Neptune's Payback - Part 4

This is a continuation of:

• Neptune's Payback - Part 1
• Neptune's Payback - Part 2
• Neptune's Payback - Part 3

Neptune's Payback - Part 4

After dropping their bags off at the Hotel Saint Germain, Amanda and Coop walk toward the Musée Rodin, about a half mile away.  Both have their hands deep into their coat pockets as they walk into cold wind coming off the Seine.

Continuing their conversation of the past several hours, Cooper says through chattering teeth, “Damn, it’s cold.  OK, about Rodin… I don’t know if you are on the right track or not.  Sure, it’s possible that the priest might have confided in Rodin.  A lot of what you told me seems to point to it.  But I just can’t buy the part about a document.”

“Why not?” Amanda asks.  “According to the Vatican, the priest left behind some sort of documentation about his ‘visitation.’  I mean, that’s what the Pope is so anxious to get a hold of, and I’d bet is paying a pretty penny to find.  Brother ‘Knights of the Whatever’ or not, the US is not going to commits these kinds of resources for free, you know?”

Coop rolls his eyes.  “I hope the price is high.  The Vatican can certainly afford it.”

Amanda continues, “I still think it has to be a document of some sort.  What else could it be?  I checked every artifact attributed to the priest, and he didn’t leave behind anything but written stuff.  Vow of poverty, and all that, you know.  All there was to leave behind was his writings.”

“Think about it, Minnie. We’re talking over one hundred years here.  How likely is it that some piece of paper survived that long, and all without anyone knowing about it?  You think Rodin took this document from the priest, hid it among his things, and no one found it in all these years?  Come on.”  Coop huffs on his cold hands and rubs them together before shoving them back into his pockets.

Amanda looks over at him.  “You should have brought gloves.  I warned you,” she comments, and goes on.  “Well, when you say it like that, it does sound kind of unlikely.  Maybe he hid it in a sculpture…”

“You’d better hope not, because if he did, we are shit out of luck.”

Amanda touches the wall of the large gray stone building to her left.  “This is it. The entrance is around the corner.”

After paying for their tickets and attaching the round orange sticker allowing access to the museum on their coats, Amanda and Cooper open the map handed to them by the ticket agent and begin their tour.

 

“The museum closes at 4:45PM.  There’s no way we’ll manage to see the gardens today, so I only bought tickets to the house,” Amanda says as they head into the exhibits.  “We’ll come back tomorrow for that."

For the rest of the afternoon, they walk though many rooms of the museum, marveling at the sculptures, and speculating.  At the end of the day, they are awe-struck, exhausted and no closer to an answer than the day before.

“Come on, Minnie.  Let’s get some dinner and a bottle of wine.  This is France, after all.  I’m on information overload.  I need some time to let all this percolate.”

*** 

The next day, after a croissant and café, Coop and Amanda are at the Musée Rodin when it opened.  Adding the green Jardin sticker to the orange one already on their coats, they walk around the around the mansion through the rose garden, its bushes covered for the winter.  Coop is grateful that he stopped to by some boots and glove on the way to the museum. A light snow has fallen during the night and the snow crunches beneath their feet as they walk.  

The two take their time, looking carefully at statue in the garden.  As they stand at the base of The Thinker, Coop says, “Damn.  I’ve got to admit; just standing in front of this gives me the chills.”

“It’s magnificent.  In fact, it all is,” Amanda replies.  “But I’m coming to the conclusion that you were right.  I haven’t seen anything that supports my theory.  This is just a collection of wonderful sculptures.”

As they turn to go back, Coop spots a large sculpture along the outer wall, and heads that way.  As they walk, he flips through the pages of the Musée Rodin: Guide to the Gardens they’d picked up earlier.

"It’s called La Porte de l'Enfer, the Gates of Hell,” he says. 

The piece is enormous, and extremely detailed.  As they look closely, Amanda says, “Wow, a lot of the statues we’ve seen here are worked into this piece.  There’s The Kiss and on top, The Three Shades.  And, look,” there’s The Thinker.”

“The guide says that when Rodin carved this, The Thinker was also called The Poet, and that many believe the figure is supposed to be Dante Alighieri,” Coop reads.

He looks up at the figure high above his head, and then suddenly grabs Amanda’s arm.  “Minnie, look. See that inscription carved at the top?”  

Amanda looks up at sees the words “LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE.”

“I think you might on the right track after all,” Coop says with a tinge of excitement in his voice.

For the next hour, Coop and Amanda examine the large sculpture.   They run their fingers into its many crevices, stopping whenever one of the few visitors to the garden in the cold afternoon air comes their way.

Stepping back with a sigh, “I don’t know, Coop.  There just nothing here.”

“Doesn’t seem to be,” Cooper concedes.  “But, geez, there are just too many clues here to be a coincidence.  I think we missed something.”

“How could we? We’ve probed every inch of this thing that we could reach.  You think there’s something up at the top?”  Amanda is feeling incredibly frustrated, and can tell she’s getting testy.

“Hey, relax, Minnie.”  Coop brushes the snow off a nearby bench and the two of them sit down.

“No, probably not.  I keep coming back to the fact that nothing could be hidden on one of the statues and not be found long before now.”  He scratches pulls off his hat and scratches his head, leaving his curls in a tangles mess.

“But,” he stands and pulls the hat back on, “there’s something here.  I smell it.”

Amanda looks up at him with an oh, puh-lease look on her face.

“Hey, I am Hall Cooper, am I not?”  Coop grabs her hand and pulls her to her feet.  “Come on, I want to look inside again.”

***

“There.”  Cooper leads Amanda to a bust they’d passed by quickly yesterday, since they could see no openings or crevices where anything could be hidden.  “I thought I remembered seeing this.  Do you have the Guide for the exhibits in here?”

Amanda digs into her pocket, pulls out the booklet, and hands it to him.  He finds the page describing the bust in front of them and reads the blurb.  Before finishing, he holds the page in front of her, and pointing with his finger, says, “Read this.”

She takes the booklet from him and reads, “The priest…

“Yeah, so?  This is important how?”

“Minnie, think.  Isn’t this our guy?  The one who supposedly saw the light?”

Amanda looks at the top of the page to find the name of the piece.  “Yes!  How did we miss that yesterday?”  She looks at Coop, completely forgetting her fatigue and frustration of a few minutes ago. 

“But I still don’t see how this helps us,” she says leaning around to look at the back of the sculpture. “We can’t pick the thing up and look under it or anything.  Even if we could heft it – it’s solid bronze and probably heavy as hell – moving it would no doubt sound alarms and bring the guards running.”

Cooper nods.  “Right.  But remember what I said about the ‘documentation’ not being a hidden document?  Well, maybe I was wrong.  Maybe it is hidden… hidden in plain sight.”

As Amanda’s brow furrows, Coop gestures toward the bust again.  “Look.”

She looks again, and realizes that the priest is holding a scroll in his arms.  Carved on the scroll are several words.  “Latin.”

“The guide says that some of the words are misspelled.  How likely is that, Minnie?”  Cooper’s eyes gleam as he looks at Amanda.

A small smile creeps onto to her lovely face, and she leans over and plants a big kiss on his cheek.

“How likely, indeed.  And don’t call me Minnie.”


Continued in Part 5

Neptune's Payback - Part 3

This is a continuation of Neptune’s Payback – Part 1 and Neptune’s Payback Part 2.

Cooper slowly regains consciousness.  It takes a minute, but he realizes that he is slumped in a heap on the floor of the third phone booth in the row of booths inside the old railway station, his phone card on the floor beside him.  If he didn’t know better, he might believe that the incredible events of the past day -- which played like a low-budget sci-fi film -- had all been a figment of his imagination or the effects of way too many cervejas.  But he does know better.  His last memory is pretty much the reverse of what happened at the beginning of this whole thing.

At the end of the briefing, Minerva had escorted him back to the booth in which he’s arrived, pointed to a number taped to the inside wall, smiled saucily at him, and said, “Phone home, ET.  I’ll see you soon.”

Funny lady. Not to mention sexy as all hell. Shit yeah. Coop looks forward to seeing her again.

He tries and fails to shift position and ease the cramping in his legs.  He lifts his eyes just in time to meet the glare of a uniformed security guard who leans down to vigorously shake his shoulder, yelling at him to wake up. 

“Senhor, senhor.  Accorde-se.”  

As Coop struggles to his feet, he is overwhelmed by the smell of cachaça and quickly realizes that the alcoholic stink is coming from him.  No wonder the guard looks like he smells a skunk, he thinks.  Since he hates the Brazilian liquor, he knows his Pantheon hosts must have doused him in it.

With all the courtesy to be accorded a drunk, the guard hauls Coop to the door and unceremoniously tosses him out onto the pavement of Avenida Francisco Bicalho, along with angry exhortations to never return again.  Frowning in disapproval, pedestrians give him wide berth as he makes his way to the bus stop, staggering a bit as he fights his dizziness and the residual cramps in his legs.  He wonders how long he was out cold in that phone booth.

***

After a very welcome shower, Cooper gathers up his reeking clothes and heads to the laundry room.  He fishes through the pockets of his cargo shorts before stuffing everything into the washer, tossing his wallet, keys, coins, cell phone and a Bluebeard marlin lure on the counter.  As he’s about to add the shorts to the clothes in the machine, he hears a crinkle from one of the pockets.  He checks again, and pulls out the slip of paper he’d stuffed in his back pocket when Minerva handed it to him just before his “trip” home.  Some trip. And all without the help of any pharmaceuticals.  I’m going to have to look into that, he thinks.

While the washing machine does its work, Cooper grabs a Guarana Antarctica from the fridge, and flops down on the couch to look at whatever Minerva gave him before sending him on his way and review what he’d heard at the Pantheon.

Unfolding the slip of paper, Coop sees a single line.

LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE.

Not even sure what language it is, let alone what it says, Coop shoves in the pocket of his jeans, making a mental note to look it up later.  He means to plot a course of action toward finding this thing left behind by the priest, but his mind keeps drifting to Minerva.  That is one damn fine woman.  “I’ll see you soon,” she’d said.  He wonders how soon.

He doesn’t get very far into his reverie before he is sound asleep.  Sometime later, a bell pulls him back to the here and now.  The washing machine, he thinks.  He sits up, and sees that it’s almost dark outside his living room window.  He can barely make out the beach below.  A glance at his watch tells him he’s been sleeping a couple of hours.  Exhausting business, all this Flash Gordon derring-do.

He heads toward the laundry room when the bell sounds again, this time a bit more insistently.  Ah, the doorbell.  Not the washing machine after all.  He goes to the door and looks through the peephole to see Minerva standing in the hall outside. 

Minerva by Auguste Rodin

Grinning, he pulls open the door and says, “Hi.  What phone booth did you pop out of, Minnie?”

Minerva is wearing civvies, and may just be the best looking woman Coop has ever seen.  Out of uniform, with her thick brunette hair free of the severe bun she's been wearing every time he's seen her, she looks much more approachable.

“Phone booth?  Whatever are you talking about?” she asks, widening her dark brown eyes disingenuously.  “I just came from the airport.  And don’t call me Minnie.  My name is Amanda.”  

She smiles at him and walks into the apartment.  As she passes him, Coop admires the way her khaki slacks and Oxford shirt compliment her curves.

“I’m glad to find you smelling better than the last time I saw you.  You’ve really got to lay off the hootch.”

“Yeah, thanks very much for that,” Coop answers.  “I’m lucky I didn’t wake up in the drunk tank instead of the train station.”

After dropping her bags just inside the door, Amanda heads across the room to the French doors leading to the balcony.  She pulls them open and steps out into the soft Brazilian dusk.  

“Nice place you’ve got here.  Is that the famous Ipanema Beach down there?” she asks.

“Nope. That neighborhood’s a bit too rich for my blood,” Coop answers.  “That’s Copacabana Beach. On any given Sunday, half the families in Rio are down there.”

“Gorgeous.  Now go pack.  And bring a jacket; it’s apt to be cold.  We’re going to Paris.”

***

It’s about 10PM when Amanda and Cooper settle into their comfortable seats for the 14-hour flight to Charles de Gaulle airport.  

“First class.  I gotta tell you, Minnie, I much prefer this mode of travel to the last one.”  Coop takes a sip of the champagne the flight attendant has just handed him.

Without turning from the window, where she is looking out as Rio drops below them, she replies, “Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, that was much faster.”

“I suppose, but I wouldn’t really know.  I was out, remember?  One of these days, you have to tell me how you guys did that.”

She turns to look at him.  “Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, and just as I was beginning to find you rather charming, despite your rough edges.”  She grins and turns back to the window.

“Rio looks magnificent from up here, like someone scattered a bunch of diamonds on a velvet cloth,” she says.  “I can see why you chose to live here.”

She turns back to Cooper, all business now, and says, “OK, let’s get to it.  I have a lot to tell you and then I think we should both get a little sleep.  It’s been a long day, and one of us didn’t have a nap.  

Amanda yawns widely, and Coop is totally charmed.

“Do you have that slip of paper I gave you?” she asks.

Cooper pulls the paper from the pocket of his jeans.  “I’ve got it, but I didn’t have a chance to look it up.  What is it?”

“Are you familiar with Dante?” Amanda asks.

“Sure, The Inferno, the nine levels of Hell, all that.” Coop asks.

“Right.  The quote I gave you, which is Latin, by the way, is the inscription that Dante sees over the entry to Hell in The Inferno.  It roughly translates to ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

“Ah, Latin,” Coop says.  “That would explain why I couldn’t translate it.  I had a suspicion hope was involved somehow.  Hope in Portuguese is esperança.”

Amanda nods.  “Yes, pretty similar.  It’s that romance languages thing. They all come from Latin somehow.”

“But what does this saying have to do with the priest and his vision?” Coop asks.

“Well, this is a bit convoluted, and I may be totally off base,” Amanda says.  “As I mentioned back at the Pantheon, I’ve been beating the bushes looking for leads on this one for a long time.  I think I may be on to something.  If I’m right, the place to start is Paris.  If we’re lucky, it may also be the place the search will end.  On the other hand, I may be taking us down absolutely the wrong path.  I’m no Hall Cooper, you know.  I’m hoping you can help me pull it all together.”

Coop pulls his best humble face.  “Aw, shucks, ma’am.  You’ll turn my head.”

The flight attendant appears with two dinner trays and more champagne.  Cooper looks down at the filet he’s ordered, and smiles.  “Now that’s what I’m talking about.  This is the way to travel.”  He picks up his knife and fork, and attacks his steak.

“So what’s your thinking on this?  What’ve you got?”

Amanda takes a bite of the grouper on her plate but quickly puts down the fork and picks up her champagne glass instead.

She takes a deep breath, and begins laying out her premise.  

“Our priest, the one who sees things, was a family friend of the sculptor Rodin.”

“The guy who did The Thinker, right?” 

“Yes.  From what I’ve been able to discover, Rodin had a bit of a breakdown after his older sister died unexpectedly of peritonitis in a convent.  I think Rodin was about 22 at the time, and hadn’t really done any important pieces yet.  He was working as a tradesman, doing decorative pieces for other scuptors.  When his sister died, he decided to devote himself to God in her stead, and joined a Catholic order as a lay brother.  Guess who ran the order?”

“I’m guessing that would be our guy.”

“And you would be right.”  Amanda nods.  “Rodin didn’t stay at the monastery long, but long enough, I think.”

“So you think the priest gave whatever it is to Rodin?”

“I do.”

“Where does Dante come into this?”  Cooper finishes the last bite of this steak.  “Hey, Minnie, you going to finish that?” he asks, indicating the nearly untouched fish on Amanda’s palate.

Handing over her plate, Amanda goes on.  “From I could learn, it seems to me that Rodin and the priest shared a common interest.  Both were somewhat obsessed with Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Given its subject matter, Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, it’s easy to see why a Catholic priest might be drawn to studying the poem, but Rodin?  Though I found several references to the fact that Rodin carried a copy of the Inferno in his pocket, it doesn’t appear in his work until after he spent that time at the monastery.  But then…”

The flight attendant cleared away the dishes, and left Amanda and Cooper blankets, pillows, and eyeshades.

“So you think…what?  It's a pretty big leap, Minnie.”

“It’s worth looking into.  We’re going to Paris to visit the Rodin Museum and take a look at his work, up close and personal.  But for now, Mr. Cooper, I think we should get some rest.  We’ll have a little time before we land.  I’ll tell you the rest then.  Good night.”

Amanda turns off the light and pushes her seat back.  She pulls on the eyeshade and snuggles in under the blanket.

Cooper’s nap earlier in the day hadn’t begun to do the job, so he’s happy to call it a night.  Before he can say good night, from under the blanket next to him come Amanda’s final words.  

“And don’t call me Minnie.”

Continued in Part 4

Neptune's Payback - Part 2

(This is a continuation of Neptune’s Payback – Part 1)

Cooper gets to his feet and brushes away the dust collected by his cargo shorts and old “Marku e Marley – Jamaican Me Crazy, Mon” t-shirt as he crawled along the tracks into the train station.  He orients himself and heads to the main concourse, where he is brought up short by the vast space before him.   His mouth drops open in awe.  The Leopoldina Estação is magnificent, and totally empty.  Closed years ago, the old railway station is used now only as a movie set and for events.  A real fan of old buildings, Coop takes a moment to appreciate the majesty of this one.  He’s glad it wasn’t torn down, and even gladder that it had been so easy to break into from trackside.

He locates the bay of old telephone booths and sees to his relief that the third booth is the center phone booth in the row.  All the way over here, he’s been worrying how he will know if it were the third booth from the left or the right.  As he steps into the booth and pulls the door closed, he feels like he’s stepping back in time. Who uses phone booths anymore? 

Taking out his wallet, Coop digs through his credit cards for the prepaid phone card he’s carried for this call.  He inserts it into the slot on the face of the phone, punches in the number, and quickly pulls the card from the slot.  Until now, when he made his annual check-in call, he heard a tone acknowledging receipt of the call, and he was done.

Not this time, no siree bob.  The only way he can explain what happened when he had pulled out the phone card is to say he lost consciousness.  Well, either that or he fell through a worm-hole.  Hey, it could happen.  The next thing he knows, he is standing in a different and very high tech-looking phone booth still clutching his phone card, and a familiar woman in an unfamiliar uniform is just outside the booth.  He feels as though the world is spinning, and he thinks he might faint.  Again.  The woman pushes open the door and says, “Welcome to the Pantheon, Neptune. You look a little woozy.  Let’s go into the briefing room and you can sit down.”

“Woozy?  Woozy???  Honey, you have no idea. What the hell just happened?”  Cooper looks around but sees absolutely nothing familiar except for this beautiful woman he knows only as Minerva, whom he hasn’t seen for over five years.  He seems to be in some kind of facility.  The gleaming walls look like titanium or some other metal, and are featureless. 

Minerva leads him down a long hallway.  As they walk, she says, “You will probably be here a while, but don’t worry about your charters.  You texted Heitor that you’ve been called away, and to cover for you.” 

“Oh, I did, huh?”  Heitor was Coop’s first mate on occasion.  He’d take care of the customers as long as needed, Coop knew.  “Glad I thought of it.”

About half way down the hall, there’s an open door and they enter a small conference room, where three men in civvies wait.  The last time Cooper saw them, they were very much in uniform, serving as members of the tribunal he’d faced when he returned after what he’d come to think of as his Roman Fiasco.

“You remember Virtus, Vulcan and Mars?”  Coop nods and gratefully sinks into one of the chairs at the table.  “Howdy, fellas.  Now does somebody want to tell me just where the hell I am, and how I got here?”

“We apologize for your unconventional mode of travel, Neptune,” Virtus says with a slight smile.

Coop snorts. “You’re shitting me, right? Unconventional? That’s what you call it?”

Mars clears his throat.  “Yes, well, let’s get to the reason we sent for you, shall we?  As you’ll recall, when we saved you from your just desserts, we told you that one day we would have a task for you.  That day has come, I am afraid.”

“Yeah, got that idea.”  Coop feels less dizzy, and he’s feeling better all the time as he remembers the full pardon he’ll be granted after he completes their little task.  Besides, he plans to go back for that ring once this is over and he’s no longer being watched. His pardon will release him from Big Brother’s watchful eye. 

Since it’s obvious they aren’t going to explain whatever gee-whiz technology got him here, might as well get to the point. 

“So what’s the deal?”

Over the next several hours, Cooper listens as the four people with their spy-novel code names brief him.  The more he hears about the task at hand, the less confident he is in his ability to pull it off.  He wouldn’t have believed there was anything he couldn’t find and retrieve.  He knew he was that good.   For the first time, though, he is wondering if he is good enough.

It's a long, convoluted story, and if Coop is honest, it all sounds pretty damned far-fetched to him.  Which, now that he thinks about it, should be no surprise, given it's coming from guys who call themselves Virtus, Vulcan and Mars.  But given what rides on this, Coop is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 Mars begins with the “back story,” as he calls it.

"According to our contact at the Vatican, there was a priest a couple of centuries ago who purportedly was visited by a vision during the Consecration prayer in the Mass.  As he held the host aloft, and pronounced the words, 'hic est enim corpus meum' (this is my body), the host began to glow, he said.  He claimed he and the host were encompassed in a golden light and Christ appeared to tell him something of great import."

Coop can't help himself.  He knows he shows this “miracle” something less than the respect he perhaps should.  His snort of derision was probably a giveaway to his disbelief.

"Please, Neptune.  Let us finish," Vulcan chides.  "It doesn't really matter if we believe it or not, does it?  Apparently the Pope does."

 Chastised, Cooper nods.  "Sorry."

Mars picks up the story.  "Apparently, this priest somehow documented his great moment of truth, and the Pope wants that documentation.  Badly.  Badly enough to call a fellow Knight of Malta and ask for help."

 "What in God's name" -- Cooper pauses to chuckle at his choice of words as the others roll their eyes -- "is a 'Knight of Malta'?"

The others at the table exchange looks.

“None of this is anything Neptune couldn’t find with an Internet search,” Minerva says, “so there’s no reason not to tell him.”

She smiles at Coop, and he winks back at her, thinking, you got that right, Honey.

Nodding, Mars continues, “The ‘Knights of Malta’ has been known by many names.  It began in the 11th century as an order of monks who cared for the sick.  You may have heard the name ‘Knights Hospitaller’.”   

 Cooper nods.

“The organization’s history since has been the stuff of great conjecture and legend, much of it fictional.  How much?”  Mars shrugs.  “There was some connection to the Knights Templar, though just what no one knows for sure. Historians differ on that.  Though the organization most certainly spent time serving as a military entity, today they have no military involvement.”

“At least not publicly,” Virtus adds, with no small amount of sarcasm.

Mars shoots him a frown and continues.

“Today, the ‘Knights of Malta’ is a Catholic organization with the status of a sovereign entity.  They maintain diplomatic relations with over 100 countries, the US being one of them, and it has observer status at the UN, much like that of the Red Cross.”

Mars pauses to take a drink of water from the glass in front of him, and Vulcan continues for him.

“Membership in the order is by invitation only, and must be approved by the Pope.  There are over 13,000 members worldwide, many in the US.  Since confidentiality is a part of the oath taken when a Knight is sworn in, we have no way of knowing just who they are.  Suffice it to say that one of the US members is in a position to commandeer our services, and through us, yours.”

Coop raises his eyebrows.  “This all sounds very, um, cloak and dagger.  But, whatever.  I’m in this now, so let’s get back to my mission.  If I understood correctly, you want me to find the – what did you call it? – ‘documentation’ that the priest made, back in the day, of his vision and its secret message.”  Cooper pauses, and rubs his hand over his eyes.  “I can’t believe I’m actually saying those words.  But given what’s happened today, I guess nothing should surprise me.  Anyway, how am I going to do this?  Obviously I need more than what you’ve told me.”

Minerva leans forward and meets Cooper’s eye.  “We’ve been looking, or I should say, I’ve been looking, for this for some time.  I’ve managed to pick up tidbits of information, and I’ll share what I’ve found with you.  But I’ve got to warn you, Neptune, it isn’t much.”

“You’ve succeeded on assignments in the past when, frankly, we thought you had not a snowball’s chance in hell,” Virtus says.  “This time you have something personal riding on it.  If ever you wanted to bring it home, this would be the time. Literally.”

Virtus, Vulcan and Mars stand and come around the table.

“Good luck, Neptune,” Mars says.  “We’re counting on you.”

After shaking Cooper’s hand, the three leave the conference room.  Minerva stands, gestures toward the door, and says with a wide smile, “Shall we, Mr. Cooper?”

Continued in Part 3

Neptune's Payback - Part 1

Hall Cooper is having a very good day.  

The weather is magnificent on this perfect summer day. A day like this reminds him why he left the humidity of the Florida Keys and came to Rio.   Well, OK, that and the fact that they’d ordered him to get out of the country until further notice.

Coop has just returned from a very successful charter.  Of course, it’s always a successful charter when no one tosses his cookies all over the deck of his MarineWay 60. Today, the fish were biting, and his customers caught several worth writing home about in spite of their obvious lack of fishing experience.  He had to bait a hook or two, but they’d been able to land their catches themselves.  Pretty impressive, actually, since a couple of the fish they’d pulled in were good-sized marlin.

After they return to the docks and Coop has Latitude Adjustment tied up, the exhausted but happy customers pose for pictures showing off their trophies. Coop is pleased when they express that happiness with the especially generous tip they hand him as they leave.  To celebrate, he heads for his favorite dockside watering hole, Saúde, and orders what will be the first of several cervejas.  Though Carnivale is still a month away, the outside tables are packed with tourists sipping caipirinhas and gawking at Sugarloaf, many of them tanned and scantily-attired lovely young ladies. 

For whatever reason, women find Coop’s scruffy looks appealing.  He has deep blue eyes, like the sea that makes it possible for him to live here in Rio, trolling for more than just fish.  He wears his graying curls on the longish side, adding to the wild and wooly look the ladies seem to like.   Women don’t even seem to mind the "eau de pescador" that clings to his clothes like a signature scent.  Tonight is no different.  Coop spends an hour or so of flirting with a pretty red-headed dental assistant escaping the brutal Chicago winter back at home.  After a couple more caipirinhas, which he is happy to buy for her (Coop hates them, but he’s gotta love their effect on the uninitiated), she is more than willing to take him back to her hotel room.  And he is more than willing to help her create an exciting carioca memory to warm her through the rest of the winter.  

He is just getting to it when he hears the distinctive tones coming from the cell phone in his cargo shorts.

“Fuck!  Sorry, honey, no pun intended.”  Coop relaxes his arms and collapses onto the redhead beneath him.  His arms aren’t the only body parts that collapse, and he knows he’s lost his mojo.  

After all these years, that sound from the cell phone is one he’d about decided he’d never hear.  But he really enjoys his freedom, so there is no way he is going to ignore it.  He rolls off the redhead, who is looking decidedly pissed off, and reaches for his shorts, puddled on the floor beside the bed.  He grapples with the flap of the side pocket and yanks out the phone.  There on the screen is the coded text message he was told to expect when all this started years ago.

Neptune alpha gamma 502-d charlie

He’s being summoned. He has to chuckle when he reads the message.  It’s all so cloak and dagger.  “Neptune” is his code name (code name – who’d a thunk?) and the rest of the message directs him to a bank of old-time closed phone booths, the only ones left in Rio.  “Charlie” tells him to go to the third booth, and dial the untraceable number he’d been required to memorize and call once a year, “just to check in.”

He yanks on his shorts and steps into his sandals as he zips up.  

“Sorry, Rhonda, but I’m afraid I have to go.  I hate to leave like this, especially like this,” he grins at her, “but it’s important.”  Without waiting for a reply, he’s out the door.

***

Hall Cooper’s military career should have been the stuff of legend, not to mention many a good yarn told over a few single malts.  Yeah, would have been, too, were he allowed to talk about it.  But part of the deal that kept him out of Leavenworth was the mother of all gag orders.  Since Coop is no fan of closed spaces, he was more than happy to comply.  The other part of the deal wasn’t something that concerned him much.  Like Scarlett, he figured he could worry about that tomorrow, if tomorrow ever came.    When several years went by without a call on his IOU, he’d begun to think he was never going to have to pay that part of the debt. He was sorry about that, because paying it would buy him a complete pardon.

Before his exile, Cooper was a retrieval expert.  Although technically, he’d been in one branch of the service (the Marines, the best branch, as far as Coop was concerned), in truth, he’d been in none.  As part of some government agency – he’d never known which one -- he’d worked with military and assorted other agencies in the US, plus a few in other countries for good measure.  When the brass – any brass -- needed something seemingly impossible to get, Coop was your man.  Nothing was impossible to get, not as far as Hall Cooper was concerned.

And that’s where he’d gotten himself into a world of hurt.  

Several years ago, Cooper caught wind of an intriguing rumor about an artifact in Europe, but it was so vague and far-fetched, he mentally filed it away and forgot about it.  Over the next few years, however, he picked up additional tidbits about the artifact on the jungle drums, as he liked to call the vast rumor mill that contributed so much to his success.  If there was anything Hall Cooper was good at, it was gathering snippets of intelligence, rumor, exaggeration and outright lies, and piecing them together to create a pretty detailed road map to the truth.  In fact, he was sure that his skill at doing so was what had kept him out of the hoosegow.  He was apparently just too damned valuable to lock away, incredible as that seemed to Coop.

So Cooper had done what he does.  When he started to hear more bits and bobs about the ring, he determined to find it.  Hey, a guy’s gotta do something with his vacation time, right?


His information eventually led him to Rome, where like any good tourist, he paid a visit to the Vatican.  In the end, he’d relieved the Vatican of one of its prized and secret treasures, the signet ring of Armand de Périgord, a Grand Master of the Knights Templar.  The ornate gold ring bore the image of The Two Riders, the most sacred seal of the Templars.  Everyone thought the ring had gone missing in the 13th century along with de Périgord himself.  Everyone but Hall Cooper. 

You know that old saying, something about “hidden in plain sight”?  That’s exactly where the ring was.  Sometimes what glitters actually is gold.  Unfortunately, the ring’s resting place in the Clementine Chapel below the Basilica of Saint Peter was also in plain sight of a Swiss Guard stationed behind a gold mesh screen.  Cooper hadn’t known the guard was there, not until he was arrested by a couple of gendarmes.  As he tried to slip out of Vatican City at Saint Anne’s Gate, they nabbed him. But what they didn't nab was the ring.  Hey, mama didn't raise no fools.  Coop was smart enough to know that his odds of getting out of Vatican City with the ring in his possession were pretty slim.  On his way to Saint Anne's Gate, he'd stashed the ring in what he sure was a secure spot, planning to go back and retrieve it a few days later. 

The gendarmes politely escorted Cooper to the Palace of the Tribunal.  Once behind closed doors, they weren't quite so polite as they thoroughly searched him and bombarded him with questions and accusations.  He played the tourist, confused and then outraged at his treatment.  He'd had years in the field to perfect his act, after all.  After much loud Italian and even louder English, the gendarmes had gotten nothing from Cooper.  Though they were sure he'd pilfered something, they had no evidence that he was anything but than a bumbling tourist who insisted on touching, like so many Americans.  They turned him over to the Polizia di Stato, the Italian State Police. The Polizia took Cooper to their headquarters in Il Palazzo del Viminale.  While they tried their hand (so to speak) at breaking him, Italian authorities tried to get more information about him.  They quickly realized that the US credentials they found in his pocket were unlike any they’d ever seen, and they notified Washington of his arrest.  

In a matter of hours, he was handed over to US officials and on his way back to the US, and what he was sure would be a court martial.  Much to his surprise, he was offered the deal that kept him out of Leavenworth.  As it turned out, his “punishment,” such as it was, caused Copper no hardship.  He was free to live anywhere but the US.  His passport had been flagged and he couldn’t have gotten into the country anyway.

His sentence?  Basically, it was “get out of the country, zip your mouth, check in once a year, and wait to hear from us.  And, oh, yeah, keep your nose clean. We’ll have eyes on you.”  

Não tem problema.

Contined in Part 2

***********************************

This was written for the Tenth Daughter of Memory 

.

The Pig

This poem was posted on The Writer's Almanac, by American Public Radio and Garrison Keillor.  It's just too good not to share.

Photo by Kim Newberg (PublicDomainPictures.net)

         The Pig

by Anonymous

It was the first of May

A lovely warm spring day

I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,

But my knees were all a-flutter,

And I landed in the gutter

And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

Yes, I lay there in the gutter

Thinking thoughts I could not utter

When a lady passing by did softly say

'You can tell a man who boozes

By the company he chooses'

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

The Pig by Anonymous. 

Public domain.

And when the door finally closes

 

And when the door finally closes

And the sound of your footsteps fade

Along with the harsh words you

Toss in my face as you turn to leave,

I’ll breathe, and forgive myself for not

Walking through the door long before.

And when the door finally closes,

I won’t say goodbye.  I’ll remember

The times I hurried to open it to find

You, offering flowers and regret, and

I  reached out to draw you back in,

Thinking he didn’t mean it.

And when the door finally closes

And the sound of your footsteps fade,

I won’t search the empty walkway for you.

I’ll close my ears to the memory sounds of
Stomping and strutting and swearing,

Anger speaking sharply in every heel click.

And when the door finally closes

And the sound of your footsteps fade

Along with the harsh words you

Toss in my face as you turn to leave,

I’ll listen instead for the whimpered words

Of our son as he cried in his sleep.

And when the door finally closes

And the sound of your footsteps fade

Along with the harsh words you

Toss in my face as you turn to leave, I'll forget

The blows you tossed in my face when you stayed

And open the door to myself, finally.

**************************************************

This was written for One Shot Poetry.

The Sweeper

As I close the door to my room, I glance at the clock beside the bed.  Nearly midnight.  I’m really tired and glad to be home.  I feel good knowing it was a job well done, but to tell the truth, I think I’m ready to call it quits.  I’m getting a little long in the tooth for this line of work.

I undress and I’m just pulling off the blonde wig when I hear the bell at the front door.  I grab my robe and pull it tightly around myself.  As I tie the sash, I hurry downstairs to the door.  The last thing I need is for one of the others in the house to awaken.

***

When I spotted the bunch of tulips on the bench in the garden back in February, I wasn’t surprised to see the unexpected spot of spring color surrounded by the snow that had been pushed aside on the concrete surface.  Over the years, I’ve seen several such anomalies.  It meant I had a job.

I’m a Sweeper.  There are many of us, though I can’t tell you how many because I don’t know.  I’ve never met another one, but I know they are out there, living ordinary lives.  The guy in the cubicle next to yours?  That barista who hands you your café macchiato with an almond shot each morning?  The nanny who pushes her charge in a pram down to Union Square Park every afternoon?  Any one of them might be a Sweeper.  

As for me, well, I am probably a bit different, if for no other reason than the way I spend the other 95% of my life.  You might say that my life is not all that ordinary.  Maybe so, but I challenge you to find a better life in which to hide.

I’m not sure why any of the others got into this, other than the obvious lure of the money.  I can guess, though, because I know why I was recruited and why I agreed to join.  And it wasn’t the money, not that the money isn't good.  Fifteen years ago, I came home from night school to find my husband and two-year-old daughter slaughtered, dead for the sake of the stereo and small amount of cash stolen by the killer.  One of the neighbors saw a man leaving the house, and was able to give a pretty good description of him and the car he got into.  The police identified him, and he was picked up pretty quickly.  And then it all went to hell in a hand-basket.  

Thanks to a series of bureaucratic mistakes, misplaced evidence and a bogus alibi, the guy got off.  I was outraged and wanted nothing more than to kill the bastard, giving him a taste of what he’d done to my family.  But I didn’t.  Not unless I killed him with the sheer force of my fury.  Because die he did, run over by a garbage truck three days later.  I know it was terrible of me, but I was grateful.  I thanked God for answering my prayers for justice.  I don’t think I could have gotten on with my life, what was left of it, if he’d still been out there, free as a bird.

The only representative of the Sweepers I've ever met came to me shortly after and told me just how that justice had been served.  It wasn’t God answering my prayers.  It was a Sweeper.  She explained how the Sweeper Program worked, and I accepted when she invited me to join them. I’ve been cleaning up ever since, in more ways than one.  Being a Sweeper has provided both me and my Cayman bank account great satisfaction.  I suppose this seems wrong to you, but the way I see it, cleansing society of evil is doing God’s work.  Besides, it’s not like I spend all my time doing this.  Finding the tulips marked only the ninth time I’ve been called upon.

***

I chucked the tulips, now dead from the cold, in the nearest trash bin and caught a cab to the main branch of library on Fifth.  I gave a nod to Patience and Fortitude* as I climbed the steps to the front entrance and made my way to the Rose Reading Room on the third floor.  Normally, you’re required to reserve a time slot on one of the computers there, but to do that, you’d have to show your library card.  I’ve learned that access can be much more anonymous than that.  

I pulled a book from the shelves, and sat down to wait.  It didn’t take long before one of the people sitting at a terminal scooped his belongings into a backpack and headed for the door.  I slipped into his seat, and in moments verified that payment had been transferred to my account in the Caymans. I closed the website, cleared the cache, and was headed over toward the encyclopedias in less than a minute. 

I quickly located the volume I wanted.  And there at the entry for “tulip” in Collier’s Encyclopedia was the blank slip of onionskin that held the secret of my instructions.  A minute or two in the oven, and the paper would tell all.

***

I was outside the courthouse this afternoon when the judge banged his gavel and said, “Case dismissed. You’re free to go, Mr. Wilson.”  When Frank Wilson walked out of the courthouse, there was no one there to meet him other than a few members of the press, and even they didn’t pursue him when he waved them off and headed down the street.  I wasn’t surprised that no one had much of an interest in this lowlife.  No one except me.

Marisa Dominico was a school teacher.  Out of college only a couple of years, she was dedicated and idealistic.  She’d stayed late to work on a project for the next day, and was walking alone to the subway after dark.  I doubt she ever saw him until he came out of the shadows and grabbed her.  The scumbag not only raped her repeatedly, he beat her to a pulp.  In all likelihood, she was dead before he tossed her in the dumpster like so much trash. I hope so.

They were on to him pretty quickly.  Wilson was a heavy drinker, and got himself picked up for drunk-and-disorderly a couple of weeks later.  More brag than brains, he'd been a little too enthusiastic with macho posturing and boasted about his conquest to a fellow guest of the city while in the tank. 

The cops charged him, but a jail house confession made to a drug dealer looking to cut a deal to avoid Rikers didn’t take them very far.  Not only was the dealer’s testimony a bit suspect, there was no corroborating evidence.  If fact, DNA evidence showed she’d had sex with someone else that day.  That turned out to be Marisa's boyfriend, who'd flown to Chicago around noon.  I heard that the DA found others who’d been attacked by Wilson and survived it, but none of them were willing to testify, especially after what happened to Dominico.  The bottom line was that the prosecutor couldn’t make the case.  Wilson walked, and I was there to follow him.

I trailed him at a discreet distance, and watched as he headed straight to a bar a few blocks from the courthouse.  I gave him a few minutes to get settled and order a drink, and then went in.  After my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I spotted Wilson at the bar.  I slipped onto the stool two down from him.  He was concentrating on his drinking, but if I’d spent the last year being held in a cell without bail, I guess I’d be pretty parched too.  Soon enough, his glass was empty and he was looking to order another. He turned to find the bartender, and his eyes met mine in the mirror.  I gave him a small smile, and dropped my eyes, but not before I saw the spark of interest that flared in his.

Before I could order, Wilson slid over to the seat next to me, and said, “You are just what the doctor ordered, little lady.”  I had to smile at the irony of that.  Honey, you have no idea, I thought.

“What’re you drinking?” he asked me when the bartender came over.  I ordered a glass of white wine and he got another Bushmills on the rocks.  Over the next two hours, I nursed two glasses of wine.  I lost count of how many Bushmills Wilson pounded down.   

When he left the bar to visit the men’s room, I was ready with the tiny vial of highly concentrated oleandrin I had concealed in my pocket.  I poured the contents into the full glass of Bushmills the barkeep had just delivered.  In an hour or two, Mr. Wilson would come down with the worst case of the flu he’d ever experienced, culminating in a fatal heart attack. 

Business was starting to pick up in the bar as locals stopped by for a quick one and a bite to eat on their way home.  I grabbed our glasses and moved them to a booth in a dark corner.  When Wilson returned, I waved him over.

“I’m kind of hungry, sweetie.  Let’s get a burger, OK?”  Though I didn’t think it would be necessary, I knew some food would obscure the oleandrin in his system.

“Sure, doll.  Whatever you want.  Then maybe later, we can go to your place for some dessert, if you know what I mean.”  He gave me a sloppy grin and somewhat less than successful wink.

“Sounds like a plan, Frank.” I purred, leaning toward him and giving him a flash of cleavage.

A couple of hours and several Bushmills later, Wilson began to complain of blurred vision.
  

“I’ma… um, not feelin’ so good.  Too mush booze.  Gotta go.”

He threw a handful of crumpled bills on the table, and stood up.  I added some money to the pile, and jumped up to support him as he walked to the door.  We headed up Sixth toward the Spring Street station.  Frank Wilson never made it.

***   

After twisting the knobs to release the locks on the big wooden door, I pull it wide to see Clare King standing on the steps outside.

“Good evening, Detective.  I thought I might see you tonight.”  I gesture to the policewoman to come into the foyer.

“Hello, Sister Catherine Mary. Sorry to come by the convent so late, but I thought you’d want to know.  We found his body in an alley off Broome.  The ME ruled it a heart attack.  He was obviously drunk as a skunk.  Pretty young for a heart attack.  But I guess for a guy like him, it was only a matter of time before there'd be the devil to pay.”

***********************************

* Patience and Fortitude are the two massive stone lions flanking the entrance to the New York Public Library.

This was written for the Tenth Daughter of Memory.