The Vetting and Other Stories

By Peter Kaufman

Peter Kaufman returns with another 13 stories filled with real, but fictional, characters. There are eccentrics, petty criminals, swindlers, drunkards, MI5, MI6, OSI agents, a beautiful/romantic woman on a cruise, an Italian family, a Jewish couple engaged in daily battles of wit, the dramatic 'S' gals and victims of unforeseen circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440109584

Peter Kaufman

Peter Kaufman is an eleven year Air Force veteran, active and reserve service, as a Special Agent in the OSI, and is a graduate of Yale and Southern Cal. He writes mostly about emotions, relationships---positive, negative, and tragic; intrigue; crime; and the critical kinds of choices people make. He lives in Oceanside, California.

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Acknowledgements

Cover Concept: design, color and background grid, P. Kaufman

Photographic Specialist, M. Sipia

Photo, back cover, S. Brodie

Poem: Yesterday’s Wind, P. Kaufman; appears in The Cavode Sisters

Special Thanks to: Kind citizens of: Los Angeles County, California; Oakland County Michigan; Orange County, California; Preston County West Virginia; Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania; and Countless citizens, London, England.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgements

Counter Measures: A Narrative

Unintended Results: The Entrepreneur

Elena’s Swoops

Double Speak

The Cavode Sisters

The Word

The Vetting

The Strange Tale of Parker Hatch

Ivor Wallace Harker

The Bank of Dad

A Glimpse of Honey

Sol’s Gambit

Flyer Mathematics: Observations

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest

Journal, 1856, Thoreau

Counter Measures: A Narrative

During the past six years, I often remind myself how living in Quail Ridge has been neither routine nor stress free, especially when there’s a constant feeling something’s going to happen, something not so good. With years of experience, I have always felt everyone has premonitions; but constantly? And that’s the situation. I’ve had a persistent foreboding every time my new neighbor, Karl Leiter, embarked on any kind of activity, large or small, that had anything to do with his home or property. And such activities occurred regularly after Karl bought the former grove owner’s homestead. The old home, and surrounding land, was the only original real estate left when the grove was subdivided years ago; it remained unsold for the last six years. It’s now a beehive of disaster.

***

Most recent event. Last Saturday morning, I was awakened early and said to my wife Nora, I heard an unusual sound. Did you hear it?

It sounded like it was out front, probably in Karl’s yard. Why don’t you get up, you’re awake now with little chance of getting back to sleep, and see what’s going on?

Karl’s yard? I’m not sure I want to know.

Oh, stop being so negative, Harry, just get up and find out what’s going on.

I dragged myself out of bed, went to the front window, opened the blinds and looked out. In the half-light I saw Karl Leiter was indeed out in his front yard, doing something. I opened the window and called, What’s up, neighbor?

Some clever scientific work is up, Harry.

Scientific?

Yes, absolutely, I’ll fill you in later. Can’t talk now, I’m too busy.

As I looked out the window, I saw it was getting lighter and immediately, two things concerned me. First, out to the west a series of huge, dark storm clouds were blowing in from the ocean, and second, the content of Karl’s reply. It was an incontestable fact that storm clouds and Karl Leiter, occurring simultaneously, always meant two events would arrive like clockwork. The natural one, rain and heavy winds, and the ill omen one, which foretold an impending Karl Leiter disaster.

Karl’s home was next to mine, to my left, on the east side of the cul-de-sac which formed the terminal end of Condor Way. So, I was worried. Already this morning Karl was in the process of doing something, something ‘scientific,’ as he put it. It was the word something, I feared. Would it eventually spell trouble not only for the five homes and families on the cul-de-sac, but possibly for everyone else on Condor Way, as far south as Eagle’s Nest Drive?

There was never a remote chance of mistaking key warning signs associated with a Karl Leiter project. A truck arrived with material; the delivery of rented construction equipment took place; sounds of compressed air equipment in operation filled the air; or some sort of hammering or other odd/strange noise occurred that filled the early hours of a Saturday, or especially, a Sunday morning.

Worst of all, however, there was an uncanny certainty, a misgiving which engulfed me whenever Karl Leiter was outside in his yard, and I heard him whistling. He was famous for whistling during the design and completion phases of a project, any project, major or minor. And a project, all the neighbors knew, produced consistent surprises. Karl, if not the inventor of, was at least the west coast distributor of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I recall telling Nora quite frequently that Karl’s whistling during the first stage of a project’s initiation, and later during its completion, was to drown out any possible objections or observations his wife Friedl might hazard to make. Friedl didn’t dare offer opinions too often. Karl also drew a crowd as a project got under way. That was when everyone agreed the louder Karl whistled the more imperative, the more urgent, the more necessary it was to drown out Friedl’s or any other comments. As a general rule, louder and more intense whistling accompanied the more off-the-wall, experimental events.

***

Karl Leiter was a model of the eccentric, intense, serious person. He was up at four-thirty every morning except Sunday, when he slept in till five. Every day he borrowed the newspaper from my driveway, read it and returned it before I was up. ‘Why buy two, when one will do,’ was how he explained this habit.

Karl, despite his boyish, quizzical, manner, routinely spoke rapidly in an authoritative tone about anything and everything; he resembled a university professor; had a short, slight physique and a nondescript, heavy mop of dark-brown hair which was always in need of a barber. Karl didn’t believe in barbers, ‘Why spend the money?’ was what he told everyone. His clothes were in the same general condition as the hair. Together with that, Karl’s posture gave the impression he was always leaning into a strong wind—a swirling wind that blew the mop of hair down over the eyes and forced his wire-rim glasses to slide down the small nose located in the precise center of his narrow, thin face. This forward-leaning posture, unkempt hair and the sliding glasses, added to the aura that Karl Leiter was Focused. Focused so intently that to interrupt him with a question or to proffer information, which he construed as advice or a precaution, caused Karl to react in a manner somewhere between annoyance and do-you-realize-you-have-interrupted-the-Leiter-Focus-process.

In addition to business success as an investment banker earning a substantial mid six-figure annual income, Karl had a domestic specialty. It was do-it-yourself home improvement projects. And in the everyday flow of any project, his personal forte was skill, obsessive skill devoted to avoiding paying retail for anything. Actually, Karl’s ultimate aim was to pay zilch, or as close to zilch as possible. This art form was illustrated by his tactic with my daily newspaper. Karl was beyond frugal. He is described by two Southern guys in our neighborhood, As tighter than a tick on a hound.

As a consequence of his penurious and miserly personality, Karl possessed two harmonious sub specialty techniques for basic home improvements. First, there was no building trade skill, no area of expertise (plumbing, electrical, concrete, carpentry—you name it) that Karl believed he could not accomplish. No task was beyond him; he was a universal expert. All you had to do, Karl sermonized, Is go to the library, read a few books or tech manuals and then just do it. This blind confidence fit in perfectly with the second of Karl’s harmonious sub specialties. Research expert, design engineer, landscape architect, county planning department bureaucrat, ordinance/variance specialist, material spec detailer, purchasing agent, and most important, project engineer and installation professional. As Karl often said, ‘Why hire a job done when you can do it yourself and save all the money you would pay to all those other guys?’

***

Well, don’t stand there day dreaming, Harry, what’s going on? Nora said.

Karl’s doing something ‘scientific,’ Nora. That’s all he’ll say until later.

Okay, dear, I’m still sleepy. I’ll get up later. Please close the blinds. Nora turned on her left side, away from the front windows, and was soon sound asleep.

I picked out some work clothes: jeans, a faded denim shirt, heavy work shoes and my old dark blue Navy Veteran’s cap. As I dressed, I relived a former vivid, major Karl Leiter project. It was also an occasion when his intense whistling became overpowering. How could any of us forget that early Sunday morning in late January several years ago?

Karl had rented a backhoe to dig a pit for a fishpond in his large front yard. He also rented a small, self-propelled trencher to create a ditch for an overflow drain line from the pond to the street. Karl claimed, ‘Both pieces of equipment are simple, a piece of cake to operate. I’ve got this equipment on a one day, reduced Sunday rental—and it all goes back tomorrow—rain or shine.’ He repeated the ‘Ease of Operation’ assurance to all on-lookers just before he broke the main water line to his house with the backhoe. And minutes later, using the trencher, severed the TV cable feed to the control box located in his yard near the sidewalk. It was the conduit that controlled the TV feed to the homes on the cul-de-sac and south for an entire block on Condor Way. These events took place after rain had begun to fall and Friedl had urged waiting until the rain stopped tomorrow to use the equipment. Karl was whistling loudly. And today was the Sunday of the NFL televised AFC and NFC division championship games.

In addition to damage repairs (a plumber to put in an entirely new water line from the street meter to his house—the existing line was too old for maintenance, the TV cable company to repair the conduit before the Sunday of the Super Bowl) Karl had to pay for all of us to go to the Oaken Bucket at the Quail Ridge Mall. There we drank beer and watched the AFC/NFC title games. The second game went into double overtime, and we ran up a hell of a bar tab by the time it ended. Everyone was so plastered they hired taxis to get home; all cars were left at the Oaken Bucket. The wives were furious. Because of their various Monday schedules, each had to take a taxi to the Bucket to get her car. No one was ever able to get Karl to reveal the total cost of the fishpond project.

As likable as Karl is, the wives were annoyed with him for months. Especially Friedl, who I recall secretly told Nora, ‘She thought the fishpond project was a dumb idea in the first place telling Karl that the pond would attract animals from the neighborhood and the nearby hills to drink water, to urinate in the flowerbeds and make other messes everywhere, specially on the front lawn.’ Karl, Friedl said to Nora, ‘Just whistled and ignored me.’

Friedl was only half right. The coyotes, rabbits, rats and wild cats, or the Joyful-Night-Visitors as I dubbed them, turned out to be very democratic and visited everyone’s yard, knocking over flowerpots, garbage containers, eating the plants and causing general havoc. One of the worst, however, were the skunks. They dug up the lawns looking for grubs before visiting that wonderful magnet: water at the fishpond. Also, the raccoons ate all the koi in the fishpond. With the fishpond event in mind, I looked out the upstairs computer room window at Karl’s yard, with a very real sense of foreboding about today’s ‘scientific’ project, I shuddered.

What if this new project turns out to be worse than the disaster that occurred right after Karl moved to Quail Ridge and installed new water pipe in the old homestead? How that project began when he’d ordered galvanized pipe from an east coast plumbing supply company he read about in the weekly Federal Bankruptcy Bulletin at the library. Karl reviewed this bulletin without fail every Monday—and always said, ‘I skin two cats with one library visit. First the bankruptcy bargains and then a reread of the Sunday paper.’ Was today’s scientific something also a bulletin bargain?

The re-piping project Karl assured us at a neighborhood cookout, Is a piece of cake. With this pipe supplier’s bankruptcy, east coast pipe is much cheaper than local, even with freight figured in. Guys, believe me, I researched it. It’s much cheaper.

So, with the east coast galvanized pipe ordered and the delivery scheduled, Karl hired day laborers, green card guys and no green card guys, to begin tearing out the existing pipe in anticipation of his pipe delivery and quick completion of the job.

Karl borrowed buckets from us and crowed, I’ve timed everything to perfection: stocked up on past-expiration-date bottled water obtained at a great discount for the workers; filled your buckets and have them on standby in the bathrooms and ready for assisted toilet flushing. It’s a piece of cake, guys.

However there were surprises. The east coast pipe arrived two weeks later than scheduled and it didn’t comply with the purchase order. However, Karl was helpless with a bankrupt seller and a P.O. with a no return clause. Also, galvanized pipe didn’t meet California code requirements for copper pipe only and, therefore, Karl’s galvanized pipe could not be installed and pass inspection. Neither did the old plaster walls and electrical wiring in the bathrooms which Karl found also had to be removed and brought up to code. The result. The neighbors learned the predicted two to three day retrofit period turned into four months; the city disconnected Karl’s water meter at the street until everything was up to code and passed inspection; and with a high-pressure weather system off the coast that blocked normal cool sea breezes, temperatures rose into the 90’s. Karl’s yard of grass, flowers, shrubs—everything died—while Karl, Friedl and their two kids alternated staying one week with each of us on the cul-de-sac and then moved to a motel for three months. During that period, local licensed plumbing, drywall and electrical contractors ordered the correct materials, completed the job and got it to pass inspection.

Moreover, Karl had to pay to have the galvanized pipe hauled away. He claimed, ‘Some of the total cost was recovered when a Tijuana scrap dealer I found agreed to buy it and haul it away.’

At the move-back-in victory party for the Leiters, Friedl quietly begged everyone not to mention re-piping, east coast galvanized pipe, no-return clauses, bankruptcy bargains, building codes, motel costs, destroyed yards, or anything else having to do with the project. She said things were tense—tense enough. Later, I named this event, Leiter disaster, vorrengig, number one.

***

I went downstairs but was not anxious to learn what Karl was doing. I decided, though, it would be better to confront the situation now and find out just what ‘scientific’ meant. I saw Karl out front and strolled over as he pounded some sort of stake into the ground. The stake emitted an audible but strange clicking sound about every thirty seconds.

What’s with the stake, Karl?

Karl, in his usual speaking-to-the-peasants manner, said, "Since I put in the fishpond with its water supply, in addition to the Joyful-Night-Visitors, a bunch of gophers have taken up residence in the front yard and are doing a heck of a lot of damage. Now, these scientific, Gopher-Be-Gone, clicking sticks you see me pounding into the ground generate a special sound wave that annoys gophers and drives them out.

Where do they go?

Damned if I know, Harry, they just leave. That’s what the sales guy said where I bought these on closeout. It was the last four the store had, and he virtually gave them to me to get rid of them. What a buy! he chuckled. Then the skies opened up and the rains came. It was that omen thing again.

After a week of the relentless sound of the scientific clicking sticks and pounding rain, Nora and I, as well as Bill Morse and his wife Clara who live in the house beyond Karl on the cul-de-sac, all noted gopher holes in our front lawns, as well as dead shrubs and plants in the beds nearby. There was no longer any mystery where Karl Leiter’s gophers had gone. They were at least non-partisan and had spread the devastation to the yards on both sides of Karl’s property.

***

I wasted no time and was on the phone immediately to my retired navy-electronics buddy, John Braun. Chief Braun not only sold all sorts of high-tech electronic gear, but he was an expert in electronic counter measures.

John said, You need a pulsating unit with a higher-wave length frequency output than Karl’s four, old fashioned, out-of-date, low frequency Gopher-Be-Gone units in order to drive the rodents out of your yard and back to Karl’s or someone else’s yard. No wonder Karl got those clicking sticks so cheap; they’re virtually junk with all the new stuff on the market. And with that single phone call to Chief Braun, the now famous Quail Ridge ‘Electronic Counter Measures War’ began.

I drove down to the Chief’s store and picked up what he recommended: a rechargeable, battery-operated, high wave-length frequency—not detectable to the human ear—pest-repelling unit. It would out perform Karl’s audible clicking sticks, which annoyed humans as well as gophers.

When I got home, I installed the unit on the front lawn, aimed it at the gopher mounds and turned on the pest-repeller. I also used some earth from the gopher mounds and packed it into gopher tunnel entrances I was able to expose. I waited overnight to see what happened. The next morning, no dirt had been pushed up to form new mounds which probably meant the gophers had bailed out in one night. Since they were probably most familiar with the old tunnels in Karl’s yard and there were fresh mounds of dirt in his lawn and flowerbeds, it was obvious Karl’s yard was where they had gone. Somehow the gophers had communicated with the Joyful-Night-Visitors, who must have dug up Karl’s Gopher-Be-Gone clicking sticks, which were missing as well, and had carried them off. At least that’s what I assumed had happened and said so to Karl. Also, I assured him I hadn’t touched them. Karl asked the other guys on the street if they had taken of the sticks. Everyone denied any responsibility for the removal of the sticks. This came to be known as, The-Case-of-the-Missing-Gopher-Be-Gone-sticks.

From the expression on Karl’s face, it was evident he did not believe a word of what we said. He was furious, he