Autumn Johnsons 2 Peacock Attacked

Autumn

Johnsons

2  Peacock Attacked

With shades pulled, and snoop devices stowed, obscured or deactivated, he studied the $587,000 spread out on the mostly red and black Maryland Terrapins table cloth that shrouded the dining room table. “That’s what a half million dollars looks like,” he voiced to himself. He walked around the forced-luxury table, stopping to observe the still life from various perspectives.

Walter’s life had recently gone from Ferris wheel to roller coaster. He had decided to leave his wife over a decade ago and now he was acting on that intention. He had moved his family from Maryland to Houston.  He monitored his East Coast offices as he opened up a Houston immigration law office, a site that would be the target of a terrorist attack.

 Throughout the years Katrina Cream, the only woman Walter ever really loved, was his emotional anchor. She would reveal herself to be ruthless, reckless, crazy and dangerous. He started dating a 27 year old Native American woman named Tonya Tulsa and it was wild. Then Katrina told Walter about Curtis’s treasure map. The great rekindling had begun.

At first, it sounded too good to be true. Katrina had asked him to drive out to California to remove a bag from a storage unit. Katrina talked constantly about the large sums she had lodged in a safe in her walk-in closet. Probably too good to be true but the numbers were intriguing.

Walter never much cared for long car trips but then again most cars did not offer much comfort to larger people. He had sold his Mercedes to make room for his redstone Impala and he wondered why he had not traded down years ago. The Impala’s cockpit demeanor made Walter almost look forward to the solitary drive to nowhere.

The storage facility was in Southeast California. The key Katrina had dropped off at their rendezvous opened the lock. The cobwebbed unit was stuffed with unknown contents all covered with tarps. Walter was not interested in what might lay beneath. Katrina said it was all camouflage. The Gigante bag was all he cared about. It would be right where she said it was, hanging from a hook halfway down the right side.

Walter zipped open the bag and took a glance. Money. Lots of money all bundled, nice and tidy. He would drive home and buy a Gardall Safe and then Katrina sent him on a second trip.

Walter put his Cherokee princess on ice and his love for Katrina warmed his heart anew. Yes, they had a bright future together. Why had he doubted her? One way or another, that woman would make things happen. He just had to trust her judgment.

Pacing around the dining room table, Walter so wanted to take a picture of his riches but thought better of it. He looked around the dining room suspiciously. He had only moved into The Luxutorium about a month ago and the place still felt foreign to him. Too much gold trim and appendages alongside the genuine antiques. Too much Chinese Baroque that might hide cameras in the fake wood gargoyles.

Walter sipped blackberry brandy from his Terrapins mug. Yes, his relationship with Katrina was challenging but it did have its rewards. At least five million rewards hidden out West, according to her. Had Cupid found his mark once more?

Suddenly, there was a volley of violent knocks at the door. Walter had the Terrapins table cloth and all of its contents back in the Gardall in a few heartbeats.  He locked the vault and slammed the closet door behind him.

More knocking. “Mr. Peacock, the building is being evacuated,” he heard a muffled voice declare from the hallway. Walter took a moment to flip on the security cam monitor mounted high in the kitchen. All of the cams seemed to be obscured. 

“Mr. Peacock!”

Walter looked through the peep hole. A short police woman stared back at him. He opened the Fort Knox Door slightly, leaving it secured by a chain.

“Mr. Peacock, please remain calm. There is a fire in the building and I will escort you to safety. Please open the door, sir.

Walter closed the door, unfastened the chain and swung the Fort Knox open wide. He stood in the doorway ever so briefly and suddenly his stomach region was hit with a bolt of lightning.

No! No! No! The policewoman had zapped him with an electric stun gun.

A week ago Mitchell Stanley was visited by a man he knew only as The White Whale but whose real name was Richard Dunham. The rotund figure was one of the few people Mitch would allow entrance during a fent-meth run.

As a half dozen guests scurried to the bedroom, the two men sat at the kitchen table littered with pizza boxes and Coke cans. Richard studied his host; unsure if this was the sculpted cross trainer he had last seen five months ago. His eyes were sunken, his skin ashen, hidden behind a motley black beard that did not camouflage patches of dried blood and mucus. His hammy forearms replaced with bruised and bleeding broomsticks. Would this be what Mitchell Stanley would look like in a naked lunch condition?

Richard had been assigned one simple task. Deliver a wrapped cell phone to Mitchell Stanley and leave with the packaging. Conversation would confirm that this was indeed, Mitchell Stanley. His voice was too hoarse to recognize but his head bobbed from side to side and he gestured with his fingers lightly touching his torso as he talked. Mission accomplished.

Had Richard cared to find out who assigned him with tasks on the Internet and who loaded his accounts with funds on a regular basis, he would have had a difficult time doing so. Had someone succeeded in unraveling the thread, they would have found respected District Director of Community Supervision, Tecumseh Sherman Johnson Jr. at the other end. Richard did not care to solve that mystery. Such knowledge could only bring hardship.

Mitchell Stanley also did not care who offered him gigs. He wasted no time in activating the phone and minutes after Richard departed, Mitch posted a comment at a site dedicated to basketball fandom. “Did you see my boys? Was that showtime or shoetime?”

Instantly Mitch received a text with a link and password to an email account. There he found the draft of an unsent email addressed to WhiteZombie787. The draft contained a detailed job description and a hefty compensation package.

A Negro immigration lawyer was flooding Houston with Central Americans. Texas was under attack. Mitchell was offered the opportunity to assemble a crew and deliver a severe beating just short of death. A crew member would spray paint swastikas inside the lawyer’s apartment to drive the point home.

Remuneration would be based on the number of days the lawyer spent in the hospital. Death was to be avoided but should it occur at the point of attack, it would translate to two days hospitalization. The target wore several rings, one of which was valued at over five thousand dollars. They could help themselves to the jewelry as well as anything else that might catch their attention.

The Johnsons had placed Walter Peacock under enhanced surveillance. They had hoped the firebombing of his Houston office would persuade him to leave Texas and Katrina Cream behind. They would be discouraged to learn that he had filed for divorce. Unbeknownst to Walter, they had arranged for a shapely legal secretary named Tonya Tulsa to come into his life. The perfect match at the perfect time?

Hopes would be dashed when Katrina Cream started sharing portions of her treasure map with Walter. This was the very same treasure that Jamal was assisting Curtis Cream in its cleansing. One solitary trip to California and Walter was once more a one-woman man. Tonya Tulsa still called but Walter had placed her on the ignore list.

Junior and Jamal were in agreement. If ever there was a time to make an exception to The Code, this would be it. Walter Peacock threatened the family’s good fortunes. A world without Walter would solve the problem.

Senior would not budge. He had imposed the Code of Cimmaron as a young man and the family would follow the one inviolable law as long as he was above ground. He perused his son’s instructions carefully; assuring that compensation would be affected by an inadvertent homicide. He allowed Junior to warn his jobbers that Walter was big and athletic and heavily armed. Perhaps, Junior reasoned, the crew might take whatever measures would be needed to assure their survival.

Mitchell Stanley did not search far and wide to assemble his team. His needle buddy, 32 year old Greg Born, was the first recruit. Unlike Mitch, Greg was tall and lean. Like Mitch, his body was a canvass for White Supremacy symbols and slogans. Neither man took the Aryan perspective seriously. Prison was prison. Survival was survival. Both men purchased fentanyl from a Haitian name Pierre and sold stolen guns to a man named Carlos.

Next, Mitch roped in his 26 year old cousin, Rusty, A powerful androgynous woman whose oversized breast provided the only visible clue that she was born with two X chromosomes. Rusty took her White Angel persona seriously and viewed her junky cousin as a disappointment, if not a traitor, to the white race. She would only come aboard with the stipulation that she would plan and lead the attack.

Lastly, Mitch would select his petite wife, Michelle to spray paint surveillance cameras and tag Peacock’s walls with swastikas.  Donning a burka, Michelle circled the building’s perimeter and discharged black liquid onto low-hanging targets using a long-range paint gun.

At the completion of her outside duties, Michelle approached the building’s locked front door behind a well dressed up and comer. The apple-cheeked professional politely held the door for her and she entered the lobby. She stood in front of the elevators with her unwitting Saint Peter.

“So sorry. I cannot be in the elevator with a man,” she explained. Michelle then removed a phone and pretended to take a call as she gestured for her acquaintance to board the car. As the door closed on Mr. Polite, Michelle removed her paint gun and disabled every visible security cam. She then bounded seven flights of stairs, hitting cameras as she moved.

At the seventh floor, Walter Peacock’s floor, Michelle opened the door a crack and studied the long, silent carpeted hall. She took a breath and then strolled down the corridor, nullifying five more cams mounted on the ceiling. She then texted “H” to Rusty and raced down the stairs to meet her accomplices at the front door.

It was Rusty’s idea to dress as Arabs. The women wore burkas and loose-fitting dresses. The men wore head scarves and sunglasses and log robes that covered ass-stomping boots.

Outside of Walter Peacock’s apartment Rusty Stanley removed her burka and slipped on a bus driver style policeman’s hat. Rusty’s bleach-white hairdo was supposed to resemble a Nazi helmet but time and gravity had morphed it into something much different. Mitch told her bluntly that she looked like an afghan hound with tits and Rusty pledged to get her hair restyled after this job was completed.

Rusty stepped in front of the peephole and pounded the Fort Knox door with the butt of a metal taser. “Mr. Peacock.”

The darts would be delivered to Walter Peacock’s torso in a less than professional manner that would result in a painful electric jolt minus the intended paralysis. With a sweeping motion of his left hand, Walter disconnected the barbs from his midsection.

Walter had entered a dream. A dog-faced cop was backed up by two sheiks and a munchkin. There was a timeless, creepy silence. You can’t hit cops no matter what they might do. But oil barons, that was another matter.

Walter sidestepped the igloo of a woman and charged the taller Arab, who had closed the door behind him. He lowered his shoulder and delivered a Joe Greene hug and hit that compacted Greg Born against the wood and steel door. Above the collision sounds Walter heard the snapping of three ribs and a mousy grunt coming from the oil baron.

Walter lowered the limp body to the floor and turned his attention to the other robed figure who was now staring down at him. Walter sprung to his feet and charged his enemy. Mitchell Stanley pivoted and fled.

It was in the chase around the house that most of the furniture was damaged. Mitchell turned over a Beaumont dining room chair behind him that tripped up his pursuer. Grunts followed groans and Walter lifted the offending chair and hurled it at the rabbit. It would miss its mark but do grave damage to an Eighteenth Century wine cabinet that mostly held Maryland Terrapin mugs.

Walter would make contact with Mitchell near the apartment’s entrance, where Greg Born lay in a fetal position. Walter wrestled Mitchell to the floor and ripped off his head scarf. He immobilized the smaller man under his 250 pounds and wrapped giant hands around his neck.

Before he could crush the seized trachea, Rusty slipped behind him and delivered a handheld tase to Walter’s neck. The application worked as intended this time.

Walter let loose of Mitchell as his bowels let loose of what they held tight. Walter rolled on the floor and then stood and swung his arms in a whirlwind, punching through a walnut kitchen cabinet and denting the stainless steel refrigerator.  He would collapse on the kitchen floor where he would remain for an hour until he arose and dialed for help.

Rusty stood over the limp body and suggested that they fan out in search of treasure. This was shouted down by Mitch, who with the help of Michelle, now held Greg Born upright in a fireman’s carry.  Rusty’s trained eye scanned Walter’s bejeweled fingers. In his current state, she could easily remove a ring or two and slip them into her pocket. She knelt next to the facedown body and grabbed his left arm.

Five rings and no wedding band.  This middle finger baby sure looked expensive. Rusty tightened her grip and was about to attempt removal when Walter jerked his arm with enough strength to liberate his limb and in the process, backhand Rusty on her left cheek.

The jewelry enhanced the impact and Rusty was momentarily stunned.  She jumped to her feet and backed away from her victim. She turned to see her partners limp out the door. Rusty did a swift walk-through and collected her two partners’ hastily discarded head scarves, the only items that seemed to have been left behind. She noticed that Michelle had tagged a large swastika on the dining room wall and a smaller one on the living room’s hardwood floor.

Rusty took one last look at the damage. These places are supposed to be soundproof but she knew that was not always the case. She removed her police hat and stowed it under her robe. She hastily applied her burka to her head and took one final look. With a gloved hand, Rusty flipped the light switch off and closed the door behind her.