Small Difficulties

She was standing in the middle of my desk, totally naked and totally hairless.  She stood without modesty, ego, shame, or even particular care for how it was effecting me.  He head was cocked slightly off center, tilted a degree or two to the right.  Her body was covered with … I hesitate to call them tattoos.  Tattoos, to the best of my knowledge, were … well, stationary.  Just two dimensional designs and illustrations worked into the various layers of skin.

Her … well, let’s call them “markings” … her markings floated an apparent quarter inch above her skin and they moved.  I don’t mean they moved like my uncle Vinnie’s belly dancer on his bicep, the one he could make shimmy by flexing; I mean they moved like three dimensional animation.  I kept waiting for a motion to repeat, to find the edge of the loop, but they never did.

As I pondered this, the cat on her left thigh casually wrapped itself around her hip and batted playfully at the butterfly on her lower back, which circled her torso and ended up finding a new perch on an erect nipple.

She ignored the body art byplay and kept her eyes on my face, patiently (and obviously) waiting for me to come to grips with the moment.  “Gimme another minute, doll,” I muttered.  She nodded and leaned back on one shapely hip.

Without taking my eyes off of her, I reached into my right desk drawer and brought out the bottle.  One strong swallow was enough to unfreeze my synapses.  I started to put it back … and then offered it to her, instead.

She tilted her head just as slightly in the other direction and produced a glass from God only knows where.  I filled it half way and put the bottle up.  She drained the glass in one long gulp, then permitted it to vanish (hopefully to be washed) while all her various illustrations shivered in response to the booze.  She didn’t respond, only her artwork.

Weird.

I leaned back in my chair and tilted my hat to a more rakish angle, regarding her for a moment longer before saying, “Okay; you have my attention.  What can I do for you, Miss?”

“There is a strange man following me, Mr. Grunion,” she replied promptly.

I looked at her again, carefully searching for any details that I might have missed during the first fifteen minutes, and shrugged, “Well, if he’s following you, he really can’t be all that strange a man.  Sounds like a pretty normal male response to me.”

“Charming,” she replied, deadpan.  “I want you to find out who he is, what he wants, and – if necessary – to stop him before he harms me.”

I leaned back and rubbed my chin with my right hand, thinking.  After a second, I asked, “How tall is he?”

“Excuse me?”

“How tall is he?” I repeated.  “Your stalker; how tall is he?”

She glared at me before replying, “A little taller than I, around eight inches.”

“Uh-huh.  So … that is your real height, then?  You’re actually in my office?  This isn’t a holograph?”

“Yes, this is my real height.  No, I’m not actually in your office, Mr. Grunion.  This is a holographic contact, but it’s a full sized one,” she explained.

“Glad to hear it.  Really; I thought I was losing it for a minute.”  I leaned forward and studied her markings.  “Is this your corrected appearance, then?  Are those markings legitimate or a computer enhancement of some sort?”

“Does it matter?” She asked, scornfully.

“Yes it does,” I replied, sitting back.  “I do not do business with clients I cannot identify in a court of law, should matters go sour.  I have a full time security recording of all my time in this office, so this entire conversation is being videoed.  Tell me that this is the way you look and I have an official record of your statement to fall back on if needed.”

She glanced around, as if able to see my entire office from her location.  I filed it away as interesting information.  “Fine, then.  That’s more than reasonable.”  She glanced back at my face and shrugged.  “For what it is worth, this is my natural state and these markings are a part of me, not any sort of illusion or augmentation.  Satisfied?”

“For now,” I agreed.  “Now tell me about the man stalking you:  Do you know his name?”

“How could I possibly know his name?”

“Most stalkers are people the women already know, Miss … I’m sorry, but what is your name?  I made a mental note of the fact that it took me damn near fifteen minutes before I’d realized that she hadn’t introduced herself.

She frowned and looked around the office again, or looked around wherever she was broadcasting from … whichever.  “I was rather hoping we could do this without my having to identify myself, Mr. Grunion.”

I did my level best to give her my private investigator tired frown, but I couldn’t help grinning at her presumption.  “I’m sorry, but let me get this straight:  You appeared on the top of my desk (where there is no holographic receiver, by the way, so … nice trick), totally naked and with the damnest tattoos or whatever those markings are, definitely unique either way … and you wish to remain anonymous?”  I was openly grinning at this point.  “Exactly how difficult do you suppose it would be to track you down?”

“Um … well, actually, it would be impossible.  You see, this is what I look like and these are a part of me, but your video system cannot record my image, only my voice … and my voice, you will find, is not in any database on the planet.”  I didn’t think a face that small could be that smug.

“Really?  So I’d be representing a client I cannot identify in the event that everything goes into the crapper?  No recorded image, no voice to identify, no name to track; is that it?”

“Yes, please.”

“No, thank you.”  I dropped my fedora on top of her image and went back to my novel.  It was an unknown Heinlein, discovered in a trunk of his effects by a collector.  It had been published as soon as it had been identified, but there were still those who believed it to be a clever fake.  Either way, it was a good read.

I reached back and snapped on the small lamp sitting behind my desk.  The sun had set far enough behind the San Francisco smog as to be useless, although the sunset was – as ever – spectacular.  I understand that it was even better at Key West, but who the hell wanted to fly across the country just to see a sunset?  From my office slant apartment, I had western windows that provided incredible sunrises and eastern windows to catch the sunset … and, between them, a row of windows that provided me with a spectacular view of The City.  Best of all, I was high enough to be above the usual fog bank that blanketed The City from time to time, so it was living in the clouds.

My hat was trying it’s best to argue me out of my position, but I found it much easier to ignore felt than a small naked bald woman, so I ignored the noise and concentrated on my novel.  It was a prequel to one of his final known novels, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.  It traces the life and military career of one Colin Campbell, an illegitimate son of the legendary Lazarus Long.  If it wasn’t by the Admiral, it was the best forgery that I’d read in decades.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the edge of my fedora lift and a small head peek out from underneath.  I ignored it, just filing the fact that my little visitor was actually in my office and not having her image beamed in somehow.  I’d assumed as much when she kept glancing around the room, but assumptions were not facts.  A fedora moving was a fact.  The edge lowered again and I went back to reading; it was getting to the infamous cannibal story, so pivotal to the character in later life, and I was curious how the writer, whomever he was, would handle it.

“Ahem.”

I looked back at my desk and my fedora was missing.  I looked up and my visitor, now around six foot, still naked, and wearing my fedora on her bald head, was sitting in my visitor chair.  I cocked my head, folded a corner of the page I was on, set my book aside, and stood.  Her markings were even more remarkable at this size.  I walked around my desk, removed my fedora from her head, and gently tapped her pate with a finger.

Solid … huh.

I tossed my hat onto the bust of Bogart and sat back down, leaning forward and cradling my chin on one palm.  After a few seconds, I asked, “How?”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘Why?’” she replied.

“Nope; couldn’t care less about why, just wanna know how you are doing this.  I know you were only six inches tall when you were standing on my desk, that it wasn’t a hologram, and that you’re now a solid six footer sitting in my office.  The how can only be one of two things; either it’s magic or technology so advanced as to seem like magic, and I’d like to know which is it.”

“Why would that matter to you?”

“Because it would tell me if I’m talking to an alien or a fairy, an important point if I’m to take your case.”

******

Okay, Shipmates, get busy.  Is she an alien or a fairy of some sort and why?  Gimme some direction on this and let’s see if writing via committee actually works.  To keep this under some sort of control, please post your official opinion/vote at my blog as a comment.  That way, we can all keep track of the replies and have a little fun with it.

A little clowning around

One of my cousins, who – for the sake of family peace – shall remain nameless, was accepted into Clown College back in 1995.  So he packed his bags and headed for Florida to learn the art of goofery.

When he reported in, he was given a room in the clown dorm.  A nice room, he wrote, one that had all the niceties of home already waiting for him.  Except for an ironing board.  He checked the rest of the clown dorm, but not one room had an ironing board.

Baffled as to how he was expected to keep either his clown costume or civilian clothes pressed, he headed to the admin building to ask about this lack.

The head of the Clown College, a Professor Slappy, happily explained that none of the rooms at the clown dorm had an ironing board because all of the window sills had been made extra wide to serve as ironing surfaces.

When my cousin, baffled, asked why such an awkward arrangement, Professor Slappy hit him with a cream pie and replied:

“Because every clown has a sill for ironing, of course!”

Well, thank goodness that’s over with

And so we see the effect of fever and cold meds on the voices in my head.

Now I’m thinking maybe a noir detective story … perhaps a western of some sort, I don’t believe I’ve tried a western story before.

Something more upbeat.

Oh, yuck!

So I stayed up and finished that last story, right?

I published it, then – as if my habit – proofed it by reading it on my blog’s front page.

The ads were … well, they were kinda strange.

The first one read:  How Many Homeless People?   State by state homelessness data included in new NAEH report.

Well, I wrote a story that had homeless people in it, so okay.

The one under it said:  Homeless housing programs Low-cost housing tips and reminders Assistance for low-income families.

Okay, kinda creepy, given the story, but okay.

The third one was:  A 9mm is False Protection  Discover What Survivalist Masters & The Army Don’t Want You To Know.

What the … ?

The final one said:  R/Client Software Case Management and funder reporting for human services.

Yeah … right.

Y’know, if this wasn’t a deliberate joke by Google, then it’s one hell of a coincidence!

An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service – Conclusion

This time, it was the Sergeant who broke the silence.

“What … What is the name of the cat food company, if’n you’d not mind saying, Sir? I have a couple of muggins meself and, if the price is reasonable … ”

Everyone turned horrified eyes on the older man. The lawyer looked as if he wanted to puke, while the Assistant DA looked torn between terror and greed. The Sergeant looked around and said, “What?!?”

Captain Reynolds tore his eyes off of his baffled Sergeant and, fist gulping to work up a little spit, said, “That’s all well and … well and good, Mr. Taylor, but it doesn’t explain what happened tonight.”

“Oh … that,” shrugged the slight man. “Well, you have to understand that many of our clients are either currently or have been major drug abusers. As such, the worse of them sometimes develop a sort of immunity to lesser drugs, such as the knock-out gas we utilize. Oh, it puts them out, but only for a few minutes. Then they generally leap to their feet, deep in some drug nightmare (often about alien abduction … y’know, there might actually be some bit of truth there, Captain. So many of our subjects have the same nightmare or type of nightmare that it might actually be worth looking into. Just a thought …. )” Al Taylor looked puzzled for a moment and asked, “Where was I?”

“Drug addicts have a slight immunity to your knock-out gas … ,” his attorney supplied in fascination.

“Oh. Yes. Well, they wake up while we’re collecting subjects and start screaming about being probed or some such, then burst down the locked doors and race into the hallway. We dismiss the security once everyone is locked down, so it become necessary for Laura and I to hunt the stragglers down. We generally find them hiding in the laundry area or in the showers, sometimes they even managed to elude us for over an hour, seriously throwing off our schedule and forcing us to conceal that nights harvest, for lack of a better term, in the various private areas that don’t show up on the blueprints.

“Well, in this instance, the subject actually managed to make it to the third floor, where he broke out a hallway window, leapt to the ground, and led us a merry chase into the nearby park before we could subdue him. Sadly, a few of your officers were close enough to notice the brief tussle and came to investigate. You know the rest.” Al Taylor sat back and picked up a cookie from the tray the Sergeant was nice enough to put out. “These are really quite good,” he complimented, mildly surprised. “Might one inquire as to their name?”

“Um … I think they were, um,” the Sergeant searched him memory. “What’s the brand that made by elves?”

“Elves?” Al looked at the slim cookie with growing respect. “These are made by elves?! Seriously?”

“There you are!”

A five foot whirlwind burst into the room and threw itself at the prisoner, planting frantic kisses all over his face. The Captain stared openly, his composure at the breaking point. Maxwell Hassler moaned and wiped one large hand over his craggy face, anticipating having to somehow convince Laura to request a separate trial. The Assistant DA, now on his third yellow pad of notes, raised both eyebrows, pleased to be able to include a little sex into the story.

The Sergeant was busy trying to remember the brand name of the cookies.

“Darling!” Al cried in surprise and despair. “What are you doing here?! You should be half way to the islands by now!”

“What? Why on Earth would I want to visit the island estate at this time of year, you silly goose? We’ll go at the same time as last year, if you don’t mind. Now,” Laura Taylor turned, still seated in her husband’s lap to face the official, “what, exactly, is going on here? Why is my husband handcuffed to that chair? Is he under arrest?”

Captain Reynolds silently counted to ten before replying, “Your husband, Madam, put two of my men into the hospital this evening, was found in the presence of a recently murdered man, had the decease’s blood on his clothing, and has spent the last hour or so confessing to a career as a serial killer that would be the envy of Hannibal Lecter. A career that he stated, under oath, that included your willing, not to say inspired, participation. A warrant for your arrest in connection with the assault on my officers was issued when your husband was brought in, so please stand and place your hands where I can see them.”

“Oh, don’t be such a silly! Doctor VanAllen! Oh, Doctor VanAllen!” The doors opened and the city’s leading psychiatrist walked in. “Oh, there you are, Doctor! Doctor, please inform these gentlemen as to whether or not my husband is a mass murderer.”

“Good evening, Captain,” the slender man put out a languid hand. “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Phillips VonAllen and …”

“Oh, drat! That’s right; VonAllen, not VanAllen … honey? Who do we know named VanAllen? Was it that silly fat man in Paris who wanted you to buy some painting?”

“No, Sweets; that was Professor Vallen of the Louvre.”

“So who was VanAllen, then?” Laura Taylor stuck a manicured finger into her mouth in puzzlement.

“Mrs. Taylor, if you don’t mind? Thank you. As I was saying, Sir, my name is Doctor Phillips VonAllen and I’ve been seeing Mr. Taylor for the past twenty-five years. Would I be correct in assuming that he confessed to a rather gaudy career as a righter of social wrongs? A man dedicated to making the world a little better by removing the parasites who bleed it and so forth?”

“Um,” the Captain glanced at the tape machine and the several stacked tapes sitting next to it. “Well, yes. With a more than generous level of detail, as a matter of fact.”

“Please take a moment to read these documents, Sir. All will be made clear.” He handed the Captain a folder, then turned to Maxwell Hassler and handed him a smaller file. “By the way, Mr. Hassler; your secretary wanted us to hand this to you as soon as we saw you.”

Hassler, who had known about his client’s odd habits for the past twenty-five years, but who hadn’t known he was seeing a headshrinker (but approved), accepted the folder. It wasn’t one from his office and he knew for a fact that his secretary would never handle any official material in such a fashion. He glanced at where the Captain was engrossed with his own folder, the glanced at the District Attorney, who was filling page after page with notes, then opened the file to glance at the contents.

There was one document. It was hand written. It said, “He’s nuts, don’t worry.”

He raised baffled eyes up to the expensive shrink, who winked. Hassler’s jaw fell open in surprise. He glanced at Laura, who was watching him with an intensity that was frightening and quite out of character with her endless nattering at her husband. She paused to say, “I think there’s more on the back, Max.”

Frowning, he turned the paper over and read the additional message, paling slightly. Without saying a word, he nodded to her, slid the folder into his Barantani briefcase, and sat back, expressionless.

The Captain handed the folder back to the doctor and asked, “And you would be willing to testify to this in a court of law?”

“Certainly, if necessary, Captain. Mr. Taylor, you must understand, is not a danger to himself or those around him, provided nothing occurs to trigger his delusional paranoia. In this instance, stumbling across a robbery victim in the dark while cutting through that park was more than enough to shift him from Thomas Albert Taylor to Al Taylor, scourge of society wrong-doers. Out of professional interest, if you don’t mind telling me … was he ranting about prostitutes or the homeless?”

“Both, actually. One and then the other.”

“Really? Oh, dear .. that’s not a good sign. Oh, well, that’s why he pays me the mega bucks, right?” The doctor fished out one more document out of his attache. “This is a court order, signed by Judge Petersen, releasing Mr. Taylor into my care. I’ll take him directly to my clinic and we’ll see if we can get Thomas Albert Taylor back before Monday.”

“Well,” the Captain slowly replied, scanning the legal document. “This seems to be in order. However, before I release Mr. Taylor, there is the matter of him putting two of my men into the hospital. If he’s not a psycho-killer, how the hell did he manage that little trick?”

Doctor VonAllen spread his hands and shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest, Sir. I know that Mr. Taylor is a practitioner of some obscure martial art form … perhaps, aided with hysterical strength, it was enough to catch your men by surprise?”

“Yeah … maybe,” Captain Reynolds regarded the doctor, then the wife, and then the wealthy nutjob. “Fine, I’ll officially release him into your custody. It will take a few minutes to process, but we should have you all on your way in just a little bit. Is this okay with the District Attorney’s office?” he asked the Assistant DA.

“What? Oh! Sure, yeah; no problem.” So much for the book. Who the hell would buy the rantings of a crazy rich guy? On the other hand, his career was now no longer past tense, so … okay. Hell, the DA probably had no idea his wife was cheating on him, either. “No problem whatsoever, Captain. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll run back downtown and write up the report before I head home.” With that, the Assistant DA left.

“Will you be needing me any more tonight, Captain?”

“Naw, Mac; but wait around for a bit. I’ll buy you a drink before we go home. My way of saying thanks for staying past your time.”

“Sure thing!”

“Doctor; Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Taylor: You might be a great deal more comfortable waiting in the lounge, rather than here. I’ll send out a man with some coffee if you like.”

Al Taylor rose and shook the Captain’s hand, apologizing for his wife’s interruption and promising that every word he spoke had been the truth. Mrs. Taylor shook the Captain’s hand and silently mouthed, “Oh no it wasn’t!” Doctor VonAllen shook his hand and shrugged. Maxwell Hassler stood carefully up, shook the Captain’s hand gently, and staggered toward the door, where they all trooped out, following a female officer to the VIP waiting area.

“No reason for us stick around, Captain?” Sergeant McDaniels asked, hopefully.

“No, none at all. However, I’d like you to meet with me tomorrow to arrange a stake out of the Taylor Foundation Shelter for the Homeless. I want a count of how many go in and how many come out the next morning. We’ll rent an office across the way if need be, but I want numbers I can take into court!”

“Why, Cap? You heard the man, Mr. Taylor’s loopy. I mean, he talked a mean game, but … well, c’mon! The rich don’t kill people and they specially don’t kill them then feed them to cats, y’know what I mean?”

“Perhaps … but they also don’t casually shrug off handcuffs, right?” Mac followed the Captain’s pointing finger and, sure enough, the handcuffs were still attached to the chair. “I didn’t see anyone unlock those, did you? I also need to review the tapes and see if I can make out what was on the other side of that note they slipped Hassler. The front baffled him, but the other side scared him to death. Maybe Taylor is nuts, but there’s nuts and then there’s nuts.”

Captain Reynolds stood and watched as Al Taylor, arms waving about, cracked up everyone in the squad bay with some story. He watched his eyes.

For an instant, a scant instant, they locked eyes and Captain Reynolds knew what kind of nut Al Taylor was.

Then, for no reason he could see, both Laura Taylor and Doctor VonAllen were staring at the Captain, too, and he felt his testicles retract. He found himself nodding and, without breaking eye contact, saying, “On second thought, what the hell.  He’s just a looney.  Screw him.  Let’s go get that drink, Mac.”  All three of them nodded back and broke eye contact, and Captain Reynolds realized he just was given his life back.

But would he ever be able to sleep again, that was the question.

End

An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service – Part Five

The uniformed officer manning the tape recorder abruptly stood, said, “Fuck this,” and left the room. The Captain watched him go, but never said a word of reprimand. He simply slid the tape recorder over to the Sergeant.

If Al Taylor noticed the byplay, he never let on.

“The problems of running a shelter are threefold: First, room. You have to have a minimum amount of space per person or per family, so – in order to accommodate the numbers we were expecting – we built along the lines of a high-rise hotel. The ground floor was the mission and the kitchen, the second floor – accessible only by private entrance – was the administrative offices, the third floor housed the clinic, and and the remaining nine floors was dedicated to the homeless, seven for individuals and two for families. The individual housing was strongly segregated for the protection of the women (Laura never forgot her boon companion) and contained a communal shower slant restroom slant laundry facility at each end.

“The basement was divided neatly in half for both storage of extra beds and linens on one side and a massive meat locker on the other.” Al Taylor paused to peer at the Sergeant in amused alarm. “Uh, uh, uh! No anticipating, now!”

“As I was saying, the second problem to running a shelter is security. We side stepped most of the problems faced by other shelters by requiring everyone who wished to use the shelter to undergo a thorough search during a mandatory physical exam, which ensured that no drugs or weapons were brought in, as well as making sure that the shelter did not become a breeding ground for the latest bugs. Members who were ill were given a room in the ward, located across from the clinic, and nursed back to health.

“In addition, we hired a private security firm to patrol the hallways and communal areas, to ensure that there was no roughhousing or hanky-panky going on. Finally, we locked each floor at night, so nobody could wander from floor to floor, primarily for the protection of any children on the top floors, but also for the protection of any women in residence.

“Only the ill and the families were permitted to be in the building during the daylight hours. Everyone else was required to go out, hopefully to seek employment, but it wasn’t mandatory. While everyone was out, the shelter was given a good cleaning, top to bottom, ending with a sanitizing mist that was dispensed from an automated system. By six at night, when we permitted individuals to return, the rooms were as pristine as we could make them.

“Finally, there was the problem of feeding those who stayed with us. The kitchen was open from five in the morning and stayed open until seven at night, serving wholesome and filling (if not fancy) fare whenever needed. Frankly, even with specializing in stews and hearty soups, it was rather expensive.

“Then, one fateful night, Laura and I attended the most inspirational musical we’d ever seen. It was as if a higher power anticipated our difficulty and provided an elegant and simple solution, set to charming music no less!

“Before that night, the routine was as follows: A homeless individual would walk in and be shunted up to the clinic for a physical and to be searched. Those who were either armed or carrying drugs were given the choice between surrendering the contraband for destruction or walking back out of the shelter, spending the night elsewhere.

“Following getting a clean bill of health, they were issued a set of clean pajamas, a robe, and disposable slippers. Then they were assigned a bed, shown where the restroom slant laundry was located (encouraged to utilize both), and left to their own devices. The only requirements were that they couldn’t leave the shelter after checking in, nor – as I’ve already mentioned – could they wander between floors.

“Outer doors locked at nine and lights out at ten.

“At two in the morning, the sanitizing jets would spray a floor with knock-out gas and, moments later – wearing masks – Laura and I would come up in our private elevator with carts and transfer the occupants of that night’s floor to the meat locker, where, with a minimum of fuss, we dispatched them onto their makers, bled their corpses into the sewer system, and prepared them for transport across town. I have a rather good sized factory located on the far side of Boston, one powered by steam and with massive furnaces. That’s where we’d dispose of the bodies.

“Well,” he grinned sheepishly, looking at the table, “we did save one or two for ourselves, removing them from the carts and securing them in our private labs, but that’s neither here nor there. They eventually made the trip to the furnaces as well.

“It was all as close to automated as we could manage. A conveyor belt transferred the carcasses to the delivery truck parked in the alley behind the shelter and another fed them into the furnace at the factory. An ecological solution at last! Reduces the homeless footprint in our fair state and the carbon footprint at my factory!

“Then, as I said, we saw this marvelous musical in New York and realized that the solution was Swift-ly upon us!” He flashed a proud grin around the room, then shrugged and sighed, “Not a literary group, then? Oh, well …

“The name of the musical, of course, was Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The Cariou and Landsbury original, of course, although we also greatly enjoyed the Hearn/Landsbury version as well.

“After that, feeding the homeless was a simple matter. As a matter of fact, we had enough of a surplus that we were able to donate stews and meaty soups to various orphanages and missions throughout the city. As of a year ago, we also started sending the excess to the cat food processing plant out by Winthrop. Laura and I feed our own cats on their food, being that it’s the only brand on the market that we are sure contains meat.”

Should I be worried?

I wonder if this is how Dr. Swift felt when he suggested that the Irish should eat their children?

I don’t know if any of you have ever read his satirical “A Modest Proposal,” but I’ve always found it to be one of the darker things he ever wrote.

I’m very glad that I’m almost done with my rough of An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service.  Nasty bit of work and I’ll be happy to be done with it.

An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service – Part Four

“Gentlemen … have you ever considered the negative impact on society, as a whole, caused by the homeless?

“Laura noticed it first, in association with our solution for the runaway problem.  If home is, indeed, where the heart is, then the men and women who have no fixed address must be thought of as somewhat heartless.  Bereft of this most basic of needs, their existence quickly degrades to the point of savages.  Scavaging and begging for sustenance, taking shelter from the elements wherever possible, wearing whatever clothing that can be found or taken, and serving as a blight upon the morale of every hardworking man and woman who they happen across.  After all, there but for the grace of God, gentlemen, goes us all.

“Well, in Laura and my case, there but for the grace of trust funds, but it works out the same.

“I’ve read that every celebrity death sends thousands scurrying back to the gyms and health food stores.  There is nothing quite like having an example of what awaits the unwary shoved into one’s face to inspire one to greater feats of prevention.  Or panic, since seeing what might happen to us always raises our overall awareness of the frailty of our comfortable existence just a smidgen and increases our loud of fear and nervousness, to boot!

“Thus, just seeing the homeless roaming the streets and begging for help is bad for the overall morale and mental health of the community.

“Then there is the crime problem that accompanies, for whom among us wouldn’t steal to save his children, his spouse, or his life?  And how does one punish a homeless person who steals, eh?

“That’s right … he or she is given a warm place to stay, one that is far safer than the streets, three good meals a day, clothing, and access to basic sanitary needs.  If they are ill, they’ll even receive free health care.  Granted, there is no freedom, but was there any to begin with?

“So what’s the solution?  Build more shelters, perhaps?  More soup kitchens?  Better public health systems and, possibly, finance through equal parts taxes and contributions some sort of training program, so that they can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and get on with their lives?

“Here’s an odd fact for you, gentlemen:  Put food out for the strays in your immediate neighborhood and, even if the nearest forest is miles and miles away, soon raccoons appear.   A historical reality is that any city that tried to solve the problem by caring for the homeless soon found themselves with more homeless!  Build a thousand room shelter and discover that you know have several thousand homeless.

“And why not?  Imagine that you can no longer afford even the most basic requirements for civilized existence.  You’re living in the backseat of a car, rummaging through garbage for whatever you can find, bathing – when possible – in public restrooms … then word filters down to you that – say – Hartford has just built a huge shelter, complete with kitchen and jobs!

“Hartford is about to experience a migration, a stampede, a – heh – ‘bum’s rush’ of the homeless.

“Fine … what about the second solution?  The one we applied to runaways?

“The homeless are, for the most part, invisible people anyway.  Why not just finish the job and make them vanish completely?  From a moral point of view, it’s like putting strays to sleep, instead of letting them suffer.  From an ethical point of view, it improves both the lives of the average citizen and saves the homeless from abuse and eventual death from any number of situations.  From a legal point of view … well, perhaps it might not be considered to be exactly legal to dispatch the homeless, but were one to apply logic, one quickly notes that the law is doing diddly to protect the homeless.  Ergo, it can be assumed that there is at least a quasi sort of legality in removing them from the community.

“As a matter of fact, many communities do so openly.  They take their homeless and buy them bus tickets to somewhere else, dust off their hands, and pat each other on the back for having ’solved their homeless problem.

“Laura and I simply took the concept a step further … well, perhaps a leap further.  We simply gave them ‘tickets’ for their ultimate destination and saved society oodles of tax money and the homeless months or years of suffering.  At first, as with all our other projects, we worked at the problem one and two subjects at a time, but that was akin to stepping back to the ‘rid the world of prostitutes and rapists’ fiasco of our youths.

“Then my mother died and the family fortune passed on to my generation.  As eldest son, I took over the management of our assets and slowly adjusted our charity donations to lean more towards helping the homeless, culminating in the building of the largest homeless shelter on the East Coast.

“The Taylor Foundation Shelter for the Homeless,” the Captain muttered, horrified.

“Yes, the Taylor Foundation Shelter for the Homeless,” Al Taylor agreed, adding, “Or as Laura and I like to call it, the Roach Motel.”  Al sat back with a happy little grin on my mild face.  “Complete with training facilities, kitchens, rooms for complete families, and a free clinic.”  He sat forward and raised both eyebrows.  “Have any of you gentlemen noticed an increase in the homeless population since we opened?  No?  Have any of you gentlemen ever wondered why?”

An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service – Part Three

“Upon returning from our honeymoon, Laura and I settled into an lovely townhouse off campus and married life seamlessly.  It was as if we’d known each other forever.  I’d start a sentence, she’d finish it.  I’d bake a luncheon, she’d return from classes with the perfect wine.  She’d have a scalpel and bone knife ready at hand, I’d have a mallet and chisels.  It was as if we were two sides of a flawlessly minted coin, two halves of a single person.

“At her urging, I shifted my major from education to sociology and political science, the better to understand the world and those who people it with such abandon.  In the meantime, she transferred her credits from Smith and joined me at Harvard, pursuing her bachelor’s in finance.  Tongue in cheek, we both signed on for as many anatomy and physiology classes as we could.

“One day, about a year later, we were chatting while doing some homework and we somehow stumbled into the philosophical fields of thought.  Who were we, where were we going, what did we what out of life; that sort of thing.  I understand that many couples do the same periodically, but we never had before that instant.  We were so in tune with each other that it really wasn’t needed, I suppose.

“But out of the blue, Laura looked up from her microscope and asked me if I really believed in what we were doing.

“Caught me completely by surprise!  I almost dropped the liver I was biopsying onto the floor, I was so surprised.  I carefully set my favorite razor down, put the liver back into the cavity (neatness isn’t hard, it just takes practice), pulled off my rubber gloves and took her hands in mine before asking if she was serious.

“She turned off her microscope and led me out of the basement before explaining that she was concerned that we’d lost our moral compass.  Shortly after returning from Scotland, we’d decided that our original projects were somewhat childish.  Rapists and prostitutes … what had we been thinking?  Both had been with humanity since the fall of Adam and, no matter how dedicated or steadfast our devotion to riding mankind of these twined, and often entwined, blights, it was a hopeless battle.

“Instead, we addressed ourselves to the general improvement of the species as a whole, judging each potential subject as an individual, rather than as a member of a larger group.  As such, we dealt with pushers, pimps, politicians, policemen (corrupt only, I assure you), and the occasional pissant.  We trimmed both the worthless and the worth-less from the communal body, striving to improve it’s overall health, in lieu of attempting to perform microsurgery on the more unsavory elements.

“I am rather pleased to mention that, after only after around fifteen months, we were far more successful than we’d hoped.  The crime rate had dropped, the Public Health facilities reported less waste, and the major’s office announced that their cuts had saved the taxpayers quite a bit of money.  Heh … their cuts, huh?   We had quite a chuckle over that article, I can tell you.  No, it was our cuts … and slashes … and strangulation’s … and – on one notable occasion – detonation, that had created such good.

“Over five hundred germs removed from the communal body, leaving … ”

“WHAT?!?”  Captain Reynolds barked out the word before he could help himself.

“What is that, Captain?  You don’t believe that our efforts were producing such results?”  Al Taylor peered mildly at the larger man in puzzlement, then both his eyebrows shot up.  “Oh!  Oh, my!  It’s not that you believe I was bragging over the results, it’s the number that vexes you, isn’t it!”

Having gotten control over himself, the Captain apologized for interrupting with a strained, “Terribly sorry for the outburst, Mr. Taylor, but … well, you have to admit that it’s a bit fantastic.  Five hundred people … ”

“Over five hundred, actually, Captain,” Al Taylor corrected.

“… in fifteen months means that you were killing more than thirty people a month.  That’s more than a murder a day, Mr. Taylor.”

“Please, Captain; murder is such an ugly word and, in this instance, somewhat imprecise.  We culled, we put down, we eradicated, we remove, we weeded; we were working for the public good, doing our humble best to improve life for the many by euthanizing those who fed on the many.”  Al Taylor chided.  “As for your figures; mathematically, it worked out to one and a half a day, Captain, which we found to be quite whimsical.  Killing half a person a day … the oddities of math, I must say.”

Captain Reynolds looked around the room and noted that he seemed to be the only person taking the testimony seriously.  The Assistant DA kept scribbling on a yellow pad, the man’s lawyer looked half asleep, and the Captain’s own men … he took a second look and decided that they seemed, emotionally, to be somewhere between horrified and amused.  He then asked, “How was it possible to conceal such numbers, Mr. Taylor?  The logistical nightmare of having to deal with that many corpses … ”

“Yes, quite.  Whilst hunting alone, I often deposed of my subjects in the many dumpsters this fair city provides.  Often, for the sake of safety, I would use several for just one subject.  Laura, being an accomplished yachtswoman,  was more in the habit of giving her prey improper burials at sea.  Neither solution was perfect, either from a safety point of view nor from an ecological aspect.

“Ecological aspect?”

“Certainement, Mon Capitanie! What benefit the man who saves the community, only to doom the planet?  Deposing of human waste and remains is a delicate matter, one that cannot simply be foisted off on the Department of Sanitation or even on the Atlantic ocean.  No, neither represented an ideal, just a make-d0 until a better solution could be found.  When we set up home together, we purchased a house with extensive plumbing in the basement for just such a reason.  Between the power tools and the industrial meat grinder we installed, subjects could be reduced almost to their primordial composition within an hour.  At which point, it was a simple matter to treat it like the sewage it was and simply flush it away.”  Al Taylor nodded to himself in pleasure.  “Not a perfect solution, either, but much closer.”

Captain Reynolds sat back, astonished.  “I see.  Well.  Sorry to have interrupted.”

“Quite alright, Captain!” The smaller man beamed back.  “An excellent question and one that helps bring us ever closer to the events of this evening.

“Now, as I was saying, we’d managed to improve the immediate community, but that was just a small drop in the bucket.  We were dedicated to the twin goals of cessation of  individual suffering and widespread improvement of society.  We tried targeting … for instance, do you know how many runaways enter our fair city each and every day?!  Young men and women who, if they are lucky, end up having to lie and steal to survive.  If they are not among those lucky few … we did some careful studies, gentlemen, and discovered that any young girl entering the city as a runaway has an average life expectancy of only two years.

“Two years!  And those twenty-four months will be an almost unrelenting nightmare of pain and suffering, both physical and mental, both emotional and spiritual.  Okay, posit two solutions:  First, remove the predators who wait for their fair flesh to debark at the bus station.  We attempted this at first, but it was like battling a hydra.  A badly dressed and rather smarmy one at that.  For every weasel we trimmed, two would pop up to replace him. At on point, I actually starting believing that there was some sort of pimp production line situation somewhere in the city, cranking out replacements endlessly.

“So we shifted to possible solution two; remove the targets.  If one removes the sheep, the wolves – eventually – will seek they prey elsewhere, so we undertook to strangle the supply line.  Oddly, this approach worked much better.  Not only were we saving those young women from two years of pain and suffering, but we were also creating an atmosphere of distrust and intense competition among the predators.  Added bonus:  those few who would have escaped the clutches of the wolves were spared a life of crime and we both passed our anatomy classes with flying colors.

“Which was well and good, but we still were morally adrift, shifting from one project to the next without any real specific goal in mind.  We needed to focus, to settle on a cause and stick to it, and it was for that reason Laura initiated the conversation.  We were going to graduate ahead of schedule, be decanted into a cold and merciless world, with only our wits, education, and trust funds to live on.

“So what were we going to do about our lack of any real cause?

“We hashed it out and decided that we had to do our level best to settle on a cause, then set the matter on the back burner and returned to our studies.  Then, one day, when we were simply laying about the house and half-listening to the radio, a rather lackluster commentator addressed the homeless problem.

“In a flash, we knew exactly what we’d be doing the rest of our lives!”

An Old Fashioned Family Tradition of Service – Part Two

The room was silent, except for the slight office noises filtering in.  Al Taylor smiled brightly, looking from face to face.  When the air conditioning cycled on, two officers jumped nervously.

The Police Captain, a fair man who’d been assigned to the matter by the mayor, himself, softly cleared his throat and said, “Sergeant, would you be so kind as to get Mr. Taylor a cup of coffee … as a matter of fact, why don’t you brew a fresh pot and fetch along several cups.”  The Sergeant, who had been staring at Taylor in shock, quickly left the room.  “As a matter of fact, gentlemen, let’s clear all non-essential personnel from the room before continuing with this interrogation.  Anders?”  A pale man with a hungry look in his eyes turned.  “I’m sure I don’t have to mention what will happen if any information were to leave this room, do I?”

By the time the Sergeant returned with the coffee, the interrogation room had been pared down to Taylor, his lawyer, the assistant DA assigned to the case, the Captain, and the officer assigned to recording the interrogation.  The Sergeant set the coffee, cups, and the selection of cookies he imagined that somebody like Taylor expected with his coffee, down on the table, then stepped – hopefully – toward the door.

“If ya don’t need me, sir?” He asked, fingers crossed.  It wasn’t that interrogations bothered him, or even the gory details (although hearing them from the lips of Thomas Albert Taylor was a little like hearing a confession of rape from a Kennedy), but he knew, instinctively, that the correct career move at this time was to be somewhere, anywhere, else.

“Please have a seat, McDaniels.  We’ll need a witness to this and better you than one of the rookies.”  The Captain leaned closer and added, softly, “Don’t worry, Mac; I’ll shield you on this one.”

“Tanks, Cap,” the heaver man muttered back, sitting and reaching for the coffee pitcher.  “That was cream wit two sugars, Mr. Taylor?”

Al Taylor agreed and happily accepted a cup of what was, no doubt, going to be as inferior a cup of coffee as he had ever consumed, but with no complaints.  These were good men, serving the community, and they deserved his respect and admiration.  He felt honored to share their traditionally terrible coffee.

His feelings towards those he considered to be fellow servants of the public good is why he didn’t simply kill the few that had stumbled onto he and Laura’s latest kill.  Instead, he’d carefully detained them until Laura had removed herself to safety and then surrendered with good cheer.  It wasn’t their fault if they lacked the wit to understand what they’d been doing or the education to realize the need of it.

He grinned at his lawyer boyishly while making a production of sipping his coffee, wanting to share the honor of the moment with the dour man.  Maxwell was a good man, a dependable man, considering that he was only worth a few million.  He had been a classmate of Al’s at Harvard, a scholarship boy who was slowly grinding his way forward in the Law School.  Now he headed his own firm, mostly due to the business of the Taylor family.

A good man, a dependable man, a proficient and talented lawyer .. but a dour one.  No brio, no joie de vivre, no simple pleasure of the moment … sad.

Captain Reynolds sipped his coffee and watched the third richest man in Massachusetts, no mean trick that, happily mug at his lawyer.  Two good men were in the hospital and, if you believed the testimony of both the third officer (who’d only suffered bruises) and Taylor, himself, they were in there because this little fop, this privileged scion of a family more powerful than almost any he knew of  beat .. them .. up.  The eldest son of a powerful family who weighed, perhaps, one-ten in his frilly silk undies, put two of his patrolmen in the hospital?!?

Sergeant McDaniels watched the clowning being done between wealthy men and shook his head.  Why, he’d taken his youngest to the Taylor Clinic not more than a year ago.  They saved little Francis and, since he was a policeman, there wasn’t even a bill for the rounds of surgery and nursing.  Thomas Albert Taylor had always been a friend to those who served … and now he was claiming to be a killer?  Even sillier, he was claiming that Laura Tennyson Fitzpatrick Taylor was also a killer?!?  Why, she was one of the finest ladies in the city, a throwback to the day when women wore gloves everywhere.

Maxwell Hassler sighed silently and nodded, acknowledging the goodhearted jibe from Al Taylor.  He’d been dreading this moment for decades, ever since he’d become aware of his old friend’s odd little quirk.  He didn’t know that Laura had been involved, but it only made sense, in retrospect.  Al was going to spend the rest of his life in the best mental ward money could provide and that was that.  One day, they’d pick up Laura and Max would have to do his level best to remove her from the tawdry affairs of her husband.  He nodded again, managing a weak smile and glanced at his watch.  The silly little shit just paid over ten thousand dollars of billable minutes to mug and roll his eyes at Max … that was at least worth a smile, wasn’t it?

The assistant District Attorney sat back and realized that, no matter what happened, his career had just ended.  There was no reward but termination for the man who convicted Thomas Albert Taylor and failure to nail down a conviction after he’d all but confessed would also bring swift release.  Briefly, he wondered if the DA knew about his wife and him.  It would explain why he’d been chosen to crash so spectacularly.  Oh, well … write a book about it later and live off the royalties.  He started composing an opening paragraph in his mind, while simultaneously searching for an appropriate title.

“Now, then, Mr. Taylor.”  The Captain set his cup down and refreshed it slightly.  “You were telling us about how you and Mrs. Taylor first met, fell in love, and married.  I assume from your final comment that she had been with you earlier tonight?  Might we speak of that before we go much farther?”

“Well, actually, Captain … Reynolds, wasn’t it?  Ah, thank you.  Actually, Captain Reynolds, I’d really rather prefer, if it’s all the same to everyone, to approach this evenings from the other direction, as it were.  You see, I feel it’s important you understand, exactly, what it is that Laura and I have dedicated our lives to and, precisely, why it’s necessary for the good of the community. I’ll do my best to be brief, but I must insist on my own narration on this.”

The Captain looked at the assistant DA with raised eyebrows.  The assistant DA shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“Excellent!  Thank you, gentlemen,” Taylor gushed, adding with a sly smile as he warmed his coffee, “I believe I can guarantee that you won’t be bored.”