The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

By Mike Kennedy

An anthology of a dozen stories:

The TEN LOST TRIBES OF EUPHORIC SHORES IS fable of urban apocalypse. The mayor leans on the police, forcing them to ignore the home invasions that plague the 400 families of the gated retirement community of Euphoric Shores. The hoods say the geezers got bank, but got no flex, and they ain’t strapped. The neighborhood is on its own and confronts the problem in clever ways.

EROTIC SHOCK: Nixon is out. The reign of the old men is over. Conway has survived his years of smuggling out of Cuba, sells his plane, and returns home. The singles bar is born. The top tease at an escort service moves in with Conway. The real fireworks begin when they reunite after a breakup, and she brings a Viking princess to share the fun.

PRINCE OF STATEN ISLAND: Charlie Newton has sworn to de-fang, de-claw, and neuter Wall Street. On the last day of his life, at the corner of Battery Place and Greenwich Street, Charlie’s I-Phone rang. “This is Bruce Duncan, your astronomer. I am heading for higher ground in case of a large wave. I tasked the Consell telescope to observe the sky directly overhead with a diameter of two hundred miles at an elevation of ninety miles. Majorca is one degree of latitude south of New York. Their computer sent it a minute ago. The object appears to be twenty yards wide. The distance between Majorca and New York is 3,800 miles. At 20,000 miles per hour, and minus the two minutes since it was photographed, that puts it nine and a half minutes away. With a mass fifteen per-cent of the Tunguska event in 1908, this means a blast radius of six miles. It will come down somewhere along a line between Spain and Chicago. Good Luck, Mr. Newton.”

DOUBLE DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE: Frances Kemble enlists the aid of glamorous television psychologist Dr. Anita Karvakian to expose a presidential candidate in the ambush journalism of a television interview. Frances contemplated the injury of lies. She remembered the jellyfish-sting of their betrayal. The lie was a family with many sons. Frances ran their names. There were weasel-words—the Swiss Army knives of lying. There were spins—the quick coats of paint. There was boilerplate—the unpruned thicket where lies hid like leopards. There was hyperbole—the vine wrapped around the living truth. There was silence—the family ghost. There was sham, phoniness, fakery, duplicity, insincerity, hypocrisy, unctuousness, quackery, humbug, and bluff. There was pretension, perversion, distortion, exaggeration, equivocation, dissimulation, and cant. Frances thought of the Eskimos, who needed 32 different names for snow.

Another among the three stories of Conway, OF WINDAGE AND DEAD RECKONING: Conway is a smuggler in the Caribbean and the Florida Straits, flying a twin-engine Navajo. As the islands string out farther south, civilization grows weary, and the towns become simple. The farther he flew from the American mainland, the wider the stretches of blue water became, and more clear became the problem of survival. Conway sometimes refuels his white, twin-engine Navajo at lonely Duncan Town. The sky behind him glows with first light. Conway rises up from the airstrip, flying low and flat out, at two hundred and twenty-five knots. He turns west north-west up the Nicholas Channel, hugging the color change, in the low light, at the west edge of blue water. Alongside Cuban airspace, Conway switches off his collision lights, to fly dark. Always, Conway dreams of the forbidden string of islands off his port side—from Neuvitas in the south to Bacunayagua in the north. Above his left shoulder, Conway watches for the lights of Migs, rising up to shoot him down.

and more....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Kennedy
• Release date: Aug 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311458490

Mike Kennedy

A note to Kennedy's readers: "Like many of you, in former times I thought of myself as not merely awake, but vibrantly awake. I was wrong. Beginning in 2019 and connecting the dots as consciousness is wont to do, I began my Red-Pill experience. Recently, and to my amazement, I see that the writing of three of my novels was channeled experience. 'Mali' turns out to be a story of the Deep State. It was always, from the start, a story of the illusion of free will. 'Taggart' turns out to be a story of Trans-Humanism. And 'All Our Yesterdays' turns out to have been an unconscious metaphor of the inner sanctum of the Cabal and its malign design upon mankind. I have long known that my stories find me (and not the other way around). Two attempts at designing a story have both resulted in ten-thousand-word dead ends. I quote from Aeschylus (his work 'Agamemnon'): 'Pain, which cannot forget, even in our sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.' And we remember that 'grace' is an unmerited consolation. Finally, I see that my 'message to the publishing world' (final paragraph below) recognized the sad fact that agents & editors have betrayed their intrinsic debt to western civilization and consciously work in thrall to the dark side. One should keep in mind that the root word for 'inspiration' is 'spirit' and so must ever remain experience beyond the five senses. I have always written about those things that you know, but do not know you know."On a lighter note: "It is not too late to fall in love with language. You've just needed characters you wish you knew. I wish there were drawings, pictures, and maps in novels and short stories. Don't you? In the novel 'Mali,' a picture begins every chapter. So also, in these two anthologies. All in support of the magical movie in your mind. Go ahead and venture, 'It's showtime!'"Indianapolis author Mike Kennedy described by Trident Media Group, saying: "Kennedy has a way with words. Readers attracted to Hemingway and Mailer will love Season of Many Thirsts [A novel brought to E-Books under the original title: REPORT FROM MALI]." Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says of the manuscript: "This is a potentially important and significant novel on many levels, including formally." Little, Brown says of the novel: "Our admiration for its ambition and the energy and high-octane force it applies toward these engrossing geopolitical events. Chance and his team are memorable characters." Random House says: "Kennedy captures the strange, and intriguing world of Mali." Playwright Arthur Miller said of Kennedy: "Marilyn and I used to think there was something funny about Mike, and then we realized that he was simply hilarious."Kennedy's message to the publishing world, "I have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness from time to time across fifty years. During this, my most recent reading, it occurs to me that I am Kurtz and that all of you are Marlow. Kurtz lay dying in the pilot house of the river steamer. Marlow, the company agent, has found him and returns with him. Kurtz has spent years in the jungle pulling out ivory and sending it downstream. Finally, Kurtz agrees to return down river to civilization because he realizes that he has something to say, something with a value beyond his ton of treasure. Kurtz realizes that he has achieved a synthesis from out of his brutish experience. Kurtz imagines being met by representatives at each one of the string of railway stations during his return to civilization. He tells Marlow, 'You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability.' And then, sounding as though he steps into our own millennium, Kurtz adds, 'Of course you must take care of the motives—right motives—always.' Now I see that Kurtz is Conrad. Kurtz is not unique. He is every writer. It is only Marlow, the agent, who is unique, unique in his fidelity, not just to the job, nor only to the company, but to the civilization that sent him."Listen to the video essays of WrongWayCorrigan on Rumble. https://rumble.com/c/WrongWayCorriganCJ

Book preview

The Prince of Staten Island And Other Stories

Mike Kennedy

Copyright 2014 by Mike Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

The Stories

The Prince of Staten Island

Double Double Toil and Trouble

Of Windage and Dead Reckoning

Erotic Shock

A Danger in Becoming

Deadstick

Only Boat for Fifty Miles

Winner Lose All

The Answering Machine

The Ten Lost Tribes of Euphoric Shores

Irresistibly American

Gather Me My Scattered Selves

Back Matter

About the Author

Other Fiction by theAuthor

THE PRINCE OF STATEN ISLAND

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) February 21, 2016. New York investor Charles Newton died Saturday in the arms of a Bellevue Hospital clinical psychologist, the glamorous Doctor Anita Karvakian, after a freak accident in Battery Park. Doctor Karvakian, a frequent contributor on cable television, had just become engaged to Mr. Newton and was leaving with him to purchase rings when…

Yes, I told Charlie about the gypsies on Cyprus. They trust Armenians. An old one explained fate to me when I was nine, the year we moved to this country. Fate, generates a chain of perceptual illusions, causing cognitive bias. It is eventually fatal. Hamlet had his ghost. Charlie had his drones. I met him six months before he died. Stockbrokers killed Charlie and his father. I had a hand in it too, but I loved him. New York City will never be the same without Charlie Newton.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) March 6, 2016. Out of a total real estate value of eight hundred billion dollars in the borough of Manhattan, the late New York investor Charles Newton is said to have owned one-eighth of the total. According to the Security and Exchange Commission, the entire amount was stolen from various American stock exchanges during their steady contraction of the last three years. Aside from the activities of Charles Newton, only the trading firm of Vanderbilt-Stuyvesant is profitable, but only recently so. The SEC acknowledges that the definition of the word theft in connection with the holdings of Charles Newton is under discussion. They have asked congress for new law, which they acknowledge, cannot have force retroactively. A self-made billionaire, Charles Newton began as a farm boy in the rolling hills of…

The Newton farm was next to ours on a plateau about six miles from the end of the main runway. The international airport was down in a valley, filled rim to rim with the city and its ring of burbs. Charlie Newton worked for me after school. The wife and I have three girls, and while the girls were a help, I had a dairy herd. I needed a big, strong kid to work with.

I remember Charlie Newton looking up at the sky, lying on his back for hours, beneath a flight path, as jets made their way to a landing. It had to do with angles. He was looking for something.

Charlie soon saved enough for his first pair of binoculars. His eyesight must have been extraordinary to discover Newton’s Law in the first place.

Charlie’s father just raised corn and beans. In between planting and picking, Charlie had free time. My girls argued over who would marry Charlie. They would each take their own, separate window in different rooms and stare at Charlie—while Charlie stared up at the sky.

Charlie’s father rolled a pair of loaded dice. In the summer of 2007, he borrowed money and put it into the stock market. Eighteen months later, he had lost half. Soon, he was renting his land back from the bank.

One Saturday morning his dad hung himself out in his barn. I heard Charlie’s mom screaming across the field. Charlie was out cutting hay for me. His mom and I walked into the alfalfa field to tell Charlie. He stopped the tractor, and turned the engine off, to watch us walk across. He had to know.

A man’s life is no longer entirely his own, once he becomes a father. They stole something from Charlie that day. I guess Charlie figured that he would do something about it.

Charlie entered the Harvard Business School on a partial scholarship and, as usual, worked his way though. He found himself another hillside in Massachusetts.

He called it Newton’s Law of Refractive Incidence. Field glasses enabled Charlie to catch quick glimpses of the stripe, but it was the digital camera and the computer that allowed him to study them. The early digital cameras showed only a fuzzy streak when he magnified the image on his computer. Finally, a camera came out boasting forty megapixels.

Charlie could be very secretive. Early in his senior year, Charlie brought a tablet computer with him on a visit to our house. He asked me to go out to the barn.

I felt like the sailor on the Pinta who first saw the New World. Actually, Leif Erickson first saw the new world, but he did not know what he was looking at, and so in history, he does not count.

The trick was that the stripe was so fast. Commercial jets can fly at two hundred miles per hour on their final approach. This means that the stripe appeared to fly along the fuselage for half a second.

Shadows are so commonplace that we never notice one that does not belong. Charlie must have had a preternaturally quick eye. He must have been able to stop motion, much as they say da Vinci did, when he drew birds in flight.

Charlie showed me the underbellies of jets. There was a streak on every one, either black or blue. When Charlie increased the magnification on black streaks, points of light emerged. These were stars. The photo with the blue streak showed a tiny second plane cruising at higher altitude, leaving a contrail in its wake. The smaller images were views from the same place, but at another time.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) March 13, 2016. Scientists at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland have taken the unusual step of launching a weather balloon provided with unusually sensitive altitude controls in order to gather air samples inside a very thin and previously unknown layer of Earth’s atmosphere, which is being termed the Nemosphere. They will use the sample during wave/particle interference experiments in the field of Quantum Mechanics in an effort to prove…

Without a reference point, Charlie did not know if these were photographs of the past or the future. He knew that he must look down through the stripe, to the ground. First, he had to get up there next to it.

He had hired helicopters. Charlie explained that planes were no longer necessary. They had merely been the backdrop. The stripe was always there. It was above us now. Something had to move through it for us to see it, or we had to be inside of it ourselves. Charlie guessed that you could also observe the Earth’s surface through it—if you were in the middle of it, like looking through a ship’s porthole.

Charlie had been unable to find the stripe that he had predicted at three thousand feet above ground level. The rotors were too large. Helicopters stirred things up. They left the edge of the stripe so chewed up that he could not see into it. He needed a steady platform. He needed a tall building. But the tallest lacked three hundred feet.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) September 4, 2013. Edgewood Military Arsenal in Maryland reports the theft of two sophisticated drone aircraft intended for the Department of Homeland Security together with their control systems. These vertical takeoff drones were intended for surveillance over the northeastern United States. The on-board cameras were capable of reading a license plate from an altitude of…

Charlie needed to raise his vantage point. He needed a camera with the optics to read a newspaper on the ground from three thousand feet. Charlie learned to travel within the stripe. He had an accurate location survey of newsstands from Brooklyn across lower Manhattan. He programmed the drones with the coordinates.

If the photos showed dinosaurs feeding where one day they would plot Central Park, then that day’s sighting was a curiosity. But if it showed a newsstand even one day in the future, then Charlie would know whether to buy or to sell.

If Bernie Madoff convinced everyone that he was buying lots of stocks, Charlie Newton convinced everyone that he was buying none. Using shell companies and Swiss bank accounts, Charlie let it all ride on every roll. He never crapped out.

Charlie took over an industrial site on the shore of Staten Island, just north of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. There was nothing but the Upper Bay in front of him. He owned the lots to either side. There was no one across the street except a railroad.

At water’s edge, there was a concealed boathouse with an overhead door where Charlie kept his thirty-six foot cigarette boat. His rooftop had motorized hatches.

Most mornings, before sunup, a gray drone, built with stealthy angles from radar absorbing composites, would ascend slowly through a roof hatch. It would hover for a few seconds just above the roof line. Then it would shoot upward, full throttle, to three thousand feet, where it would slow to search a narrow band of sky for that day’s sliver of time. After finding it, it would lock on to that altitude and slowly proceed to the first of the many predetermined locations. At each one, the on-board computer would activate the camera to zoom in on the front page of a newspaper to photograph and store.

At those times, the drone was outside Charlie’s control. He knew where it was, but not when it was. It was where signals would not reach.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) September 8, 2015. The New York Federal Reserve expresses dismay at the wild swings of stock markets, which have persisted over the last two years. The Fed calls for new regulations and blames computerized trading for the market gyrations. In rebuttal, the Republican National Committee calls for renewed faith in free market forces and pledged support for job-creating entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the Senate filibuster continues into its third week despite…

In retrospect, it should have been obvious from the wild swings of market averages that there must be someone operating like Charlie Newton. Charlie called it outsider trading. The same thing began happening with commodities. Charlie spread himself out to appear systemic.

Charlie returned home one afternoon to find that the navy had docked an aircraft carrier nearby. Its superstructure looked down on his building. Charlie would take a few weeks off—lest their sensors pick up his drones. It was time to see the town.

(THE NEW YORKER) September 7, 2015. The New York Museum of Art features early Byzantine art in its most intimate of galleries. The Crypt Gallery has been carved from the space beneath the museum’s massive grand staircase. Subdued lighting, low ceilings, brick arches, and an eerie quiet give the visitor the feel of a time traveler. On permanent loan from the Cairo Museum, hit hard by the worsening turmoil in that country, is the priceless collection of…

"You’re too young to be carrying a cane," Anita observed in piping soprano notes.

I must have something to do with my hands, Charlie replied, twirling it one-handed, flashing silver inlays, and omitting mention of the twelve-gage shell inside.

Anita thought that she might like to give this man something to do with his hands. She knew she was compulsive. She was at peace with that quality about herself.

This woman is stunning, Charlie thought. While slightly plump, she maintains splendid curves. She is high breasted, and arrives with the most beautiful eyes he has ever seen.

Anita’s shiny black hair curled abundantly at her shoulders. Anita displayed a confidence that Charlie found thrilling.

You’re Armenian! He both announced and exclaimed.

Yes, she gasped. How could you have known so quickly?

How could such a beautiful and talented people have been subjected to such barbarism? Anita, who always fell in love quickly, prayed that this was to be the last time.

Why do you come here? She asked.

Beginning today, it shall be, henceforth; because it was here we met.

Yesterday, then, she pressed.

Because Justinian was the first iconoclast.

Sorry, that was Leo and he lived in the century after the period in this gallery. She waited a moment, studying. You took that pretty well. She sounded surprised.

Took what well?

"I was competing with you. What do you think about that?"

"Well…I want to know these things, he protested, lightly. Are you some kind of psychiatrist?" He smiled.

Clinical psychologist, she confessed, waiting, evaluating.

I guess you’ll want to make me over, won’t you?

Maybe just…parts of you, she whispered. Can you handle that?

For a chance to take you to bed, I’d let you turn me into a housewife.

Oh, no, she replied in mock horror. Anything but that…cowboy, maybe, she whispered, confidentially. But we must dine together at least once, beforehand…a necessary preliminary…of acquaintance and acceptance.

Hungry yet? He asked.

Big appetite, She nodded, knowingly. Don’t you want to know my name? She added, coyly.

Of course, I’m Charlie, he laughed. What’s yours?

I’m Anita…but they call me ‘neat’. Take me to another gallery that you like. Then we’ll have lunch. Ten o’clock in the morning is too soon for dinner and a movie.

I guess I’m moving pretty fast.

I spoke first, she corrected him.

"Charlie, the lady in the painting is sitting on a bench like we are. Do you know who she is?" Anita did not turn from the painting, but waited. Her long, black lashes stood out from her eyes, heavy in profile.

That was Monet’s wife.

Why is she so unhappy?

Her father just died. See the note in her hand? She was twenty-six. She only lived six more years. Monet went on another forty-seven years without her.

Is that Monet behind her?

No, a neighbor. He brought the flowers that lay beside her.

"The painting looks like it was done in pixels. Why is that?

Good catch…Neat. Impressionism was a reaction against the camera. When the camera started representing life better than they could, they moved on to something beyond representation. Our eyes perform like cameras only sometimes. You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.

"I don’t know what it is that you do," she said, in quiet surprise, bypassing the compliment.

I don’t remember, he shrugged. It must not be very important, He sighed.

"Your home is very beautiful, Anita said, turning to prop her head up on her elbow. Her breasts lay one on top of the other. Charlie admired them. With his index finger, he traced their upper parts where they merged with her collarbone. When the taxi pulled up in front, I said, ‘Oh, no. We are going to make love in a warehouse’. But inside it is totally unexpected," she said, exuberantly, in piping notes.

Anita’s stare was interrupted as she startled herself with a thought. How old are you, Charlie? She frowned and pursed her lips.

Twenty-eight, he replied.

I’m three years older, she advised, guardedly. Does that matter? She asked in a musical voice that sprang across the syllables, one note following the next.

What kind of a fool would I be if it mattered? He asked.

You are very smart, Charlie, she said, rolling over on her back. Do me again.

I kept my own place, in the village, near the hospital, but I probably stayed with Charlie three or four night a week. I was a little short of cash one time and I asked Charlie if I could borrow a few bucks. He told me to pull up on a carpet and to pull open a floor hatch. Inside the vault was a thousand bands of one hundred dollar bills, each wrapper said a thousand dollars, Charlie did not even look up to see how much I took.

Charlie…can we unwrap all that money and put it in the bath tub so I can take a money bath?

You need a psychiatrist, Neat, he said, playfully.

I already have one.

"Seriously? Why would you have a psychiatrist?"

We all do…everyone in the department. It can get quite mean in staff meetings.

All the psychiatrists have a psychiatrist?

"We call it a professional prophylaxis and I’m a psychologist, remember? Can I take a money bath…please? Remember how attractive compulsive personalities can be…Charrrrr-lieeeeee?" She whined, playfully.

Do you want the money in the tub before or after you get in?

Now that is something I have not given much thought to. Anita hooked an index finger into her mouth and frowned. "I’ll bet the rich fucks up on Wall Street give their ladies a money bath all the time."

"Well, if they don’t, they had better start because I’m taking all their money. I suppose that they can fill a tub up with singles just as easy…and it should feel the same. But, we know the difference don’t we, Neat? I’ll draw your bath…Milady."

Wait, Charlie. I want in the tub first, Anita announced, pulling off her sweater. Get a camera, Charlie. We’ll send this out at Christmas…except to my parents.

Charlie’s office was dark, windowless and he kept it at sixty degrees even though it was getting late in the year. He had five Apple I-Macs with twenty-seven inch screens glowing atop a U-shaped desk. There was a huge piece of Lexan on the carpet, making it a skating rink for his swivel chairs. Television monitors overhead ran with the ticker of every stock market and a financial news cable show played continuously.

Charlie never smirked, though sometimes he might yield to a nod. He explained to me that he was trying to leach the value out of Wall Street and to convert it into real estate. He said this was the same thing that veterinarians do—when they de-fang, de-claw, and neuter.

He paid too much for the Google building. He said it was time for him to become barely visible. That was ironic because Griffin Enterprises purchased the building. This was one of Charlie’s front companies. I googled it. Griffin