Clans

By Frederick Albert

In the fall of 1994, Jimmy Brett was doing very well for a Wisconsin boy: good looks, great job, house on a lake, and a hot car. However, his life would change dramatically when he bought an old racist book for a quarter at a sidewalk sale. Jimmy's lover, Marian, took great offense when she saw the book; and Jimmy resolved to get rid of it by utilizing the fledgling World Wide Web. Jimmy found out quickly that using the Web could put himself and Marian in danger. Seeking to make a huge profit from the sale of the book, he traveled South to meet with a buyer. There he became aware of a terrible plan by white supremacists to kill and maim hundreds of African Americans with the intent of starting a race war.

Meanwhile, Jimmy's friend George Farrell has been honored by his alma mater by becoming the grand marshal of the Crispus Attucks State College Homecoming Parade where the white supremacist plan was to take place. Jimmy notified the authorities of the plot, but he also called George. On the day of the parade, George's heroics would save many lives. Using Jimmy's information, the FBI and ATF were able to quash the nationwide follow-up plan by arresting many of the leaders of the plot, but the threat would continue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638811367

Book preview

1

Jimmy Brett loved Maxwell Street Days in Union Town, Wisconsin. In the early 1990s, all the store owners set up little stands on the sidewalks and stocked them with items that hadn’t sold during the previous year. The Lions Club roasted corn, and the Kiwanis competed with bratwurst. Opportunists cooked everything from tacos to egg rolls between the store displays. Local ordinances against such activity were totally ignored. Traffic was routed around the downtown area, and the effect was that of a huge open-air mall. Thousands of people came from the surrounding communities, even as far as Milwaukee, to rummage through the merchandise, eat the sidewalk heartburn delights, and wander in and out of the stores.

Jimmy Brett was probably one of the few people in Union Town that day who had actually walked on the real Maxwell Street in Chicago, the street that gave this festival weekend its name. When he was in college, Jimmy had driven his father’s car, loaded with some of his buddies, down to Chicago to spend the day dickering with the street merchants, ogling the hookers, and laughing at the drunks who were sprawled here and there on the sidewalk. Jimmy recalled the skinny black fellow who had approached him and said, Hey, white boy. Wanna buy a watch? He then pulled his shirtsleeve up to reveal eight shiny gold watches, all the way up to his elbow. Jimmy hadn’t bought a watch that day, not that the offer wasn’t tempting—he just didn’t have the money. But he had always envied the guy’s boldness and initiative.

Of course the Union Town Maxwell Street Days only resembled their namesake in the outdoor stands and the open-air preparation of food. There were no bums lying around, the smells were pleasant, and the people were mostly white and dressed in clean, comfortable summer attire. But the biggest difference to Jimmy, the element that was missing, was the feeling of danger, the uneasy sense that, on the real Maxwell Street, he was simply prey, surrounded by predators. When he was younger, Jimmy kind of liked that feeling; but now, in his middle thirties, he preferred to be safe and sound in the comfortable cleanliness of Union Town!

Jimmy visited for a bit with some people from Racine who had asked him where the drugstore was. He gave them a brief description of the downtown, a little advice on which shops had some pretty good bargains, and which to avoid. He told them the story about the guy selling watches on the real Maxwell Street and sent them off to Hooper’s Drugstore so they could buy some Pepto Bismol to counteract the sidewalk food. Then he wandered toward the little library that was nestled between the drugstore and a tavern. Mabel Simmons, the ancient librarian, always put books out for public sale on Maxwell Street Days. They were generally the oldest volumes and were priced at a dime or a quarter. Mabel just wanted to clear some shelf space, but Jimmy liked to peruse the books in hopes of finding one to add to his personal library.

Jimmy had known Mabel since he was five. She was in her fifties then. She had been a schoolteacher and served as the community librarian. Back then, the little library was only open in the evening and Saturdays. When Mabel retired, the Village Board had retained her to be the full-time librarian with a modest salary. This meant that she could spend as much time as she wanted at the library. She often kept it open most of the day and evening until about nine o’clock. Books were her whole life.

Jimmy’s father was taking him down to the library before he was even in kindergarten. They would look through the books together, and his father would read a few paragraphs to help Jimmy decide on which book to check out. Most of the time, Jimmy would choose a Thornton W. Burgess book about Peter Rabbit, Johnny Chuck, or Reddy Fox. When they went to check the book out, Mabel would smile and say something like That Reddy Fox is such a rascal! Little chills of delight would run up and down Jimmy’s spine. When they got home, Jimmy would curl up by his father and read his prize.

Jimmy didn’t get to read much fiction anymore. Most of his reading was technical manuals and books on sales and sales management. But the bond that had been created between him and Mabel had remained throughout the years, and he always looked forward to a little visit with her. To Mabel, Jimmy was like a grown-up grandchild.

Nobody paid too much attention to the little stand in front of the library. Occasionally, an out-of-towner would stop and paw through the old books on display or an elderly woman would stop to visit with Mabel. Jimmy walked up to the display, smiled, and said, Hi, Mabel, any good books out here today?

Mabel returned his smile and said, There are some real treasures if you can recognize them, Jimmy. This sounded like a little challenge, which, of course, it was; so he started examining some of the books.

Jimmy shared Mabel’s love of good writing and carefully inspected title after title while making small talk with Mabel. He was hopeful of finding at least one book to add to his collection. He already had a lot of the great books that he had read as a youngster, including Gulliver’s Travels; Bob, Son of Battle; C. S. Forester’s entire Horatio Hornblower series; Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and an 1895 printing of Ivanhoe. He had added many titles to his library over the years and was always on the lookout to add more. Many of his books were very old; some were first editions. Jimmy liked the fact that these old books had great writing and language from bygone days. And these books had no political correctness that had begun to creep through the universities in the eighties and nineties. The language was formal, elegant, frank, and sometimes blatantly racist. The old authors, even those who wrote children’s books, were not in the least troubled by violence or inequality among the people they wrote about. The original Grimm’s Fairy Tales bore little resemblance to the Disney movies, and the word nigger was peppered through Huckleberry Finn. Sex, of course, was another matter. In the old books, one had to search it out. It was hidden between the lines, and one’s imagination was needed to conjure up the mental pictures that were not described in words on the page. However, as Jimmy knew quite well, this was always more exciting than the raw description of body parts.

This year, the books on display didn’t appear particularly promising to Jimmy. In fact, he had to stop his search and sneeze at one point from the dust that was emanating from the pages. Mabel asked him if he was catching a cold, and he told her that it was just book dust. Mabel simply nodded, and Jimmy resumed his search.

Suddenly Jimmy heard the sharp snapping of firecrackers, accompanied by shrieks and shouts. Jimmy saw the town constable, Chuck Schroeder, running toward the commotion. A wailing started up, sounding like a small child in pain, and people started running from all directions to see what was going on.

Jimmy almost left the library to join the throng that was flowing toward the incident, when his eye caught the name on the back of a book. He had heard something about that title, and his hand moved to it as quick as a cat catching a fly. The book was very old but still seemed to be in remarkably good condition. It had a plain reddish cover, and the pages appeared to be firm and intact. Jimmy read the title and then looked at the printing date. The book looked as if it might be a first edition! Jimmy looked in the back. There was no library pocket! He scanned the pages quickly and could find no evidence that the book had ever belonged to the Union Town library. He looked over at Mabel and said, Mabel, this book doesn’t look like it has ever been checked out. Mabel lifted her bony arm wearily and motioned him over to where she was sitting. She gave the impression that she was interested but much too old to be hopping up every time someone had a question. As he had done many times over the years, Jimmy approached Mabel with a book in his hands and a quizzical look on his face.

Mabel took the book gently and looked at it, then looked up at Jimmy. I never put this one on the shelf, she said. It was donated to the library forty years ago, and it has been in the back closet all that time. It’s a horrible book, and I was always going to throw it out, but feeling as I do about books, I just couldn’t do it. Even a book written by Satan himself shouldn’t be destroyed because somebody doesn’t like it or agree with what it says. I put it out today hoping that someone would need some books to fill a bookshelf, and maybe it would just disappear!

Jimmy said excitedly, Do you think it’s a first edition?

Mabel sucked in air, sounding for the entire world like a bellows being opened. Jimmy knew that when she did this, she wanted to emphasize the importance of her next statement. Oh, it’s much more than a simple first edition, Jimmy. There’s a personal dedication inside, signed by the author himself.

Jimmy almost jumped. A personal dedication would make the book more valuable. He said cautiously, How much is it?

Mabel replied huffily, Just like the others, Jimmy, twenty-five cents! Personally, I wouldn’t give a dime for that garbage, but there is no accounting for taste, and if you want to own it, the price is twenty-five cents, cash!

Suddenly the same little chill went down Jimmy’s back, just as it had done when he was five years old and Mabel had warned him about the rascal Reddy Fox. He dug out a quarter, and Mabel put the book in a paper sack.

With that, Charlie Johnson, an employee at Hank’s Hat Shop, came up and hollered at them, Well, that might be the end of Maxwell Street Days!

Mabel raised her voice slightly and gave it an elementary schoolteacher edge. Charlie, she scolded, I’m not deaf, and what are you blathering about anyway?

As he had done when he had been her student many years ago, Charlie quickly settled down and spoke almost normally. Well, a kid threw some firecrackers into the crowd, and one landed on the little Anderson girl, and it blew up, right in her face. I heard Tom Terry say that she might even lose an eye! Mabel replied by shaking her head in disgust. Charlie hurried away to the stand in front of the drugstore, and Jimmy heard him shout at the girl standing near the merchandise. Well, we might have seen the end of Maxwell Street Days! He continued to yell about the incident until Pete Hooper came out of the drugstore and told him to shut up as he was scaring the customers.

Jimmy moved through the crowd toward the side street where he had parked his car. The combination of finding a great book and the little Anderson girl getting hurt had ended this year’s Maxwell Street Days for him. He drove carefully, as people were jaywalking every which way across the streets. Soon he was out of the crowded area and onto the sleepy back streets of Union Town. He had no idea how his life was about to change because the book he had found was about to cost him a lot more than twenty-five cents, cash!

2

Jimmy’s Jaguar cruised slowly through the back streets of Union Town, and soon he came to Highway 11. Turning west on 11, he moved out of town toward Eagle Lake. When he came to the end of the speed zone, he floored the accelerator. The Jag roared to life, and the speedometer quickly rose to 70 mph, at which point Jimmy took his foot off the gas and let the car settle back to 55. He didn’t want to get another ticket because he was almost out of points.

Coming up over a little hill, Jimmy spotted the county sheriff squad car sitting in the wayside. As he went by, he eyeballed the squad without turning his head. Sure enough, it was Rick the Prick. That cop had given Jimmy his last three tickets. The first two were well deserved, but the third was bogus. Tim Rick had lived up to his name on that one. Jimmy had nothing against cops in general, but he had definitely entertained a few bad thoughts about Rick the Prick.

Jimmy knew that Tim Rick instantly recognized the Jag. After all, it was the only shiny black 1984 XJ12 in Racine County. Jimmy had asked Constable Chuck Schroeder to run a report to verify that fact before he purchased the car. It had set him back thirty thousand 1992 George Washingtons, and he reasoned that if you’re laying out that kind of dough, Why buy something ordinary?

Jimmy glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Rick’s squad car pull slowly out of the wayside, turn eastward, and accelerate gradually. "That prick! Jimmy exclaimed to the mirror. He was waiting for me!" His mind went into overdrive as he watched Rick disappear behind him, going in the opposite direction. What had he ever done to that miserable son of a bitch? Nothing! He ate his tickets peacefully (except for that one where he had dragged the cop into court only to see him lie on the witness stand). Jimmy Brett hadn’t been remotely in trouble for twenty years. He was a model citizen, and he couldn’t conceive why the guy was out to get him outside of some kind of jealousy.

It wasn’t that Tim Rick was a cop. Jimmy knew lots of cops who were good guys. He had played poker with them, drunk beer with them, visited with them about their families, and supported them in conversations with people who didn’t like them. He donated to their fundraisers generously, and he wrote personal thank-you notes for small favors, like riding past his estate now and then when he was out of town. No, he got along well with the officers, which he called them in formal situations. It was just this one guy, Rick the Prick, with whom he had a problem; and it really corked him!

The Jag entered the Eagle Lake area, and Jimmy took a right turn off Highway 11 on to East Lake Drive. After about half a mile, he slowed, signaled for a left turn, and turned carefully onto a narrow private drive. Very quickly he came to a walled estate with a metal gate across the drive. He reached up to the visor and touched a button. The gate swung open, and he drove through. He touched the button again, and the gate closed behind him. He proceeded leisurely up the drive toward a large house. As he came over the crest of a hill, Eagle Lake appeared behind the house.

Jimmy never tired of the sight of the lake appearing behind the house. In fact, a rush of excitement went through his body every time he drove over the crest of the hill. The sight was particularly beautiful on a sunny summer day like today. Jimmy always dreaded the day when seeing the lake would become commonplace, but it never had.

Jimmy drove up to a large detached garage, stopped the car in front of it, and got out. He walked to where he could see a lot more of the lake. As he always did, he turned slowly, taking in the lake, his property, his house, and the lake once again. The panorama was breathtaking. He never became bored with looking at Eagle Lake. There was always something going on. Boats were crisscrossing, pulling water-skiers and kids on tubes, and there were pontoon boats loaded with passengers. Eagle Lake was not huge like Winnebago, but it had a lot of character. It covered about two thousand acres but was not just a round dish lake. It wandered around, had about almost twenty miles of shoreline, and sported a few little bays and islands, which made for an interesting afternoon boat ride.

Out in the middle of the lobe of the lake visible from Jimmy’s house, a police boat floated peacefully. Jimmy was aware that the boat’s blue light would start flashing at the least sign of trouble or boating rules being broken. Once in a while some jerk up from the Chicago suburbs would drop his high-powered jet boat into the lake and go screaming around at high speed, ignoring common sense and coming too close to other boats. Before long, the police boat would have him pulled over, and he would be directed to leave the lake and to appear in court or to mail in the big fine that accompanied his ticket. If the jerk started squawking, he would be subjected to a safety check; and if he didn’t have all the proper equipment, the fine would be increased. Dave Parsons was the lake cop, and he was pretty ruthless when any safety rules were violated. Despite Jimmy’s encounter with Rick the Prick, he felt pretty good seeing Parsons out there, keeping the lake safe.

Jimmy again surveyed his property. People called Jimmy’s property the Estate, mostly because he had the wall and gate at the end of the driveway. Although the gate prevented vehicular traffic from entering the grounds, the wall only extended about one hundred feet to both property lines, so there was no real lack of access to anyone who cared to walk around the wall or enter the property from either side. And of course, anyone could bring a boat up and land it on Jimmy’s fifty-foot sand beach. Outside of the private drive, the wall, and the gate, Jimmy’s property was a lot like many of the other nice lake properties. But the word estate sounded nice, and Jimmy didn’t discourage others from using that term, although he never used it himself. His friends called it Jimmy’s place or, when talking to him, your place.

The house was an oversized older stone ranch. It had been advertised as an executive ranch, but in reality, it was a nice old fixer-upper. Jimmy had sunk $30,000 into bringing the electric up to code, getting the toilets and showers working properly, putting on a new roof, and having new windows installed. He had spent another twenty thousand on a new three-car detached garage with a loft that looked out on the lake. He knew that he still had a lot of remodeling ahead to get the inside the way he wanted. Before he was done, he would probably spend over $100,000 on the fix up, but he didn’t care. The view and living in relative privacy were worth the cost. Besides, he would be rich in a few years!

As a kid, Jimmy Brett had not been a particularly good student. Except for the sports, he wouldn’t have liked school at all. But he loved to read, and by the time he was in sixth grade, he was scoring at the twelfth-grade level on the Stanford Achievement Tests. He was as proud of this as he was of his prowess on the basketball court. Although he was too short to be a serious college prospect, in high school he had been an absolute terror on the hardwood. He was fiercely aggressive, quick as a mongoose, and had a deadly fadeaway jump shot.

Union Town High School (UTHS) had won the regional tournament when Jimmy was a senior. They were beaten in the sectional finals by a team from Milwaukee made up entirely of African American kids, none of whom was less than six feet tall. Jimmy had played like a maniac and had been named the game’s MVP, despite the fact that UTHS had lost the game by five points. That night, Jimmy had broken down and sobbed uncontrollably on his father’s shoulder. It was the only time he had ever cried since being a baby. His father had tried to ease the pain by telling Jimmy that he would lose often in life and that he should be prouder of his effort than his victories. At the time, the words hadn’t helped, but knowing that his father was proud of him did. And the words had come back to him often over the years in times when things hadn’t gone just according to plan.

Jimmy became seriously interested in computers at about the same time as Steve Jobs was building the first Apple. With his reading ability and a passion for the new technology, he quickly leaped ahead of his teachers. In fact, when UTHS decided to install a computer system for its clerical staff, Jimmy took on the role of a consultant, going before the school board to explain the system and why they should buy it. After he convinced them and the computers arrived, he set up the system and showed the secretaries how to use them. He had total access to the system, training other staff in its use, and he was the troubleshooter when someone got stuck. In the days of DOS, this happened quite often!

If he hadn’t been such a competitive athlete, Jimmy probably would have been considered a geek or a nerd. But with his outgoing personality and his genuinely positive attitude, he was well liked by both his teachers and his classmates. He sailed through high school with little effort and lots of time in the library reading and programming new computers for his teachers.

Girls liked Jimmy. He was nice to them, and they found him interesting. His reading had exposed him to worlds far beyond the imaginations of his male classmates. He regarded himself as somewhat of a romantic. He didn’t try to get in the pants of every girl he dated. Some he just befriended, conversing with them about a myriad of subjects. Unlike some of his dumb buddies, he was smart enough not to get tied down to a girl because of a careless ten minutes in his car. When he did succumb to a girl’s physical charms, he made damn sure that she didn’t get pregnant. And he never, ever, shared his experiences with his buddies. So girls trusted him and loved him, and when the inevitable breakups occurred, Jimmy managed to keep most of them as friends.

College was boring to Jimmy, worse than high school had been, except for the computer labs. Since money was tight, he had found himself at University of Wisconsin–Parkside, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He participated in some of the school’s activities but spent most of his time in the computer lab. After two years, he dropped out and went to work for a small computer consulting firm that was busy setting up computer systems for businesses.

The computer business exploded in the ’80s, and Jimmy’s little company expanded rapidly. His knowledge grew along with the advances in technology. Large companies were installing keyboards and monitors on every desk! One large insurance company installed a nationwide computer system in all of its district offices with something new, called electronic mail. It was designed so that all the district offices and the territorial offices could communicate with each other, with no thought of what the consequences might be. So when the 1985 Chicago Bears faced the New England Patriots in the 1986 Super Bowl, one of the Chicago insurance agents typed Piss on the Pats into the system and sent the message to every office in the country. Some firings followed, and the new system was reconfigured! These kinds of things were merely growing pains, however, and nothing could stop the evolution of the new computer age. Jimmy was on a surfboard, riding the wave!

Because of his ability to read and understand the technical manuals, his outgoing personality, and his competitive nature, Jimmy quickly became a sales star for his company. He was able to converse on equal terms with the techies at companies that were looking for help in the design and implementation of the new technology. Jimmy became a very valuable commodity.

One day a headhunter approached Jimmy about a new situation that was coming available. He asked Jimmy to meet him for lunch. Jimmy replied that he was happy where he was and tried to get off the phone. Then the headhunter spoke several magic words, large signing bonus and stock options. Jimmy took the meeting and, two weeks later, was working for a start-up company with a 30 percent pay raise and a $50,000 signing bonus in his savings account at the State Bank of Union Town.

Jimmy’s new company was composed of half a dozen young men just like himself: bright, knowledgeable, and totally ruthless in competition. In five years, they had built a computer consulting firm that had no equal in the Midwest. They advised companies on which computer systems to buy, sold the hardware, installed the software, and trained personnel. They currently had most of the business in the Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, and Kenosha area and were making real inroads into the huge Chicago market. They couldn’t keep up with the demand. It was like printing money!

In its seventh year of operation, the company went public. Jimmy was a one-tenth owner. He became a multimillionaire on paper that day! So now, he had it made. He indulged himself by buying the Jaguar, the last of its kind, in mint condition. He also bought the lake property. He was in debt because his money was mostly in his company stock, but he didn’t care. He was earning a great salary, still had stock options to purchase, and owned a share of a company that was doubling in value every year. Despite Jimmy’s expertise in some areas, he was totally inexperienced with handling money, especially large amounts of it, and so he bought anything he wanted including every new electronic gadget. His lake house was filled with stuff that he didn’t have time to use!

Jimmy’s stock was tied up for two more years as part of his contract, and he had borrowed heavily against it from both the bank and his own company. His buddy at the bank, Dave Hinton, had warned him against buying his Jaguar. Jimmy, Hinton had grumbled, I can see the lake property. They’re not making any more of it, and it’s a great longer-term investment, but buying a $30,000 car is like pissing dollars into the street. Why don’t you just buy a nice Mustang? There’s plenty of time for spending after your stock is freed up and you can sell a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth.

Of course Jimmy hadn’t listened to Dave, and he had bought the Jag. He loved the car like he loved his lake house. Although the Jaguar was built in1984 (the last year of that model), it was like brand new with only 24,000 miles on it when he bought it in 1992. He got a thrill every time he opened the hood and saw those double six-cylinder engines sitting side by side, hooked together to make the XJ12 the monster it was. He loved the fact that the speedometer went up to 165 miles per hour. He loved the eight-disc CD player that sat in a corner of the trunk. But most of all, he loved the way the black Jaguar shone and the oohs and aahs it received wherever he drove it.

Of course the Jaguar wasn’t the only thing that Jimmy had purchased with his newfound wealth. One room in his home had the latest computer system complete with a fax, scanner, color printer, CD-ROM, huge color monitor, and microphone. At the time, it was unheard of for a homeowner to have all this stuff! In another room was a huge TV hooked to a satellite dish and a laser disc movie system complete with a double VCR and surround sound speakers. Only the latest and best for Jimmy Brett!

All of this buying had left Jimmy with a cash flow problem. He had more monthly debt than even his generous income could support. Like the guy in a current movie said, American Express had a hit man looking for him. He had several short-term notes from the bank. This cash had disappeared rapidly, and one note for $20,000 was due next week. Dave Hinton had said that he better stop buying things and that he would redo his mortgage for him to take the pressure off.

Jimmy wasn’t terribly concerned about the money though. To him, money was just a way of keeping score in the friendly to the death sales contests he and his associates indulged in at Midwest Technical Services to liven up the job.

Jimmy Brett had an entitlement philosophy. If he had been given something, he must have been entitled to it. Good looks, entitled to them. Athleticism, entitled to it. Intelligence entitled to it, and on and on. After all, reasoned Jimmy, simplistically, if God had not wanted him to have these gifts, he wouldn’t have given them to him. Likewise, if people wanted to give him $150 an hour for the simple task of telling them what they could have learned by reading a manual, then he was entitled to those bucks! Because Midwest Tech had been willing to give him $50,000 and a bunch of stock options, he was certainly entitled to those things. Even though he wasn’t crazy about his current financial situation, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Things always worked out for him, and that wasn’t about to change!

Jimmy walked back to the Jaguar, reached in, and grabbed the bag that contained his literary find. He swung the door shut, satisfied with the thump. He liked the sound of those doors closing. They had such a solid, high-quality sound; it gave him a feeling of stability, something that would last.

Jimmy entered the house through the back door. He moved through a hallway that was piled with boxes and odds and ends. Jimmy had never really gotten around to unpacking everything when he had moved from his apartment. A lot of things still sat where he and his buddies had dropped them or where Jimmy had moved them in the first month. The back hallway led to the kitchen, and automatically, Jimmy opened the refrigerator to see what was in it. This was an old habit. He rarely took anything out but a soda between his two meals, but he always opened the door. Reaching in, he grabbed a Coke and, with the Coke in one hand and the bag in the other, swung the door shut with his knee. He moved into the large living room that had windows that looked out on Eagle Lake. The view was outstanding from this room His plan for the house was to create this same view from his office as well by having a huge picture window installed there. The estimate for this project was over $10,000, so it wasn’t going to get done next week!

Moving into the bedroom that Jimmy had converted into his office, he set the bag and the soda down and reached over and touched the Microsoft mouse that rested on a large black-and-white dairy cow mouse pad. His monitor lit up, and his email signal beeped. He retrieved several messages regarding next week’s appointments and some junk mail from software companies and internet services. He quickly printed the former and deleted the latter, then turned his attention to his answering machine. The answering machine, like his email, was important to him; and he generally checked both several times a day, even on Saturdays and Sundays.

The first voice on the answering machine was a customer that Jimmy had sold a system to, last week. He had a few more questions about the system and asked if Jimmy could call him. The second voice was a friend that he played basketball with in the winter businessman’s league. Could Jimmy call him about a problem he was having with his computer? Jimmy smiled. He was like a doctor at a party to these guys. They were always looking for free advice!

The guy probably hadn’t defragged his hard drive or needed to run his scan disk program, or both, and his software was getting weird. But Jimmy would call both of these people back and solve their problems at no charge. They would both feel lucky to have Jimmy as a friend. Like a doctor, Jimmy took his work seriously, either for profit or pro bono, and he knew that money seemed to follow when he solved people’s computer problems. The guy in the basketball league might tip him off to something happening in his company related to their computers.

Hey, Jimmy, he might say in the locker room. Our VP of sales is going to be buying all of the salesmen new laptops. Maybe you should give him a call. I’d hate to see him getting taken and ending up with the wrong brand.

Jimmy would buy that VP a lunch and say to him, Well, Bill, I can probably save your firm a ton of money on those laptops, and I have some ideas on how to better integrate them with your office system. Also, I’ll help sell your tech guys on the purchase so they won’t get in your way with the bosses.

Jimmy knew that helping the VP take out any objections from the data department was probably more important than the cost of the computers. Firms were being held hostage by the employees who ran their computer systems in those days, and one of Jimmy’s specialties was clearing the path for the executives who had no expertise in the new field of computer technology. He knew how to talk with the techies, treating them with great respect and making them partners in the transactions. He never threatened to tip their rice bowls over!

The third voice on the machine made him literally jump when it came on! It was a woman’s voice but rather low, the kind that sounded sexy when she was telling you how to separate your laundry before washing it. It was a voice that he had not heard for a long time but one that instantly conjured up deep feelings. He was instantly riveted to the machine.

Hi, stranger! Long time no seduce. Jimmy could picture the sly, sexy look that was on her face as she spoke those words. I’m in town for the weekend, staying with my brother Jack. Call me if you want to get together. Then the machine clicked off. She hadn’t even left her name, but Jimmy knew very well who it was, and she had known that he would know.

Jimmy rewound the tape and played the messages again and then again. On the third hearing, he managed to write the other messages down with an unsteady hand. Then he erased the other two and listened to that voice again. He walked out of his office into the living room and wandered over to the window. He was looking out at the lake, but his mind was a million miles away. Marian Steeler had accomplished exactly what she had intended. She had taken over his mind with a ten-second phone message! His mind was moving like a kaleidoscope. Of a hundred girls and women, Marian would always be his one great love, and she was here and wanted to see him! Jimmy looked up Jack Steeler’s number in the phone book and punched in the numbers. He received no answer. He double-checked the number and tried again. He let the phone ring eight or nine times before hanging up. Well, he thought, I’ll try again in an hour. What a day this was turning out to be!

3

Marian Steeler hadn’t always been a babe. In high school, she was skinny and wore her hair unfashionably short. She was the eldest of six children, and her family was among the poorest in Union Town, so her clothing was plain and unattractive. Luckily, her school required the wearing of uniforms, so her school attire was the same as her classmates. Marian was proud, and she was tough. Not even the boys made fun of her to her face. Besides, she was smart and outgoing, the kind of girl who ran things at St. Maria’s High School. She was president of the student council, the editor of the school paper, and a member of the National Honor Society. She carried a 4.0 grade point average but was never asked out on dates.

The Steelers lived right next door to the Bretts, so Jimmy had pretty much grown up with Marian and her family. Although she took every opportunity to talk to Jimmy, he was two years older and went to Union Town High School, so they didn’t really see very much of each other. However, when Marian was a junior and didn’t have a prom date, she aggressively asked Jimmy to escort her. Jimmy accepted the date good-naturedly. He was in his first year of college and thought it might be fun to relive a high school event. He took some teasing from his friends, but Jimmy never really cared what they thought about his relationships with girls anyway. He thought that most of them were pretty lame with only one thing on their minds.

The St. Maria’s prom was nice, but nothing like the Union Town High School proms had been. There were no kids drinking or smoking outside, no couples making out in the corners, and there were adults everywhere and even a few nuns in the official penguin outfits. Jimmy was actually relieved. There was no way that he could be expected to make a play for Marian with all of this supervision, right? In fact, Sister Cecelia cruised the dance floor with a ruler, making sure, on slow dances, that the couples remained apart at least a chaste eight inches. Once, after the sister had passed them, Marian pressed her bony body against Jimmy; and they quickly hugged, laughing at this little transgression. Jimmy stayed the entire evening and then took Marian to dinner at a popular local restaurant. They talked easily, and Jimmy found her interesting. He discovered that she was intelligent and knew a lot about many things. But he felt no sexual attraction, and he took her straight home. He did give her a kiss on the lips at the door, thanked her for inviting him, and said good night. He sensed that Marian wanted more, but it wasn’t in his plans that night.

Marian had initiated their second date also. Two years later, on a warm spring day, Jimmy was cleaning out his convertible; and Marian appeared in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that was tied in a knot at her side, displaying a bare slim brown belly. Jimmy almost gasped in astonishment.

Marian Steeler was growing up! Her breasts were filling out, her hair was stylishly cut, her teeth were snowy white, and she exuded sex. She said, Hi, Jimmy, I’ll help you clean the car if you take me for a ride. There was something a little wicked in the way she spoke. If Jimmy hadn’t been caught off guard so badly by her sudden, and very surprising, appearance, he would have recognized the double entendre and would have given a like response.

But Jimmy had learned how to recover from surprises. He gave her his biggest smile and said, I was just dreaming that some angel would come along and help me with this work and, Marian, here you are.

True to her word, Marian worked like a demon on the car; and to