Isis, the days of the voles, Part Three
Vegas
On the plane from New York to Los Angeles the acrobats were talking their own private language. It wasn't exactly a language alhough they both spoke several. It was a mix of what people call body language, expressions which they understood between themselves and he odd word or phrase from this language or that. What made it quite unusual was that they spoke in clipped lines, spoken notations from this language or that.
They shared a lot between themselves and nothing with others. Only they really knew why they had left North Oxford and England. Why they were in America. Why they were going to Vegas. And why they were not telling anyone else.
As far as they were concerned they had the plan within the plan.The last secret. Between the two of them. Always. They had come up against a lot of circus entrpreneurs who had been wily, unsavoury, downright wicked even. In fact the shady front of house and the dodgy ringmaster were par for the course, a occupational hazard for an acrobat.
In Bogota it was hot.
Juan, the Man on the Ground, the man known as Do-the-math trained in a park. It was humid enough for him to have difficulty seeing with the sweat in his eyes.
He thought of the other man based in Bogota. The man sitting by the cool fountain. Sweaty as he was he did not want to trade places. Animals made him nervous. Living in a zoo? Not for him. He liked to control, to know numbers, to count and to control what he had counted.
Soon, he knew the call would be soon.
He counted press-ups.
Juan lived in a world which was constantly being de-centred. Julio's systemm of cutouts meant that he was always shifting. He'd got to know Julio years before in Guatemala when a group of them worked together. Most of that group were now dead and Julio was the one who had made the money.
Juan had persisted but at the cost of living in places that he did not like. He had a lover in the caribbean. His family were in Miami. He'd forgotten where he was meant to live.
The decision was made to leave stencils at key points along the river, Little messages that only Esme, Bella, Leo, Simon Two and the Tramp understood.
This was a way of showing who was around and the usual suspects as Simon Two called them were well stencilled- Sam, Simon, the Don, the Tramp...
Simon Lodge himself was not the one to figure out that the twins had left the country. Jacques, another Roma person, saw them at Heathrow airport. He had been working the crowd, looking for loose bags, anything to turn a quid whe he saw his relations in the distance acccompanied by two men and about to board a plane.
Jacques had a number of functions at the airport or in crowded places like railway stations and being a pickpocket was the main beard. He saw things that other people did not, made connections that seemed unlikely until he described meetings he had seen between the strangest of bedfellows.
Not wanting to be compromised, the pickpocket kept quiet at the time but let people know later and within two days the Roma of North Oxford were building a picture which had the teenagers in another country.
But Simon did find out that they might have gone to America. He went to Heathrow and met the pickpocket. Simon established that the acrobats had been walking to a stand where America bound tickets were dealt with.
And the racing and the chasing went on. It was 3am in Los Angeles.Outsde a church in the barrio a man went to ground and died. Knifed.
The phone rang in Bogota. It was picked up in the marsupial hut.
Certain things on the ground were being cleared up, prepared for the action that was to come.
The Man by the Fountain thought about ringing Juan, the Man on the Ground.
He walked to the monkey cage.
At thirty two Juan had the body of a twenty two year old.
Juan was solo, his partner had gone two years earlier. She disappeared and he had never been able to find out where she went.
He liked any sports with numbers and statistics hat meant that he would follow any sport at all. He could talk American baseball all night.
Juan liked Bruce Lee films.
He preferred motorbikes to cars. Bush track riding was his specialty. Juan liked the unpredictable aspect, no even surfaces, no assumptions at all. Reactions made in the moment.
Denim and leather were his favorite fabrics. Jeans and fairly heavy leather. With light boots, boots like running shoes. Juan could not see why people used heavy boots. The slowed you down and made movement cumbersome.
Juan's best colours were blue and white. He liked the challenge of his job which involved him walking through airports and bus stations and not sticking out. That meant that he could wear any shade of clothing and look comfortable in it. Brights in Mexico City. Subdued colours in Paddington Station.
The hawk was his favorite bird. He liked the way could hover and wait, and wait for the longest time before moving. Juan also like the way the hawk could move so quickly once its mind was made up and the target determined.
He liked reruns of films on television such as Fast and furious but not Tokyo Drift. This was partly because his world was a Latin American one. South America, some of the Caribbean and some cities with big Hispanic populations in the USA.
He was introspective with a compulsive need to count things. He was like a sea diver with big lung capacity, he could stay still under severe pressure, weigh things up and then take decisive action.
At school he was good at tennis and of course maths. His nickname which had stuck at least in some quarters was 'Do-the-math'. The teachersleft him to it at the back of the class. There was always something about his isolation, it was not to be taken lightly by others.
His schoolmates did not pay too much attention to him.That suited Juan. He learned early that he could fit right in and plan something way outside his immediate circumstances.
Simon called his Dad, the retired rock star, in Los Angeles. Paullie Lodge was, of course, on the freeway. He took the call on his mobile without pulling over which would have been impossible anyway. Not that Paullie liked to take precautions. He'd joined up. Paullie was American now and by that he meant that aggresssion beat discretion hands down.
Paullie had swished silver hair and a tan. He looked, in a George Hamilton kind of a way like a fit, mature man. At forty eight he could have been someone's uncle on a day time American soap.
He had a bit to do with a sister who'd moved to Australia but Simon was his family really, Simon and Sam. He liked Sam and thought she would do well in the States. In fact he had plans for her should the couple decide to join him there.
Paullie liked soccer which he did not get much of in the States. He'd never taken to gridiron or baseball but he was usually getting up in the early afternoon anyway. Sport was something that he'd left in England.
He liked the odd landscape painter but was cynical about art markets. He'd seen too many jack ups, too many inflated reputations and inflated prices. He liked drawings and lithographs.
His favourite car was of course the Stutz bearcat. For some reason he had rejected English cars. A Bentley seemed to him now like a curiosity, interesting but not to be taken seriously.
He could not dress like a star of the seventies any more so he settled for loose chinos and guccis. Very light leather jackets, dark but easy to sling around were part of Paullie's style.
Purple was his favorite colour. But mostly he settled, these days, for pastel shades, very flat hues that sat in the background of some chrome chairs hung with black leather.
When it came to animals Paullie liked deer. It was probably due to the toons he watched as a child. Whatever, he was always put at ease by deer and had the odd linocut featuring them in his flat.
CSI Miami was his favorite television show. He liked the light and the pastel colours that the camera picked up. He like people being cool and not losing it. He likes the water so close to the buildings.
Paullie's moods were steady and he had a sense of humour. Anger really was not his thing. He's seen too many breakdowns spun on into destruction by rage.
At school he was good at art. He had a tidy pen and a wicked wit which made for minimal and sometimes surprising cartoons. A bit of a lost art now but occasionally he'd do something on a napkin and surprise people.
He had a quick wit respected by his schoolmates. He could always organise people and that helped him later on as he got his band into shape and then over the years of recording and touring.
So Paullie sat back in the Stutz, moved from the outside into the middle lane and told Simon to go ahead. He might have even said, 'Shoot'. In fact he welcomed a call from Simon, it broke the tedium and, when he thought about it America, incredible as it might seem, had become a tad boring for him.
Simon described the Trapeze Twins and their disappearance. The idea that they might be in America. At this stage it was a mattter that Simon had to deal with in England. The thing now was the next step, Simon didn't have the faintest...
Paullie resorted to shrinkspeak which he sometimes did when he, also, did not have a clue. Look at those close to the Trapezoids he said. As with broke marriages and domestic murders those closest usually had the answers. CAF, Condider All Factors, Establish Priorities for which he'd forgotten the acronym if there was one but of course there was one.
This was problem solving on the freeway in Los Angeles. There had to be an acronym, a code to unlock and then solve any given problem. The first thing, thought Paullie, was to define the problem itself.
In the country at the edge of the Caucasus a woman in her late forties was crossing a street.
A car screeched to a halt beside her. She whirlrd around and began to run. But a man with a beard ran at her from behind, caught up to her and bundled her back towrds the car.
Two men jumped out and grabbed her forcing her into the back seat between them.
The insurance package is in hand they told the Man by the Fountain later that night on the phone to Bogota.
The woman's name was Vera and she was in her early fifties and had class and elegance.
Vera liked going to art galleries and reading good books. She liked reading about fine wines and liqueurs, especially of the French kind.Vera also had a passing knowledge of architecture.
She liked the ballet. Dance was her sport. And playing the cello. This meant that expeditions to the theatre were loaded with things Vera knew about which made her, in turn, good company.
Her favourite painter was Turner. In various ways Vera was an Anglophile. Like a lot of people educated in Russia, Vera had a taste for things European.
Vera did not like cars and preferred trains. Well appointed carriages for good long trips to see things and people that mattered. Vera had been on the great train rides of Europe and to the East as well.
Vera was a Russian bluestocking when it came to dress.High sweaters with cheekbones just as high. Flat heels interspersed with high heels when it suited her.
Red and silver were her favorite colours. Something of a Cossack at heart she ventured to herself but really Vera was a pacifist. And a socialist in her own way.
Vera liked foxes. She could not say why that was but it may have been that hey were survivors in a difficult world. And they looked good, especially in snow. And they were very quick
Vera liked watching dance on the television and not much else. Television was a suspect media she thought, always used by newsreaders to push political points of view.
At school she was good at mathematics and formal logic. Vera was good at languages as well and Vera saw languages as a means to an end whereas she really enjoyed maths and logic. Sports were not her thing but she played a good game of tennis.
Vera had a wry sense of humour. She'd needed it after she took up with a gypsy and became alienated from her family. Having a child out of wedlock hadnt helped. Vera was, of course, the mother of one of the twins.
Being a retired rock star in California had its moments. Paullie had developed a personality which made it diffficult to recognise him as the person who left the UK. Paullie was rich.
But Paullie was usually bored. He liked America and it put up with him. His band had done well and then broken up but not before some of their music had become the theme tune in a daily soap. Paul did nothing but live off royalties really. Two of the band had died fron drug overdoses and a manager had gone through natural causes but Paullie and two others remained to pick up the cheques and spend them.
Out of necessity, in the bands early years in Reading Paullie had got used to living frugally. He kept records of all his spending in a small notebook where he once also kept records of sexual encounters. Long story short, Paullie had invested and then retired in America.
In the mid West a senator was campaigning. His name was Jake Stephens. They said he was a born politician. He smiled as though he'd been taught in a television charm school, as though he'd been a child actor.
At fifty eight Jake Stephens was remarkable. Tuned and tanned he played a useful round of golf and kept in shape. They liked Jake's smile in the clubhouse where he shook hands and kept things light.
He had three children and Giselle, a toothy wife who seemed to be there for photo opportunities but not for much else. In fact she did a lot in the background and it was impossible for people to tell whether she was flirting or scheming.
Gridiron was Jake's passion. He liked most American sports but the Superbowl was the high point of his sports year. He wanted to be part of it in some way some day.
Jake liked Norman Rockwell paintings. One day he'd like to retire with Giselle at his side to a farm somewhere in the mid-west. After he'd done it, after the big one...
Chrysler was Jake's kind of car. Japanese cars were the elephant in the room and he did not talk about them. You could sit in a Chrysler and feel at home he thought.
Jake liked blazers but he was as prone to sharp suits as the next politician. He had a silky wave to his hair which he had used to advantage again and again in campaigns.
Blue was his best colour. It stood for the political hue he liked and he could not get it out of his system. He was blue. All his mental images, all of his visualisations were against a blue background.
Jake liked buffalo. He liked prairies and pretty well everything in them. That included gophers and big skies. He liked big game parks and had taken lots of photo opportunities when on senatorial jaunts in Africa.
Jake liked business television. He like the urgency of it all. He was an adrenalin junkie. Stocks and shares racing up and down were his kind of thing. To say he was a political creature was not to overstate things. There was nothing else.
He really did not have time for moods. He could tell you in a monotone what others might shriek. He never broke down. There was always an upside, something to be pulled out of a fire, a silver lining in any cloud. And this was his job. And he was alright at it.
At school he was good at civics. He knew all of the Presidents that there had been and he could imagine himself as any of them, some rather more than others but he walked with them all in his mind.
He was into all kinds of committees. His schoolmates knew he was good at the committee stuff and left him to it. He'd become an expert at being on a committee but never acknowledging it. He recognised that it was better if people thought you'd been chosen rather than schemed to get something.
Paullie knew people, knew who they were. He had what people call a photographic memory. He remembered faces from television, what people were wearing. That type of thing. After his fling with Simon's mum who was doing Tripos at the time Paullie never partnered seriously: he was a serious serial dater for a while and then got bored.
So Paullie seemed to have all the luck and then none. He and Simon got along automatically. Simon's mum had forgotten about him. The Don hated him on sight as he did a lot of people in their age group, especially those who had made it and left the country. Why hadn't he put up with it all in England like everyone else?
There were stirrings in the country near the Caucasus about the mother of the twin being held. Vera was a known person, her family had connections and were kown to use them.
Time was passing, people were getting nervous.
This was a country effectively without law except for those who chose to make it.
The word went out that his was going to be a long haul and that tVera would be well treated. Because of the espect in which her captors were held this was accepted.
Paullie always treated America as a village, as a place he understood. This was partly an effort to stay sane in a very strange place but given the people he knew and the years he'd spent on the road in the states there was something in it.
There was someone he could call on in most cities. Calling in was easy for Paullie, leaving not so smooth. People liked him and he liked to party, not so much these days but his reputation went before him and was apt to hold him up. Now he continued to party long but the party hard bit had been reduced to no drugs but some and sometimes some considerable alcohol. Once on the road he never varied from water.
And because he liked to drive rather than fly part of leaving was sobering up. This meant that the exit strategy took time before its execution. He had built some kind of a plan around that. Long breakfasts, then a last nap, then coffee and a walk.
And there was something he knew about most cities. The airport, the CBD, how to get on the freeway. But he knew the clubs as well, where to party al night long after a gig. And the netwoks that went with those clubs, the bouncers, the club managers, the performers and some of the regulars.
Enough, he reckoned, to get by on.
Julio, the man by the fountain in Bogota got up and walked about. The zoo was around five square kilometres. But there were groves and cul de sacs and funny little maze like paths that made it time consuming to walk around and hard to find your way around, at least at first.
He had constructed a small zoo beginning with a collection of birds and adding more creaturs over a period of about five years.He had plans for expansion into aquariums and he was working on these plans when he was not involved in the present project.
His chair by the fountain was more or less in the middle of all this.
Julio tried not to be in the middle of things.He specialised in cutouts, ways i which links between people could not be traced. He had direct relationships with few people. With Juan he insisted on changes in cellphones, different places for Juan to stay in Colombia and around the world. With the people in the Caucasus there were similar arrangements.
The Tramp started to collect the stencils. Where he put them Esme and Bella did not know. It annoyed them. There was all the work involved and then there were the messages left up and down the Isis. These messsages were being rephrased and changed by the Tramp, of all people.
And then there was the question as to why the Tramp might want to steal their stencils and wreck their messages. Bella thought there was a additional question as to who the Tramp really was.
From Edmond, the Tramp's point of view Esme and Bela were nuisances. They were on the riverbank more than other people and so it seemed like they were in his face all the time. He did his best some days to queer theirr pitch, taking heir silly stencils which annoyed him and putting hem in a place that they would never find.
The riverbank was a kind of asylum for him. There was his past which he tried not to think about, there was the riverbank and there was no future or at least none that he wanted to think about.
He had thoughts about Simon and his mother that referred back to his past and he tried not to think about that. Same with Paullie. The Don he wondered about. There was something curious there...
Giselle, like Agnes was remarkably attractive in her late forties. She had a way with fashion and style which drew people to her.She had a smile and a walk which made for an effect.
Jake was her partner but it was a complex situation. Giselle did the thinking. Jake acted out on the political stage. A to where he went, what he did and what he stood for Giselle had as good or better idea than anyone else including and especially Jake.
Giselle liked fashion shows and Openings. Any Opening would do but film premieres were her specialty. Giselle liked it when people were at their best and there were people watching and attendants like waiters and valets.
Giselle liked a Colombian artist who painted larger people. She thought he captured America or at least something of it that she could recognise. Giselle spoke Spanish and thought that to survive in the States politically this was important.
Giselle liked cars of state, limousines. American limousines. She liked Lear jets and used them when she could. Giselle liked to stay in five star hotels, places where she could meet people who mattered.
Brand names featured high on Giselle's dress lists. She was a walking designer label. This was especially important when she appeared beside Jake on podiums and platforms around the country but it was also part of her own radar for survival, to dress, to win, to kill.
Giselle's favorite colours were blue, black and white. Her political interests were extremely right wing and she knew people who were much more extreme. Giselle classed herself as a republican moderate.
Giselle liked cheetahs. All forms of big cats. Especially fast cats. Giselle had been photographed with some when she went with Jake to some of the big game parks in Africa.
Giselle watched reruns of soaps like Dallas on her televisions. That made her a bit of a throwback but she was unapologetic. This was the way Giselle saw life- families and power, power and families.
At school Giselle had made a study of the prom. And cheerleading. In a sense she had graduated in the latter. Giselle could encourage but she could lead as well.
Knowing an opponent's weakness was the stuff of politics and being able to deal to that weakness with himour was one of Giselle's strengths. She would sit with Jake's speechwriters and help with oneliners and gags.
Paullie travelled from Los Angeles to Vegas. By Stutz.
Simon figured that Paullie might have something about the closest person always having some kind of answer. There had to be an explanation for why the twins had gone to America.
He went back to the Roma leader. He went back to the Job Sheet. More yellow slips. He went back to Sam. There had to be soneone in North Oxford who knew something. Did the Trapezoids, as Paullie so cunningly called them, like American junk food?
Was the solution a simple one? Had North Oxford been a tad too stable for them? Were they threatened by some Central European custom like arranged mariage thought Simon knowing nothing at all about the subject at hand but feeling wise with all his figuring.
Thinking about his world Simon reflected on being caught between his mother and Sam. All in all he thought it worked out well. They were such different people and he got different things out of each of them. Paullie was a great help to Simon but he found the Don a real pain sometimes. The Tramp was an odd bod and Simon often thought he was a sad, tragic figure. And every time he turned around these days he came across those schoolgirls...
Sam thought she could talk this through. Simon walked with her to the Broad and left her to it, the task of gossipping to the passing Dons, the best minds in the world were there and if they thought she was too cute for words then so much the better for a good chat.
The helicopter rose from the pad on top of the hotel. Vegas was red and without dust in the early morning. As far as could be seen there was a fine, clear air, a magic to look at.
It was reconnaisance ordered by the man by the fountain getting ready for the arrival ofJuan, the man on the ground. Juan was not to be interfered with when he arrived. The instructions were explicit and made sure that no-one got a look at him.
The report back to Bogota said Go.
Back on the banks of the Isis Esme and Bella continued their search for the identity of the Tramp. It seemed he was from a good family. And he seemed intelligent. So why was he without means in North Oxford?
Why was he a tramp and what was his name? And why did he do those silly physical jerks, kicking up dirt and jumping around?
And what had drawn him back to the banks of the Isis? Had he returned to halcyon days of his youth at college?
Back in America Paullie tried to sort things out. Acrobats? Why would someone want acrobats in America? To entertain of course. To tumble from point to point.
To distract. If so to distract from what? Or from whom?
To do things on high. To defy gravity for a moment and make the hearts of the watchers skip a beat.
Why from North Oxford? It meant or it probably meant they spoke English.
Where to in the Americas? To a place where people were entertained. Las Vegas. Paullie was certain. Had to be Vegas.
The men in the country at the edge of the Caucasus took the woman they had kidnapped to a cottage in the country. Vera made herself at home, something she could do in most environments.
One called Bogota and said that the insurance package was now safe and secure. He stood in a cold hallway with his coat past his collar as he talked to the man in the tropical rainforest.
The call was taken at a booth near the eel weir. Julio took sips from a fruit drink while he carried on feeding with his other hand. He liked the way the eels thrashed and fought over the food he threw to them.
Esme and Bella found a way into the Boathouse. Really it was just a matter of getting into one of the boats and listening to what was happening above. The hardest thing was not to fall asleep.
It was restful, time off the bikes and out of the wind.
Theirs was a professional interest. They just wanted to know about the Private Detective Business- they always spoke of it as though each word in the phrase was capitalised.
It was a long summer break and Esme and Bella had all the time in the world to plan and think. They had their own missions; to find the identity of the Tramp, to find out what Sam and Simon were up to...
In Bogota there was a meeting between the two men, the one who owned the zoo and the one that would be going into the field. Julio and Juan had coffee by the fountain and then walked, taking their time, through the zoo.
As they walked past the cages they went over and over the possibilities. The animals made sounds at the stranger. Juan took no notice he was listening intently to Julio.
The were very different people. Julio was at home in command. Juan was at home executing a plan, preferably on his own but with reference back to a leader who understood. They had complete confidence in one another.
Back in Oxford Simon messsed about in the boatshed and went for walks trying to come to terms with all this, in a desultory mannner. He saw the usual people.
Simon did try to stay close to his pattern of indolence just really for something to do. Flirted with elevenses even but then he had problems with the afternoons. Several sherries before lunch just seemed to call forth his old enemy: work. In this case the effort involved in working to stay awake, in trying to make sense with a foggy mind...
All a bit much really.
At one stage, late at night, Simon passed the Tramp who, once again, was kicking up dirt on the path from the Boathouse to the Joiner's Arms. To keep himself warm through activity Simon supposed. Tricky, staying warm in that line of operations Simon thought.
He often saw the Tramp sitting outside the pub on summmer's nights and waiting for something to happen. Simon could relate to that. He wondered when the case would gain some momentum.
Anything that flies I can handle said the man on the ground in Bogata. The Lear jet was in the skies over Colombia.
Practice.
The Day was in his mind now. He was engaged. All he could think about were the hows, how to get from A to B, how to fly without drawing attention.
There was light drizzle so far as he could see across the Columbian land.It suited him as he needed that kind of challenge, flying half blind.
He measured distances in his mind.
'Voles for tea?' Asked the Aussie. His name was David Walker.
Simon started. He'd drifted off into the sleepy almost narcoleptic High Summmer dusk of North Oxford. He needed waking though. All he could do lately was to sleep and drift away.
'Sling 'em on the barbie dya reckon Sport?' Responded Simon glad to snap out of The Case.
David Walker started on and on in his tedious Australian whine about The Case of the Exploding Vole and Simon had to admit that he had something. Other than the fact that he had once competed for the attention of Sam.
It was to do with oil. And gas. One group against another on the other side of the Caucasus and then all the way down to Iraq and Iran. Control of pipelines, really, was what it was all about. Control of the information about the pipelines actually.
More a matter of disguising information so that it never seemed to be about the pipelines. This sometimes meant murdering journalists.
It also meant keeping a presence in the area. Troops in Iraq, Turkey or Afganistan.
Keeping the troops in the area sometimes meant doing someone a big favour and this is where the man in Bogota came in. The politics had to be right. People had to keep promises and vote so that those troops were in place. Without the politics things fell apart.
There had to be a way to fool the Tramp reckoned Esme. He as a right pain actually, always messing around withy the signs of her group. For no apparent reason...
Who was he?
The Don wondered what Simon had got himself into this time. Then he noticed an interesting looking chap on the far side of the bar. Eventually though he had a short, sharp talk to Simon over a guiness making it clear that problems do not solve themselves, waiting for solutions to pop into your mind was not really how to do things, if you really wanted to put the polish on the boot then you had to set to, turn to, whatever the expression and look like you were working at least.
The Don's held Simon in some regard. Sam liked Simon so the Don put up with her. He found Paullie to be insufferably lightweight. His college and his club were the main things in his life and he liked the world of gossip and intrigue that he found there. Some of this riverbank business was silly- the Tramp and the schoolgirls. But the Isis was where he found himself and that was that.
So they did, Simon and Sam, what they always did. They went home and started work. Simon hung the Job Sheet up and sat directly in front of it a low table beside him with pins, small squares of yellow paper and the like on it while Sam went about things behind him.
Other things looming large in Sam's life were thing like salts and oils. If she had time she would write a book about one or the other. That would get her off the benefit too. The world had been wrecked by canola oil, salts were being corrupted en route to the shops.
What kind of diet would the acrobats be forced to eat in America?
Sam lived in the middle of many different people. There was Simon and here was his mother. Simon listened to her and his mother, quite simply, did not. The Don put up with her and then there were the cast of characters on the riverbank. The Tramp, the schoolgirls. All occupational hazards she supposed. At least the Isis was a good place to think.
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