The Terrorists Came Early

Fiction is part of the reality “they” don’t want exposed yet.

In my case, the terrorists came early. They always do hit lucrative targets first and being a lawyer, I was targeted–first by them, then the State Bar and finally because I was active in more than one state, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He told me not to leave the state. “He” being the State Bar Investigator assigned to my case. The corpse from Lviv that pointed the pistol at my jugular years before was now lying six feet under in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. That guy lied a great deal and a humongous glossy black marble headstone with his family name engraved across the top would not change that, but it did help me find him.  He was buried next to his father with space for his mother on the other side.  She apparently had not yet died or been shipped from the Ukraine.  “Young man does well, makes his parents proud,” I thought he must have thought to himself–his body now restlessly couched beside one of them waiting for the other to make him feel comfortable and proud again.

The office wasn’t much, but it was Beverly Hills and nicer than the other mills I worked at in Koreatown.  At first I wondered if it was a mill.  It looked fairly common. I asked the right questions of Sam, the proprietor from Lviv, but he used me for the money he needed to pay his women and to buy apartments houses to keep them.  Although I wanted desperately to believe his responses, I gradually found them to be fabrications to induce my alliance.  He’d lied to me that first day.  When it came to extricate myself, that’s when he said it, “A deal’s a deal John.” I should have mentioned breach of contract.  When I forced the issue by breaking into his office through the ceiling overnight, the bead on my left internal jugular with his .38 seemed pre-set.  I had brought the Italian in the next morning to show him my solo mischief.  That’s when Sam arrived, asked what was happening and quickly pulled out his revolver and pointed it straight at me, almost crying at the betrayal.  The Italian attorney who introduced us spied Sam and stepped between us, he vouched for me.  He was able to talk Sam out of it.  Sam knew his place.  At least the Italian didn’t treat me like a throw-away over a disagreement.  I think this will be the last time I use a surrogate father.

“Why are you writing this?”

“The doctor said I have about eight more years to live and my wife nags me so I don’t have much to lose.”

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copyright John Rubens January 12, 2016