The Lesser Evil

by Jim Magwood

  Trans-shipping out of the United States, Mexico or South America to Canada and Europe was usually just as easy as getting the small loads across the near borders. All he did was look for pilots and cargo handlers who wanted to supplement their incomes, and there were lots of them. There were simply too many passenger and cargo planes crossing the oceans for drug agents to chase them all. By keeping the loads smaller than his competitors, he could quickly get them on a flight that suddenly came available, and, if the load and the pilot were caught, the expense again was minimal. Because the loads were smaller, they were easier and faster to transfer at the end of the runs and, again, the drug agents simply didn’t have the assets to keep up with all of them, especially when the larger loads brought the larger rewards.

  Alberto Escobedo knew many of his competitors laughed at him. However, he regularly laughed back at them when he counted his bank holdings and especially when he heard of a major loss suffered by an egotistical competitor. Escobedo had never had a major loss and his bank accounts simply continued to grow. He paid a few of his people very well to protect him and to take care of producing and routing the shipments.

  The workers, too, had secret accounts that continued to grow and which they hoped would enable them to live out their lives on a secluded beach or mountaintop some day, so they worked hard to stay in Escobedo’s good graces.

  In addition to laughing back at many of his competitors, he got back at them regularly in other ways. One simply did not laugh at Alberto Escobedo and walk away. Escobedo occasionally learned of major shipments being planned and turned them in to a select few drug agents, some of whom could then be expected to turn their backs on one of his smaller shipments.

  One competitor had spent a long night drinking in downtown clubs joking about little Alberto and ridiculing Escobedo’s methods as well as his family members, his growing stable of racing horses and fighting bulls, and the peasant atmosphere of Escobedo’s estate in the hills outside Sao Paulo.

  It was exactly one month later to the day that the estate of the competitor was found burned and bulldozed to the ground.

  Every one of his family members, servants, guards and workers were buried in a mass grave, and every animal on the property was slaughtered, from the prize horses and bulls down to the dogs and chickens. The competitor himself had been found nailed to a cross placed in the middle of the road leading into the estate immediately under the massive arch of the entrance gate. He gave the open-armed appearance of welcoming visitors to his estate, except he had been horribly tor-tured before being left for the ants, animals and birds to finish.

  Very few people publicly laughed at Alberto Escobedo again.

  Escobedo seldom raised his voice in anger. He actually treated his servants and workers well and few of them would ever consider leaving him for anything else. Children of some of his workers had been sent to special schools; medical treatments had been received by many that they would have never been able to get on their own; some aging parents had been placed in retirement type homes that were impossible to get into, even for the well-to-do. He regularly gave large gifts to his church and to several charities. However, everyone knew you never crossed Alberto Escobedo, cheated him or laughed at him. His anger was very seldom publicly expressed. When it was, it came out in ways that could only be described as evil and ugly and was never forgotten by those who witnessed the events.

  As he walked through the warehouse and then drove his jeep to the beautiful country home nestled in the grove of huge, cooling trees two miles down the road, he saw his two young daughters running out to meet him. This was the birthday weekend for the twins and they had begged to be able to come out from their Sao Paulo home to the country estate in Columbia for the event. Many friends were to be arriving tonight and most would stay through the weekend in the guest cottages. His wife had spent a small fortune, with his blessing, to put on a fiesta worthy of royalty, and that’s how Alberto considered his family—royalty. The only purpose of money was to be spent making more money or to spend on his family’s enjoyment.

  Both the girls were laughing and screaming as they ran to him and wrapped themselves around him. He let them pull him down to the ground and spent several minutes rolling around the lawn with them. His wife finally arrived and rescued him and he ran happily with them back to the house for lunch.

  Just as they were going in the front doors, he heard one of the planes taking off and he stopped. His face immediately took on a serious look and the calculator in his mind began totaling the dollars that would have been already added to his accounts before this shipment even left the ground. He waited quietly until he couldn’t hear the plane anymore and then, like a switch turning, his face took on the birthday joy again and he turned back and went in with his family.

  His wife had been holding the door for him. “Did the planes get off alright?” she asked simply.

  “Of course.” His face darkened and his reply was curt and final. The attitude was Don’t ask into my business. Then the switch flipped again, his eyes sparkled, and he shouted joy-fully, “When is the party? Where are my girls?”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Ron Kincaide, please.”

  “Who may I say is calling, sir?”

  “Henry Baxter, independent newsman, calling from Washington, D.C. I think he’ll remember me.”

  “Please hold for a moment, sir. I’ll let him know you’re on the line.”

  Henry sat listening to some ‘government’ music for a minute, wondering if he’d really get through and if Kincaide would recognize him. They had met a couple of years before, shortly after Henry had written about the destruction of a group that was trying to take over control of the world’s power structure. Henry had gotten wind of the event when a couple of news agencies had reported some kind of small, possibly nuclear, explosion at a secret location in Corvalle, a new African nation. He had spent a lot of time researching the event through both Internet and personal sources and got a definite surprise one day when Ron Kincaide from the Central Intelligence Agency had called out of the blue inquiring as to Henry’s purposes for the research. Henry had no idea his efforts were being monitored and immediately tried to both soft-pedal his activities while trying to get some information from Kincaide.

  Although Kincaide hadn’t said anything specific about the event, he had acknowledged that some ‘mysterious’ explosion had taken place at the location in Corvalle, that the place had been destroyed, but that no one had been injured. While he had gently warned Henry about digging too deep into the event, he hadn’t threatened him in any way, so Baxter went on researching. He found enough rudiments of the event through several sources to flesh out the story and wrote a series of small articles on it. Part of his investigation dug up some information about several world leaders that had been involved in the supposed take-over plans, including possibly the Vice-President and the Secretary of State of the United States.

  When the stories had hit the news, there was little excitement registered by readers, but Kincaide had called him again to let him know that the event was over. It was really no longer newsworthy. Much more digging on Henry’s part might cause notice to be taken of him by several people or agencies around the world and he might not like the exposure. Henry had not continued with any more stories or investigations.

  Now he waited for Ron Kincaide, hoping for some information on either the victims of the vigilante actions or on the group itself that was responsible for the actions. The group contact, Randall Johns, had not warned him off of investigating the group. He had, in fact, said they were very well hidden and couldn’t be found. However, Henry figured he might at least get some background material for future stories if he could.

  “Mr. Baxter? This is Ron Kincaide. How can I help you?”

  “Mr. Kincaide. Thanks for taking my call. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but we met…”

  “Yes, I do remember, Mr. Baxter. How can I help you?”

  Recognizing from th
e abrupt cutoff and the tone of his voice that Kincaide wasn’t exactly exuding charm at the moment, Henry jumped right in. “I’ve been doing several stories about these so called vigilante actions around the world…”

  “Yes, I’ve read several of them.”

  Feeling he was about to lose Kincaide, Henry quickly said, “A friend of mine from another agency reminded me of your name and I wondered if I could get some information from you about either the victims in the events or the group itself.”

  “What ‘friend”, Mr. Baxter?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I should…”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Baxter.”

  “Wait. Wait. He’s from the FBI.”

  “And a name, Mr. Baxter?”

  “Uhmm…”

  “Stop playing games, Mr. Baxter. Talk to me or it’s goodbye.”

  After a short pause, Baxter replied, “He’s Bob D’Arcy, a friend of several years.”

  “Thank you. Now that wasn’t really so hard, was it? Bob called me yesterday to let me know he had referred you, so I was expecting your call. Now, how can I help you?”

  “If you already knew, then why did you put me through…”

  “Mr. Baxter, if you want me to talk with you, don’t you think you should talk with me? Share and share alike, isn’t it?”

  “Okay. Sorry.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Uh, can I start over?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, if you’ve read some of my stories, you likely know I’ve gotten most of my material from a contact with this vigilante group. I’m just trying to find out anything more I can about either the supposed victims, as I said, or about the group itself. I know you won’t give me anything out of line, but—

  anything? I’ve been investigated by everybody up to the FBI and I’ve been open and honest with any agency that wanted information from me. They know I’m not connected to this group except as a reporter. Can you give me anything?”

  After a brief pause, Kincaide said, “What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Anything you want me to do.”

  “Then meet me at 11:30 at Bazin’s on Church. Best place in the D.C. area. Do you know the place?”

  “No.”

  “Take the 123 south-west from Langley, turn right on Center Street, then left on Church. It’s just down a bit, at 111

  Church. They open at 11:30; be on time.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The next day, Henry was at Bazin’s before 11:30. The receptionist greeted him and walked him back to a table in the rear where Ron Kincaide was already waiting. As they shook hands, Baxter said, “I thought you said 11:30?”

  “Patrick and Julie know me, and I wanted to get away from the office. Sit down and order, okay. Food’s great, and we’re here a little before the lunch crowd, so we’ll have some quiet time.”

  “Anything special you can recommend?”

  “Mama’s Meatballs are superb. Both the Garlic Shrimp and the Seared Scallops are great, if you want fish. And the Steak Sandwich will bring you back again. It’s all great. And save some room for the Apple Crisp. Worth coming here just for that. I’ve ordered some Jumbo Lump Crabmeat Springrolls to start, and there’s plenty enough for two.”

  The ‘receptionist’ came to the table and Kincaide introduced her: “Julie, this is Mr. Henry Baxter. He’s a world famous reporter, so you’d better treat him real well. Henry, this is Julie. She and Patrick started the place, so you’d better be real nice to her or she just might not let me bring you in here again.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Baxter. And don’t take any lip from this guy. He thinks just because he works up the road he’s special, but we just barely manage to let him in the door.

  So, what can I get for you two? Enough of this idle chatter or I won’t have time to serve you before the crowd gets here.”

  Kincaide ordered the streak sandwich and Henry the meatballs, and both ordered apple crisp to finish. Then they started talking.

  “Henry, let me ask you bluntly, are you involved with this group? I’ve heard most of your story from other sources, but I want to hear it direct from you. How much do you know about these people?”

  With a momentary flood of panic, and then an indignant look, Baxter replied, “Look. I’ve been completely above board with any investigators that have asked me that, and the answer is still, No. I don’t know who they are and I haven’t had any advance notice of what they were going to do, except the first one in Germany, and I didn’t really know what was going to happen there. I have no idea why they chose me, except the contact guy said because I was independent and had written some good stories. He said they wanted someone to report on what they were doing in a way that wouldn’t be sensational in itself, but would give the best facts and interpretations to the public. He said I’d never be able to find them, but didn’t say I couldn’t try. In fact, he seemed to almost make it a joke in that they were supposedly so well hidden it’d be a waste of time to try to find them. He gave me the same reasoning for their actions I’ve told others, and it wasn’t in some boasting or self-serving manner. He just said they were tired of all the evil going on without the authorities apparently being able to do anything about it anymore, and the governments and the people turning their backs on it. He said something like if the people and authorities won’t or can’t do anything, then we will have to. And that’s about all I know.”

  “And you said this guys name was Johns?”

  “Yeah, Randall Johns. He said that was what I could call him. I don’t really imagine he’d give me a real name. In fact, I tried to look it up with absolutely no hits that panned out.”

  “So, how do you feel about these guys and what they’re doing, now that you’ve been involved for a while?”

  Henry sat and thought for a long moment before replying,

  “I really don’t know. Part of me is probably like a lot of other folks right now and is cheering them on. I think they’re right when they say we, the people, have let all this crime and corruption take place. We’ve elected and re-elected politicians that have proven themselves crooks over and over. We’ve allowed the criminal elements to take control of our cities and lives. We’ve allowed the lawyers and social scientists to put so many roadblocks in the path of the authorities that they can’t do their jobs even when they want to. When someone steps up to try to do something decent, they just get stamped out, and we let it happen. There’s a continuing movement in the governments to take all power out of the hands of the people.

  And, we, the good old sheep, just keep voting, or maybe not voting, for everything they keep telling us. We keep walking away from any responsibility ourselves, yet we scream and cry when anything gets in our face or walks up onto our own porches.”

  “Anything specific in that list?”

  “Sure. How many politicians do I have to point out, from presidents on down to city managers who are immoral in a lot of what they do or are caught in illegal and criminal activities, yet walk away, and get re-elected over and over? And whose almost sole purpose is just to get re-elected? We’ve got church leaders who break almost every rule in the Bible they claim is their precious rule book, and so-called religious people who don’t know a word of their rule book and so just follow the charlatans. We’ve got sports heroes who drug themselves up to being top athletes, and sports organizations that do absolutely nothing about it, except hide it. And we won’t even talk about the business people everywhere that figure anything is right for them to do as long as they get the profits they want—

  and don’t get caught. That’s probably the mantra everywhere now—don’t get caught.”

  “You sound like you’ve been rehearsing this little speech.”

  “Yeah, it does. But, I’ll guarantee that if you pinched any good citizen out there in the world on any certain day, they’d gripe and complain about these same things. They see things happening around them every day, but have become helpless to do anything about it. True, we’ve given
away our rights ourselves by letting the courts and politicians run everything for us, by not shutting them down. But, still, when it comes down to trying to live our lives in some kind of peace and decency, we’re lost and have no more power.”