Phantoms, Insults, Morals, and Technology

"What is the saying," Natasha asked tossing Lee an earpiece, "Safety in numbers?" I nodded, she caught my hand after I had loaded the bags in the big SUV and Lee had climbed into the driver's seat. "I will drive with you."

***Epilogue: July 27 2021

Not sure what to say about what has happened. Some of you will be outraged I wound up with a new woman less than a month after losing my wife. Some will think I'm a pussy for not taking her to bed that first night. Or the second. Or until a quiet night in October, when I knocked on her bedroom door and asked if she still wanted a kiss.

I will not be telling you about that. It's real, but I am not sure how long it will last... will Nastya and Lee move on as soon as I have built their legends and set up the safeguards? I will tell you that I hope so, and that if she leaves tomorrow it will hurt but that means it will have been worth it, that it was real.

So what will I say? Nastya and Lynd met. Marie approves.

Laney still visits me in my dreams, but she's usually just observing, occasionally scolding but more often nodding in support.

Business is still booming. Companies think Lee took over, and the seamless way she managed to take care of them when they worried their safties and secure sites would be exposed has built the business.

Oh, and all that work is just to keep our hands in, to keep an ear to the ground, posting a stalking horse for the next time someone comes along trying to even old scores. Because the wealth Laney and I shared was never going to be completely spent, even if we had tried, and we were not trying. And we have... more than tripled that.

See, the bag I brought from the mansion was ledgers and banks and passwords and codes. Lee was not lying, she is something of a computer savant, and showed me ways to keep from having banks or aggressive account holders or even governments find where the money in their black bag and slush fund accounts had gone. At first I thought the amounts she was talking about had to be wrong. But I guess when you are operating above board at the outset, it is easier to hide what you want to use illicitly in losses and bad business decisions.

Sadly, it has quickly become obvious these were not all of said slush funds; the men at the apex of modern business across the world do not seem to be looking for their money or for us, so I guess their bottom line decision is losing a fixer and his team again would cost more than finding the people who did it. A purely business approach, no 'honor' or 'vengeance' in the calculation. Probably a good approach, since they would never ever get much money back, and it could blow up in their faces and cost more than they have already lost.

Of course, their attitude may change when their losses get to a point. Or rather when they recognize those losses. Because I do not think they have admitted it to themselves, but they have been steadily losing for a year now. Remember that computer? It was a carefully constructed thoroughly researched organizational tree of a group that thinks it needs to be in charge of everything in the world. A nameless body of the world's top business leader—names you know and use talking to your friends and family—and pollical elite and a smattering of the most influential journalists and artists. People who believe their opinions to be the only correct ones, and who want the rest of us to live by their edicts.

Somedays it looks like they have succeeded. Politicians do their bidding for paltry bribes. Sometimes by extortion. You don't believe Epstein really killed himself, do you? That his paramour was convicted of trafficking but with no client ever being exposed. And Prince Ahole does not count. I mean, how are voters given the choice of a blowhard narcissist and a doddering demented old man? How do voters agree those are the two best choices, or after 'their' choice is elected, how do they not despair at what happens? How are corporations supported and protected by politicians with no one asking 'what about?' For my ladies, how does no one wonder about the graft in Ukraine or China or a dozen other second world nations? How do politicians making less than $200 k a year become millionaires?

The game is rigged. And it is more rigged every year. Am I saying they are all crooked? Hell yes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And as a globe people let their governments lock them in their homes and call their work 'non-essential' for months. They took an experimental vaccine, and came back two and three and more times, even when the disease proved less dangerous than the common cold for most of us.

But far too many are not anywhere near the organizational level, but like the citizens are ignorant, pleased to be used as pawns for their own momentary glory or a small measure of power and wealth. A handful of governors and representatives spring to mind. A supposedly communist senator who does not see the hypocrisy in three houses and million dollar book deals. Then again, it was not like Lenin and Stalin lived in squalor with their subjects.

I know, hearing that means more of you are now pissed at me than based on my finding a new love a week after my soulmate was killed and for not consummating that new love for months after it had been offered combined. Does it help if I mention deep south dyed in the wool Republicans who have let the Chinese make them rich, pretending it does not compromise them? Or the leaders of that morally bankrupt party who insist things will be better if they are in charge, and then fail to act when given the reins of power? Because those fools do not have the vision or dedication to be part of the organization. I know, you're still mad, and now more of you are, as well.

You know what? Good. Get pissed. Look at the Ethical Skeptic. Look at the death rates... try 'all cause mortality' and see what has happened since the virus made us all scared to demand transparency. Look at the rates of healthy athletes dying unexpectedly. Consider how much you paid to pay off your school loans, and remember your brother who did not go to college but went into the trades, now for both of your taxes to be handed out because someone spent a quarter million dollars on a degree that will not pay sixty thousand a year. Your taxes, not school endowments.

Or don't, it does not matter to me. We are as insulated as I can make us. The warning bells are set; anyone coming for my girls will quickly find themselves disappeared. I was surprised where they wanted to make a home, but we are safely tucked away in a place where no one can get within a half mile without our knowing about it. If we are not on an island where the natives know we are the good guys and anyone coming after us is not. Or any of a half dozen places for when they want a change of pace. More as you read this, because a paranoid with funding does not stop preparing.

Or could you care less about my point of view about all of this, and instead you are mad because I never followed through on my promise, never killed the brain that was responsible for Laney's death.

Was there not a terrible symmetry to the firebug who ruined my world dying by the means to prevent those fires? Essentially at his own hand, considering I never invited him in. You wanted more pain and fear in his end? Hell, me too. But pain and fear can be messy and bring about additional risk. And I do not think Laney would have wanted me to be the sort of reaper taking pleasure in the bastard's pain.

You did not really think I stopped shooting for the brain, though, did you? First I had to make sure my new family was safe. And that meant days and nights talking about what had happened, what they thought, and what they could prove. There were so many parallels between what had happened to Nastya and Lee's father it was scary. And then as we went through the computer, finding corroboration in the meticulous records that the Whistleblower had accessed and copied—not created himself—for what Nastya and Lee thought was truth, it became obvious we had a shared enemy who had stalked us unawares. I hate that. I hate that having proof of direct ties between the men and women who made kill decisions for the organization would not lead to a single deserving person being punished by any court in the world today. I stopped looking at the other lives that the organization ruined, hikers killed because they might have passed within hearing distance of a secret meeting in Joshua Tree national park. Tourists killed horribly because they could have seen a secret exchange in an undeveloped lagoon on the Yucatan peninsula. Workers who were suicided because they dared ask for more wages or more time off or better working conditions.

Anything that threatens their status quo, their 'perfect order' must be destroyed. I stopped looking at the specifics because the truth was obvious, they may not know it consciously, but their certainty that they are right in every facet of life cannot stand up to critique and alternative plans as a whole or in their individual positions. So what, you ask? They have money and security and legal protection. And it is just the three of us, so what difference can we make?

Like I said, they may not even recognize what is happening. Thanks to her Whistleblower, we have detailed blueprints to the death star, so to speak. So do not believe we have not been acting out.

Don't believe me? Well, I can understand that... Did you read about the discovery of four bodies with no obvious wounds but evidence they had intended to start a fire during CHOP? No? Because there was none. There was never an investigation of Leo and his team. Who would have the power to keep that from being a major story.

You have heard about the last guy... His stabbing death was one of the crimes that brought an end to CHOP, but of course the story of just how he died had to be spun.

You heard about massive crypto losses? Wonder how that would happen and who lost big. How about banks failing? And those are just the things you hear about; Billionaires with their own security force and with private holdings are not always keen to admit when they have lost hundreds of millions. Huge sums of money that we 'liberated' and have left them with less money to spend altering the world to fit their perspective.

And I should not be too hard on COVD. There was a year where anyone with COVID who died died OF COVID. Including an incredibly wealthy and influential guy who died in a hit and run motorcycle crash. And there are those deaths attributed to the results of the lockdown. A guy who threw himself to his death from his condo balcony. A handful or opioid overdoses, carbon monoxide poisoning. See, taking away the money they were using to influence the world was fun. But I meant what I said. And there are still names on the list. The organizational chart was not complete. Will I go back, trying to prune the replacements for the amoral scumbags that would kill innocent people over concern their financial crimes were going to be exposed? If they're still doing it, I've decided they're culpable. Nastya worries it's an obsession. But we've also attacked the European side of the problem, because it is not just an American cabal. And unlike the Syndicate, it's not even aware it's hemorrhaging.

It's not a perfect ending. Some of the biggest scumbags are clearly beyond our reach... for now. And they go on taking advantage of people like you and me. But Nastya made me promise that taking everyone of them down would not become my obsession. Natasha and Lee are my family. If anything is worth being obsessed by, it's family. Don't believe me? Just ask Vin Diesel. And lighten up. You never know when fat or kismet or karma or chance is going to throw a monkey wrench in your plans. You have heard the adage 'Man Plans, God Laughs'? I think it is real. So I am going to enjoy what I have and what we are doing. And when it changes we both know I will be back to the bitter angry sarcastic loner I was. But that will have to be another story.

Besides, Nastya says I need to stop talking to myself like this. Something about negative labels creating negative outcomes. She says I already know all of this, and I have learned I should listen to her. So there you go.

==

Cast:

Abelour hero

Laceywife/ partner, dead

Elliotman Friday, dead

Whistleblowerdead

Bruce Patricreal estate agent

Marie LyndIA investigator

Leonard'cleaner' for the

FrankSam's Tavern owner

Leeclerk at Molly Moon

Natashamanager at Molly Moon

Fez SimonCHOP warlord

***Author's Note:

I do work from a rough outline... I am including that below, for anyone wondering how it gets from my head to the net. There are always changes and shifts. I hope you enjoyed it. This and a sequel to my submission from the 1st Hammertime, so it has been rattling around in my gourd for a couple years.

And for fans of Sharon and Ann, their stories are still not done There is solid work on Sharon, but a change in the continuity is requiring a lot of changes. One of these days there will be a new chapter, but don't hold your breath. D, R, those who have asked, I see your posts and appreciate the encouragement... when we get years out and I am having trouble making the new chapter feel unique and not a rehash of past work it's easy to put it back on the shelf and start something like this.

Still not really 'Spillane like' but hopefully a story with some twists and turns that kept you reading and maybe it almost felt real.

RA

=Story Outline=

wake from good dream. imply bad situation.

in Coos Bay

driving up 101.

Pacific City, Astoria

in on 30 to I5, skirt portland and its disaster

outskirts of Seattle,

drive by home.

Able is mad. and alone. On the run. Trying to fight back.

rent upper story of building just north of PD that was evacuated.

paid cash, imply journalist, don't want to be seen, no guests...

Hiding in Chop, but for a purpose.

Glad for the masks and chaos, telling self not to get involved.

Nightmares of explosion and death.

Look out the front room window... non-descript rental sedan parked at cur outside destroyed building, 2 occupants, too calm.

Letting the killer get away?... for the moment...

Money in accounts... did Mob want him dead more than their money back?

A trap?

'safe house' beside business. explosion collapsed tunnel.

wife gone. vagrant employed as man friday dead. slip into dentist's office, swap records.

How did they find us?

Programmer had sent emails. Encrypted, secure server, so to Seattle

Beeline across US, 2 lane roads? Trade the car? Nope, not retagging. Main roads.

Hollywood to Nashville 13 hours. Nashville to KC 8 hours.

KC to Salt Lake 15.5 hours. Salt Lake to Coos Bay 13.5 hours

Paying cash.

Mom's Kitchen over the Pancake Mill

Front page story: literally splashy murder, found floating in his work clothes in his indoor pool, no note. Had trashed his computers

Stop for new phone.

Need a new base. Need... deniable internet access.

Hiding out in CHOP... access to college and police records.

Rent second floor for cash for a month... 'journalist, wanting to record what happens.

Hasty office set up 2 days.

Surreptitious visits and lots of CAT5 wire. Mesh system with Repeaters, Amazon cameras

B&E...

Found a Lenovo think pad in the lower level kitchen oven.

Voicemail... hadn't checked, her voice... how did programmer get his cell?

He had it... but they had discovered him... so they had it... and their emails and contacts and downloads.

Trigger in files... begins trace when he opens it. But requires MS LIVE.

Craziness in CHOP, threats, threat to ice cream server closing shop.

Raz Simone interaction about Floyd and threats to the woman/ business.

Tough who had started it follows Abel home... disarmed. Elbow dislocated between PD and electric apartments... stows the AR, leads hood to Raz at checkpoint.

Sees the killer... they had the same car, too, parked inside of CHOP, belligerently asking questions and showing a photo.

Tavern owner shrugs, says no, then warns Abel.

Hood tells them about the ice cream shop.

Pushes plan up... get the weapon, not the brain... yet.

=Research from the internet for the story=

Epstien dead Aug 19, 19

CHOP June 2020 23 days: June 8 to July 1

COVID underway

-Southern border Pine ST: South End, West to East:

Blick art materials; Oddfellows Café; Mud Bay' Elliot Bay Book Co; Sam's Tavern; Badwill Market; Molly Moon ice cream

Empty floor above the Rhino Room; Sunset Electric Apartments; Seattle PD; Little Big Burger; Ramen Danbo

-East edge south to north , 12th Ave, cut out 13th ave

NW Liquor

Café Argento

Atulea; Car Tender

-West Edge: Broadway, cut in Nagle Place, south to north:

Cap Hill Farmer's Market; Pizza on the Hill; Panera; Seattle Central College

-North edge East Denny Way, Just outside NW:

Starbucks; Anapurna Café; Just outside NE: Roasters __asters