Ingrams & Assoc 3: American Life 04

Hillier and Tara were both left looking embarrassed. Tara still had her back turned and Hillier didn't know where to look, so he stared at his beer instead.

Eventually Tara said, "Has she gone?"

Hillier grunted in return. Tara turned around, her faced pinched. She looked to see if anyone had noticed. No one appeared to, or at least no one looked back. She grabbed her wine from the mantelpiece, to give herself something to do.

They both drank their drinks in silence for a moment, just standing close to each other but not close enough to be together. Then Hillier said, "She's right, you know. I'm damaged goods. One completely messed up marriage due to the work and not being able to see straight for case work."

Tara smiled and said, "I hear that. You and me both."

Hillier sighed. "I make snap judgments. I don't come home on time. I have a backlog of scumbags I need to put away and I don't sleep well."

"Oh yeah?" said Tara. "Lightweight. I work all hours, I have a phone on constantly and my best friend is a vibrator. And I work at home too. And I snore. Apparently."

"That's kids stuff. I have guns stashed all over my apartments. I deliberately leave the hallway dirty with stuff that makes noise so I can hear people coming. I eat blended pizza for breakfast. And I haven't had a suit dry cleaned in a month."

"Oh reeeealy? You think you're such hot shit don't you? I bet you I can drink more than you too."

"Oh bullshit. Be real," retorted Hillier, "I can out drink a beanpole like you any day of the week."

"Fine. You think so? Great. Hossaks bar, Wednesday. I'll have my driver on hand, so neither of us have to drive. Get ready to be put on your ass by a woman, Mr. Hillier."

"Fine."

"Fine then!"

They both stood there, sipping their drinks, wondering what, exactly, had just happened.

Across the room April stood at the bar, looking in the mirror at the two of them and smiled to herself. On paper it had looked perfect, but you never knew until you got two people together.

"Miss Carlisle?" she heard someone ask, interrupting her musing.

She turned, and there was Manny, with his fedora scrunched in his hand.

"Hi there. Manny right? One of Julian's Army buddies?"

"Yes, ma'am. There are some people I want you to meet. This here is John Graves. John was one of the lookouts at the Cambridge event. He and Joe went way back. This fella, - who needs a shave – is Sal Samri. Sal was in the hospital with me in Kuwait. All of these guys are part of the Cambridge event. Show her, guys."

All of them rolled up their sleeves. All had the same tattoo.

"Ma'am," said one of the men, "We know what you did. We just wanted to say thank you, and give you this."

Another of them produced a t-shirt, complete with the Cambridge tattoo and motto on it. "We figured you probably wouldn't go for the tattoo, but since you are one of us now, we figured you should have this."

April didn't know what to say. Eventually she found her voice and said, "One of you?"

"Sure. Joe Sullivan saved you too. We figure that makes you part of the Cambridge crew."

"I..." April honestly didn't know what to say. "I don't deserve this. I really don't. I never even got to say thank you to him."

"Well, as far as I know, as Joe used to say, as long as there are people out there willing to do those things, you never have to," said Manny.

April smiled a large genuine smile. "Ok, well, drinks are definitely on me. Who's having one? Someone mentioned some Joe stories? I want to hear. And also, don't count me out on the tattoo just yet. Might have to find the right location for it though..."

Post Script

"An American Life", as it was published, was a quiet success. It was number one on the New York Times book list for two weeks, and then went into higher success when Oprah named it one of her "favorite things." It became required reading at several premier colleges but to date, no one has attempted to buy the movie rights.

All profits were fed back into the Julian Sullivan Foundation, run by Tara Western, which dedicates itself to providing scholarships for aspiring writers, favoring those from the armed forces.

After "An American Life" was published and promoted by Oprah, even the President of the U.S. got involved, mentioning Joe Sullivan at the State of the Union address that year, calling Joe Sullivan "the kind of quiet American hero, who does for others but never asks for themselves, even under the most difficult conditions, that this country is built on."

The military opened an investigation into the Cambridge Event, and ended up awarding Joe Sullivan, posthumously, the Purple Heart and Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day. They even had his son, Aaron, come to Washington to accept it. Manny and some of his crew were also awarded medals of valor, and there was a public apology from the Army's top general that this incident had been overlooked for so long.

It didn't stop there. Joe Sullivan's CO of the time, two-star General James Patterson (ret), who was a common talking head on CNN, was asked to be part of a debate on the subject of Military Injustice. He went ahead and appeared and was completely taken apart by the other three panelists, all of whom had served in the military. He had no answers for why he had penalized the people involved, and CNN dropped his contract.

The military, quietly, retroactively reduced him in rank to colonel.

Three weeks after "American Life" was published, three of the four designers that Mark Glasso had working for him quit en masse. All were married and none of them wanted Glasso around. They resigned together and when Glasso protested that he was a happily married man, and they had nothing to fear from him, he was told, "Yeah, I'm sure Joe Sullivan thought the same."

Two weeks after that, eighty five percent of his clients had canceled their orders. Glasso was living in a Best Western, having been thrown out by Penny once the evidence of his own cheating had been provided, and suddenly he was hit with three lawsuits at once. One was for alienation of affection, from the husband of his personal assistant. The second was for being named in the divorce of the same couple and the third was for not enforcing his own company's rulebook regarding interpersonal relationships within the company.

He'd been astounded by that, and pulled out his companies bylaws and rule book and found, to his astonishment, that there was indeed a clause in there. When he'd left Joe Sullivan's employ, Mark had taken everything he could put his hands on – clients, wife, and also the bylaws and rulebook that Joe had written. He'd not even thought about it at the time, just glanced at it to ensure that it seemed appropriate, renamed the company heading at the top and used it.

He wondered how they had known that clause was there, but again, that damn book, "An American Life" had made mention of it. He was hoist on Joe Sullivan's petard.

The IRS found several inconsistencies with his bookkeeping, and while they weren't much, with the loss of designers and loss of clients, it amounted to enough to kill the company. Three days before he was about to declare bankruptcy, he was offered thirty-two grand for the company, a particular dollar amount not lost on him. He had no choice to accept it. The company was taken over by the Julian Sullivan foundation, and renamed 'Sullivan's Designs'. The three designers who had quit were offered their jobs back and two accepted, the other having already taken another job.

Sullivan's Designs is now the preferred design group for Mercanos.

Peter Western was found in a motel in Sweetwater, Texas, four months later. Sweetwater was a small town just outside of Abilene. What he was doing there, he couldn't rightly say. He woke up after a night of drinking beer in a hotel bar in Fort Worth. He wasn't robbed, but he did have scratches over a lot of his body. He had some particularly heavy cuts on his penis and around his anus.

It took him a week to understand that he couldn't maintain an erection any more. Some of the cuts around the dorsal artery were such that when they healed, they blocked the artery to the top of the penis, stopping the blood flow. A large amount of the arterial wall had also been removed, so while blood flowed, it just went everywhere instead of where it was supposed to go to maintain an erection. When he got a professional opinion, they all were stumped. It was as if the cuts where made deliberately in order for the scar tissue to form in such a way as to prevent an erection.

Specialist plastic surgeons worked on it, but found that every time they made an incision into the scar tissue, more scar tissue formed that kept blocking the artery. Eventually they made another small artery into the main muscle of the penis, to ensure it got blood and didn't go gangrenous, but that his ability to maintain an erection would be impaired for the rest of his life.

Hector Gonzales was never found, either in Mexico or Paraguay. However, it is worth noting that very soon after the Julian Sullivan murder, a new sex worker at the premier niche brothel in Bogota, in Columbia, arrived. The sex worker was a man, who took up residence in the Paine Room. The Paine room was the specialist room, where those with sadistic sexual tendencies took their business. The inhabitants of that room never lasted long, but there was nothing off the table. Blood was often drawn in that room and it took a very masochistic person to want to be the victim in there.

This particular individual lasted longer than most, before being found three months later, dead, from running at a mirror, cracking it, and using the shards to cut his own wrists. There was talk about him being drugged or him not being there by choice, but since half the fun to be had in the abuse of the people in the Paine Room was their own reluctance, it was hard to tell if it was put on or not. Either way, it got the users of that room even more excited.

Many of the sadists who had abused this man had talked of his mania, of how his crazed eyes had been so wild, and how amazing it was to force a blowjob from a man with no teeth and no tongue. They did wonder at why there were so many copies of a picture of a man in American desert combat gear all over the room, posted so the sex worker would always see it, but the Madam of the brothel just spread her hands and told them it was a condition of his employment there.

The body was dumped in a shallow grave and no one mentioned him again.

Aaron Glasso changed his name at the earliest opportunity to Aaron Sullivan. Manny and his crew came to see him one Saturday, to take him out with them and tell him stories of his old man. When Penny wouldn't allow it, Manny stepped into the kitchen with her, talked for ten minutes, quietly, and after that, she never stopped him going out with the Cambridge Crew. Every time one was in town, they'd stop by and take him out to some museum or such and regale him with stories. April even went with them, when she wasn't out in the field. She made the cabin available to anyone of the crew who asked, and it was in frequent use. She was sure Joe would have liked that.

Tara Western retired days before "An American Life" was published, after first having agreed with April that she was allowed to – that her duties with the local homeless sheltered would be picked up by the Cambridge Crew. She relocated to Austin, Texas, where she bought a market gardening farm. They grew palm and fruit trees that were sold in Lowe's and Home Depot. She found more local homeless shelters to volunteer with. April was not about to let her off her pledge, and to her credit, Tara wasn't either. Hillier also quit and retired to Austin. Tara married him as soon as she was decently able, if only to get his last name and rid of hers. Anytime Ambrose Hillier was mad at Tara's behavior towards him, he called her Mrs. Sullivan, and it made her stop and think.

They try and keep in touch with April, and invite her every year to their annual 4th of July party, as well as Thanksgiving, but she never comes. She's not over her anger yet. She wasn't ready to see Tara happy. She knew it was wrong of her, and very unprofessional, but it was there.

April Carlisle went back to work at Ingrams. She still sees Marianne Dubowski professionally from time to time.

April Carlise and Ingrams & Assoc will be back in Life After Death.