The SoapBoxers

Gerald Champeaux hid his annoyance at the appearance of a hot cocoa mustache on the upper lip of the man seated across from him. His companion was oblivious to the foamy appendage. Gerald could scarcely believe that Jimmy Bagley was a competent professional. He forced himself to push the doubts to the back of his mind. Bagley had an excellent reputation.

“So, what you want,” said Bagley, wiping his lip as he finally became aware of the mustache, “is for me to steal stuff from your own house? For the insurance money?”

“Exactly,” replied Champeaux. “It’s really a profit deal. I have unfortunately become quite addicted to Texas Hold’em lately and have accumulated some sizable losses lately. A nice insurance settlement would allow me to hide our financial situation from my wife. A fringe benefit is that I’d be getting rid of some absurdly ugly pieces of art that she has purchased over the years.”

“OK, so what’s in it for me?”

“We’ll split the proceeds of the sales, 50-50. Some of the items are very identifiable, and may not be able to be sold for several years. Many of the others should be able to be quickly sold. I can give you the names of some dealers who have questionable ethics and are perfectly willing to buy stolen merchandise. You close the deal and keep half the money for your troubles.”

Bagley grabbed the sheet of paper from the table. “So, what sort of money are we talking about?”

“I think a conservative estimate would be a million dollars.”

Bagley whistled. “I’d make half a mill just for ripping you off? Wow.”

“For ripping me off and setting up the sales. And, of course, for your discretion,” corrected Champeaux.

“Ah, yes, discretion is the better part of vigor.”

“Valor,” corrected Champeaux.

“Huh?”

“Discretion is the better part of valor, not the better part of vigor.”

“Yeah? I always heard it the other way. Oh well, ten of one, half dozen of another.”

Champeaux rolled his eyes at the smaller man’s maligning of the English language. Focus, Gerald, focus. You don’t need to like this man, you simply need to use him.

“OK,” asked Champeaux, “what details do you need?”

“I’ll need to know about your security system, and also the layout of your home and the location of these items.”

Champeaux was prepared for these questions. He gave Bagley the details of his home security system, including flaws in the system that would allow a burglar to easily defeat the system. He verbally walked Bagley through the house. He described each room in turn, and described which of the items would be located in that room.

Four nights later, Jimmy Bagley descended upon the Champeaux home. Gerald and his wife would be out for the evening, having dinner and watching a play at the theater.

Bagley quickly picked the lock and slipped into the house. He quickly disabled the security system and began the work of stealing. He decided to use the living room as a staging area. He would pile everything in the middle of the living room before taking everything out to his Explorer.

Jimmy quickly took three painting off the wall and set them on the floor. It took him a moment to find that statue that Champeaux had described. Jimmy agreed with Champeaux – in spite of its value to collectors, it was hideously ugly.

Bagley walked down a short hallway to the master bedroom. He opened the door and was surprised to see Champeaux inside the room. He only had an instant to wonder why Champeaux was at home instead of establishing an alibi for the time of the robbery. Then he saw the Glock in Champeax’s right hand and was more confused.

Gerald Chapeaux pulled the trigger and felt the thrill of killing another man.

Champeaux waited for Bagley to die before grabbing the phone.

“What is your emergency?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

“There’s been a break-in at my home. I shot the burglar. I think he may be dead.”

Author’s note: This is the embellished version of an interesting dream I had Wednesday night.

Sam Jordan finally ripped the phone off the wall. His brutal honesty was being met with hatred from the faithful fans of the football team. As part of his end of year review of the team, he analyzed the professional prospects of several players on the team. His review of All-American left tackle Chad Jenkins had become a lightning rod.

“Jenkins’ size, strength, and technique would transfer well to the professional level. However, he does have a questionable work effort and had a tendency to give sub-par effort on some plays. At the college level, his physical skills allowed him to take off a play without repercussions. At the professional level, superior athletes will be able to overpower him on those plays, endangering the quarterback.”

Jordan knew that the controversy would blow over in a week or so. He shrugged it off, knowing that his journalistic integrity had forced him to speak the truth.

As Jordan began work on next week’s column, he heard a disturbance at the front door. A split second later, the hulking frame of Chad Jenkins plowed through the door, leaving splintered chunks of wood in the foyer. Jordan could see the action from his home office, which overlooked the lower level of the house. He quickly retreated to the back corner, hoping that Jenkins hadn’t seen him.

Jenkins had already spotted him, and thundered up the stairs. For a moment, Jenkins unleashed verbal abuse toward Jordan before he started to get physical. Jordan quickly absorbed two punches and a kick before he was able to scramble away to elude the angry lineman.

Jordan retreated toward the front of the room. Jenkins raced toward him and Sam quickly ducked out of the way to avoid the collision. Chad Jenkins’ momentum propelled him over the top of the railing and he fell to the room below, falling with a thud.

For a moment, Sam Jordan’s brain was frozen solid. When the brain cramp eased, he raced down the stairs to check on Jenkins. It was immediately apparent that the standout football player was dead.

When Sam finished cleaning up the blood, he looked at the clock. It was 3:55. Shirley would be home very shortly. She had disliked his analysis of her favorite player – he couldn’t imagine trying to explain why Chad Jenkins was lying dead on the floor. He acted as quickly as possible, slowly dragging the body down the hall. He opened to door to the storage room, hauled Jenkins inside, and threw some blankets on top of him. As he finished, he heard the garage door open.

When Shirley left for work the next morning, Jordan got to work. He had been promising to dig up the dead crab apple tree for a couple of years. This was a good time to cross that task off the list. He made sure to dig the hole big enough to hold a body.

Jordan cooled off with a glass of lemonade before getting to the next task on his list. He pushed the wheelbarrow to the door of the storage room. He opened the door and pulled the blankets off Jenkins’ body – only to realize that there was no corpse. Jordan was stunned. Jenkins’ had clearly had not had a pulse, and he had suffered severe head injuries. It was highly unlikely that he had arisen and walked away.

Sam spent the next two hours searching the house. Was his memory wrong? Had he actually stashed the body somewhere else? Sam’s panic level was at an all time high, but the mystery remained unsolved.

Sam was wondering what to do next when an incessant ringing invaded his ears. What in tarnation was that that awful sound? He eventually realized that it was his alarm clock. This had all been an awful dream.

Ralphie, his German Shepherd, had also heard the alarm and raced into the room to greet his master. Ralphie had a very large bone in his mouth. Sam realized that the bone was a human fibula, and was aghast to see bits of flesh sticking to the bone.

Rutherford Carter III was a powerful executive in the boardroom and a rather weak chess player in the game room. Other men in similar roles would likely see underlings falling over themselves to intentionally lose a game to the boss in order to curry favor.

This was not the case for Rutherford Carter. Carter’s inborn superiority complex emanated from him, and this aura caused those around him to want to knock him down a peg when given the opportunity.

It had been many weeks since Carter had last stumbled to a win against an opponent who was distracted by a phone call. He lusted for the sweet smell of victory, and he knew where he could find a weak and willing opponent.

Down on the street below, Carter quickly found a target. The bum was gaunt, and the pieces on his chessboard were cheap plastic.

“Care for a game?” asked Carter as he sat down on the bench.

The bum looked up with disinterest.

“I brought some dinner for you,” cajoled Carter. He popped the briefcase open and pulled out half of a pastrami sandwich, left over from lunch.

The bum nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

“I’m Rutherford Carter III.”

“The third, eh? They call me Soapy. Soapy the second, I suppose, since I’m named after the O. Henry character.”

“Where do you sleep at night?” asked Carter, as he opened the game by moving the queen’s pawn ahead two spots.

“On the bench, mostly” replied Soapy, as he quickly made his move. “Sometimes under the bench, if I need to get out of the wind. The shelter on 32nd street sometimes brings blankets for us when the weather gets cold.”

As the game progressed, Carter asked more questions about Soapy’s life on the street. Soapy answered him between bites of the sandwich. It became quickly apparent that Soapy was a simple man. He desired nothing more in life than a chance to read the comics from a discarded newspaper in the morning, a warm meal at the shelter at noon, and a blanket on a cold night.

Carter was so engrossed in the conversation that he was shocked when Soapy called out “Checkmate!”.

Carter was taken aback. His eyes focused intently on the board, sure that Soapy was mistaken. A moment later, Carter conceded defeat to a lowly street bum and asked for a rematch.

An hour later, Carter’s record against Soapy had dropped to 0-3. With his head hung low, Carter was about to bid Soapy good night.

“I can tell that you’re surprised,” Soapy said, reading his mind. “My father was a lawyer and taught me chess at a young age. I played in tournament nearly every weekend until I had to give it up to focus on law school. I’m still quite good at the game.”

“Law school?” asked Carter.

“Yes, Harvard Law,” replied Soapy. “I used to work over here. There’s my old office,” he said, point toward the corner of a building twice as tall as the one that housed Carter’s firm.

Carter gasped. “A corner office in the Hepner building? You must have been making a fortune! How did you end up on the streets?”

“Too much success, I supposed,” Soapy replied. “I was high on cocaine one night, celebrating successfully defending a sleazeball company from a legitimate class action lawsuit.  I crashed my Mercedes into an oncoming semi. My wife and baby daughter were killed instantly.”

Carter’s eyes opened wide at the tragic story.

“They never tested me for drugs, so I was never charged with a crime. I collected a large life insurance payment. I tried to buy happiness with the money, but it only made things worse. I couldn’t bear living without them, and I knew that the insurance settlement was blood money, Finally, one night I doused my bank records in gasoline, set them on fire, and walked away and let the house burn to the ground.”

“That’s terrible,” interjected Carter.

“It could be worse” replied Soapy. “I could be dead like my dear wife and baby. My meager life on the streets, this is my penance for the sins of my past.”

Tony Rollins cracked a smile as he bit into the cheap fast food taco. The flimsy shell broke into pieces and hot sauce spilled out onto Tony’s hands. Tony brushed off this small misadventure. Nothing could spoil his mood today. Tony was just one small jump away from retirement.

Tony, at 40, was a bit young for retirement. In fact, it would come as a big surprise to many, since he had never been one to save a lot of money. He typically lived paycheck to paycheck, and when he did save up a few dollars, he quickly frittered it away on high end electronics or expensive vacations.

Then, six months ago, Tony bumped into Damon Cole and his fortunes took a turn for the better. Damon’s claim was worth, at most, seventy thousand dollars. The property, however, was massively over-insured, with millions of dollars in coverage. During a long lunch at a local strip club, a plan was hatched to bleed the insurance company of eight million dollars.

With Tony’s boss on temporary disability due to a freak skydiving accident, he had a short window in which to execute the plan. Late at night, when the office was quiet and no one was stirring (not even a mouse) Tony generated the paperwork for the claim, fabricating estimates from contractors as necessary. He approved the claim and forged his boss’ approval as well. Tony carefully backdated the documents to indicate that his boss had approved the claim two days before he shattered his leg in the accident.

The claims had sailed through the processing center and Damon had received a check for $7,946,312.42. Damon had wired half the money to an account that Tony had recently opened at a financial institution in Geneva. This morning, Tony had confirmed the receipt of his share of the money – $3,973,156.21 – with his Swiss banker, Gerhard Hunziker.

When Tony disappeared, people would notice. Before long, his boss would return to the office and discover the fraudulent claim. By then, Tony would be long gone. He had no doubt that law enforcement would be after him hot and heavy.

They would certainly jump to the correct assumption that he had left the country and headed south. Tony was sure that they would first look in Panama, where his co-workers had heard him talk of friends. When he wasn’t found in Panama, the authorities would fan out into the rest of central and south America. Everyone in the office had seen him intensely studying Spanish. At the time, his explanation had been that knowledge of Spanish would allow him to work more effectively on claims involving people who spoke limited English. This made perfect sense, and Tony’s reputation as a genuine nice guy lent it even more credibility.

Soon after his disappearance, his co-workers and authorities would realize that this was just an excuse – and that the real reason for learning Spanish was so that he would be able to blend in more easily in his new country.

Tony smiled with the knowledge that they would be barking up the wrong tree. He would be settling in Brazil – where the natives spoke Portuguese and not Spanish.

It was a dark and stormy night. This weather always made Casey think of Snoopy. How she envied that dog, with his vibrant imagination, always dreaming of aerial dogfights with The Red Baron or telling war stories with Bill Mauldin. When the bucket dropped down into the well of Snoopy’s creativity, it never came up dry.

The same could not be said for Casey. She looked down at the last two words she had typed – qwerty uiop. Hardly great fiction. She exhaled deeply, blowing tendrils of auburn hair away from her face. She abandoned the current story by closing the window. She opened a new window and began anew.

Twenty minutes later, she had managed just five sentences in the new story. The damned weather was distracting her. The flashes of lightning were constantly illuminating the sky, and the booms of thunder jolted her out of her seat every couple of minutes. It was completely impossible to concentrate. Casey needed a break. She decided to watch a bit of the idiot box before turning her attention back to her writing.

First, though, she needed something to quench her thirst. Casey crossed the room to the walk-in closet, pushed aside some dresses that she hadn’t worn in a decade, and removed a large, heavy box from the bottom shelf. Hidden behind the box – away from the prying eyes of friends who would be stunned by its presence – was a bottle of single malt scotch.

Casey grabbed one of the Styrofoam cups that sat next to the bottle. She poured a generous amount of scotch into the glass and chugged it quickly. She could immediately feel herself begin to relax. She replaced the box on the shelf.

Casey arranged a couple of pillows against the headboard of the bed and jumped up onto the pillow top mattress. She grabbed the remote and flipped the TV on. She was pleased to see that NCIS was on – and it was one that she hadn’t seen before.

Ducky was in the midst of explaining that the person had not died of natural causes, but was in fact the victim of a murder. This was not particularly surprising, since the show only focused on murders. Casey was interested in the real mystery – when were Dinozzo and Ziva going to get together? The suspense was killing her!

Finally, the NCIS team cracked the case and Gibbs got a confession from the bad guy. Casey noted that all good leisure must come to an end and got back to her writing.

Casey really needed to get her story done tonight. Her editor was a slave driver, and his deadlines were firm. If it wasn’t in his email inbox by midnight, it wouldn’t get into the next edition, and she wouldn’t get paid. Casey’s fridge was empty, her rent was due, and her bottle of scotch was dangerously low. She really needed a paycheck.

Since she hadn’t been productive in front of the computer, she decided to eschew her Macbook Air in favorite of pen and paper. She had a lot of flexibility – she could write anything, as long as it was fiction – but that was part of the problem. What sort of story should she write?

Casey grabbed her trusty Montblanc pen and a composition book. She decided to try her hand at a crime story. A half hour later, the story was dead. She had written just 250 words, and was completely uninterested in the plot.

Casey sighed, tore the page from the composition book, and wadded it up. She launched the paper ball across the room toward the waste basket. The long three point shot rimmed out – par for the course today.

She decided to switch directions one hundred eighty degrees and began work on a love story. Forty five minutes later, she realized that the main characters were only interested in each other as friends. Ugh.

Then the inspiration hit her. Of course – she would write a fictional account of a writer suffering from writer’s block.

Although the idea for this story was quite obviously ripped from the headlines, this story is intended to be politically neutral.  You will notice that no party affiliations are mentioned, nor is the subject matter of the bill detailed.

One of the preeminent power brokers in Washington was chewing on a number two pencil with the severity of a hungry beaver, carving deep incisions into the wood.  Jeffrey Warner had a serious problem.  Even worse, it was a problem without an easy answer.

Warner knew that he had the support of fifty nine senators to vote for cloture and end the filibuster on the bill.  Not fifty eight, not sixty.  Precisely fifty nine.  Unless Warner could pick up another vote, the most important bill of a generation was going to die on the floor.

Warner snapped the weakened pencil in half and launched the pieces at the waste basket twenty feet away.  The stress of the situation was making him tired, exacerbating the lethargy that routinely took hold of his aging body at the end of a nineteen hour work day.  It was only eleven at night, but Senate majority leader Jeffrey Warner needed a nap.

When Warner awoke from his respite thirty four minutes later, the solution to his problem was fully formed.  He called a page and instructed him to track down Senator Byron Cooper.  A short while later, the long term senator stood before him.

“Byron,” began the leader, “I’d like your support on Senate Bill 1975.”

Cooper laughed in response.  “You know I can’t support that bill.  It goes against all my principles.”

“I could give you a hundred million dollars.”

“While my state could use those funds, it would be political suicide,” responded Cooper.

“We could have you killed, “ continued Warner, oblivious to the interruption.

Cooper jumped out of his chair in anger.  “We’ve had disagreements before, Warner, but threats of violence is a bridge too far!”

“Violence,” echoed Warner.  “I’m not talking about violence.  Sit down and let’s discuss this like gentlemen.”

A thoroughly confused and somewhat wary Byron Cooper returned to his seat.  He listened as Jeffrey Warner laid out a brilliant plan.

Byron Cooper was in a tough spot.  He was in a loveless marriage and had turned to booze and gambling to bring pleasure into his life.  Not surprisingly, he owed a fortune to gamblers.  The only thing that prevented him from having his legs broken by goons was the power that he held as a US Senator.  He wasn’t particularly fond of the job, but fought to hang on as if his life depended on it – because it probably did.

“This is your golden parachute, Byron,”  said Warner, as they parted ways an hour later.

Three days later, the Washington Post had a front page story about the car bombing that claimed the life of Senator Byron Cooper.  He was eulogized by his powerful friends in the Washington elite.  Days later, his mourning widow burst into tears as his casket was lowered into the ground at Arlington National Cemetery.

When it came time for the governor to appoint someone to fill Byron Cooper’s spot in the senate, he chose a man who was very nearly the ideological opposite of Cooper.  This stirred up controversy, but the governor didn’t give a damn.  The new Senator mirrored his own beliefs, and that’s all that really mattered.

Six days later, the Senate voted for cloture.  Sixty senators – including the newly minted replacement senator – voted for cloture, and the filibuster was broken.  The bill passed the up-or-down vote with the exact same number of votes.  The president signed the bill into law on a cold day in late March.

The morning that the President signed the bill, Jeffrey Warner poured himself a generous amount of cognac from a bottle with a yellowed label.  Thirty four years after being elected to the Senate, Warner had finally seen the passage of his life’s work.

At the same time, an ocean away, another man was also enjoying a drink.  It was six hours later in the city of Nice, France.  The man formerly known as Byron Cooper had finished swimming a few laps in his heated indoor pool.  Cooper relaxed in the comfort of his sun room, basking in the warmth of an unseasonably warm day.  He stroked the beard on his surgically reconstructed chin and decided that he needed a drink.  He rang a small bell, and his butler raced into the room, carrying another piña colada.

“The pay isn’t much, but I know how you feel about widows and orphans.”

“How much, Jack?”

“Only ten, I’m afraid.”

The man at the other end of the phone hesitated for a moment and then decided to take the job.  Ten grand wasn’t much, but he had a soft spot for damsels in distress.

“OK, I’ll do it for ten.  Make sure to pay FICA for me.”

The caller laughed.  “You know the drill, Rex.  You’re an independent contractor.”

Jack Stone arranged to call back in a few days with more information.

Rex Mortimer grabbed a Cuban cigar from the box on the corner of his desk and shoved it into the corner of his mouth.  He pulled a box of wooden matches from the top desk drawer, extracted one, and struck it sharply against the side of the desk.  The match immediately illuminated, and Rex lit his cigarette and enjoyed one final smoke.  After he finished his cigarette, he’d pull the bottle of single malt scotch from the bottom drawer and enjoy a final dose of that wonderful elixir as well.  Rex Mortimer loved fine cigars and quality booze, but he always swore them off when working on a job.  The stakes warranted complete sobriety.

To the outside world, Rex Mortimer was a marketing executive named Alexander Milne.  He operated his front business under the name of Sanders Consulting.  Indeed, Sanders Consulting was small, but had a long history in the industry, and their reputation had continued unblemished after Alexander had bought the company from the old owner.  This was largely because Alexander outsourced the work to people far more qualified than himself.  He had little difficulty outsourcing the jobs, since he paid more than the clients paid him – and paid with cash.

While the business was not profitable from a pure economic sense, it served a very valuable purpose – accounting for Alexander’s frequent business trips and reasonably high level of income.

When Alexander took a road trip, it was his alter ego who performed the work.  Rex Mortimer’s business was death, and business was very good.  Rex was a contract killer.  He wasn’t an elite guy like Jaguar or Condor, but he managed to make a very decent living from his profession.  Most of the money was diverted to safe haven in the Cayman Islands.  The rest was passed along to the flunkies who performed the outsourcing for Sanders Consulting.  The recipients never complained about receiving cash, and the process did a nice job of trading dirty cash from the contract killers for clean cash paid by clients for the excellent work of Sanders Consulting.

How do you like the story so far?

This other half of this particular story will NOT be available on the blog! It will only be available as part of an eBook that I am giving away to my most valued regular readers. Don’t worry, it does not cost any money, nor do you have to give up any personal information.

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The sleigh glided down to the snow, touched down for an instant, and hopped back into the air before landing for the final time. The reindeer taxied quickly to their stable, in spite of their exhaustion from the long journey. Their food was close enough to smell. Santa unhooked them from the sleigh and the deer near trampled each other in an effort to get to the food that Mrs. Claus had left out for them.

Santa smiled as he watched the deer hungrily devour the first meal they had eaten in a day. He knew that they would be sound asleep shortly after they finished eating. It had been a grueling day.

The man in the red suit trudged up to the big house. The first order of business was a long hot shower. As usual, his red suit was beyond saving, and would be thrown in the trash again this year. The hot water felt good on his cold skin, and the powerful bursts from the showerhead removed the soot from his skin. Eventually, Claus emerged from the shower, slipped into his pajamas, and searched for food.

He immediately hit pay dirt. There was a pizza box on the top shelf of the fridge. It contained a nearly whole Canadian bacon pizza from the best pizza joint north of the Arctic Circle. There was not time to waste with frivolities such as reheating, so Santa inhaled the pizza cold. He chased it down with a liter bottle of Pepsi. When he was finished, he let out an enormous burp that could probably be heard as far away as the workshop.

Saturday was a completely lost day. Santa slept until 8 PM, woke up long enough to eat and share a few words with Mrs. Claus, and then slipped back into slumber once again. Sunday was a day of leisure that Santa spent watching football with a few of the elves.

Monday marked the return to the normal grind, and it came far too soon. Most of the elves were on a long vacation, so there was a skeleton crew at the workshop, mostly handling the handful of request for returns.

The Claus mailbag was already busting at the seams. Not with gifts from good little boys and girls – those were still many months away. Instead, they were filled with bills from suppliers and solicitations from every whack job that thought they had the next brilliant idea for a toy design and wanted a hefty licensing fee.

Santa tossed the mail from wannabe toymakers into the recycling bin.  He had more than enough designers on staff, and couldn’t afford to license designs from independent contractors.  He tossed the bills to the side, where the accounting team would have to deal with them later. Costs had been steadily rising for the last few years, and funding had really dried up in the wake in the international economic crisis. The non-profit North Pole Toy Company had enough funds in reserve for one more year like this. Beyond that, Santa feared that he would have to start asking children to send a check with their letters.

Santa looked down at his calendar and realized, with great dismay, that he had a noon meeting with Malcom Snogsworth, the head of the Elfen Toy Makers International union. ETMI had been aggressively negotiating in recent years. Snogsworth had been using the threat of an OSHA investigation as a means to blackmail Santa into paying higher wages. OSHA was not aware of the 23 hour work days in December, and he preferred that it stay that way. The OSHA officials typically made their visit in the middle of the summer, when the elves rarely worked more than twelve hour days.

Even worse, Snogsworth always insisted on meeting at Red Lobster, and never picked up the tab.

Santa hated Mondays.

“Oh, no. Stan told me that you snoop into his stuff, and that he often fabricates his notes in an effort to get a rise out of you. That must be what he meant. He and I are old childhood friends.”

“Right, he mentions that delusion as well. You believe that you and he are old friends, but he never set eyes on you before he examined you prior to your commitment.”

Walker slumped in the chair. “You have to believe me. This was all a stunt for my book.”

“These notebooks, filled with the incoherent ramblings of a madman? You are operating in a false reality. You have constructed a grand illusion to shield yourself from the fact that you are mentally ill. Stanley’s notes indicated that he had concerns about your ability to receive adequate treatment at this facility. I concur with his opinion and will make a recommendation that you be committed to the Springfield facility, where you will have more constant observation.

The next day, Sascha arrived at Lennox for her monthly visit, and Joe shared the dreadful news with her.

“Don’t worry, honey,” whispered Sacha. “The director at Springfield is in on the plan. You’ll be set free as soon as you get dropped off”

Joe perked up at hearing this news, and returned to his normal self for his final few days at Lennox. Finally, the day of his transfer arrived. He gathered up his belongings – mostly consisting of the notebooks – and Rogers drove him up to Springfield.

After Rogers scrawled his signature on a few forms to authorize the transfers, he jumped back in the car for the solo trip back to Lennox.

“OK, this has been fun, guys,” Joe said to the director of the Springfield facility. “You can let me go now.”

“Go where?”

“Go home.”

“You are confused, son. This is your new home. It may be difficult at first, but you will soon grow to like it here. Let me give you a tour.”

After the fruitless discussion with Rogers at Lennox, Joe decided that it would be pointless to continue his plea for freedom. Sascha had been certain that the director of this facility had been privy to their secret. Clearly, some wires had gotten crossed at some point.

Joe expected Sascha to visit the Springfield facility to inquire as to his whereabouts. A few days passed, then a few weeks. To kill time, he continued his writings, using his experiences at Springfield to write several more chapters in his character’s life.

On the last day of the month, Sascha finally came to visit. She scarcely had time to sit before Joe started talking.

“You have to talk to the director, and to the judge who committed me. You have to explain that this was all research for a book and that I should be set free” he pleaded.

“But then I would have to admit that I lied during the hearing, Joe. That would be perjury. I certainly wouldn’t want to go to jail.”

Joe gasped as she continued to speak.

“I’ve decided that I rather enjoy life without you, Joe. The power of attorney gives me unlimited access to your funds, and I don’t have to put up with any of your annoying habits. I can take a young lover whenever I want. It’s a pleasant life, Joe.”

Walker was stunned. “You can’t possibly be thinking of leaving me here!”

“I really have no choice,” she said, giving him a kiss. “You’ve heard the doctors, Joe. You need treatment.”

He received his first disappointment when Banks told him that he would not be able to use his trusty ink pen. A pen could be a dangerous weapon in the hands of some of the residents. Gone, too, were spiral bound notebooks. Joe was dismayed by their replacements – crayons and composition books. Joe reminded himself that a competent professional could succeed with any tools.

Joe spoke with his good friend, Director Stanley Banks, nearly every day. One day Joe noticed that Banks always carried a red notebook with him.

“The associate director, Rogers, is a real snoop. I like to toy with him by pretending that this is some master record of my observations of all the residents at Lennox. Really, I just make up stuff, just to see if he slips up and mentions any of it in conversation. The stuff I’ve written about you is great,” laughed Banks.

A month after being committed to Lennox, Joe felt that he had become sufficiently institutionalized and had begun to learn about the various disorders that afflicted the other residents. He began to write. His novel would be a pseudo-biographical account detailing the daily struggles of mental illness. He decided that he rather enjoyed the look of the crayon writings – they gave the work a juvenile look. Perhaps Vic, the publisher, could retain that unique look and feel for a few small parts of the book.

Time passed quickly inside the walls of Lennox. Other than the near-daily visits from Banks and the monthly visits from Sascha, Joe was completely focused on his book. He spent nearly all his time either writing or interacting with other residents to gain further insights into mental illness. Over the course of a year, he filled the pages of dozens of composition books with his novel. The novel, he reflected, would likely have to be broken into two or three books, even after Vic edited it.

Near the end of his stay at Lennox, he was visited one day by Associate Director Rogers, rather than by his friend Banks. It wasn’t like Banks to take a day off, and Joe questioned the Rogers about Banks’ absence.

“Dr. Banks was involved in a traffic accident last night and remains in a coma. I have looked over Stanley’s notes on you, Joe. It seems that you will not be in our company much longer.”

Walker smiled. “It will be nice to be free once again – to walk in the park on beautiful spring nights …”

“I’m afraid you misunderstand, Mr. Walker. You will be leaving Lennox, but you will not be re-entering society. You are being transferred to the facility in Springfield.”

“No, no,” replied Walker. “This is a mistake. The story of the transfer was just a ruse to cover the fact that I was going to be released. I completely orchestrated a plan to have myself committed.”

“Oh, yes. Here it is,” Rogers said, leafing through pages in a notebook. “’Patient Walker believes himself to be a famous writer. He is under the delusion that he convinced his wife and myself to have him committed so that he could better research an upcoming book’”

TO BE CONTINUED …