Rome & Joliet

By Yancey Williams

From the story's inception, CIA Agent Satchel X. Gilespie (one L) is smack dab in the middle of a pristine Georgia forest trying to uncover a stash of illegal weapons which he hopes will jump start his foiled career and return him to prominence within the agency. To put it mildly, this is no easy task because Gilespie (one L) has as his one main go

• Language: English
• Publisher: YPress
• Release date: Dec 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780986031632

Book preview

Rome & Joliet

A Novel

By

Yancey Williams

Also by Yancey Williams

Worlds Apart

Shoot The Messenger

Copyright © 2013 by Yancey Williams

Y Press

www.yanceywilliams.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-978-0-9860316-2-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013946668

Printed in the United States of America

To Mary Balle

&

Virginia Michael Pannill

These violent delights have violent ends.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Circa 1597

Rome & Joliet

A Chapterless Continuum

SATCHEL GILESPIE (ONE L not two) sat between a hollow, ground-rotted cedar stump and a thorny gray thistle branch. The brier thorns had scratched his cheek bloody in multiple lashes. It left the appearance of sergeant stripes. Under a thin mist and leftover fog, he had squatted to a seat at the edge of the dense thicket. The parallel and identical lacerations on his face bled evenly in a tiny trickle, but he hadn’t bothered to notice. He was preoccupied, lost in thought. As well, he’d been too busy smoking half a Cuban cigar in giant puffs. It was the only way, he claimed, to smoke one of the fucking things. Cut ‘em in half and puff like hell. But it had flamed out tramping around in the forest. It was still unlit. He didn’t think to strike another match. So, he sat there chewing on it and shifting it left to right and right to left and back. It would drive anyone crazy if you had to watch it. Just like someone had really taken a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut and landed. The brown stained saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth, the loose tiny flakes of tobacco collecting on his teeth he’d spit in demonstrative flicks off the tip of his tongue, the leftover dribble at the point of his chin, not to mention the churlish demeanor that accompanied all this machismo cigar aftermath. And nothing inside ever said, clean it up Satchel. Clean it up. His ex-wife thought it made him look sexy and told him so. What does that tell you about her?

Yeah, well, she’s dead so not much I guess.

And you can kiss my ass if you don’t like it, as she liked to tell Gilespie. It’s the way he remembered her. All froth with tease and mischief and comeuppance, that was her. Whether he agreed or not, whether the subject matter was meaningful or not, she was always good for a laugh if just for sport and particularly in the rough spots, a laugh for the sake of it … like right now.

All hunched over Gilespie thought he was making himself warmer where in fact he was beginning to shiver like a frightened coward under enemy fire and sort of snarl indecipherably under his breath like a harmless dog bluffing. Few men had been where he’d been or done what he’d done. Even fewer men wanted to or cared. But for Gilespie, it was the grander notion that counted, a calling of sorts, and he acted like he’d planned the whole thing from birth where in fact his entire life had been an extemporaneous cluster fuck bigger than the entire twinkling Milky Way. No time for religion, less time for family, sorted and sordid time for beautiful women though he claimed that time was all on his terms. What a farce. It was never on any man’s terms, much less Satchel Gilespie’s.

Gilespie (one L not two) had uncovered enough debris in the last two hours to bury a Middlesex cathedral in the throwaway, but there was nothing in the find, nothing where it was supposed to be, and nothing, at least, where he thought it should be or was told he would find it. He wasn’t one to swear much, but he’d grumbled more than once and even called out multiple times hoping to irreverently incite a Christian god and thus jar loose the secret hiding place in this his latest illicit business affair.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Who gives a shit, thought an incredulous Gilespie in a log jammed self rebuke inside his own skull. Guns just don’t disappear. Boxes of guns just don’t get up and walk off. Crates and truck loads of ammunition just don’t grow legs and slither away into the night. He told himself all this as he sat chumping on the worn stogy as he felt his butt grow more and more damp by the second. It’s what inspired him to rise up again to his six foot something full frame and look out over the forest floor. It was then that he looked over to her. She was just the other side of the bent poplar.

She was leggy, just shy of tall, engagingly yet vacuously beautiful, still an Everyman’s siren. They met fifteen months, one day near the seventeenth hour after she’d graduated from Holy Communion Catholic Girls School. He was nineteen and half years older and looked evermore like her father with each passing tryst. He’d made the comment more than once, best sex of my life, and he made known to anyone bored enough to listen about all the sex he’d had with this woman and that. She was a hybrid, a cross between a pit bull and gerbil, a hyena and a mink. She liked it kinky, stir fried, up, down, mashed, inflected, incriminating, molded, melted, with her eyes open and shut. She liked it best standing with her bare ass backed up and pounded against the cold brass knobs of her great-great grandfather’s English chest of drawers, the balls of her feet barely touching the floor.

But there she was traipsing down the hillside through the leaves, her blouse half buttoned, pistol by her side, bandana round her waist, clutching tree bark in her dismount the way she groped and stroked his cock in those memorable sexual encounters he loved to brag about. Whatever is it that draws a woman to a man, he thought admiring her as she moved ever closer in her gangly sensual stride.

I thought you said the guns would be here? she asked mopping the sweat from her brow with a spare kerchief.

That’s not what I said, replied Gilespie. It’s what the sonofabitch told me.

Gilespie stood still. Through his own shit brown saliva, yellow teeth, and dead stump of his Havana, he gazed back at her and smiled lasciviously, adoringly her way as if to repeal the ill feelings he was presently having about this current deal gone sour.

We’ll make it work, Gilespie told her. We need to make it work. Right?

When these things worked, it was heaven on earth. The money rolled in like cream cheese at a Jewish wedding. He always took the year off. He traveled and not to the goddamned Catskills or the dorky Blue Ridge or the fucking, frumpy wine country for God’s sake. Hell no. He booked flights half way round the world and looked up exotic aborigines like lost kin. Maybe they were? Who knows? He hadn’t thought that far out. Nevertheless, it was nothing to find Satchmo sporting a lip ring with a pack of nappy-headed natives in tow or championing some berry stained tattoo just the other side of his throwing arm. Moon arising he could be competitively howling with bare-assed raucous monkeys the whole time pissing blow darts at them from one end of his pee shooter just for spite and to see if could hit one. Their beady little eyes covering the acacia limbs so high that at times they looked like furry tinsel ornaments on a subtropical Christmas tree. Dining out in Gilespie’s retreats meant toe to toe scraps with black tipped reef sharks suspended weightless all in a row waiting to take a limb off. That was his idea of a vacation. Or, so, that’s what he liked to claim.

If he could just somehow find a way to pull this one out his ass, he’d be on some big ol’ bird, up front first class, his pockets stuffed with filthy fifties and hundreds and a treasure chest full of prepaid credit card excursion collateral he’d just pulled in from this stinking heist. But first he had to find a way to pull this one out his ass. At present, it was looking bleak.

Satchel’s ex became suspicious when she found sex stains on the bed sheets. Wednesday morning was linen day. Brenda loved the smell of freshly laundered pillow cases every Wednesday night. It had become ritual. How was life worth living before the dryer sheet, she’d said on more than one occasion. She and Satchmo hadn’t had sex in three and a half weeks, and it certainly wasn’t anything memorable. She’d faked an orgasm. For the first time in their marriage, she suspected he’d faked his, too. Not that it really mattered, but fidelity was fidelity, and society’s rules had their place, and somehow, some way, we all had to live within the confines thereof and hereunto. Together we will stand, every boy, every woman, every man, or something. So, she wadded the sheets and ditched them into a tall, white trash can liner pulled the red ripcord shut, and took the unperturbed bundle to a crime lab for DNA sample. Rhonda C and she were something akin to drinking buddies. Rhonda C told her more than once: My husband won’t cheat on me because I process DNA for a living. That chemistry degree’s come in handy on more than one job. They’d discussed their husbands and lives in conversational cocktail Morse code at fractious times of various and sundry hours, odd days and off nights which turned into weeks then months then more. With little more than a look exchanging the soiled sheets, Rhonda C got the gist. Enough said between gals. Rhonda C got right on it. Turnaround less than twenty four hours. Neither the state nor the county got that kind of service. As expected, the test results came back positive. The cum stains were not hers (Brenda’s), but the cum stains were Satchmo’s and some other woman’s. Brenda, Satchmo’s ex, wasn’t amused. She’d been through too much with her old man and confronted him in the front seat of their new sedan, a Volvo station wagon (another trendy statement among other trendy statements at the time). She carried a luger in her purse because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. She’d seen his violent side, and Satchel was well over six feet and two hundred something pounds plus or minus depending on the size of his paunch. She wouldn’t stand a chance, at least not without some protection as equalizer.

So Gilespie, Brenda started in.

One L in Gilespie, he retorted.

How well I know, fuck head, Brenda recanted grudgingly. I just got the results back from the crime lab, and you’re guilty. Whataya have to say for yourself?

Guilty as charged, replied Satchel Gilespie without hesitation while sucking cigar tobacco through tight spaces in his stained teeth.

That’s it? Brenda shot back, dumbfounded, confounded, shocked, feeling, as well, brittle on top of disappointed. You mean you’re not even going to deny your infidelity and adultery? Not even a little?

Oh, that? Satchel Gilespie replied off guard. I didn’t know that’s what you were talking about. But, hell, he continued, I guess the answer would be the same irregardless.

"For fuck’s sake, Satch, how many times have I gotta tell you, it’s regardless not irregardless, and you’re telling me you’ve been fucking some other woman in our bed as well?" Brenda was transfixed now just this side of dumbfounded. She waffled for a nanosecond in and out of pissed off and don’t give a shit. I thought you were supposed to be an intelligent man, Mister-Fulbright-Scholar-and-all-that-horse-shit. How in the world could you bring some other tramp into our home and bang this bitch in our bed, Satchel Xavier Gilespie? Huh? Satchel? Answer that one for me, Satchel Xavier Gilespie? Brenda waited. She counted to five or six. Huh? Could I get an answer, please? Brenda frowned and reached into her purse and felt the small pistol pressed into her palm. She thought: I’ll be damned if this cheatin’ mother fucker’s gonna slap me around the way he did that once back when we first started living together. One dead son of a bitch, you lay a hand on me, big boy. One dead mother fucking cheating son of a bitch indeed.

First off, her husband Satchel Xavier Gilespie began pensively, for after all he was an ex or former Fulbright Scholar, and he knew himself to have some supernatural sense for conversational to perorational levitation which he considered a God-given gift on the order of raw, unrehearsed foot speed, Keynesian IQ, Herculean strength, physical agility, musical clairvoyance, mathematical telepathy, etc., etc., … Gilespie continued:

It wasn’t just some other woman. And, she’s certainly not the tramp you’ve described. She happens to be a very intelligent, charming, and beautiful younger woman that I’ve grown very close to in the last several months, and I had just misplaced the notion to convey this relationship to you thinking that somehow the infatuation would pass, and you and I could return to what we once had, you know, the throes of passion, sex at a glance, the interpersonal gravitational pull of lunar objects to their planetary source. Gilespie looked over to Brenda. Brenda looked back at Gilespie. She wasn’t buying it. He could tell. He’d seen that I ain’t buying it look before. She continued to glare at him as he continued. Okay, so the infatuation hasn’t passed, Gilespie proffered. And, I’m afraid the infatuation may not pass. As a matter of fact, I’m certain the infatuation has manifested itself into something I never could have imagined. This just couldn’t happen to me at this stage of my life when in fact I wasn’t even looking for it. Gilespie’s head fell back into the Volvo recline head rest as he sighed a most deep and laborious sigh. Adultery on the half shell, he thought without sharing the thought with Brenda. Perhaps somehow his sixth sense said to him: She’s got her hand around a small caliber firearm, and you open your big mouth, and she’s going to blow your ass straight away. So, for once keep your big trap shut! So he did.

Um huh, replied Brenda transfixed on incredulous. And you expect me to buy into that twisted, uncircumcised can of worms and owl shit rationale? Huh, Satchel Xavier Gilespie? Is that the best you can come up with? Brenda looked across the unidentified air space and read the second part of the riot act. Do you really think I’m that stupid, Satchel? Huh? Do you? Do I really look that fucking dumb, Satch? Tell me now, so I can move on, as if I’m not moving on anyway, you two timing, adulterous, lying, cheating, filthy cockroach of a maggot. Brenda slapped the steering wheel with both hands knowing full well it wouldn’t do any good. Jesus! How could I be so stupid? Brenda shouted, stuck her hand back into her purse, and gripped hardest on the luger at the end as her voice inflected. You’re not worth shooting! she yelled. Now, get out of my car! (There was a visible inflection at my car.)

She pulled the hand gun from the purse and waved it point blank into Gilespie’s face. She gritted her teeth and frowned horrifically. She even momentarily pictured herself a moonstruck Lon Chaney cloned into that same hairy, toothy, grotesque transformation. Her brow became one with her eyelids and the dish ran away with the spoon, said the voice inside her head. What? She almost asked the question aloud. Where did that come from? But she didn’t flinch. She kept the gun in Gilespie’s face as a blunt show of force, a symbol of brute femininity, and exacerbated raw emotion and estrogen. She wouldn’t take becoming a victim lightly, not now, not ever. Did you hear me, Satchel Xavier Gilespie? Brenda asked once more demanding. Get out of the car, and get out now! The gun waggled and waggled and waggled in front of Gilespie’s face. She waggled the gun again, this time as to direct him out. She continued waggling the revolver until he was free of the Volvo’s inner sanctum and new car smell that she was at that very moment enjoying.

She always called him by his full name whenever, One: she was either proudest of him, or Two: she was most pissed off at something he’d done. Either or. The rest of the time, he was Satchel or Satch or Gilespie or Satchmo or Satch darling. Yeah, well, there was G’Pie, but that didn’t count. He’d made her promise years before that she would never ever call him G’Pie in public, and so she hadn’t. But G’Pie … that’s when they were really getting along. He never mentioned G’Pie to anyone for fear of wrecking his good name. Or bad name as it were. Can you imagine Escobar’s baby talk amongst his mistresses … Esco’baby or Esco’bunny or my thrill you lil’ teddy Espadrille? Sunny days in tune after a big heist in a tropical foreign country waiting on the heat to blow over from wherever it was they’d just done the do.

Curbside, a vagrantly despondent Gilespie thought: I’m a man in love. (His olfactory senses still encapsulated within yet abandoning the new car smell whilst still in eye contact with his jilted and enraged wife of fifteen years). I’m a man in love with another woman who’s half my age, and it’s only come to me in an adulterous confessional to my wife who at this very moment is commandeering the brand new car I just bought her. How fucked up is that? responded the voice in the back of his thick skull.

When Gilespie got out of the car and closed the door (sorrowfully with even grander drama as if rehearsed and the longest of face), he purviewed his surroundings and noted that he didn’t recognize a fucking thing. Brenda had already driven off in a dull screech followed up by a compulsive swerve accented in a forcible tear. The image of her wagging the mussel of her pistol in his face hadn’t yet vacated his brain. The hole was so perfectly round from the wrong side. He remembered looking for the soft, cylindrical curve of the bullet down the barrel two or three times, but Brenda never quite quit jockeying the gun to and fro, back and forth, zoom in, zoom out, up down, up down so he never could draw a bead on loaded or unloaded. As well, discretion is the better part of valor… or Valerie, but that’s another story for another time.

What’s more, he remembered in a starched absentminded fit, he’d left his wallet, house keys, cigar valet, and a to-do list in the middle console buried beneath the chewing gum wrappers and loose receipts the two of them had accumulated in the last two weeks since purchasing the Swedish grand Yuppie monolith from Leonard’s Imports. He remembered how grateful Brenda seemed that day in the showroom. She seemed on the verge of tears. She’d wiped the lipstick from his cheek in on both sides of his face. She was really poignantly smitten by his thoughtfulness and seeming generosity. Her happiness was his happiness. At least that’s what he said to her seated next to her and across from the salesman while the trio were wrapped in the little glass cubby behind showroom door number three. With the printout paperwork in hand, it seemed the most congenial hug the two had given each other in years. However, what Satchel couldn’t remember was the guy’s phone number scribbled onto the to-do list which had just left with Brenda, and that was the telephone number of the fellow who had just agreed to terms in his next big to-do, which was former Fulbright Scholar code for theft, heist, malfeasance, or other misappropriation of someone else’s funds.

My, how things change.

Great, said Gilespie to himself without uttering a word. Here I am in the middle of fucking nowhere without so much as a one dollar bill or a credit card or a driver’s license to my name. Not even so much as a toothpick. He could sense another fleck of tobacco at the rear molar. A toothpick was the only cure. He pulled the loose change from his trouser pocket, opened his palm, and counted. Ninety three cents. He re-pocketed the coins.

Taxi! His mind called out though that, too, was futile. He really was in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Inexplicably, the memory of Brenda’s death had come and gone. So, why in the hell would all of this Brenda stuff all of a sudden come flooding back into his memory vault at this particular time at this particular moment here in the dank, desolate, primeval forest. News of her death seemed unreasonably abrupt at the time, but it was life, and life, as he knew, was so full of irony, he recalled standing in the hollow of the forest watching from a short distance away as his girlfriend of twenty nine months swept away debris with her feet in a long deliberate stroke.