by Neil Russell
“Define provide.”
Some of the beam went out of his baby blues. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ll make it easier. Name some ‘developing countries.’”
He hesitated for a few seconds, then, “Korea ...”
“North or South?”
“Both.”
“Both? Really? How about Mexico?”
“We don’t consider Mexico a developing country.”
“And that would be because of what? Their space program?”
Despite the subzero temperature and the frequent wiping, beads of perspiration continued to form on his brow.
“Let’s try another. Saudi Arabia.”
“We might have sent some there.”
“Sent how? Big crates for the heavy demand at the airport bookstore? Maybe a giveaway at a mall?”
His hands were trying to figure out something to do with themselves.
“One more. China.”
“Are you an atheist?” he stammered, the warm facade completely gone.
“No, I’m as much in favor of the Bible as you are. If you want to parachute a few thousand into Darfur or hire the Hells Angels to pass them out in biker bars, I’ll write you a check. And if you really want to change the world, how about handing one to every first-year law student?
“What I’m not in favor of are naive, well-intentioned Americans smuggling banned books into dangerous places with no understanding of the risks. Missionaries make informed choices. A man who sends out a housewife with God in her heart and a false bottom in her suitcase is a reckless zealot—and a coward. And if something happens to her— like maybe a few days of riding a cattle prod or having her hand cut off—then he’s also a criminal with no more respect for women than a Taliban mullah.” I paused. “And Chuck and Lucille Brando thought so too, didn’t they? They also thought you were putting the bigger enterprise in jeopardy.”
The last part was a wild stab, but even if I was wrong, I had him running, and that’s usually when you learn the most. He burst out of his chair so quickly it banged into the credenza and knocked over the row of martini shakers. I heard Birdy gasp in surprise. Cabot Northcutt was in a rage, and as he came around the desk, I thought at first he was charging me. Instead, he blew by and went to a small closet. He came back with an overflowing banker’s box that he upended on the desk. Letters cascaded out, some falling to the floor.
Northcutt grabbed one at random, opened it and began to read, “You have changed my life.” He threw it down and grabbed another, “May God bless you and your church.” He was onto his third when I stood, reached out my arm and brushed the mountain of paper away, taking with it everything on the desk.
He stared at me with his mouth open. Sometimes being as big as I am makes a point better than words, and I moved almost against him so he had to look up at me. I kept my voice very soft. “Fuck your letters, Reverend. Fuck the Rackmann Project. Fuck your church. And fuck you. People are dead. Friends of mine. And just maybe you had a hand in it.”
Cabot Northcutt then did what I least expected. He started to sob, then fell back into this chair. “It’s not because of the Bibles. It’s because of the BABIES! Oh, God, I warned them. I WARNED them!”
* * * *
18
Auctions and Clippers
Carroll Rackmann returned to the U.S. in 1956. He might, in fact, have been the last American missionary left in China. The rise of Mao had forced most to flee years earlier, while those who stayed faced torture—and worse—from roving bands of fanatical young Communists—many of whom had been students of their victims. Rackmann, who survived for a while under the protection of a local mayor, eventually escaped himself, just minutes ahead of an execution squad, by swimming a river, then walking six hundred miles to Vietnam.
But though he left Asia, he did not abandon it. Once home in California, he worked with charities to ease the plight of the hapless souls who were now caught in the grip of a madman intent on propelling the largest homogeneous population on earth back to the Stone Age. Eventually, though, as the Cold War became entrenched, and the memory of what China once had been faded, the romance faded as well, and money raced it to the door.
So Rackmann had gone to the desert. Victorville. A tiny hamlet selling gas and sandwiches to the impatient on their way to gamble and to the beaten on their way back. In those days, a commercial lot on the east side of Route 66 cost twice as much as the same-sized patch of dirt across the road on the theory that those heading to Las Vegas had more in their pockets than those returning.
The reverend began holding services in the common room of a fire station, where his personal Bible remained on display during the week to be touched by firemen on their way to a call. Those were the heady days of innocence before the ACLU enlightened Americans about how devastating casual exposure to the Ten Commandments can be.
His first parishioners were a handful of locals, and because the station was located east of the highway, they were sometimes joined by motorists hoping to ensure their luck at the tables. When the church’s finances allowed, Rackmann bought as many used Bibles as he could and shipped them to a student who had fled to Taiwan. The student then smuggled them onto the mainland, where they anchored clandestine worship groups.
Rackmann rescued his first child in 1967, and what the event lacked in sophistication, it made up for in drama. Unremarked upon by the rest of the world, Mao’s overt genocide against his enemies was in full, murderous swing. More sinister was the passive slaughter of millions from disease and malnutrition. And as always, children died first and most often—frequently killed by desperate parents trying to stave off starvation themselves.
Late one night, a Victorville ham operator, an ethnic Chinese named Walt Crowe, phoned Rackmann and implored him to come to his home. The reverend knew Crowe only slightly, but the urgency in the man’s voice was palpable. When he arrived, he found Crowe talking on his radio with a fellow operator in Perth, Australia. Days earlier, a Chinese trawler filled with fleeing refugees had capsized in high seas. The survivors had been picked up by Javanese fishermen and taken to Surabaya. One was a young boy whose parents had perished and, according to the radio chatter, was being auctioned off by the now-shipless Chinese captain through the Surabaya dockmaster.
Though Crowe’s parents had been émigrés from Shanghai, they had Americanized themselves completely, including their name. As a result, Walt didn’t speak a word of the language. However, he remembered someone mentioning that Rackmann did. So with patchwork shortwave connection and volunteer translators stepping the conversation through several languages, Rackmann entered the bidding and bought the boy for two hundred dollars—twice what anyone else was offering.
The next day, he cabled half to the dockmaster and headed to the South Pacific. Meanwhile, Walt drove to the Los Angeles passport office and, lying through his teeth, convinced a clerk that his long-lost brother, Wes, had turned up in Java and needed an emergency visa to be reunited with the family. It was a preposterous story, but Walt, a bachelor, was afraid to say the boy was his son because he wouldn’t be able to produce a wife or a birth certificate. Fortunately, the clerk never asked how old the brother was or requested any documentation, and a day behind the reverend, Walt was on a plane too.
And that is how Wes Crowe was saved from slavery and came to Victorville to be raised by his “brother.” It is also how the Rackmann Project began.
Over the years, the Cathedral of the Testaments spirited more orphans out of misery and placed them with loving Chinese families as far away as New York, some of whom were childless, others who just wanted to play a small role in fighting an incomprehensible tragedy. It was remarkably easy. Immigration laws were not designed to snare small children, and as long as a U.S. citizen represented to authorities that the child was a member of his family, no one intruded.
But shortly after Cabot Northcutt had arrived at the cathedral and had not yet learned about the child-smuggling network, so
mething had gone terribly wrong. A young family in San Francisco, who had recently taken in twins, was shot execution style in their car. And in a grisly bit of theatre, pledge envelopes for the Rackmann Project had been inserted into the children’s mouths, a crisp hundred-dollar bill in each.
San Francisco investigators descended on Victorville, interviewing every member of the church and grilling Northcutt and Rackmann. But no one cooperated, and in a few weeks, the cops were gone. No charges were ever filed, but the incident shook Northcutt, and the questions he had been asked during his interrogation lifted the veil. He confronted Rackmann and demanded to know the full story.
But except for talking about Walt and Wes Crowe, Rackmann stonewalled him. There things lay until the old man died, and Northcutt assumed the pulpit. His first order of business was to call in the elders and tell them that the church was officially out of the baby business. And if that was a problem, he was going to call the SFPD and offer them every file, every canceled check, every scrap of paper that the church possessed and let the chips fall where they may. Then he walked out of the room.
A few days later, he found an unsigned note on his desk. All it said was, “It’s done.” The reverend wasn’t naive enough to think an operation that had been functioning that long had suddenly disappeared. But all he wanted was the cathedral out of it, and he believed he had accomplished that. Until Chuck and Lucille.
We left Northcutt weeping at this desk. Birdy made a final attempt to comfort him, but it was hopeless. Sometimes, the best thing is to let a person get it out of his system. Good intentions had become a dime dance to bad music, and even though it wasn’t Northcutt’s fault, I didn’t care how he felt.
Before we left, I did manage to get out of him the name of the murdered family: Philip Chang, his wife, Wendy, and their two daughters. I now had a few answers but even more questions. Northcutt and I agreed on one thing, though: Chuck and Lucille hadn’t died because of Bibles. But I didn’t think they’d died because of babies either. Babies were the road marker, but the original Rackmann Project had begun before Chuck knew how to tie his shoes. How many children had been brought in over the years? Dozens? Hundreds? And if there had been an ongoing slaughter of innocents, it would have been evident long before the Chang murders. So why now?
I had a feeling that this was like everything else: find the money, find the prom. And it wasn’t going to be in little envelopes in a church hallway. Chuck might have been a contributor, but he’d gone from cop to author, not to oilman.
Wes Crowe knew, of course, but he wasn’t going to tell me. At least not voluntarily. He might or might not know what was in Lucille’s monthly package to Perth, but I was willing to bet that somebody at Parkinson-Lowe Imports was into ham radio and knew Wes’s call sign.
If the Brandos were running a way station for arriving Chinese infants, then based on the FedEx driver’s unexpected encounters, the couriers were very attractive Caucasian women, one of whom had been there the night of the mayhem. Chuck had probably fought like a wild man to give her time to escape. I tried to construct a sequence of events, but I didn’t have enough information.
Then there was the Resurrection Bay II. Three football fields of Bahamian-registered steel. Last known port, Tonga. A place where a few dollars in the right place could buy anything.
I was looking at the very bottom of the pyramid. It was wide, and it was impressive, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with churches, ministers and saving souls—maybe not even children. And somewhere, up where I couldn’t see him yet, was the guy in charge. I was willing to bet it wasn’t God.
* * * *
We were back in the Ram before Birdy spoke. “That was the Brandos’ house we were in, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I knew they were dead. The house felt like it. But I don’t want to know how it happened.”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you. Given you the option of staying or going.”
“I’m only afraid of real things, not ghosts or superstitions. Besides, you weren’t going to let anything happen to me.”
I felt my jaw involuntarily tighten. I hadn’t done so well with a couple of other women in my past.
“You’re not with the police, so who are you?”
“A friend.”
That seemed to be enough, so while she looked for a radio station she liked, I dialed Fat Cat Saleapaga.
“Hey, I was getting ready to call you.” He sounded upbeat.
“How’s Dion?”
“Goin’ home tomorrow, and he better. There’s a couple of nurses here who want to strangle the little fucker.”
“Tell them to be as rough as they can. It’ll remind him to be more careful crossing streets.”
Fat Cat laughed. “I managed a few calls on Maywood. Word is he’s just punchin’ the clock till he turns in his shield. In late, home early, bangin’ the steakhouses for a final round of freebies. You want me to dig a little deeper?”
“Let it go for now. You know anybody in the Bay Area?”
“Got a cousin in the mayor’s office. In charge of handin’ out towing contracts. Would you believe a guy can knock down six figures in a bullshit job like that?”
“He have any pull with the cops?”
“In San Francorrupto? In the towin’ business? Please.”
“I’m interested in a dead Chinese family. Fifteen years back, give or take. Name of Chang. Two adults and a couple of babies.”
“Gang shit?”
“Probably not. I want to talk to somebody who worked it. Find out what they didn’t write down.”
“I’ll have him make the connection, then run up there myself.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is if I’m gonna get laid by that sweet little singer in the Mark Hopkins lounge.”
As I pulled out of the lot, I noticed that the yellow Mercedes with the wheelchair rack was gone.
* * * *
The ride out to Kingdom Starr was a straight shot on a mostly deserted two-lane road. Eventually, the landscape was broken by the Victorville aircraft boneyard, where scores of discarded Lockheeds and Boeings sat at silent attention, their engines removed and their windows covered with foil.
Birdy was glued to her window. “That’s really spooky.”
“Some of them will end up back in service ... in developing countries.”
“That’s even spookier.”
Having once sat in a lawn chair nailed to a sheet of plywood aboard Air Vietnam, I couldn’t have agreed more. Smart people, myself included, who’d walk twenty flights to avoid a noisy elevator, routinely march out to jets piloted by guys who barely speak English and maintained by crews who don’t know a wrench from a can of tuna. When it comes to flying, we are a compliant herd.
Back in the good old days of the Cold War, an occasional wiseass F-16 jock would descend over the Mojave to telephone-pole height, then drop the hammer. As he streaked across the desert floor, his wake would cyclone behind him, slinging rocks at bullet speed and uprooting cactus. The purpose of this unauthorized exercise was to cross the 1-15, afterburners flaming, and give earth-tethered civilians a close-up of their tax dollars at work ... not to mention a scare that would last a lifetime. Pilots who were truly pure of heart— meaning the craziest motherfuckers—liked to do it at night.
It’s called flathatting, and if you got caught, your career was over. At least that was what was supposed to happen. Usually, though, you got a profanity-laced, eye-bulging lecture from your commander—no paper trial—and you didn’t do it again. At least until your next posting. The air force didn’t invest several million dollars in your talented ass to cashier it for a wild hair.
I saw the plume of dust and the silver dot just above the desert floor ten miles before it got to us. Only it wasn’t an F-16. This was something the size of a DC-10, delta-winged and dead quiet. When it passed in front of my windshield, I could see lettering on its belly, but it was gone before I could make it
out. Then the buffeting almost rolled us over.
Birdy sat and stared with her mouth open. “What in the world was that?”
“I have no idea, but it’s nice to know the politicians haven’t won yet.”
The desert is still where our most secret military hardware is born and nurtured, but increasingly, it’s also where a growing nation is doing business. Just outside Victorville, governments, banks and businesses have joined to invest billions in the Southern California Logistics Airport. When finished, it will be an air and rail cargo colossus more modern than any in the world. It’s a brilliant idea, and how it got done in this state can only be explained by the high desert’s lacking enough votes to attract our dim bulbs in Washington. That, and it’s difficult to make a good impression on CNN with grit blowing in your face and your five-hundred-dollar haircut standing straight up.