubic, furthermore, has not only been convicted on

  three previous misdemeanor charges involving what

  might be termed violence against domestic birds and

  wildfowl but is also the man whom Monterey County

  Prosecutor Florio Volpone attempted last year to prove

  was the actual head of the dognapping ring that in the

  last five years has been responsible for the deaths of

  thousands of Central California Irish Setters and Afghans sold to the Mexican fur industry for their beautiful

  “pelts.” Though we here at the RAG cannot disagree

  with Judge Hapgood’s ruling to the effect that the

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  evidence Prosecutor Volpone produced was insufficient

  to prove Dubic guilty before the law of the dognapping

  and related conspiracy charges— which is to say, guilty

  of them beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt— yet

  we cannot help but feel that there is something at the

  very least quite suggestive about the fact that Dubic has

  been arrested and charged with similar crimes on at least

  forty other occasions in the recent past. Though it is not

  perhaps completely fair for those of us here at the RAG,

  in our capacity of armchair quarterbacks, to suggest that,

  as the saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire and that

  there must have been some compelling reason for not

  just one but all of our local police forces to keep on

  arresting Dubic again and again for the same kind of

  alleged crime. . . .

  II. The Trial

  “Objection sustained,” Hapgood said but it was already

  too late. Volpone’d been able to get the jury thinking

  about the dognapping charges again, with that bit about

  Mexico thrown in to appeal to their racism. The bastard.

  He knew as well as I did that that was all bullshit, that I’d

  never had anything against dogs. Or cats either, and he

  was trying to get them to believe I’d been killing cats too,

  and that wasn’t, true. I’d always loved cats, I’d even had

  one o f my own for a while and he knew it, but it didn’t

  make any difference to Volpone, he was going to try to

  get me for the cats anyway.

  “ . . . a rubber duck,” Wibsome was saying the next

  time I bothered to tune in to him. I hadn’t been missing

  anything. I’d heard it all before time after time and

  anyway he was even clumsier than usual today. Probably

  because he knew there was no way his particular brand of

  rhetoric was going to get me out of anything this time, no

  matter how hard he tried, so he wasn’t even trying.

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  “A rubber duck,” he continued, “which the late Robert Tyrone Dubic had the habit of filling with bird shot and ball bearings before he used it to beat his defenseless

  five-year-old brother into unconsciousness. The same

  rubber duck with which he often threatened to kill that

  younger brother, James Patrick Dubic, here before you

  on charges from what the prosecution claims is a pathological hatred of birds in general and ducks in particular.

  “But I ask you— is there anything really all that sick or

  irrational in the defendent’s feelings about birds? Would

  you, any of you, have had a great fondness for the

  creatures if you had been repeatedly beaten by a sadistic

  older brother with a lead-filled rubber duck during your

  formative years? If you had been so badly mauled by

  your aunt’s flock of geese that you were hospitalized for

  three days? Would you have had any overwhelming love

  for our feathered friends if your grandfather had disinherited you in favor of a bird sanctuary in Guatemala, a country which neither you nor he had ever visited? Is

  there anything odd about the fact that James Patrick

  Dubic is, as you yourselves have heard him testify,

  disgusted with the evident hypocrisy of people who

  publically demand increased protection for the California environment while at the same time spending a fortune in certain local restaurants for meat
from wild

  boar they know perfectly well have been killed illegally

  inside the Los Padres Forest preserve?

  “I’m not going to try to pretend to you that James

  Patrick Dubic is immensely likeable, or that he’s just like

  everybody else. He isn’t. But what he is is a man of

  intelligence and principle, a former teacher who was

  always respected by his students, and he is neither

  irrational nor insane. His dislike of birds, regrettable

  though it may be, is a perfectly normal reaction to the

  rather unique and unfortunate circumstances of his

  childhood. . . .”

  It wasn’t going to work. Not this time. Wibsome

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  wasn’t even trying. They were going to lock me up again,

  and not just for a little while this time. Maybe even get

  me committed to Atascadero, put me away for the rest of

  my life by claiming I was criminally insane. That

  sounded like what Wibsome was really after this time.

  Get me out of Father’s hair for good. And even if they let

  me out later he could always have me put back in if I

  made any more trouble for him. If they ever let me out.

  He’d like that now, with Mother remarried so she

  couldn’t make him do anything for me anymore.

  “We’re going to appeal,” Wibsome told me when he

  came back and sat down again. Meaning that there was

  no way they weren’t going to find me guilty. “Those

  articles in the RAG— I’m pretty sure we can prove they

  prejudiced the jury and kept you from getting a fair trial.

  And there may be other things I can turn up when I’ve

  had the time to study the court recorder’s transcripts of

  the trial for a while.”

  “Wibsome,” I said, “you know I didn’t have anything

  to do with the dogs, or with those cats either. You know

  how I’ve always liked dogs and cats— ”

  “Of course, Jimmy.” He didn’t believe me even

  though he was supposed to be on my side. “Not the dogs

  and cats. Just those nasty, nasty birds.”

  “Yes!” He was laughing at me again. Just like Bobby

  used to, before they shipped him off to Vietnam and

  killed him. But if I ever got out of here I was going to get

  him just like I was going to get all the rest of them. That

  oh-so-sweet little girl and her bull-dyke mother and her

  paralyzed father who was the one who’d lied about me at

  that other trial, the time that he’d been the one who’d

  arrested me. That bastard who’d written all those

  articles for the RAG and all those restaurant owners

  who’d tried to put each other out of business by accusing

  each other of having hired me to get their sea gulls and

  cats for them, when all the time they’d hired me to get

  sea gulls for them themselves and they knew I wouldn’t

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  have anything to do with killing cats. And Judge

  Hapgood and Florio Vclpone and the jury and Wibsome

  and my father and the ducks.

  All of them. But especially the ducks.

  III. From the SAND C ITY SHORELINE

  RAG AND TATTLESHEET, August 8,1983:

  . . . remember that the judge and jury agreed with our

  editorial staff and that Dubic was sentenced to three

  concurrent terms of ten to twenty years in the state

  penitentiary. Since then his lawyers have made repeated

  attempts to have his convictions overturned, most recently by charging that the RAG's crusading editorials and reportage unfairly prejudiced the jury against him

  and so precluded the possibility of a fair trial. Dubic’s

  lawyers accompanied this latest appeal with a simultaneous multimillion dollar suit against the RAG and its editorial staff for libel and defamation of character.

  We are very happy indeed to report that Dubic’s

  appeal has been denied and that all charges against us for

  libel and defamation of character have been unconditionally dismissed.

  IV. From TH E BUZZBOM B, House Organ

  o f the Dubic Aerospace and M unitions

  Industrial Group, January, 1984:

  Aerospace Guidance System Division Chief Damien

  Holmes announced today the purchase of t h e o t h e r

  c h e s s p l a y e r , In c ., designers and manufacturers o f the

  popular p r o g r a m m e d p r o line of computerized tennis

  opponents, as well as of the increasingly popular computer games s h a r k a l e r t , r o b o b r a w l, and g e t t h e pr o w le r b e f o r e h e g e t s y o u . “With their genius for innovative software and our technical expertise,” Vice President

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  Holmes told the Buzzbomb, “it shouldn’t be more than a

  matter of months before we’re not only light-years ahead

  of our competitors here in the United States but even

  further ahead of everybody else in the rest of the world,

  and most especially our counterparts in Soviet Russia.”

  V. From “Philanthropy for the Year 2000,” a

  speech delivered by Jam es Damien Dubic to

  the Orange County League of Republican

  Women, March 19, 1984

  . . not just new ways o f doing things that have never

  really done anybody much real good. To put it another

  way, we don’t want to compete with any of the other

  charitable and philanthropic organizations now operating, we want to put them out of business altogether by making the very need for charity and philanthropy

  obsolete.

  “Furthermore, there’s no question in any of our minds

  that our society’s future lies with increased computerization. Now, there are some disadvantages to this, as I’m sure some of you may have noticed every now and then

  when you’ve caught a computer error on your bank

  statement or your Mastercharge, but that kind of problem doesn’t come from using computers, it just comes from the fact that we haven’t been using computers long

  enough to have learned everything there is to know about

  using them. A good comparison would be to think of

  yourselves in the same position as the first railway

  passengers, who inevitably got covered with soot and

  smoke from the locomotive’s engines because nobody’d

  yet found out how to make them bum cleaner and how to

  keep the smoke away from the passengers. But after

  trains had been around for a while they found all sorts of

  solutions to the problems, so they weren’t really problems at all anymore.

  “But let me get back to what we at the Dubic Founda­

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  tion are trying to do right now, which is to find new ways

  to use the future’s increased computerization for the

  social good. Not just new ways of doing old things—like

  a robot soup-line to compete with the Salvation Army’s

  human volunteers—but ways to do new things altogether, things that nobody’s ever been able to do before. And we’re pretty sure we’ve found some new ways of doing

  things, all of them so far based on the concepts of shared

  computer time and decentralization.

  “Let me make that a little clearer for you. Take a look

  at oh, any of the big banks here in California. Bank of

  Amer
ica, UCB, even the Japanese Maritime Bank, any

  bank with a lot of branches scattered all over the state.

  All their records are computerized, but there’s no way

  that any of these banks could have ever afforded a

  separate computer system for every one of their

  branches, even if they’d wanted to have them for some

  reason. No, what they’ve got is a single master computer

  connected by telephone linkages to separate data terminals in every branch, so that each branch is sharing the master computer’s capabilities with all the other

  branches. There are even a number of companies that

  rent their spare computer time to companies too small to

  have a cost-effective computer capacity of their own.

  Dubic Aerospace is one such company, which is one of

  the reasons 1 know what I do about the subject.

  “Anyway, ladies, think about what would happen if

  you took the whole process one step further, and took at

  least some of the data terminals out of the branch offices

  or whatever and put them into the employees’ homes, so

  that you had a double telephone linkage working for you,

  not only between the master computer and the branch

  offices, but also between the branch offices and the

  employees’ home terminals. There are an awful lot of

  peripheral benefits we haven’t yet had a chance to

  examine to be gained from having people work at home

  like that— no commuting time wasted and less traffic

  jams, for one thing, possible savings on expensive office

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  space for another, to pick just two examples— but that

  sort of thing’s not really what we, as philanthropists, are

  interested in right now. What we want to know is, how

  can we find new ways to use this development to make

  things better for people?

  “Well, one of the first things we thought of was the way

  this could help shut-ins, perfectly competent and intelligent people who because of some accident or chronic illness are unable to leave their homes or, even worse,

  have been condemned to live the rest of their lives

  confined to their beds. Just think what it would do for

  these people’s sense of self-esteem if they had a way of

  holding a real job and of becoming more or less self-

  supporting. Not to mention the savings to society involved in getting them off welfare. This wouldn’t really affect all that many people, probably, but it could make