Time and Chance Read online

  TIME & CHANCE

  by

  G. L. Rockey

  ISBN: 978-1-927111-92-5

  Books We Love Ltd.

  (Electronic Book Publishers)

  192 Lakeside Greens Drive

  Chestermere, Alberta, T1X 1C2

  Canada

  http://bookswelove.net

  Copyright 2012 by G.L. Rockey

  Cover art by Michelle Lee Copyright 2012

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Prologue

  1

  Chuck from Biloxi had made the contact with his ‘chinchilla’ supplier, Sonny ‘headshot’ Ray, four weeks ago. After follow-up discussions, final delivery set, Chuck—medium height, maroon suit, open red shirt, gold necklace with a cross dangling in a chest of thick black hair, silver-tipped cowboy boots, white western Stetson hat—boarded his Gulf Stream 5.

  An hour later, landed at Huntsville International Airport, a car waiting, he drove to a trailer park on the outskirts of Decatur, Alabama, parked and entered a rusty Airstream trailer.

  ‘Chinchilla’ supplier Sonny—spec black eyes darting about like a rat in a psychology maze experiment—nodded to a young girl sitting on a stained sofa.

  Sonny sneered at the girl, “Stand up.”

  Previously drugged by Sonny, the girl—around sixteen, 5 foot, shapely, dark brown eyes glazed, torn dress—stood.

  Nothing more said, Chuck began probing the girl's body with his index finger.

  The girl, pliable, her ankles shackled, wobbled.

  Finished poking her over, Chuck said, “Not bad.”

  Trawl flashed a toothless grin and nodded toward a back bedroom, “Like ‘er, take it now.”

  Chuck handed Sonny an envelope. “Fifteen hundred. Start looking for a blonde, blue eyed chinchilla, worth two grand.”

  2

  The Tennessean reported the story on the front page:

  CAR BOMB TAKES LIFE OF TBI AGENT

  A car bomb has taken the life of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent Ancel Kensington and his wife, Maria. The couple had been celebrating their twentieth anniversary at a Hermitage Hotel dinner party. Following the celebration, when the Kensingtons got in their SUV to drive home, the tragic incident took place. Police say the explosion was so forceful they found the front bumper of the vehicle a half block away.

  Ancel, a special agent for the TBI, had been working on a local Nashville rackets connection with the Dixie Mafia involved in human trafficking.

  Maria taught music at Springfield High School. The Kensingtons are survived by Mrs. Kensingtons’ sister, Mildred Reed, and adopted fourteen-year-old daughter, Joyce Kensington. Joyce is a freshman at Springfield High.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Twelve years later

  Nashville TN, Friday, April 13

  Jack’s Time

  I'm Jack Carr, News Director at the CBS outlet WBFN-TV12, Nashville, Tennessee, where I work to pay the rent, Jack Daniels' distilleries, Uncle Sam, speeding tickets, a D.U.I. lawyer, sundry utilities, and a local Stop&Shop. I also make healthy donations to the Police Chief's annual charity ball for which, in part, I received a deputy badge. The badge sometimes helps with speeding tickets and the D.U.I.s.

  In it all, one thing that bugs me is time and chance. Since I can remember, I concluded there are two kinds of time—mine and real. Then there is chance. I've determined, like time, there are two kinds of chance—good and bad.

  As to the time thing, in the universe, on earth, time has many names. For instance there is Pacific, Zulu, Central Standard, Greenwich, solar, Daylight Savings, star, earth, sun, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There is also end-time, as in everybody's. Obscuring matters is that Einstein thing, relativity—something like, as velocities approach the speed of light, time slows. More befuddling, when time exceeds the speed of light (the theory goes) time regresses. I wish.

  Then there's chance. I looked chance up a couple of times. Actually, learnt it by heart. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines chance thusly: Chance, 1: a) something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention, or observable cause b) the assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings: luck c) the fortuitous of incalculable element in existence: contingency. 2: a situation favoring some purpose: opportunity.

  I figure if there is a God involved in any of this, either way, we all have a problem.

  So anyway and here we are, I turned forty last April and my once-full head of black hair is flecked with gray but still full. Some say my once-green eyes look like tarnished copper and my nose, broken several times (I played football in college, UT, guard and sometimes, mainly after friendly conversations with bar patrons, jerks, and know-it-alls, traded left jabs), last time I looked is slightly off center. Some say it looks like a corkscrew flattened by a steam roller. Whatever. One good thing, my stomach is still flat, mainly due to liquid diet dinners of Jack Daniels on the rocks. I'm five foot ten and people sometimes remark that I resemble somebody they have seen somewhere. I don't know about that, but I do talk to myself a lot like it's somebody I know. And, more strange, I hear somebody talking back.

  For instance, in times of crisis, or times in general, somebody says the strangest things to me, like: "Time and chance is mixed up with a fickle free will thing and the exclusive consequences are stuck on the smell of humanity forever.

  "Is a minute a minute on an Andromeda star? Is it the same in Xanadu? Did Kubla Khan know?

  "On Saturn, spring is nine years long.

  "A woman once told me, one plus one is not always two.

  "Truth is not pi r squared.

  "Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

  "Time smells different to death-row inmates.

  "A fork is a fork.

  "Turned south, down around the southern tip of Peru.

  "When we begin weaving a beginning, the end gets further away, and when we hold on it disappears, and sometimes an end can be better than a beginning.

  "Who started this time thing anyhow?

  "Take David and Goliath. If Goliath kills David, no story."

  One other thing my somebody says, on occasion, when disillusioned with the human condition, "You know how many wives Solomon had?"

  And, when convinced that I am right, somebody says, "If I'm wrong, fuck right."

  Anyway, so here we are, in a tidy little microcosm of imposed time and chance. A tangle of real-time events that seems to be converging in my life at some screwy corner of now and nowhere. Some call these convergences fate; others, luck. The implications in a larger whole can keep you up nights wondering who or what may be around the world's next corner.

  Anyway, it's Friday, April 13 (I'm long past fretting over Friday and 13, there are too many other days that outshine it), my silver Blancpain chronograph indicates that it is a little past 6:25 P.M., and I need a drink. Speaking of drink, some say I've been drinking too much (okay a lot). Other say I smoke too much, but I tell them I only smoke when I drink. Still others who know, know differently. The drinking and smoking had its origins in a fork. i.e., one of those life paths you're on that is going along duckily but fate runs a red light and you find yourself on that "why" road with no reason.

  “Jack, can we talk?”

  I looked up. Sago Yu stood in my office doorway. His encyclopedic face, thick and bronzed, involved two large chocolate-brown eyes that reflected
back the moment in time when this all began. His black hair, pulled back in a ponytail (I know this), hung to his top vertebrae. Five foot six, he is built like a fire plug.

  I said, “What's up?”

  He said, “We need to talk. S-Stuff.”

  I told him, after my regularly scheduled critique of the 6:00 P.M. newscast, take about ten minutes or so, I'd meet him in the lobby.

  He said okay and left.

  So you'll know, Sago is my ace investigative reporter. He turned twenty-eight last February. Law degree, he tried practicing legalese but he hated judges. Tried teaching college but he loathed students. We hooked up a year ago when I needed an expert political analyst on Tennessee election laws, state government, for local election coverage. He liked the work and viewers loved him. I enjoyed his insights, so he stayed. More recently, we have a bar in common, (his legal, mine of the liquid variety) so he's become more than an employee.

  Regarding his name, Sago told me that Yu came from Yu The Great on his mother's side. Yu The Great was the Chinese predecessor of the Old Testament's Noah. Sago also told me that his first name (redacted by me) came from a distant Cherokee ancestor, Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee syllable—made it easier for Cherokee to understand white man’s forked tongue stuff, so Sago told me. Regarding S-Stuff, that's the code word Sago and I assigned an in-depth TV series he is working on. The idea, his (after seeing a piece on 60 Minutes—trafficking in human beings, mostly young girls), came up three weeks ago. He had done initial research, we talked and, considering the stakes, sleazy individuals who might be involved, I gave him the okay, with the caveat: when we talked about the to-be series we would refer to everything associated with it as S-Stuff. So you'll know, S stands for scum. We also agreed to discuss sensitive S-Stuff matters in Winston. Winston is my mint, bone white, 1957 XK140 Jaguar convertible, restored (mostly by Nashville-based U-Cars, some by me). My late wife, Terri, had named it, she loved that car, we took long top-down rides along back country roads.

  Assignment editor, director, anchors, and producer present, I started the post-6:00 P.M. newscast critique.

  CHAPTER 2

  Real Time

  6:35 P.M. Central Standard Time (CDT)

  Tugging on her red suspenders, F.B.I. Special Agent in Charge, Bonnie Castiglioni, sat at her Atlanta office's round conference table with Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Nashville Bureau Chief, Guy Pickle.

  Looking more like Columbo than Columbo, Pickle said, “You said that.”

  Bonnie ran her right hand through her butch cut black hair. “It's a new twist, Pickle, scumbag angle of the week.’‘

  Bonnie snapped her suspenders, stood and walked to a swath of window overlooking the sparkling steel and glass high rise building of downtown Atlanta. She turned and leaned against the marble sill. “You know our jurisprudence darlings, to prove someone is dumping in the water, you gotta have a witness to the act. We need someone to go undercover, Pickle, catch a scumbag we suspect is dumping in the water.’‘

  Pickle joined her at the window, “I'm listening.”

  “We have good evidence that points to a Houston connection who is hooked up with a five star scumbag who lives in your fair Music City, runs a string of strip joints, massage parlors, owns a C&W night club—Felix The Cat—that features female servers called Kittens.”

  Pickle, not surprised: “Snakebite Walker.”

  Bonnie nodded, “The scumbag also runs a little ranch, twenty miles south of Nashville, uses it as some kind of charity write-off, supposedly something for disadvantaged kids.” Bonnie gave Pickle a stare. “Hello.”

  Pickle: “So where are we?”

  “You have a special agent, could pass for Ms. World, make a dandy Kitten.”

  Another no-surprise look from Pickle, “Joyce Kensington.”

  “Undercover … she'd have to volunteer.”

  Pickle thought a minute, “Knowing her, she will.”

  “Can she act?”

  “Whata’ ya mean?”

  “She's got a law degree, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She'll have to go back to school, as in backwards, let's go get some lunch, I'll explain.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Jack’s Time

  I concluded the producers' meeting with, “It's like Goliath kills David, no story.”

  After a pregnant pause, everyone gone, I made a few notes, filed them under “notes”, and noticed a cigarette burn near the knee of my khaki Dockers. The burn seemed to match the surrounding khaki, so I rolled down the sleeves of my blue dress shirt, loosened my Land's End ecru tie, retrieved my blue blazer from the back of my office door, and started off to meet Sago.

  In the TV12 lobby, standing at the front door, Sago—white Nike running shoes, white slacks, black V-neck shirt, orange (station color) TV12 rain slicker—looked out at a wall of only-in-Tennessee spring rain.

  I pushed the plate glass door open, “Let's go.”

  He said, “Where's your trench coat?”

  “At home.”

  We dashed through the downpour to Winston, got in, and I started the engine. Exiting the parking lot, windshield wipers flapping like they were in a hundred yard dash, Sago asked if I would please stop at Krystal. He had to have a bacon cheese.

  Rain pounding Winston’s canvas top, radio on, a female voice on our sister station, WTNN-AM, announced through the drone: “…people living in low lying areas should be ready to move to high….”

  Over the announcer, Sago said, “You just ran a red light, Kemosabe,” (he called me Kemosabe … the vintage Lone Ranger TV series, now on Youtube, backwater cable channels, he watched it regularly).

  I said, “So what's going on with S-Stuff?”

  He snapped the radio off, “Missing kids.”

  “Missing kids?”

  “Missing kids aren't so missing.”

  Sago could see chicken tracks on a concrete road. He also had an acute sense of smell like Ike, a hunting dog I had when I was fifteen. Ike sniffed out wild animals. Sago sniffed out nice tame things, as in human, what he called, unique to the species—murder, rape, torture, war—to name a few of the shenanigans unique to the species you and I happen to be members of.

  I said, “How so?”

  “Something is pointing close to home.”

  I pulled into a Krystal (after several incidents involving human ingenuity associated with strange things ending up in cop's hamburgers, Sago feared restaurant drive-thru windows), stopped close to the front door and said, “You gonna tell me now or make me wait ‘til you get a bacon cheese?”

  “Mike 'Snakebite' Walker.”

  He got out, slammed the door, and ran inside.

  * * *

  So you'll know, Mike 'Snakebite' Walker, is Nashville's own albino bookie scumbag who happens to be the owner of a local strip joint called The Pink Poodle. The Pink Poodle is advertised as totally nude, a hundred main course ladies for every taste. For dessert, he offers, across the county line, the Lips & Stick massage parlor. He is also proprietor of Felix The Cat, a country and western night club which boasts a restaurant called The Haute Cuisine. I've dined there once which might tell you something. On the other hand, I occasionally frequent the basement night club. I had come to know the personable bartender, Angelo Rich (Rich short for Ricigleano, not sure of the spelling). Angelo was a comic diversion and he poured a pretty good drink. On my frequent visits to The Cat (nickname for the lounge), I never met Snakebite but had seen him slinking around corners and crevices a couple times.

  His nickname, Snakebite, I was told, came from a nasty habit he had of striking out at things (usually human) that displeased him. The strike, I was told, the speed of light, was sometimes followed by a lick with his long black tongue.

  Snakebite, I was also told, a third generation albino, his irises pink, light blinded him and, when angry, the pink turned red. His true age a mystery, he was thought to be around thirty. I was told all this by the person aforementioned, bartender
Angelo Rich.

  At the outset it should be explained, in the news business you find things out—good, bad, whatever, in many ways, just do. It comes by way of leaks, sources, press releases, telephone calls, official spokesperson, wire services, other media, and a lot of over-the-fence, under-the-fence, around-the-fence gossip, and the World Wide Web, Internet of which you read between, above, and below the lines. Information also comes via audio and video recordings. These last two marvels have made life different, i.e., before CDs and tape, everything was now, as in live. Now, now is before, after, or in between. Reality and time are mixed up, real and otherwise, in history. It also should be noted, some people think news directors deal with news. They don't. They deal with General Managers, Sales Managers, producers, on-air talent egos, promotion people, and ratings. Mostly, anyway.

  * * *

  Sago returned and I drove, opting for city streets to avoid traffic-glutted I-24, toward downtown Nashville. The scent of Sago's Sea Breeze (he used Sea Breeze as aftershave lotion) along with his bacon cheese Krystal, filled the stuffy cockpit.

  While he ate, I said, “So what about Snakebite?”

  Like he does, he said out of the blue, “Wanna hear a good one.”

  “Sure.”

  “This one takes the pineapple upside-down cake.”

  I waited.

  “Some Ph.D. guy over in Finland, breeding clones for transplant parts, got a female pregnant, says he's ass over tin cups in love with her, planning to get married, but he's got problems with the Pope.”

  After fifteen seconds, I said, “Okay?”

  “Pope says he can't get married, clone doesn't have a soul.”

  “Joke, right?”

  “True story.”