Merlin lowered the shirttail to his waist level, where it resembled a freemason’s apron.
“What happened today is like what in the military and intelligence world they call black ops and any further talk of it is what the old spooks in the CIA used to call dead man’s talk.”
Merlin’s eyes widened again.
“What happened today is under the umbrella of the pilot’s code of silence. If anybody asks you about what went on today, your response is that all went as planned, and there was no deviation from the normal course of blimp operations.”
Merlin’s jaw dropped open slightly.
“What about Mr. Smakaporpous and his friends?”
“Like I told you, we’ve already made our deal. As freewheeling as they may seem, they are good secret keepers.”
“Like the way they are not going to tell Mr. Murphy about his wife’s sunbathing assistant?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“What about Miss Slahtskaya?”
“I’m not worried about Svetlana. The former Soviet Union was built on secret keeping; it’s part and parcel of her cultural DNA to stay mum. They look at getting to keep secrets as a badge of honor.”
Dirk nodded toward the inked-up shirttail. “Just like your new certificate there.”
Merlin looked down at the lowered shirttail.
“So can I rely on you?” Dirk asked.
Merlin was quiet for a few seconds as he continued to look Kajerka in the eye and gave the barest nod of accession. A complicit smile cracked the corners of Dirk’s mouth.
“Good! Welcome aboard!”
Dirk reached out and Merlin offered his big right paw, and they shook. In a flash of creative manipulation, Dirk straightened and saluted the credulous blimp of a man. Merlin, astonished and honored, also straightened and slowly raised his hand to his brow, returning the gesture. It was with this salute that Merlin felt that he had crossed a line somehow, but the nature of the line was something of which he wasn’t quite sure. Dirk lowered his hand, and Merlin mirrored the move. Kajerka’s smile was full now as he continued the military ruse.
“That’ll be all, lieutenant. At ease.”
He motioned toward the office door and Merlin nodded again and started toward the door, then turned to Kajerka and said, “Thank you.”
Dirk gave a silent nod of reassurance, and Merlin exited toward his office.
At his desk at the base and all the way home in the Alles car, Merlin reflected on the day. He was particularly vexed by the prospect of having to lie if asked about the day’s events. He had been taught not to lie as a child and had always held this as a cardinal tenet of his code of living. But, he reasoned, no one ever asked him anything important anyway. And although his physical presence was imposing, he had a way of blending into the background, kind of like a Sasquatch, with whose kind he had always felt a particular affinity. Also, he had an inkling that most of those who were accustomed to seeing him thought of him as perhaps a bit out of the ordinary but thoroughly inconsequential as far as anything that might impact the serious world of adult business affairs was concerned.
Finally, he remembered something his youth minister who trained him to be an acolyte said. The young Episcopal priest always insisted that lying was bad but that not volunteering information when not asked about it was okay. He called it the doctrine of selective truths. Merlin hoped he would not have to invoke this doctrine regarding what had happened on what proved to be a very auspicious day for him.
• Nineteen
On his return to the observatory, Merlin was drained in a way he hadn’t been since taking multihour exams for his master’s degree. Nevertheless, he trudged up the stairs with anticipation of a deep sleep in the security of his own little castle of a lair. He expected the observatory to present itself as the womb of safety it so often was for him; however, he had dubbed it the observatory many years ago for a reason. Its primary function was as a watchtower and a place where data was to be gathered, sorted, and analyzed. When he opened the hatch and entered, it was this latter and primary aspect of the place that held forth. Namely, orange dots were flashing on each of his computer monitors, signaling the Agglomerator had an important message for him. He opened the program on his central screen, and in letters the same hue of orange as the alert blips, the phrase “Event Horizon Update” flashed with ominous urgency.
Merlin clicked past the warning window and the live-action map showed a gray gyre tightening over Greater Houston. He clicked on an icon called “time window” and saw an orange-shaded calendar with the orange darkening between late July and early September. “Deep summer indeed,” he mused, the middle of what he had heard people in South Texas refer to as “the enchilada.” The gray gyre indicated a negative energy field event. If it continued to darken toward black, the predicted event would be no cause for little concern. Merlin was impatient to know more, but he also knew he could not push the Agglomerator. It processed data thoroughly, but at its own august pace.
Now the fatigue was pulling him down like he was carrying lead-filled grocery bags, and despite the growing alarm sounded by his cherished computer program, he found himself lumbering, eyes half shut, toward his big reinforced bed, the sleep wagon on which he had come to rely to spirit him to a land of relief from the mounting concerns of his increasingly complicated circumstances. He flopped onto the bed and was out cold before he could undress and get under the covers.
Tite Dûche sat in a dark corner of a bruine café in the De Pijp neighborhood of Amsterdam looking at photos on his electronic tablet. He was choosing new pictures for the updated Dûche Ovens website. They featured his new Super Dûcherator 5000 shot from several angles using various lighting effects. He closed the file and opened another.
Also a photo file, this one featured all human subjects, none of whom appeared to be the sort of people with whom Tite would associate socially. There were both female and male, perhaps in their early adolescence, but really most of them seemed to be no more than girls and boys. Their eyes bespoke lives of deprivation and existential fear unknown to the majority of North Americans. Each of the photographs had a caption with a single name that often had the look of a nickname—Paquito instead of Francisco or Mayte instead of Maria Teresa. There were no surnames accompanying any of the images.
A tall man in a black outfit wearing dark glasses and tightly cropped gray hair walked slowly toward Tite. He was utterly expressionless. As he arrived at the table, Tite offered him an equally emotionless mien. Tite looked at his Cartier tank watch and said, “You are exactly on time.”
“We Dutch pride ourselves on our punctuality, especially when it comes to business meetings.”
Tite motioned toward the chair and the man seated himself. He declined the menu Tite offered him. A server arrived, and the Dutchman ordered a pint of beer in his native language.
“What else are you all proud of?” queried Tite.
“Our taciturnity in trading,” responded the Amsterdammer, now removing his sunglasses.
“What about fair trading?”
“Of course! We may negotiate with vigor, but when mutually agreeable terms are struck, a deal is a deal.”
“Alright. Well, I suppose we have reached that point.”
“Agreed. So, then, let’s have a look at the candidates.”
Tite nodded and slid his electronic tablet to a neutral zone between them where they could see its screen.
Mickey McNaughton sat at his desk in his Dutch client’s corporate headquarters. Most of the employees had already left the building, a contemporary structure in the Zuidas business district of Amsterdam. His mobile phone rang. It was a call from Houston.
“Hey, Mick?”
“Yeah! Jim?”
“Yeah, hey, I hate disturb you at the end of the business day across the pond.”
“So, how’s everything in the world of putting bad guys away?”
“Committing felonies continues to be a burgeoning enterprise in Harris Count
y.”
“So, what else is new, right?”
“Exactly. Hey, we found out a few things about the mad eggers outside your house.”
“Outstanding.”
“I don’t know if it’s outstanding, but I think we have ID’ed the egg hurlers.”
“Okay, so what gives?”
“The vehicle is registered to N. Teitel Dûche V.”
“Tite Dûche?!”
“Yep. A friend in the video lab did me a favor and analyzed the footage. He thinks our egg tossers may be Tite’s sons.”
“What the hell?!”
“I don’t know, Mickey. But we have a pretty good visual of those two. The elder son is N. Teitel Dûche VI, aka Titey, and the younger one is Duke Wayne Dûche, aka Dukey.”
“So, that’s really weird, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Could be just some punk kids picking on the neighborhood oddball.”
“I guess the whole world has its share of punks, right?”
“Yep. Even Bayou Boughs.”
“So weird. I think I saw Tite on the street here in Amsterdam a few weeks ago.”
“I don’t think that necessarily has anything to do with the defacement of the structure.”
“No, but it’s just weird is all I’m saying, right? A Dûche here doing God knows what; a couple of Dûches there causing trouble. So, what’s the next move?”
“We could go after them right now, but my gut is telling me, if you’ll forgive the figure of speech, to sit tight.” His years in the justice system had taught him the value of circumspection. “If they do it again, maybe we can put a good scare on them.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Makes sense. Thanks.”
“You bet. Over and out.”
Mickey tapped his smart phone to close the call. He opened his private e-mail and began to type. After a minute or so he sent the message. In Houston, Merlin was getting ready to leave the blimp base for his lunch break when his computer made a dinging sound, and he saw one of the rare e-mails from Mickey—so rare it was almost like seeing a unicorn. Merlin opened the communiqué and read.
So, my ace in the hole at the DA’s office has come through. He has ID’d the license plate and is pretty certain of the identity of the actual eggers themselves. That said, he thinks we should hold off on pursuing any action against them for the time being. If the same guys strike again, a friend of his in the video lab downtown can compare the two video captures, and we can move forward from there, right?
I’m also disclosing to you who we think the vandals are with the understanding that you won’t try to take any retaliatory action on your own. It looks like the culprits are Tite Dûche’s sons. Stay in contact—especially if more dodgy stuff goes down. So, this is just a heads-up, right? Will keep you posted if I hear anything salient on my end.
Merlin read with concentrated focus that intensified when Mickey revealed the likely identity of the assaulters of his sacrosanct white tower and just as quickly asked him to keep it to himself. This was a tall order, even for the rule-following Merlin, but he understood by the way Mickey presented it to him that he was treating Merlin like an adult. Musing on the phrase “discretion is the better part of valor,” Merlin then realized that he had been implored in the space of a mere couple of days to keep a couple of things secret. Was this how the adult world of commerce and justice really worked? Was it a place of strategic restraint and selective truths? He wondered. Perhaps keeping information under his hat might be one of his untapped talents. Equipped with the frequency listening device, his hats themselves were imparting to him privileged information all the time, the nuances of which only he was qualified to interpret.
Not speaking to others was something at which Merlin was accomplished, so adding a few items that required secretive restraint might not be so challenging. And, at the end of the day, Merlin was proud that people in authority around him had entrusted him with information and trusted him to keep it quiet. They were indeed treating him like an adult now, he continued to muse—not like an overgrown child. He sat for a moment feeling the weight of his newfound maturity then closed the e-mail program and headed for the door, the internal debate on where to go for lunch returning to the forefront of his ever-ranging thoughts.
At the bruine café in De Pijp, the Amsterdammer and Tite Dûche concluded their meeting. The Dutchman slid the tablet with the photos of the young people back toward Tite and spoke: “So many little brown ones.”
“Well, we are meeting in a brown café,” responded Tite, taxing his cleverness resources.
“How appropriate.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help move things along?”
“No, I don’t think so. The company will come to a decision within a fortnight. You must remember that we Dutch have a considerable history managing the little dark ones from the tropics.”
“Oh?”
“Of course. As you may recall, we originally colonized the archipelago now known as Indonesia; it was the Dutch East Indies for almost one hundred and fifty years.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“Some of my ancestors were there for a time.”
“Really?”
“Yes, so engaging in this kind of business is, you might say, in my blood.”
“And blood will tell, as the saying goes.”
“But we tell no one.”
“Agreed.”
“And a deal is a deal.”
• Summer
• Twenty
June arrived with a one-two punch of heat and humidity, eliminating any residuum of springtime lightheartedness. June 1st also marks the official beginning of hurricane season. As a young man, around Memorial Day weekend, Merlin kept a sharp eye out for the Sunday paper containing the annually distributed hurricane tracking charts. He penciled the familiar gyre symbols onto the chart as each system developed, scratching the little circles with the whirling semicircular arcs into the thick cross-hatched paper with its grid of latitude and longitude lines.
Unsatisfied with the consistency of his symbol-making skills, he created a stencil for the storm graphic. He left the center blank to denote a tropical storm and penciled it in if it developed into a hurricane. He also added tiny numbers with adhesive backing to the center of the design to indicate a storm’s intensity. He was particularly proud of the apposite arcs in the stencil. They seemed kinetic to him somehow, intimating a storm’s menacing power with their fat, stubby blades churning over the Atlantic, Caribbean, or Gulf of Mexico—the terrible sign of a twin-scythed maritime grim reaper.
Although it may seem macabre, it was actually quite common for families to keep the charts magnetically clamped to kitchen refrigerators and update them now and then. As a young person, Merlin, however, was particularly fastidious with his chart updates. His fascination with the annual ritual did not wane through the years, and, as the world became progressively digital and computerized, Merlin created his own electronic hurricane tracking charts, adding special functions for visual enhancement of the experience, like different colors representing each strength category of a storm. These first early efforts spawned projects that had ultimately led to the complex, and Merlin believed, beautiful information synthesizer of the Agglomerator. This morning, however, was blazing hot and almost cloudless, and the prospect of imminently approaching hurricanes, generally a late summer phenomenon, was neither on the horizon nor animating Merlin’s thoughts.
On learning Tite Dûche’s sons were the perps of the eggings, Merlin went back into online shopping mode, searching for tracking devices that could be affixed by magnet to automobiles. He found just what he was looking for—a tiny gadget with an equally tiny, but powerful, battery-powered electromagnet. The device reported its whereabouts both to his computer and through an app to his smart phone. It also had an emergency feature that disengaged the magnet, allowing it to detach from wherever it had been placed.
The tracker arrived in a nondescript little box he opened with ant
icipation. Getting past the bubble wrap and packing paper, he excised a smooth, thick wafer—matte black plastic on the top and sides, and the bottom consisting entirely of the magnet. It looked like a miniature hockey puck. “Not much bigger than a macaroon,” he observed. He put it in the palm of one of his hands. Closing his fingers around it completely hid it from view. He went to work linking it to his computer and phone, which took just a few minutes. The manufacturers had even sent a fresh, strong battery with it, which he installed without difficulty. Then he thought, Why not today? He dropped the little device in a trouser pocket and set off for the club.
He saw neither father’s nor sons’ Dûche mobiles on entering the club, but when he left after breakfast, he saw Tite’s bright yellow Porsche parked in a row reserved for board members. Although he had planned to affix it to the offending SUV, on a whim he decided to attach it to the club president’s car. He saw a place where he might secrete it in a rear wheel well, but he wondered how to do it without being noticed.
He began to sidle toward the roadster and noticed an errant UPS delivery truck heading his way. He shuffled out of the way of its path and quickly scanned the lot as he approached the sports car. The truck began to pass slowly, blocking the view of the parking lot’s security camera. Just to be safe he feigned dropping something, and on the way up, firmly affixed the tracker out of sight on the undercarriage of the car. It adhered with a muffled metal-on-metal clink. By the time the delivery truck rolled past, he was once again upright and on his way home.
The Saturday mail had been delivered by the time Merlin reached the main house, and sorting through it as he headed toward his observatory, he recognized the familiar shape, texture, and coloring of the Bayou Boughs Country Club monthly newsletter. As much as he found the new president’s letters far from pleasant reading, they took up most of the cover of the update and were impossible to ignore, so he began to read.
Merlin of the Magnolias Page 13