“Wait a minute…are you telling me…you’re not actually going down into those tunnels? Are you out of your mind, Doctor Jones?” asked Joe, his voice rising to a higher octave and teetering on the edge of incredulity.
He not nuts. He crazy! My inner commentary in the voice of Short Round probably wasn’t that far from the truth…Organized quickly after my rendezvous with the Austrian sisters, our plenary meeting had full attendance in the living room of Donna’s place, with all invitees before me: Donna standing behind the kitchen partition, Rhonda and a lively Octavio on the couch, a visibly shaken and pacing Joe, and me. Much to my pleasant surprise, we had managed to convene without Huiwen’s presence. In my eyes, the meeting was already a success due to that fact alone. After listening to my plan, though, I could tell that Joe had to come to a much different opinion about the current forum.
I appeared to consider his question thoughtfully, in order to give my proposition more gravity than it probably deserved. “Yes…and, ummm…maybe.”
“I don’t think that it’s all that crazy,” Octavio commented, smiling much like anyone with youth would in the face of audacious schemes. “Actually, I think that it’s kinda dope.”
Joe closed his head and shook his eyes, much like a bucking maverick might attempt to rid itself of the annoying cowboy atop him. “You’re going down into those tunnels…to find what exactly? And how exactly would you find it, whatever that is?”
Donna cleared her throat. “Yes, I have to agree with Joe. It seems a bit crazy.”
“Listen, Pete, I get it, you want to find some sort of proof, but you don’t know if anything is down there,” said Joe boisterously. “Hell, even Donna agrees with me, and that should tell you something! We need real proof, not some urban spelunking. Let’s find that first before you get yourself arrested for something so stupid!”
“I know that it seems crazy,” I replied, “but I think that it’s a good lead to find the smoking handgun. As for actual proof, something we can stand on…we already got it.”
Both Joe and Octavio straightened their posture and bolted upright in response, while Donna, the model of sophrosyne, commented with the arch of one eyebrow. For her, it was the same as doing jumping jacks in place.
“You have proof?” blurted Joe. “Since when?”
Rhonda and I exchanged flashing glances, and with a quick nod, she rose from the couch and quickly exited Donna’s home.
“Where’s she going?” asked Joe. “Again…since when?!?”
“Just recently,” I answered quickly, knowing the ensuing maelstrom that was bound to envelop the room if I didn’t get my lips moving fast enough. “Now, listen, before everyone goes bananas, do me a favor…everyone is gonna stay cool, right? Because I need everyone to keep their cool before we go any further. Sooo…we’re good?” Though I received calm affirmations from both Donna and Octavio, I received only a reticent silence from our formerly-charismatic traitor to the enemy. “So, whaddya say, Joe?”
“I’ll try,” he responded dryly. “But like I was asking before, where did Rhonda go…”
On cue and on time, Rhonda opened the door just a crack, focusing her attention and whispers onto me. “So…are we ready?”
“One sec,” I said, holding up my index finger. “Okay, like everybody was thinking…we need proof, right? We need something substantial? So, that’s true. But we want something more substantial than simply something. What if we had more than that? What if we had someone, somebody who was on the inside of this whole thing?”
Now on his feet, Octavio pointed towards the door. “You got one of those twisted red suits to spill the beans? I’ll be honest, if you got one of those guys out there…”
“Shut up!” I yelled, preempting his outburst and keeping a finger locked onto his face. Preemptively cutting the wire leading to an impending explosion of threats, I could now easily spot his various tells. Despite all the maturity for his age, he was still his age. It couldn’t be helped. “You’re not doing shit…and, no, there’s no red suit who’s turned traitor. Sorry.”
Joe stared unwaveringly towards the door, waiting in suspense for the surprise guest that had become the belle of this ball. “If you got Richie behind that door, I’ll throw my shorts into Donna’s wok and cook ‘em up so that I can eat them right here.”
Detached and yet still unable to betray her annoyance, Donna spoke in a barely detectable tone of condescension. “I don’t own a wok…”
I shook my head. “Nope, I don’t got anybody like that. However, I know that this thing is a lot bigger than we all thought. Ever heard of Mayor Massaco?”
“Yo, I know that dude,” answered Octavio. “I’ve seen his campaign commercials on TV all the time, ever since I was a kid…he’s been around a long time, right?”
Even more acquainted and settled as a townie than even Octavio, Joe immediately smiled at the mere mention of the name. “El Douché? The mayor of West Guttenberg? The guy who has his hands in all the right pockets of the Palisades? You’re telling me that old bastard is mixed up in this, too? Not that it’s really a surprise…”
“Looks like it,” I began, “And, no, he didn’t have a lapse, suddenly developed a conscience and wants to spill his guts to us. So, no, he isn’t out there with Rhonda, either. However, there are people who work with him, some who know about the dirty details and who have access to some incriminating pieces of paperwork.” I couldn’t help smiling, once again basking in our good fortunes. “Now that kind of person, we do have.”
A silence ensued as our conspiring consortium held their tongues. Eager to turn the page, they remained transfixed and waited patiently, like a summer audience of Parisian children at the foot of a puppeteers’ stage.
“Okay,” I said to Rhonda. “I think that we’re all ready. Bring her in.”
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story
I Hate the Sounds around Me 