The Hollywood Liberal

REBELS IN HELL

EPISODE 6

It was a dark and cloudy day on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Miguel, the man once known as The Assassin sat on his patio. It was the kind of day when he would have worked on his wall. Only now there was no wall, and from where he sat under the coconut palm looking down below his right knee there was no leg. Gone also was the man he once was. The man who depended upon his physical agility and strength and deadly skills.

But that man was gone. Along with the missing leg.

Who is to say what it is in a person’s life that causes them to change? The death of a loved one? An unaccountable epiphany? A spiritual revelation brought about by a near death experience?

Upon their return to Costa Rica Miguel had spent two weeks in bed, the first three days of which his body fought the death-dealing infection. It was fortunate that he had wealth. That allowed him privacy and for Reynaldo to bring in the surgeon and nurse from Venezuela. He had succumbed and the leg was removed.

During his recuperation, when he could, he looked out his window to see the boy once known as Patrick with Reynaldo, or heard the boy moving throughout the house. But mostly what he knew of Patrick was of a boy now named Jovani to hide him from the assassins. It was Jovani then that was playing the electric guitar Reynaldo had purchased.

On occasion Jovani would come to see him, but his condition was so extreme that he could not respond with more than to nod or say “de nada” when Jovani thanked him for saving his life. Too he could see the sadness in the boy. But there was nothing he could do. He left that to Reynaldo who took the boy fishing or for rides on the coast. As it was summer, no question was asked of his schooling.

Over the year what he experienced of the boy was from what he heard: sometimes in the middle of the night he would hear the boy playing somber, moody blues pieces. Sometimes he would hear frenetic strumming. On two occasions the boy busted the guitar against the wall, once the floor.

He told Reynaldo to replace it each time. Reynaldo nodded his agreement. Better the walls, floor and guitar than himself.

Six months after their arrival Jovani had made friends at the international school and soon formed a band. His spirits began to rise. There were no more broken guitars.

By the time of his ambulatory state he was a weakened man, both physically and mentally. He knew he had changed, but he didn’t yet know how. And at times he was angry. Very angry. That was followed by depression. The new man he was had no life and he knew it.

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EPISODE 4

While Healey wrote and Patrick blazed upon his guitar Miguel was in retreat, an often habituated practice. It allowed him to cleanse his soul, as he would tell his one of two friends he trusted. And Costa Rica was the perfect place for his cleansing. His fluent, though slightly accented Spanish allowed him easy movement throughout the country. His settlement on the Nicoya Peninsula in Tambor was part cliff and part bay. While the water was an odd brown, it was one of the few beaches within the area without riptides and odd changes in water patterns. He liked the calm of the water. It calmed him. The peninsula was a respite from a world he hated.

It was also isolated from the rest of Costa Rica yet accessible by boat, car or bus. An exit could be had very quickly.

He was bothered. His assassination of The Patron broke a pattern of trust with those who hired him. It was unethical. It was also very dangerous. But he knew it was a turning point for him. A moral one. Not of a nature he applied often in the killing business.

He slowly had come to realize that the killings he did for them no longer could be cloaked in a form of patriotism, them vs. the U.S. One of the last of his killings was a man dedicated, no matter how violently or skewed in his belief systems, to overthrowing the repressive regime that controlled his country.

But killing The Patron was more personal than professional, and of course there would be consequences. No man with Austin’s wealth and attachment to the power of the United States could be killed and there not be consequences. And there was confluence as well. And of course, coincidence, for life is ruled by coincidence.

He had no illusions about The Patron’s associations. The President of the United States and those that controlled him considered the killing of adversaries routine.

He’d made the phone call to The Agent who’d hired him. He explained the circumstance of the surveillance. He termed death of The Patron as “killing in self-defense.” He did not mention his affinity for Patrick or Healey. He barely allowed himself to recognize it. The Agent didn’t ask, though he made it clear that he knew the assignment not to have been completed. He would take Miguel’s explanation to the commission that oversaw their work. He ended the conversation with “believe me, I understand.”

The phrase “I understand” was ruining his retreat. They would send someone after him.

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IN HELL

REVENGE

©
The 01-2008 Serialization

EPISODE 3

The Patron, Walter T. Austin, was not sleek, nor slender nor elegant. He was knobs, elbows, knees, hipbones, ribs, bony toes and fingers. His Adam’s apple moved awkwardly when he drawled his Florida cracker drawl. He was in his 70th year of life.

The trappings and accoutrements of the wealthy he’d collected about him were all that gave him the right to be called Patron. Though in his region the Hispanics who worked his land knew him better as Senor.

His sprawling, 5,000 square foot, one-story brick ranch house with its five bedrooms, den, playroom, four-car garage, basement and glassed-in exterior porch sat on 100 acres of horse farm. It was ensconced in the Florida oak and scrub of central Florida, just outside of Ocala. His house was empty except for him and his wife Amelia. Despite Amelia he was alone: Alzheimer’s had taken Amelia and she no longer recognized him. Yet he visited her in her wing of the house overlooking the pond with its ducks and flamingoes she had so loved every day. Sometimes he would sit and talk with her, knowing she neither understood nor would respond. He didn’t care. She was the last of his longed for dreams of a family. His son was dead. Dying in a DUI accident his year of graduation from medical school.

So he lived semi-alone with the lost Amelia and his now-absent servant. Their white housekeeper and the two on duty nurses lived in the small quadplex he’d built for them in the woods 100 yards south.

He occupied himself as creator of public consensus, politician-maker, dealmaker and President-maker. It was he who orchestrated the Vice President-President combination that now ruled. And now he was making the President King, as it ought to have been in the beginning had The South won.

The assassination of Healey would not be the first he had either ordered or orchestrated. Far more powerful political figures had met their fate as the result of his orders. Men who roused the rabble. Men who held the highest of offices. All stopped short in life because they failed the great American Mission.

He took pride in the power he wielded; ebullient in the reaction he caused in those who feared him. And there were few in power who did not fear him.

He continued that semi-recluse life except for monthly trips to Boca Raton, where he sought relief in the “strange” as it was called. There for a weekend each month he ordered and played with a variety of young girls he’d pick out from the Internet sex café that had, in part, been created for him. Even at 70, his urges were great, and with the help of the new pharmaceuticals he could play for hours.

He was as “unforgiving as a Coral snake”, said those who knew him, with the “memory of an elephant” that never forgot those who crossed him. Healey had done so and he would pay.

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EPISODE

2

It was six in the evening when Healey and Patrick headed back toward their home, Miguel following. But at halfway up the Keys the father drove toward the ocean and entered a parking area adjacent to the beach. Miguel passed them and parked some 30 spaces over.

“Stop struggling. Kick your feet,” he told the man. The man calmed and complied.

He also knew that a stranger had saved his life. Like a spirit force that’d come from nowhere and then disappeared into nowhere. It seemed unreal. Healey began to believe that he owed his life to something beyond his own definition. He became a more humble man.

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