Chapter 13. The Wretched Bliss
A silver Cross pen poured out royal blue ink, slowly, elegantly, and in large strokes on a contract printed on cardstock paper. The signature spelled out the Treasurer's name, Judith's operating name.
Julia Bentley-Blackwell.
After she signed, Judith stood up and handed the pen to the next person in line: Marcus Jovan. One lawyer stood behind the desk and watched every person sign. On his left was another lawyer. The grandeur of the moment in the Sault Sainte Marie restaurant made Judith think of the Pennsylvania State House on a hot day in 1776.
Jovan signed the paper and handed the pen to the next person in line, one of the owners of The Raclette restaurant, which would be rebranded as Grams.
At a table in the rear of the restaurant sat Ben Longstreet, Dr. Gaveston, and Ben's daughter, Marie. The owners of the Raclette organized a free party to celebrate the marriage of companies into a long-term agreement under Talbot's supervision. Grams, meaning Julia, would act as the the medium of exchange and comptroller of all funds. Accounts were arranged with Credit Suisse. One account, however, Judith failed to mention to her partners, and that was the one she setup in Uruguay.
After Judith's initial pitch to Talbot, she brought the audio recording of her presentation back to Michigan and played it for the owners of The Raclette. The speech conveyed to the owners the excitement of the panel at Talbot. By the end of the presentation, the owners were ready to sign. Judith did not let them listen to Gaveston's comment at the end of her pitch. The great chef, Gaveston, retired after the meeting, before Judith could fire him.
When she found a minute, after the signing ceremony concluded, Judith worked her way over to the corner table. As she approached, she heard the tail end of their conversation.
"I think this mug looks a little dirty," Ben Longstreet said. "Don't you think this mug looks dirty, Marie?"
"Dad, it's supposed to look that way."
"Then I like my mugs like my evenings. Dirty."
"Like your tobacco and boys," said Gaveston.
"Damn you, viper of - oh, hello, Julia!" Ben ignored Gaveston when he saw Judith approaching. "Ms. Bentley-Blackwell, so nice of you to drop in. I'll ask you. Do you think this mug is dirty?"
"If it is, don't worry." Judith sat down in a vacant chair at the table. "They will have all new equipment, including mugs, at the grand openings in New York and Los Angeles." Judith winked at Ben.
"Oh, yes, the grand opening." He laughed at her comment and smiled. "Yes, of course!"
"Nice to see you out of the house again, Ben. And Gaveston - is that merely vodka in front of you?"
Gaveston picked up the glass and in one slug, drank it all. Judith watched in amazement.
"Water," Gaveston admitted. "Ben took up the outdoors, and I quit drinking. Marie finally got her way."
"No, it was your choice." Marie laughed and nudged Gaveston. "The only thing I did was help dump out the liquor on the lawn."
"There never was such a consecration of earth," said Gaveston.
"We now live on hallowed ground," Ben commented. "A ninety-proof Gettysburg."
Judith noticed Ben looking over her shoulder at the ensemble of Talbot men, the owners, and the city administrators of Sault Sainte Marie, who mingled over the table where the signing occurred.
"A historic moment, eh? A turning of tables. Bankrupting a Dow Stock, that's impressive."
Judith rolled her eyes. "That's not my motivation, Ben. Have some discretion, please."
"Maybe a little?" Ben prodded. He held his thumb and index finger one inch apart.
"Maybe a little," she admitted, "but not really. I'm long past the stage of feeling disadvantaged."
"I bet." Ben rubbed his hands together. "Oh, this is rich. Another beautifully worded legal pile of paper, but this time for a new kind of extermination, one to foist the foister, to trick the trickster, and pull the rug out from unbridled science. There is that old bull, Jovan, eating from the trough of the world. But then, he's already been snuffed."
Judith looked over at Jovan. "Why do you say that?"
"Ask Marie."
"I went on one date with Jovan," Marie said. "No one ever asks me about my research, just that one stupid date with Marcus Jovan. I was working as a consultant at Talbot on a few projects and he and I got along. I had to meet with him for business purposes and then we went on one date. He's a decent enough guy." She looked around at the doubting faces. "Really, he is!"
"Why do you say he's 'been snuffed'?" asked Judith.
"It's a strange story." Ben answered for Marie. "I used to get emails and letters from anonymous people telling me strange things about industry information, as if I were the Blocker or the Broker to solve all their problems. One letter came in with a story about Jovan's son. Allegedly, Marcus and Junior were sleeping with the same woman."
"Really?" said Judith.
"That's what I heard, too," Marie agreed. "Then the kid disappeared. Well, he was eighteen. Not exactly a kid."
"That's the story," Ben said. "Imagine, a man like Marcus Jovan being peeled like that. That must have been a mess." Ben laughed. "Look at the old bugger's face. Those wrinkles didn't all come from business deals gone bad and market fluctuations."
Along with the others, Judith looked at Jovan. Earlier she had been face to face with him, but now that she looked again, his eyes seemed sad. Throughout the day, Jovan acted terribly polite, to a fault nearly, but always like a gentleman. He had a grandfather quality to him. What seemed before as dancing eyes now looked doggish and lost, moist from some kind of pain. She could not look away from him, even as Ben continued to speak.
"What a story. The son also rises, you know what I'm saying? The son apparently goes down, too, on daddy's mistress."
"Dad," said Marie.
"I'm sorry," Ben said. "I apologize to you, too, Ms. Blackwell, you modern Squanto, translating between the whites and natives here today."
"Oh goodness. Dad," Marie scolded, "I can see you are starting to get excited and silly. I think it's time to take your pills." Marie looked at Judith. "He gets like this, just saying whatever comes to mind."
Marie produced a prescription bottle from her purse, but could not get her father to sit still. She put her finger in his mouth and tossed the soothers onto his tongue.
"The ice is breaking up." He swallowed and then said, "This flotilla of wretched bliss. Julia, you are the jackhammer."
"And you are a jackass," said Gaveston.
"To hell with you sober, Gaveston." Longstreet threw his napkin into the Doctor's face. As he grew excited, Ben's hair became a mess, although he did not touch it at all. He became electric.
"Wretched bliss," said Marie. "How nice."
"It is! That's what life is," Ben said, vibrating in his seat. "Awake or asleep, we're always under the ready fangs of wolves. We were once helpless and perfect until they made us run. We are dumb in a dark and jumbled deep woods, entangled among burdocks of misery, brambles of rent, canopies of debt, sloughs of age, and weeds of expectations, always, always being hunted for what we owe, sniffed out by our fear, stared down until we pay and turn away. To survive it, we run, we flap wildly in an old pursuit that keeps innocence permanently endangered. And time goes by, degenerating our minds. Time!"
"Dad," said Marie, "stop talking while you swallow the pills or you'll choke."
"By attrition. No, perforce," yelled Ben. "We begin to believe the stories set forth by our rulers, mutating what as innocents we knew was true, blinding ourselves with a coerced fiction. Even if we know another way, in the woods, we someday relent and come to believe what is shoved into our face like a...a..."
"Sausage?" said Gaveston.
"No. Like a telescreen. Only a few, like
you Judith," said Ben, ignoring his detractors, "can cut through the jungle and show us another way. Because of you, now and then a new idea sinks in its teeth into the old guard, and whatever you hold as the truth today, will become tomorrow's apostasy. The world is a cool quicksand. I tell you it is a wretched bliss!" He banged his fork and knife on the table.
"For goodness sakes, why are you so agitated?" Marie grabbed her father's wrists and held his hands down on the table. "This is not a Munich beer hall, this is Michigan."
Ben asked, "Are you comparing me to Adolf?"
"Yes, Dad. You are an extremist and a nut."
"All you need," Gaveston said, tapping his upper-lip, "is a little moustache."
"It would be better if we kept it quiet here," Judith said nervously. "Don't scare off the investors."
After a moment, Ben calmed and leaned back into his chair. A waitress walked by, and Ben said to her, "More coffee, please."
"Decaf, please," Marie whispered to the waitress.
"Decaf keeps the old man quiet, is that it?" Ben fumed. "Damn the decaf!"
"I think maybe you need a walk," Marie said. "Let's go walk along the locks."
"Time to walk the writer." Gaveston laughed.
"I will not be quieted when I can see you stifling me. That's the only truth I see."
"You can't handle the truth," Gaveston needled.
Ben's face became outraged. He paused and leered at Gaveston, like an alien species sat across from him. "I know less about truth," Ben said in low voice, with a constant crescendo, "than any man, deservedly, since I went seeking for it, with conviction, doggedly, to tame truth, to nail it down. For truth, I was dying of a thirst and being offered nothing but a life of dry oatmeal and bad whiskey."
"That sounds delicious," said Gaveston.
"Let's not provoke him," said Marie, "please."
"But I'm not provoking him," Gaveston argued. "After ten days of delirium tremens, I would love to have oatmeal and whiskey. Unfortunately, my head is starting to clear."
Ben was in a faraway place, talking to no one, and loudly.
"Ok, it's time to go," said Marie, frowning.
Judith nodded at Marie.
The dysfunctional family began to push Ben out of the booth and strongly encouraged him toward the rear exit. Before Ben raised his voice any further, Judith distanced herself from the members of Hatter House. As they dragged the old man to the door, he continued snarling and snapping.
"From these stakes of truth I could never rip free, and after some time I stopped wanting to be free, as the leather of my skin..." He paused to grab his coffee from the waitress, which the waitress had poured into a paper to-go cup. "Thank you, dear." He slurped quickly and yelled again. "These layers of gristle on my neck quelled me, quieted me, and - wow, this is delicious, and decaf? A hint of vanilla and biscotti. Now where was I? Oh yes, gristle...quieted...let me think."
"This is nonsense." Marie apologized to everyone in the room.
Gaveston yelled as he left the building, "Vive La Raclette!"
The scene brought a laugh and a shout from the investors and businessmen. The owners took the blame for Ben Longstreet. Judith overheard descriptions of Longstreet as "our resident madman" and "the worst-kept secret in Sault Sainte Marie." The outburst entertained the Talbot men, and drew no suspicion toward Judith.
She moved toward the center of the room, toward Marcus Jovan, who smiled and spoke with a few of the locals who were dining at The Raclette. She approached him, eavesdropping as she mingled with other members of the ribbon-cutting party. She began to admire the old man the more she watched him. Like a politician - one of the rare ones - Jovan sat and talked with people, leading Judith to wonder what the future might have brought to Jovan, had his family not fallen to pieces. She wondered if it was the loss of his family that made him likable, brought him down a notch, and turned his nose downward, toward the earth instead of the sky. The reputation of Talbot soared under Jovan for many years, despite recent setbacks, which all dealt with accounting and ethics issues.
When he stood up and said goodbye to the locals, Judith noticed a natural look of nobility, if there is such a thing, rising with him. Obviously, based on his accomplishments, Jovan had talent and charisma, but she wondered if he had virtue. Judith broke away from a conversation to intercept Jovan. On her way to catch him, she doubted her right to judge the virtue of any person who bore forty years of changes, hardships, family fallout, and business. It was one of the first doubts she had ever experienced, but after that one came a flood.
Her conversation with Jovan began easily. She did not feel the need to sell anything, because she knew that he had dealt with salesmen most of his life. His face was deep with lifelines. The confident and cocky man buried underneath those lines had a kind of wisdom, humble instead of bitter. Jovan was shrinking in height, but still stood straight. Judith spoke to him for several hours and afterward, her plan to rob Talbot, so solid at the beginning of the day, felt tattered and pointed at the wrong mark. Was this really the man to be left holding the empty bag?
They discussed past deals, risks taken, and his life at Talbot, all of which seemed legitimate - aggressive - but overall, legal and in the spirit of competition and social improvement. She struggled to decide if old Jovan was merely indoctrinated with moralspeak or really did seek a better world through pharmaceuticals.
"No offense, Julia," he said cautiously, "but this branching into restaurants is a whole new arena for me. It rattles my nerves. I must tell you though, you give me confidence. When I can see what a sharp and principled person you are, I have no doubt we will have success with this adventure and improve every city that we do business in. I love the idea of bringing family and friends closer together."
She bit her lip as he extolled the merits of community, which, he claimed, had disappeared with consumerism.
"It's way to reconnect with family," he said, "and that's a great business to be in."
If the conversation had occurred over the phone, she might have rolled her eyes, but Jovan was serious.
"It's very important," he added.
"What about you, Mr. Jovan? Will your family be there on the opening night of Grams?"
Nodding, he replied, "I will be there."
"With your family?"
"I will be there with some friends. My family is small and doesn't get together anymore."
"That's too bad."
"It is, Julia. A terrible thing."
"Where are they now?"
He didn't answer, but she could see the truth. She didn't doubt the awful story about his son and his wife. They were not a part of his life anymore.
Shortly after the meeting, when the day finally rested, Judith returned to her hotel room and opened the mini-bar. She uncorked a small bottle of pinot noir, flopped onto the bed, and read the parts of The Wall Street Journal that she didn't get to that morning.
Before she could relax, she checked her messages on the phone. The only message was from Isaac, but his voice concerned her. The message was short, but every word contained vital information.
"The Broker's name is Lucas Perth."
She went back to reading, and sipped the wine right from the bottle, without giving to much thought to Isaac's message until she turned to the front page of the Marketplace section. She nearly spit red wine onto the white bed sheets. Staring up at her was a face, one that would have meant nothing to her if she had read the paper that morning, yet now it meant everything, and her stomach twisted as she read the story. The many jobs she worked in the past suddenly pained her shoulders. She looked at the date on the newspaper and felt the years pile onto her, from 2005 to 2022, the hours of toil that were the hope of a revolution now felt like a rucksack full of useless bricks.
&nbs
p; That face haunted her by bringing back the memory of every crime she had committed for the KillJoy cause: robbing the cash room at the stadium, smashing the Brio-Nano delivery truck, creeping through hospitals to spoil cell cultures, defaming innocent people by planting drugs and money. Her life's work furthered an act of revenge rather than the KillJoy cause. The blood on her hands was from a dirty game of distract-and-conquer. The face in the picture was the same one that she saw at the stadium that day. It was obvious now, after meeting with Jovan, that Lucas Perth was Marcus Jovan's missing son. The money, soon to be piled in her fraudulent bank accounts, amounted to no more than thirty pieces of silver.
Without getting any rest, Judith set the wine down and got up to leave. She needed some advice, some company. She turned the light off in the room, but paused, and flipped the light back on. Leaving the bottle was not an option.
In her rented Lexus SUV, Judith bounced along the back roads of the Upper Peninsula toward Hatter House. Bugs swarmed her headlights and dashed their bodies against her windshield. It was a muggy August night.
Marie opened the door and invited Judith inside. Marie whispered, "I hate to greet you like this..."
"I think you should know my real name..."
"Don't say it!" Marie covered Judith's mouth and continued to whisper. "You never know who's listening anymore. But right now, please move your car behind the house. Someone is on his way here. He just called and whenever this happens he's not far."
"Who?"
"FBI. Agent Pazzo."
"An agent?" Judith said. "A federal agent?"
"Yes." Marie spun Judith around. "Now, move the car and I'll open the back door."
Judith followed the orders. After she moved the car, Marie hid Judith in the cellar of the house, beneath the shabby floorboards, and while waiting for the agent to walk in, she wondered if this would be her final betrayal.
Five minutes later, the agent entered the house.
"Pazzo!" Ben yelled. "You crazy Guinea, come on in!"
She heard the agent's shoes over her head. Wherever the floorboards creaked, she cringed. Cracks in the hardwood floor allowed for small shafts of light to come through, but she could not see the face of the agent.
The footsteps stopped and Pazzo asked, "What happened to all the clocks?"
"I'm cured!" Ben said. "Sort of. And Dr. Gaveston has given up the sauce. I could entertain you with a story about his final days in the bag..."
"Sorry, no time," Pazzo said. "No bullshitting tonight, Ben. I need Marie and Gaveston to go upstairs. I have to talk to you about something. And I'm going to arrest you afterward. I need to detain you."
"Arrest me?"
"I'm afraid so," Pazzo said.
"That's terrific!" Ben said to Marie and Gaveston. "Go upstairs honeys. Daddy needs to get arrested now." Then to Pazzo he said, "I can't thank you enough, Agent Pazzo. I knew you would come around."
"You are a strange person. But I'm only taking you in as a decoy."
"Better a decoy than dead. At least I'll be in the water again." Ben waited until Marie and Gaveston ascended the steps. "So what's going on? Are you on a new case?"
Pazzo paused. Judith heard him sigh. "Same case. The same case I've been on for most of my career."
She barely breathed as Pazzo told his story.
"Ben, listen up. I need to talk to you about some options for ending this problem once and for all. A major operation is in place to take the organization down, including four teams of Special Forces on 24-hour standby. However, I am here to speak with an expert," Pazzo cleared his throat, "who knows the Blocker mindset. Trust me, there is no way I would be here speaking to you unless it was for information on the theory."
"That's me," said Ben with pride. "All theory and no balls."
"I won't mince words. We are planning a death blow on these monsters you've created."
"Wow," Ben shivered. "So what are you saying? You want to make a Block on the Blockers? You want to whack the KillJoys?"
"Exactly. I want to spin the KillJoy's work into something less...controversial."
"Foof!" Ben raised his eyebrows. "If I knew any disgruntled Blockers, I could help, but..."
"Oh, I've got a boatload full of Blockers, don't worry. But I am not going to let them play the outcome like they want to. That's what Blocking is all about, correct? Stealing public opinion with shocking events?"
Ben said, "Very much so."
Judith strained to hear every word.
"Mr. Longstreet, before I arrest you, let me tell you about what I saw. Three days ago I broke the case. I can tell you this because you're going to be muzzled and cuffed for the next week."
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