Josephs Springsummer 6: Martin Goode
Walter McVey coasted his lime green Grand Marquis past the house where
his father had spent most of his childhood. The port city of Georgetown had
long ago been swallowed by the District of Columbia but it was still
Georgetown. Every American city has a few pricey neighborhoods and several nice
suburbs but Georgetown remained special in the eyes of Walter McVey.
Yes, the historical societies had done a good job of preserving her
unique charms but there was always unique charm to preserve. Some of the
hottest real estate on Planet Earth had once been built, owned and occupied by
everyday people. Nothing like the Maryland suburb Walter now called home. In
his father’s day, rich people lived alongside working people and young couples
with their growing families and teenagers who left home to fight wars. If you
looked closely you could still see a Georgetown that was every bit American as Bowling
Green or Hibbing or Topeka.
Charles McVey handed down stories of mean kids who would steal bikes and
kill cats. Stories of slingshots and tree houses and endless arm-punching
contests. Whatever else present day residents might contribute to society, they
probably did not build many tree houses, Walter mused.
A zig and a zag from his father’s house and Walter was pushing the barge
into Martin Goode’s driveway. He parked snugly behind Martin’s generic sedan.
By fitting bumper to bumper Walter would allow a third car to park behind him
in the asphalt driveway.
Walter bounded from his seat, gently closed the door behind him and
absorbed his surroundings. Martin was flanked on one side by a semi-famous
green policy advocate to his left and a deliberately unfamous defense lobbyist
to his right. Directly across the street the ex-wife of a former news anchor
kept her summer quarters.
Martin sometimes mused aloud about the minimal contact he shared with his
neighbors. He knew their landscapes and housekeepers better than he knew the
mysterious figures behind the Ban-Rays and the tinted windshields. Given
Martin’s background and livelihood and demeanor, Walter surmised that he was
probably every bit as reclusive as his neighbors.
Gate, fence and camera. Walter’s
own Maryland neighborhood was much the same way. He briefly reflected on an era
when children thought nothing of cutting a path through the neighbors’ yard or
helping themselves to low-hanging apples and families adopted stray dogs who
refused to leave their porch. Something
to be said for Lockdown America, Walter concluded once more.
Martin, for all of his efforts to stay current, still retained the
atavistic habit of receiving all guests through the front door. It might seem
like the wrong jacket button to others but it was the way Martin did things.
Before Walter could ring the bell, Martin had swung the rounded door open and
pressed the lever on the screen door.
Walter hurried inside and Martin closed and locked the doors behind him.
Martin led Walter down the hall to the library. To Walter’s eyes, every room in
the house looked like a library. Books of all kind lined most walls and even
the kitchen and laundry room featured small bookcases. A touch of heraldry gave
the house a British affect, which is what Martin intended.
At 82, Martin seemed younger than his stated age. He had repeatedly
shared his Methuselah techniques with Walter. He moved with deliberate speed
and exaggerated motions—flourishes he deliberately practiced in front of a
mirror—so as to not look like an octogenarian. He always listened intently and
on those rare occasions when he could not understand the speaker, he always
accused the rube of mumbling and insisted that he speak slowly and distinctly.
Walter held no doubt that had he chosen a different career he would never
have met anyone half as interesting or engaging as Martin Goode. Lightweight
boxer, Notre Dame Grad, Naval Intelligence, DEA, and most significantly,
auxiliary management. Had Walter not met Martin, he would not have been
inducted into the cryptic world of guided direct action. It was a world that
Walter did not understand and a world he might not ever understand and a world
he might not ever be able to explain to outsiders, even if some day he leveraged
a grasp of the subject.
Martin still flew to Montreal and Bogota and Mexico City to conduct
business. When he had to fly to Asia or Australia, he generally laid over in
Hawaii. On a routine day Martin rose at 5 AM. The alarm clock had been replaced
by a fifteen minute “Energized Breathing” narration designed to prompt the
abandonment of a cozy bed. The Kai Kundalini regimen was always followed by a
ten minute ice cold shower.
Next, Martin would exercise his body, emphasizing strength, flexibility
and poison hand kung fu. We would write and review his goals and would then
peruse his messages. On most days Martin walked a quarter mile to Holy Family’s
8 AM Mass. He would then return home and put in four to six hours of Bridge
Club business. At the end of his workday, Martin would pray the Rosary as he
paced his upstairs hallway.
At the conclusion of his prayers, Martin would indulge himself in his
real passion: the daily walk and read. Depending on his Bridge Club workload,
Martin would spend four to eight hours pacing his perfectly-lighted hallway
reading from a book and drinking dromedary quantities of water. Greek History.
Roman History. Lives of the Saints. Thackeray. Austen. Dickens. Westerns. Crime
novels. Biographies of people familiar and strange. Business books. Conspiracy
theories. Bram Stoker. Mary Shelley. Robert Louis Stevenson. Edgar Allen Poe. Oliver
Sachs. The paranormal. 100 to 200 pages, 8 to 15 miles, three quarts of water.
Martin would then eat the only meal of the day, usually a mixed leaf
salad loaded with tree nuts, avocado, hard boiled eggs, olives, anchovies and
raspberry-flavored goat cheese all soaked in olive oil and vinegar. He would
sometimes add a side of sardines or kippers or shellfish with a glass or two of
bold red wine. He would then consume his nutritional supplements followed by a
large chunk of organic chocolate and a few slices of pineapple.
Martin would rinse his dirty dishes and place them in the dishwasher for
his thrice weekly to wash thoroughly at a later time. With dinner out of the
way, Martin would check his messages one more time. He would then take a warm
shower, care for his dental investments and retire to his bedroom. In Notre
Dame sweat pants and t-shirt, Martin would kneel on his bedroom floor and say
his evening prayers under a cast iron crucifix mounted on a small wall between
door and closet. He would then consume his sleep-time supplements and pull back
the covers on hi Perfect Bed. On the nightstand rested a small glass of plum
wine, a few slivers of organic cocoa on a porcelain saucer and a transparent
plastic tumbler filled with a quart of ice water.
With the Perfect Bed set to a reader’s incline and the illumination of a Midnight
Sun mood lamp, Martin would don his reading glasses revisit books he had read
in boyhood: Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, a biography of
Richard the Lionhearted. Mostly he read Hardy Boys stories.
Walter invaded the orderly kitchen and percolated a pot of Cowpoke
Coffee. Of all the people in all the houses he had ever visited, no one made
him feel more at home than Martin Goode. For all of his security measures,
Martin took the mi casa es tu casa to another level. He would sometimes ask a
guest to go upstairs and retrieve something from a dresser drawer or something
hidden away in a closet. Walter recognized the tactic was used to convey a
feeling of trust and that feeling was always present at bridge club gatherings.
Walter loaded his coffee with heavy cream and blended sugar and hiked
back to the library. He placed his coffee on an Edinburgh Castle cork coaster
and sat at the round table about ninety degrees from Martin. Despite Martin’s
penchant for hording books and the fetishes of knighthood, his house was always
looked like a furniture showroom. Plenty of open space on and between pieces of
furniture.
“Did you drive past King Joseph’s house?” Martin asked.
Walter sniffed and smiled and briefly turned his head. No, he had not
gone anywhere near John Joseph’s Georgetown home, the runt of a dead end
litter. John Joseph had purchased a house in Washington to be close to his
baseball team. He had intended to buy the surrounding properties and house
acolytes and friends and associates. So entrenched were Georgetown residents
that Joseph had failed to purchase a second property five years later.
Walter studied Martin’s face. He had a full head of transplanted and dyed
blondish hair. He had access to cutting edge cosmetics and he utilized his
choices wisely. Face lifts and botox injections were still performed on the
masses but Martin’s doctors opened eyes and smoothed wrinkles without leaving
fingerprints.
Walter savored his creamy coffee and listened keenly as Martin discussed
world events and other matters that concerned the bridge club. Coming from a
large family with a career-driven father, Walter had always cherished the times
he had spent alone with his father. The ever-busy sage down the hall spewed
insight and wisdom whenever you could get his attention. He now had a similar
feeling whenever he could enjoy one to one time with Martin.
Long ago it had been relayed to Walter that long ago before then someone
had asked Martin if he ever regretted marrying or raising a family. He
instantly and flatly answered, “No” and he was never asked those questions
again.
Walter took mental notes of Martin’s recently discovered news sites as
well as his tangential information about Islamic imperialism and psychic
warfare. Oh if only he had more time to spend with his Obi-Alec Guinness. The
enchanting monolog was terminated when Martin observed a mounted screen
catching Don Lambert perking his blue Volvo SUV in the driveway bumper to
bumper behind Walter’s Grand Marquis.
Martin executed a practiced I-am-not-your-typical-octogenarian spring to
his feet and swaggered to the front door. A moment later Walter was asking Don
about his heart, his health and his recovery as they strolled back to the
library. Walter had grown more comfortable with Don over time. There was
something foreign about his proudly bald scalp and oversized moustache that
reminded Walter of clam digger bathing suits, penny-farthing bicycles, frothy
beers and bare knuckle fighting. He still seemed a bit out of era but he won
the trust and respect of his bridge club partners and had been designated
Martin’s successor.
On this day Martin Goode employed
the shortened ritual to open their meeting. A brief prayer, some demasonized
mumbo jumbo and a short recital lifted directly from the Knights of Columbus.
“To be named is to be blamed,” Martin often said. Keeping with that
philosophy, Martin’s crew had never been christened. The bridge club was the
perfect cover for a meeting of geezers dedicated to supplemental governance. Of
course, only 3 of the 5 non-members to the non-existent club knew how to play
bridge, so Martin substituted Chinese checkers as the background activity. The
game had yet to find its Oswald Jacoby and Martin devoted enough thought and
theory to basic strategy and had emerged as the dominant player.
Martin had mused that Chinese checkers might be the perfect metaphor for
auxiliary management. In real life, groups raced, blocked, evaded and sometimes
assisted other players in pursuit of their goals. Martin had once more selected
his leaf green cat eye marbles and play commenced.
As he moved his first piece, Martin opened the discussion. “The Joseph
media are investigating our domestic surveillance infrastructure. I have it on
record that they can do serious damage to our program.”
With Walter playing the red cat eyes to his left and Don Lambert in
direct opposition playing the yellow cats, questions and answers ensued. The
Joseph wire service was preparing a data drop that would be the equivalent of
500 pages of newsprint. The expose will focus primarily on the technical
aspects of domestic satellite security.
“Our space coverage ranges from absolute to absolute zero and everything
in between.” Martin then elaborated on the technical details that captivated his
audience’s attention and distracted them from his board game superiority. Not
every satellite was of the same vintage. The old ones recorded fewer details
than the new ones. Being that they were designed and maintained by private
firms, there was a wide variance in dependability. Some stations were usually
functional and some never worked at all.
Some satellites could see through clouds and some could not. Some could
record through storms and some could not. Some could see in the dark and some
could not.
Organized crime had procured some cloaking technology. Unmanned flights
from Canada or Mexico would sometimes disappear from surveillance. This was a
secret that both the elite cartels and the intelligence industry wanted to keep
secret.
The network had its regional quirks as well. Chicago’s focus was a bit
skewed, capturing more of Northern Indiana than the Western suburbs. Detroit
had a small diameter scope. New Orleans was almost absent from view but the
surrounding swampland was displayed in all of its flourishing detail.
Only four cities were provided 24-hour door to door monitoring, the
latest being Houston. Space City had been the scene of several biological
attacks directed at the law enforcement establishment. Sensing a weakness,
every cartel and gang and weekend dealer headed to Houston to set up shop. It
could not be leaked that Houston had become the most-watched city in the world.
Game 1 went to Martin and Don shifted to a diagonal position from the
champion. “Amber Wayne can no longer be considered an innocent trollop,” Martin
decreed at the start of the second game. “She is an active participant in the
Joseph agenda.”
Both listeners nodded. Amber Wayne had lost her collateral status. But
what about the pilots and security and the Josephs’ ever-changing entourage?
Martin was ahead of his inquisitive pupils. Two of John Joseph’s pilots had
been unindicted coconspirators back in the hippy aviator days. Justice will get
another shot at these two.
Martin concluded his tutelage by informing his companions that one of the
two pilots, Steve Foust, was the only pilot of John Joseph’s four-seat jet. “If
Foust fell to the ground with Joseph and Wayne, there would be no innocent loss
of life.”
“Provided they did not land on innocents,” Walter interjected before Don
had a chance. Yes, of course. Usual restatement of parameters and limitations
and safeguards. Consensus would be reached easily and Martin would win all
three games of Chinese checkers.
