The Guys Who Spied For China
By
Gordon Basichis
Copyright 2009 Gordon Basichis
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design - Casey Basichis
Published by Minstrel’s Alley at Smashwords
PO Box 492332
Los Angeles, CA 90049
“…We should thoroughly learn the written and spoken languages of all countries so as to translate Western books and newspapers, in order to know what other countries are doing all around us, and also to train men of ability as diplomats. We should send people to travel to all countries in order to enlarge their points of view and enrich their store of information, to observe the strengths and weaknesses, the rise and fall of other countries; to adopt all the good points of other nations and to avoid the bad points from the start. As a result there will be none of the ships and weapons of any nation, which we shall not
be able to make, and none of the machines or implements which we shall not be able to improve.”
---T’an Ssu-T’uang, 1897
Chapter One
It was winter in Van Nuys. Winter in Southern California could never evoke the frosty bleakness of the northern states, but on the right night it was still capable of creating an ambience of urban drear and desolation. The streets were empty; traffic was sparse. Gusts of wind blew leaves and trash. I was sitting in the shadows inside Noah Brown’s ancient Chevy El Camino, sipping bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup, my eyes cast toward a dumpster-ridden alleyway that divided the tacky shops on Van Nuys Boulevard from the tacky apartments two and three stories above the street.
“That’s it.” Noah pointed to one ugly apartment building that was nearly indistinguishable from the next. “He lives in the back.”
I nodded and studied the dark windows in the second floor rear. A creepy feeling swept over me as I focused on the older, cheaper vehicles parked in the carport on the street level just underneath the building.
“You sure he’s not there?” It was less a question and more a plea for reassurance.
Noah gestured. “See the empty space, the last space on the last row? That’s where he parks his car.”
I nodded, catching the sounds of blue-collar din—a dish clattering in some unknown kitchen, violence from an overloud TV. The smell of a hundred microwave dinners mingled with the garbage odor spiraling from a couple dozen dumpsters. It was bleak and banal, and it stood in sharp contrast to the
pre-conceived glamour of cloak-and-dagger romance. But, in fact, it was the banality itself that heightened the danger that lay just a few yards away.
“He may be a contract player, working for Louie’s friends. He may be here on his own. It’s too early to tell.”
I nodded, turning to look at my companion, Noah Brown. Noah was a one of a kind, a government spook with a social and scientific pedigree. Having traveled with Noah for more than a year, I knew all too well about the many times and many places Noah had sat waiting in the darkness, waiting for his prey. Noah’s gray hair and angular face were appropriately noirish in the shadows of his faded beige El Camino. Despite his sixty-odd years of age, Noah remained the ever-faithful adventure junkie, seeking his own peculiar gratifications, which he sometimes cloaked in the guise of patriotic ideology. The El Camino, like the older and seemingly fragile Noah, was deceptively virile, filled with spy gear, weapons and a powerhouse engine.
“Either way, I don’t want him around causing a ruckus,” Noah went on. “The last thing I need is to go chasing him all over the country. Not with all this other business on my plate.”
“How did he get into the country?” I asked.
“Slipped in,” Noah shrugged matter-of-factly. “Happens all the time. They’re in and out of here. Sometimes we catch them, sometimes we don’t. But Yomiya, he’s one of their big chief muckety mucks. He gets loose and…” Noah let his voice trail off.
I nodded in understanding. I looked to the apartment where Dennis Yomiya was living. Yomiya, native Japanese, was a high-ranking member of the old Red Brigade, and was rumored to be selling his skills to the highest bidder. Surely he was worth his price. Yomiya was a solid professional who reportedly specialized in terrorist bombings and political assassinations. For years he had eluded law enforcement and intelligence agencies, in Europe especially. He was a former college professor who had embraced the radical vision a little too tightly, and now he was stuck with the habit of killing and mayhem. Yomiya was a rogue without legitimacy and without a country to call his own.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Find his mailbox,” Noah said, handing me a key. “And take whatever mail’s inside. It’ll help us establish his current network. Remember, he’s going under the name Katayama.”
“This key will work?” I asked, holding up the key he had given me. “You’re sure?”
Noah barely smiled. I knew that miserly smile was all the assurance I was getting.
“And be careful. This guy is a pro. I mean he’s marquee material. He spooks easily, and he can put a knife through your eye at twenty yards.”
“You have any other words of encouragement?”
“Look around. But don’t dawdle up there.”
I got out of the car hoping I was ready for the unthinkable and the unexpected. I was frightened. I knew I was no match for a renowned terrorist, and my youthful sense of immortality had, a few precious years before, left for parts unknown. I made my way through the rear walkway and into the spare and modest courtyard where the tenants entered their apartments. There were several doors facing the concrete courtyard, with a stairwell leading to the second floor of apartments. Yellow lamplight from inside the apartments slipped out through the cheap drapes and aluminum frame windows, casting shadows of the withering banana tree on the weathered stucco wall. I found the mailbox marked Katayama, Yomiya’s cover name, and slipped the key into the lock. I opened the mailbox just as I heard a car pull up in the driveway.
It was one of those moments frozen in time, when you realize you just committed to a single foolish action that could actually end your life. I stifled the shakes, pulled the single letter out of the mailbox and stuffed it inside my jacket. Reaching into my pocket, I felt for the .25 automatic I had stashed there. It was a cheapo Saturday night special, the kind the anti-gun lobbyists vilify for its predominance in gang marauding and drunken shootouts. If anything, at that particular moment, the .25 was puny and inadequate, more of an ornament than decent protection. I remembered how old gun nuts I knew used to joke that shooting someone with a .25 caliber would only piss him off. I hoped I wouldn’t have to disprove that theory.
Yomiya appeared in the mouth of the courtyard, blocking my exit. He was momentarily startled by my presence, but since I made no move toward him, he feigned indifference, barely looking up as I started past him on my way out of the courtyard. He was wearing wire rim glasses, a short leather jacket and his trademark woolen newsboy’s cap. At first glance he wasn’t threatening at all, more like the college professor of old, lost in his thoughts. But looking closer, there was no denying his wary movement and the deadly aura he projected from deep within.
Either my sixth sense was in tune that night, or I actually did hear his rubber sole sliding ever so slightly on the courtyard’s surface grit. I turned suddenly, drawing my gun, and found him facing me, his hand reaching inside his jacket pocket. Before I dared think about it, I fired twice. The first bullet caught him flush in the cheekbone, just under the eye, and the other skimmed the side of his face.
Instinctively, he grabbed at his face, grumbling what I was sure was “Shit,” in English, before muttering and cursing in what sounded like Japanese. He staggered like a drunk. Sheer fear compelled me to step in to point blank range and fire three times in rapid succession, putting small, bloody holes in his temple. It was like a dream. Echoes and flashes in the tiny courtyard. He was gasping for breath, still weaving and muttering. The blood pooled in his ear and ran down his neck. He dropped hard to his knees, like his feet had been chopped out from under him. I nearly shit when his nine-millimeter pistol spilled out of his jacket and clattered on the concrete. Yomiya muttered something again, in a softer, barely audible tone and then pitched forward on his face. I shot him one more time through the back of his head.
As I walked quickly toward the car, I thought my heart would leap out of my chest. My knees were locked and buckling; my legs were rubber. Somehow I found the presence of mind to stash the hot and smoking pistol into my jacket. It felt warm against my ribs. When I reached the end of the driveway, I found Noah hobbling toward me on his semi-crippled legs. From the look on his face, he had been afraid for me, and now the creased and worried brow was showing visible signs of relief that I was the one still walking.
“Better get the fuck out of here,” I uttered through clenched teeth.
He nodded and started back to the car, moving remarkably fast for a guy with legs the width of cue sticks. As I climbed inside, Noah pulled away slowly. He turned up Van Nuys Boulevard at traffic speed, and a few blocks later he entered the freeway. Moving north on the 101, Noah picked up speed, maneuvering discretely in and out of lanes, checking to see if we were being followed.
“No one on our tail,” he said with a fair degree of relief and satisfaction.
I didn’t respond.
“You were only supposed to get the mail,” he admonished. The fear and concern were still in his voice. It was his way of covering up for sticking me in a dangerous situation.
“Well, what the fuck,” I gritted. “There was a sudden change in plans.”
“I know,” he relented. “Is he dead?”
I stared. “I sure fucking hope so.”
“You did good then,” Noah acknowledged, lighting up a cigarette. Just what I needed at that moment, second hand smoke.
I sat in silence while Noah covered miles on the freeways, making sure we weren’t being followed. When he was satisfied we were safe, he drove to his house, where Noah, the scientist, prepared a glass vat of highly concentrated sulfuric acid and tossed in the gun. We watched in meditative silence while the .25 caliber pistol dissolved like an Alka Seltzer, providing us both with a bit of relief. Dissolve the evidence. Clearly, Noah was used to the drill.
I had a lot on my mind. I had just killed somebody, and I realized it wasn’t enough to rationalize he intended to kill me. I was so scared, I acted first, and by acting first I got lucky. In the flash of understanding I realized two significant precepts. The first was fear could be the overwhelming guiding force in a time of crisis, and it could produce better results than professional skills. The second was that, to my good fortune, when people hear gunshots, they do not run outside to see what’s going on.
In my head I replayed my shooting of Yomiya, my watching him die awkwardly and ugly, like a puppet cut suddenly from its strings. Killing him was not an act to be taken lightly, and any show of nonchalance would be pure bravado, denying the feelings I grappled with inside. Killing was wrong for the usual reasons. I knew that. A momentary wave of nausea overcame me as I wrestled my conscience. I recognized Yomiya was the terrorist sonofabitch responsible for the murders of a number of innocent people and that the planet wouldn’t be missing him. I glanced at Noah; he was already whispering to someone on the telephone, making sure Yomiya’s body vanished without a trace, like some dead alley cat swept up by the animal regulations people and dumped in an unmarked grave.
I soon dispelled the nausea, and I found the struggle with my conscience was inexplicably transplanted by a life confirming rush. I had faced death and I had survived. I wondered if I would ever be forced to kill again. And could I ever get so used to killing that my conscience no longer affected me? Like Noah. I sensed in the darker, more manipulative recesses of Noah’s brain, he certainly hoped I’d become more like him. I looked over to where he was sitting, puffing on his cigarette, working out our next set of moves. I watched the last bits of gunmetal dissolve in the acid. And in the silence of the canyons, punctuated briefly by howling coyotes and the occasional rustle of sage, I wondered how in the hell I had ended up here.
Chapter Two
For me, this story began in the dentist’s chair in the autumn of 1982. That’s when I first met Dr. Louis Dubin. He had been recommended to me as an excellent dentist. Dubin was a garrulous man with an affable personality punctuated by the distinctive adenoidal register of the Mid-Atlantic States. He was in his late fifties and looked like your basic aging hip booster who had outgrown his excesses and settled down. He had wavy gray hair and the ash white beard of an upscale bohemian. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and corduroy Levi’s with button down oxford shirts. Behind the glasses, his steel-blue eyes were filled with scrutiny and just a hint of menace. When we shook hands, he exhibited the powerful grip acquired by most dentists after years of pulling teeth and digging out cavities.
Unlike most physicians, who try to maintain a cool and objective professional distance, Louis preferred being chummy and chatty. He was a good listener, and he liked to talk about himself, qualities that made him skillful in jumping from the introductory phase of our relationship to easy familiarity in less than an hour.
“Nina tells me you’re a writer,” he offered, referring to the woman who had recommended him. “A lot of writers are patients of mine. I get a lot of Hollywood people.”
He told me how he relished being the dentist to show business personalities who worked both in front of and behind the camera. In a city of contacts, where hair stylists and restaurateurs are sometimes as responsible for initial deal making as attorneys and agents, his patients offered a modest amount of networking currency. His practice provided him with a decent income, which he used to maintain his comfortable bachelor’s lifestyle and an upper six-figure house in the Santa Monica Mountain range overlooking Beverly Hills.
Dr. Dubin was probably the first dentist since the infamous Doc Holliday to keep a gun holstered within short reach of his dental tools. It was a strange vision, this Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol resting a few feet from where Louis prepared his steel amalgam fillings and mixed his dental cement.
“Why the gun?” I asked. “The ultimate anesthetic?”
“I have a permit to carry,” he boasted. “Which is almost impossible to get these days, with all these liberals wanting to grab our weapons.”
“If you don’t want them taking your guns, then don’t leave them out where they can see them.”
“Doesn’t do any good in a drawer. If trouble comes, you have only seconds to defend yourself. You have to keep the gun close by.”
“Doesn’t it frighten patients?”
“It didn’t frighten you.
“I’m not your average patient.”
Louis smiled, knowingly. “I sensed that,” he said. “I’ve always been good at sensing these things.”
Instead of the usual cotton-stuffed, saliva-filled innocuous mutterings between dentist and patient, Dubin sang the anthem of the Second Amendment.
“I told myself a long time ago, I don’t intend to be the victim,” Louis insisted. “No place is safe, really.”
“Yeah, Louie, maybe you do have a point,” I conceded.
“Louis!” he corrected immediately, his body stiffening. I had tripped over his one concession to formality.
“Louis,” I repeated. “Sorry about that.”
He nodded to signify it was a forgivable transgression.
“I keep a gun in every room in the house,” Louis confided as he picked at my teeth with the tools of his trade. “But I carry a Colt .45,” he said, pointing to the semi-automatic as his weapon of choice.
I nodded, smiling.
“What’s the smile?” Louis demanded.
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Look, I believe you take care of your own. Because if you don’t, then who’s going to do it for you? The government?
“My friends and I, we take care of each other. Some guys I know are in their forties and fifties, and they can still rappel cliffs as good as any SAS commando.”
“It’s always good to have friends.”
“Especially my friends. Maybe you would like to come up and meet them? I have these get-togethers every month or so. I order in food, and we sit and talk. Gun people, mostly. Some are professionals, like me, and some are technology guys. Others are the real thing--ex-law enforcement, government types. Spooks. A few ex-military. A couple of active mercenaries. Once in awhile some Hollywood people show up. It’s an interesting group.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Good,” he smiled, affectionately slapping my arm. “I’ll give you directions.”
***
Most people, especially my friends who were politically correct and possessed of at least a rudimentary social consciousness, would have bowed out politely and then scrambled in search of another dentist. But not me. I was the street-smart schmuck who was determined to follow this new discovery wherever it led him. Why is that? On one hand, I don’t know, really. On the other hand, there are probably a dozen reasons, some of them deeply rooted psychologically and the rest a mixture of story seeking and just being crazy.
I always had a flirtation with danger and the shadowy creatures that thrived in dangerous worlds. For some reason I was never fearful of that world. I was no angel myself, but nothing I ever had done compared with some of the fearsome creatures I had met on that toll road of life. I was basically a nice guy who over the years had formed acquaintances with the wise guys and tough guys I had met either as a journalist or through fate and circumstance.
I was also a published novelist who enjoyed modest success writing for television and film. I was looking for a story, but more than a story, perhaps. I was restless and looking for a new lease on life. A recent flurry of abrupt but significant downturns, including the violent death of a friend, was forcing me to reassess my current direction. If I had any direction to even reassess.
I went to Louis Dubin’s party out of curiosity. I went because fate had pointed me that way. Intuition dictated that in this unlikely direction lay my destiny. I was stepping through the looking glass, and my life, my world and everything about it, would soon be turned around.
Chapter Three
Louis’ two story house occupied a flag lot in the Santa Monica Mountain Range, overlooking several fabled canyons and the city skyline, which shimmered in the distance a thousand feet below. He lived in a modest sized house with a million dollar view. On a clear winter day you could see the Pacific Ocean to the west, while a snowcapped Mt. Wilson towered in the east. The house itself was hidden away, so without detailed directions it would have been easy for me to miss it. On a dark night the narrow driveway was lost among the overhanging shrubbery and the two adjacent properties.
I announced myself on the intercom, and when the electric gate swung open, I passed through.
Louis was waiting for me in the foyer. “Glad you could make it,” smiled Louis, approaching, tossing his arms for a warm, friendly hug. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
There were twenty-five to thirty people seated about the living room, or talking around the dining room table that had been extended for the occasion. A couple of faces I recognized quickly. Hollywood people.
“What would you like to drink?” Louis asked. “I have wine or beer, soda and Perrier.”
“A beer would be nice,” I told him, and he led me into the narrow, but well ordered galley kitchen, accented by a pot rack and houseplants.
As he fished in the fridge for a beer for me, he gestured to the upper cabinets. “If you want a glass, they’re up in there.”
I opened the cabinet and was greeted by a neat assortment of sparkling glasses and an older police issue .38-caliber revolver wedged between the dessert plates and coffee mugs. I removed a glass from the shelf and watched in silence as Louis poured my beer.
He smiled again and led me back into the living room. “Let me introduce you around.”
I shook hands as Louis made a valiant attempt to introduce me to his guests. They were mostly Average Joe’s, dressed in Levi’s and L.L. Bean. They were so ordinary; in fact, they seemed out of place in the more glitzy environs of Beverly Hills. It was their Average Joe looks that made them more dangerous. These weren’t the archetypical guys Hollywood had taught us to fear, no cinematic heavies in leather and sneers. These were almost the kind of guys you found at model railroad fetes or memorabilia conventions. What passion they aroused inside their plaid shrouded frames was stimulated not primarily by the usual vices, but by their affection for weapons.
They talked the finer points of caliber size and grain loads, discussing magazine capacity at length. They spoke of bullet velocity, explosive force and penetration. They compared and contrasted the destructive merits of hollow point ammo with the reliability of full metal casings. They mentioned windage and elevation, necessary calculations related to shooting from a distance. In their zeal, they reminded me of the Camel-smoking motor heads I knew growing up, who squatted on milk crates, trading arcane facts about transmissions and engine blocks into the wee hours of the morning. For me, it was another case of post-modern overload.
Still, I was intrigued by the camaraderie among this folksy group, who in their social isolation were brought together by Louis. Most were polite and easygoing, throwbacks to an older school of manners and circumspection. And not all were geeks. A few of them were clearly dangerous men, powerfully built, former mercenaries with eyes still scanning the third world shit holes that were permanently etched in the back of their minds. A few had served in law enforcement, and several more were from that murky background where you didn’t ask questions. The rest were technocrats or engineers, either self-employed or working for major corporations. Some were veterans of military service, and some were just professional people who were in love with their guns.
As I talked to them, I found most were devout libertarians who hadn’t much use for the government. They fell into what I considered the no man’s land between left wing and right wing, and they embraced a somewhat confusing agenda of civil rights and free form capitalism, coupled with a distrust of bureaucracies and multi-national corporations. They were strong as a unit, and they were smart enough to know their power was in numbers.
They made no excuses for their weapons lust or the consequential social rejection it caused them. At best, they were only vaguely aware they stood in marked contrast to media driven society. It didn’t seem to faze them that they were neither politically correct nor topically fashionable. They didn’t wish to be outsiders, really. In fact, if given their preference, they all wanted a larger slice of the American Pie. Instead of the pie they had each other.
Louis served as the Den Mother to the gang; he was the provider of sanctuary. Clearly, they adored him.
“What do you think of my friends?” he asked, pointing to a few, including Tom Raymond, a bearded middle-aged man in a wheelchair, who Louis proclaimed to be a former Navy fighter pilot. Raymond’s wife, Linda, was standing behind her husband, arguing the fine points of political something with Nelson Stackhouse, a man I had met earlier.
“Quite a collection,”
Louis smiled. “I trust these guys with my life. And they trust me with theirs.
“Here,” he said, gesturing toward a short man in spectacles with nervous eyes and wavy hair who had just come over to join us. “I’d like you to meet a very special friend of mine. Ray Dannenberg.”
“Louis told me a lot about you,” Ray smiled, extending his hand.
“I hope he hasn’t said too much.”
“Louis likes to talk a lot,” Ray laughed, and Louis laughed in complicity.
“He said you’re a writer with anti-government leanings.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just a guy with reasonable sense of history.”
“You couldn’t possibly be pro-government,” he insisted. “Not how they treat us today. Every time you look around it’s always mucking around in our business.”
“And what business is that, Ray?”
“Ray manufactures electronics components for the cable and telecommunications industries. Louis glanced at Ray to see if he described his business correctly.
“Seems basic enough. Why is the government on your case?”
“They’re all over me, about everything. With all their rules and regulations.
To say nothing of the IRS.”
“Sounds like you should start a revolution or find a better accountant.”
“I’m up for the revolution. What about you?”
I shrugged. “I have a terrific accountant.”
Ray took his time in appraising my answer. He laughed finally. “Louis is right. You’re an okay guy.”
“He’s a friend now,” Louis chimed in, turning to me for greater emphasis. “Anyone does wrong to a friend, then he does wrong to us.”
“Tough talk for a dentist.”
Louis smiled, and it was a colder smile than I was used to. “I’m a dentist with a gun. That makes all the difference.”
***
Not long after, I took particular note of a sober looking man sitting patiently in the corner. Unlike the others, this man was dressed conservatively in a gray suit and tie. His graying hair was swept back from a lined but handsome face. He leaned forward in his chair, quietly observing the chitchat. He looked like a cop, the serious kind, a lifelong professional who had miraculously avoided the burnout. But he wasn’t a cop. Louis told me that much and more.
“He’s my neighbor,” Louis whispered. “He is very high up in the federal government.”
When I looked doubtful, Louis persisted.
“It’s true. I’ve seen limousines come in the middle of the night and whisk him off to God knows where. I’m telling you, he’s a very powerful guy. It’s scary.”
I found it fascinating that of all the commando types, the shooters and soldiers of fortune, the one guy Louis most feared was the elderly gentleman sitting alone in the corner.
“What’s he doing here then?”
“Like I said, he’s my neighbor.”
“But nobody talks to him, really.”
I glanced over to the corner where the gray-headed man in the silver gray suit was staring back at me. He knew we were talking about him. His eyes were intense and piercing, yet somewhat inviting. He nodded to me, and I nodded back.
“Come on,” said Louis. “I’ll introduce you.”
Moments later I met Noah Brown.
“And just what are you doing here?” he asked as we shook hands. It was more of a challenge than a question.
“It’s life as an art form,” I told him.
He smiled, not entirely sure what I was driving at. “Not high art, certainly,” he said after a pause.
I smiled.
“C’mon, sit down a minute,” he offered, indicating the space beside him.
“Sorry. I have to get going.”
Noah was by disturbed by what he deemed my sudden departure.
“Was it something that I said?” he asked.
“No. But what’s waiting for me is prettier than you.”
He grunted reluctant approval. “Can’t fault you for that. She have a girlfriend?”
“Just two cats and a litter box.”
“No thanks,” he replied in mock disgust.
I left soon after, closing the door to one of life’s chapters and opening another. Destiny had just intervened and dropped kicked my ass in a whole new direction.
Chapter Four
Two weeks later, and much to my surprise, Noah Brown was on the phone to me. He wanted to take me to dinner. I considered making jokes about me not being the type who fucked on the first date, but I sensed this was hardly Noah’s brand of humor.
“Meet me at Adriano’s?”
Adriano’s was an upscale Italian restaurant in the Beverly Glen Centre, a strip mall at the crest of the Santa Monica Mountain range, just below Mulholland Drive. The Glen Centre was far more unique than the majority of strip centers in America. Instead of the usual suburbanite consumer traffic, the Glen Centre serviced a tonier, show business crowd who could shop and eat in relative privacy within a few minutes’ drive of their homes. The Glen Centre parking lot looked more like a dealership for luxury European automobiles than a parking lot for a mini-mall. On any given day the crowded asphalt boasted Mercedes and BMW’s of every conceivable model, Jaguars, Porsches, Ferraris, and a Rolls Royce or Bentley for that extra measure of extravagance. If you drove up in a junker, then you were probably just working there.
When I arrived, Noah Brown was waiting for me at his table. As I approached, I watched the waiter fawn over Brown like he was a familiar and valued patron. Brown was sipping wine and picking at the Italian bread in a leisurely manner, demanding softer butter. It appeared as if he had been there awhile, waiting alone, despite the fact that every table was taken and anxious dinner patrons were crowded into the bar.
“How are you?” Brown asked me, rising out of his chair to shake my hand. I felt his eyes assessing my jacket and slacks; relieved I knew how to dress for formal restaurants. “Have you eaten here before?”
“A few times.”
He nodded. Even in the atmospheric restaurant lighting, I noticed Brown’s crippled physique. His handsome face was mounted on the body of a troll. He was hunchbacked, and when he stood up to greet me, his suit pants were hiked up, and I noticed his legs were withered so badly they weren’t much thicker than the average pair of arms.
He smiled faintly and looked around. “What’s really nice about this place are all the beautiful women. You like women?”
I nodded. It was an obvious and leading question.
“I used to date my fair share of actresses,” he said, perhaps as his way of assuring me of his sexual preferences, given the invitation to dinner. He named a few brand name actresses from the fifties and sixties, and if his boasting was true, then I was impressed.
“If nothing else, they kept me entertained and open minded. But they got older and went onto other things.”
“And you? You didn’t grow older?”
He smiled. “I’d like to think not. Up here,” he said, indicating his mind, “I’m still in my prime. Everywhere else…” he let his voice trail off.
“Still chasing romance. Only you are finding it tougher to catch.”
“Something like that. I guess I like lighting candles for the way things used to be.”
The waiter arrived and gushed about specials. Noah ordered like he was commanding forces, giving the waiter special instructions about his veal chop and the consistency of his pasta. He ordered a bottle of expensive Cabernet Sauvignon and made a pretense of judging its flavor before it was poured.
“I have a piece of a winery up in Napa Valley,” he said. “We produce some world class wine up there. Including this,” he said, tapping the wine bottle’s label.
“Louis did say you were a man of many interests.”
“Sooner or later I’ll end up in a wheelchair. So I try to keep as active as possible, while I still can.”
He told me he was a former fighter pilot and an intrepid cold warrior; he had been shot and stabbed, bombed and poisoned. That was but part of the freight he paid for frequent trips under and over the Iron Curtain and for skulking about in strange and forbidden frontiers. I could see as he boasted about the dozens of wounds on his body, there were immeasurable scars on his soul.
“Believe it or not, in high school I was a six foot, two hundred pound line backer. Before a spent twenty millimeter cannon shell from a Jap Zero busted up my back and chest.
“An accident at the Skunk Works took care of my legs. Hydrogen gas explosion killed men eighty, ninety feet away. I went up on a forty-five degree angle and hit my head on a pole. I survived, only because I was at the epicenter of the explosion. Still, I had broken fourteen ribs and both collarbones. My thyroid still gives me trouble, possibly because of the double dose of tetanus shots I received for the puncture wounds and abrasions. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“We’re all lucky to be alive,” I offered, sipping on my wine. Glancing around, I saw the rich and famous, the Hollywood powerhouses and the mighty corporate Angelenos. I wondered what secret source of power was sitting across from me, this almost mythical creature in a broken down shell. I marveled at the fact he was living his mystery life out in plain sight. I felt his eyes on me, seeking, probing, and learning about me from my every gesture. I felt like I was being studied by an alien being.
Noah allowed us time to finish our dinner, before he tried another approach. “What has Louie told you about me?”
“He said you had a lot of juice in the federal government, and that you’re no one to be fucked with.”
“Louie has a big mouth,” he said, lighting up a cigarette. “You don’t mind if I smoke.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, Louie does have a big mouth. But if you are all the stuff that Louis claims, then why would you tell him? And why do you call him Louie, when he prefers to be called Louis?”
“Because it gets on his nerves.”
“He’s scared to death of you. I’m sure you know that.”
“I prefer it that way. You know why?”
I shook my head. I could only imagine.
Noah studied his cigarette ash as if in the glowing embers there lay the secret to life. “The day he moved in, they unloaded a truckload of weapons and stored them in his house.”
“A truckload?” I asked skeptically. “That’s impressive.”
Noah nodded and started clicking them off. “A truckload. M-16’s, AR-15’s. Military issue. Civilian issue. Some of them were fully automatic. I went over to do my good neighbor routine, and I’m watching his mover buddies stacking them up in his bedroom, along with the ammo to go with them. Later he had these big, custom built walk-in safes installed under the stairwell, just to hold all this crap. Supposedly the safes are booby trapped, but I really don’t know.”
Noah paused to gauge my reaction. When he was satisfied he was making the intended impression, he went on.
“I tell him his house has a lovely view, and you know what he tells me? He says his house is in an absolutely defensible position.”
“Maybe it’s a new twist on neighborhood watch.”
Noah held up his hand, a sign for me to wait before passing judgment. “Then he finds out I may know a thing or two, so he starts pumping me for information about burglar alarms, security gates, defensive landscaping.”
“Houses are robbed all the time up here. I have met some of the people who rob them.”
Noah shook his head in frustration. I wasn’t getting it. “Louie wasn’t stopping at a burglar alarm. He told me he wanted to build a mutual defense perimeter around our houses.”
“I see your point. Most neighbors settle for a cinderblock wall.”
Noah shook his head in frustration. No, I didn’t even begin to see his point. “I used to see him walking around, making penetration runs on his property.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s crazy, you know. You do realize that? I could have him sent to prison.”
“He could practice his dentistry in there. A lot of inmates would be grateful.”
Brown demurred, considered, and then began very slowly. “There are some branches of the government in which it’s a federal crime to identify an agent. The crime is punishable by stiff fines and jail time. Did you know that?” “It’s never come up before. But if I had to guess, judging by what both Louis and you had to say, is the National Reconnaissance Office one of them?”
Brown allowed me the satisfaction of a half-smile. “The National Reconnaissance Office doesn’t exist,” he proclaimed. “But if it did exist, yes, identifying any of its operatives would be punishable by stiff fines and a prison sentence.”