American Mutt

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It was a perfect fall morning at the Ventura Coastal Little League Field. This was fall ball. The Mediterranean climate of Southern California meant baseball could be played any time of year. Fall ball was a three-month stretch of league play, kind of a bonus time in addition to the conventional spring baseball season for the little guys.

The players were scattered around practicing hitting, running, fielding, throwing and pitching on this very special field. This field, this ballpark, was like no other. Millions had been spent on the construction of these hallowed baseball grounds, and all from a single donor. That donor had intended to make it the best of the best, a miniaturized version of Wrigley Field, complete with brick walls, ivy and the hand-operated scoreboard in center. The kids loved the park and it made them feel special.

Observing the antics was a man wearing sunglasses and a hoodie. He sat in the top row in the farthest left seat of the bleachers along the third base line. He lifted his head and inhaled deeply, taking in the waft of fresh-cut grass that brought him back to an earlier Americana time and place. The hooded man smiled as he felt something. That sense of someone watching him. A sense he’d honed years ago. He scanned the field again. An old man standing inside the third base line assisting with the day's activities was staring at him.

The old man was Satchel, in his seventies or eighties…or who knew. No one knew if Satchel was his real name, but when questioned about the origin of his name, Satchel said, “Cuz I ain’t playing no trumpet like Satchmo, so they dun called me Satchel. I gots a satchel full of pitches, ya never knows what’s comin’ out.”

Satchel stepped over the third-base line. He was smiling broadly at the man with the hoodie in the stands. It was a smile of acknowledgment. One of gratitude. Mutual respect. The man in the stands smiled back. Of course he did. Satchel was one of his favorite people.

From his perched view in the stands, the hooded man’s attention turned to the parking lot on the far side of the field. An SUV pulled up, and a woman got out. She helped a boy out of the back seat. The hooded man removed a pair of small binoculars from his jacket and glassed the woman. She was in her late twenties, auburn hair, deep tan, athletic, wearing a stocking cap and sunglasses. The hooded man tracked her as she made her way to the registration table, handed in her paperwork, hugged the boy, walked back to her truck and left.

The stands were packed with parents, and the hooded man made way to allow a woman to sit next to him, the last available open seat.

“Thanks,” the woman said. “Which one is yours?”

“Oh, I don’t have a boy here,” the hooded man said. “Just like watching. Helps me think.”

The woman smiled, an I-don’t-really-get-that-but-I’ll-be-polite smile.

The hooded man turned to the sound of commotion on the ground. A heavily tattooed man, early thirties, lock-gripped a young boy’s arm, and they were arguing. A league volunteer, a woman, approached them.

“Sir, you don’t have to take it out on your son,” the volunteer said.

A quick inhale, and the tattooed man said, “This here is a public park, no?... chamaca. Parks be free, for res-si-dents, si?”

“Yes, sir, the park is free, but there’s a fee for all players to be in the fall ball league. Uniforms and such,” the woman said, shuffling back a half step.

The volunteer turned and looked up to the hooded man sitting in the stands to see if he was watching. He was and he rose, making his way down the stands. He placed a phone to his ear, acting like he was making a phone call, and took a picture of the tattooed man below him, who did not catch the action.

The tattooed man grabbed the boy by the collar and shoved him towards the parking lot.

The hooded man reached ground level and stepped through the archway that led to the bullpen area behind the dugout. He approached the volunteer and placed a hand on her shoulder, an it's-okay-let-me-deal-with-this pat.

Jackson Rand, drew back his hoodie and removed his sunglasses. Jackson was six-feet-one, mixed-race, mid-length flowing dark hair, early thirties, athletically fit with a grizzled-more-than-the-age face, and small scars on his forehead, cheek and chin.

The tattooed man snorted like a bull about to charge. “You a cop, homie?”

Jackson showed no emotion. “Is there an issue?” he said.

“No issue for you, maricón.”

“I was just explaining to the gentleman about the Little League fee,” the volunteer said.

“This your son?” Jackson asked.

“Ain’t no bastard, who the f**k’re you?”

Jackson noticed an MS on his neck. “What’s your name, son?”

“Tony,” the boy said.

“Hey, Tony.” Jackson high-fived him. “You wanna play some baseball today?”

The tattooed man gripped the boy’s collar.

Jackson locked eyes with tattoo man for a fraction of a second. Tattoo man’s head rocked back, a look of pent-up rage. He took his hand off the boy’s collar, shifted his stance. Jackson smiled and kneeled in front of the boy.

“Tony, what position do ya like best?”

“Catcher,” Tony said.

“Catcher?” Tony nodded. “Do you know about the league promotion we got going today? Kinda a deferred payment deal for all catchers. How’s that sound, Tony?”

The boy smiled and looked up at the tattooed man.

“Part of your tax, homie,” the tattooed man said, taking a half step with his lead foot, towering over Jackson.

Jackson rose to his feet in a slow, deliberate move, ending inches from the tattooed man’s face, passed Tony’s hand to the volunteer.

“Nice to meet you, Tony. Let’s get you registered,” the volunteer said.

“Deferred payment,” Jackson said. “You pay later.”

“Suck my verga, marrano.” The tattooed man broke off the stare and walked away. Jackson’s shoulders loosened slightly, a slight exhale, his silent DEFCON ratcheting down a notch.

Jackson’s cellphone rang. “Hey, Tina.”

With panic in her voice, Tina said, “We gotta major problem here. Did you see the news?”

The historic and quaint downtown area of small-town-feel Ventura, California used to be post-card beautiful and included the San Buenaventura Mission founded in 1782, the Bank of Italy building with its columns and gargoyles, and the classic white stone City Hall, built in 1912 and the birthplace of the Perry Mason novels. The lamppost-lit Main Street was an eclectic mix of architecture, including Victorian, Neoclassical, mission-style, Craftsman, Cape Cod, Mediterranean architecture and more. Main Street featured locally owned bars, pubs, shops, thrift stores, and antique stores—no chain-stores or fast food, a real throwback in time.

In 2015, Men’s Journal called it the best place to live in America, the sleepy city of 106,000 located midway between Santa Barbara and Malibu, remains refreshingly unpolished, like a 1961 Ford pick-up that’s been well kept. The city used to be all those, except now in place of the vintage truck were what had become known as sanc-tees, sanctuary tents for the homeless. The despair of Los Angeles had moved north.

Toward the east end of Main Street sat an old Victorian house that had been converted into offices. The top floor offices looked over the Pacific and the Channel Islands. The eastern-facing windows had a direct view of the colorful mix of the Main Street thrift store shopping crowd who were navigating the encampments. At night that view would change to the robust nightlife raucous rock-and-roller partying crowd bouncing off the half-light zombies buzzed on one street-grade intoxicant or another.

The house was now the headquarters for an Internet-based news organization that was notorious for breaking stories about political corruption, sources undisclosed. The website already had ruined the political career of several demagogues of both parties, and was recently blamed for the suicide of a congressman in the 28th District of California after it published evidence of the fabrication of evidence to implicate a political opponent in a phony criminal case.

The site’s founder was also under investigation for releasing what some of his critics claimed was classified information. Rumors of illegal wiretapping by his confederates also swirled, and he had been implicated in plots to steal documents from private residences—documents that ended up on his website, though no charges were filed due to lack of hard evidence. The site had risen quickly in readership, second only to Drudge, and put WikiLeaks to shame in terms of scoops. That site was PublicFigure.com. Its founder was Jackson Rand.

The bullpen, a tightly packed area of cubicles and workstations, was put together using Herman Miller Resolve workstations that featured organic-styled boomerang-shaped desks, adjustable partitions and domed canopies on casters. The designers of the systems intended to foster a more naturally human experience of work by enabling people to feel comfortable, valued, and connected in their workspaces. Rand’s web developers weren’t sure about any of that, but they dug the open-air feeling and look. Scattered around the bullpen were flat-screens displaying major news stations, FOX, CNN, Fox Business, BBC, and others.

Earlier that morning, the editors were banging away on their keyboards on a day like any other, when, within seconds of each other, the news stations went into alert mode. On Fox, the screen flashed a Fox News Alert, and the programming cut to reporter Catherine Hanson, fortyish, dark short hair, who was covering the Capitol in Washington, D.C. “We are getting reports just now that, days before a controversial vote on raising the debt ceiling, a procedure crucial to avoid a default on the monstrous national debt, the Speaker has not entered the Capitol today and has not been reachable. Our sources are reporting that a security detail was dispatched pre-dawn to the residence of the Speaker in Georgetown. I believe we have our Michael Foster in front of the residence. Michael, can you hear me?”

Across the street from the home of the Speaker, Fox reporter Michael Foster, mid-thirties, black, was adjusting his earpiece. Behind him were a dozen government vehicles, two FBI field office evidence response team trucks, an FBI mobile Command Center vehicle, and several Capitol Police cars. The home was barricaded with yellow crime scene tape, and police were moving in and out of the residence rapidly.

“Yes, Catherine. As you can see behind me, something has happened here. We have an active crime scene. My sources inside the Capitol Police are telling me that the Speaker is missing and there may have been foul play of some kind,” Foster said.

“Missing? Uh, what does that mean exactly, Michael?”

“Well, from what I was told, her husband was awakened by Capitol Police, who somehow entered the residence. Mr. Arnold was very groggy, and once lucid, told the police that men entered his bedroom in the middle of the night.”

“Yes, Michael stand by. We are getting a report that the Capitol Police are announcing now, in a short statement, that they believe the Speaker of the House was abducted from her residence sometime last night and further details will be available at a press briefing shortly. And this comes, of course, just three weeks from the presidential election. A shocking development,” Catherine Hanson said.

Tina Takata, half Asian, half Caucasian, senior editor for PublicFigure, stood motionless in the center of the bullpen, her eyes bouncing from one newscast to the next. She yelled out to her staff, “Okay, new headline. Add link to full bio of Arnold too. Let’s go, people.”

The writers and developers in the PublicFigure bullpen went into overdrive, and within minutes, a photograph of the Speaker appeared on the home page of the website, with a link to her extensive biography.

“Jesus, she’s on our Sunlight List,” a developer said.

“No s**t,” another writer said. “Whatta we have on her that we haven’t cleared for publication yet?”

Jackson Rand stormed through the front door.

“Tina, do you have her on the home page yet?” Jackson said.

“It’s up,” Tina said.

“I’m gonna tweak the home page real quick, so save it, and hold up editing, I’m on point. Come see me if you get more details.”

Jackson walked into his workspace that was more like a computer lab than an office, with a mix of television monitors and computer screens stacked high and wide. Bookshelves covered the wall space. On a shelf in front of the books was an old baseball glove, a Wilson A2000, well worn. A small frame on another shelf held a photograph of Keith Richards. Next to the photo was a bottle of Bracero Anejo tequila, half full, and next to it, a small metal trident pin also known as the Budweiser. On the floor near the corner were two used chrome Supertrapp exhaust pipes and a motorcycle helmet. Jackson sat down in his Aeron chair and, in a flurry of keystrokes on his mechanical keyboard, brought up the HTML editing screen for the home page and started making changes.

Tina rushed in. “We’re going to be people of interest number one by the Feds, the Secret Service, DOJ and who knows what the hell else. How are we going to protect our sources and the newest stuff on the Speaker?”

“Who’s our source on her exposé?” Jackson said.

“You know. The deep anon.”

“So that’s what we’ll tell them.”

“They’ll go after another contempt charge,” Tina said.

“Take care of my dog while I’m gone.”

“That’s not funny. Should I call the lawyer?”

“I already did.”

The west end of Ventura has been mostly Hispanic since the mid-1860s. A mishmash of single-story quasi-industrial block and stucco structures, machine shops and dilapidated buildings in need of repair. Next to a family-owned Mexican cafe was a building that housed a welding business before it failed.

To keep the homeless out, the owner surrounded the building with a chain-link fence and boarded up the windows with plywood. It was dark and damp inside the old welding shop; rusted machines littered the space and cobwebs hung down from the rafters. Birds found their way in and fluttered around until they escaped or dropped dead.

Spider webs enshrouded a doorway adjacent to the main floor area that led to a small office. An old dented battleship-gray metal desk sat in the center of the office room, rusting, layers of dust coating it. An old Coca-Cola machine stood against the wall, long past any functionality.

Next to the machine was a three-foot-square metal plate on the floor with eyelets to hold padlocks. The plate concealed a wobbly staircase that led down to a basement. A basement, any basement, was rare in California due to their propensity to flood. The basement was ten-by-fifteen feet, walls of cinder block, cellar darkness. Darkness until the wall switch was flipped and the basement lit up like daylight in the desert. There was electrical power and lots of it. The welding operation had beefed up the electrical panel to power heavy equipment on the main floor, and it was that panel that Cinder Stowe had modified to power what has hidden in this cavernous enclave. Racks of computer servers.

Cinder, the woman Jackson had viewed through the binoculars at the ball field, sat in the middle of her horse-shoe configuration of technology, computer screens surrounding her. All of her machines routed to an array of servers across the planet. Any trace of the connections led to anonymous servers in Finland. At the end of each session, the work files were saved on the dark web, encrypted of course, and purged from local hard drives through a variety of proprietary bleaching processes. Her clandestine research, all of her communications, and black-hat hacking originating in this dark refuge, were untraceable.

Red Nick was Cinder's call sign on the dark web. Most thought it was a play on the term Red Neck, a guy named Nick who was from the South. Or a far-left radical named Nick who loved the irony. It was a play on her name spelled backward, Rednic. Cloaked in anonymity, Red Nick ran a deep web-based network of researchers and hackers located in several countries. She paid them in Bitcoins. Red Nick became a thing of dark web legend.

Fearing that Jackson Rand would connect her dots someday, she communicated to the PublicFigure editorial team as Deep Anon. Red Nick-Rednic-Deep Anon-Cinder Stowe was an information broker. A very special information broker. A sleuth information broker that could manage black hats.

Cinder lived for the rush. The max adrenaline main-line rush, the no-one-could-have-pulled-this-off-but-me rush, when the source’s work product made international news, and a corrupt CEO or a celebrity pedophile or a banker or a Congressperson or despot was exposed and hauled away in handcuffs. Which to her chagrin, was a rare occurrence even though corruption was at an all-time high since the United States became a one-party system welfare state.

There was the rush, the justice-served rush, and then there was the money. Cinder was well-paid for her unique services. She paid her black hats exorbitant fees in turn, which was why they did what they did. So there was the rush and the money. The money from her highest paying and most consistent client. The website known as The Famous, The Infamous, and The Notorious—PublicFigure.com.

But under the cool-in-control demeanor coupled with a cold and calculating math mind, was something else. Behind the hazel eyes, a fire burned, a torch of an unquieted need. The need for revenge. The bittersweet taste of revenge yet to pass her lips, yet to be consumed, digested, and dissolved. She carried the burden of a nagging secret and every day repeated the same mantra. Someday soon.

Today’s justice-served work would have to wait. On the five screens surrounding Cinder were data sets for five individuals. Commissioned work. Works in progress. Susan Arnold, Heinrich Tenner, Glenn Woo, Donald Sturitz, and Lawrence Brenton. When the news flashed on one of her screens about the disappearance of the Speaker of the House, Cinder quickly turned up the volume and sat up in her chair.

The coverage of the disappearance of the Speaker was interrupted with a news alert about the disappearance of Donald Sturitz, the CNN pundit. Cinder swallowed—tried to swallow—her throat tightened, her saliva turned to cement, hardened on the way down, and plowed into her intestines like a wrecking ball. She grabbed the top of the monitor with both hands, her eyes intense, absorbing every word.

She slammed back into the chair and typed furiously, bringing up article after article from news sites about the kidnappings. She switched to the dark web, typing in dozens of search terms, including Speaker of the House, Susan Arnold, and Donald Sturitz. She was looking for chatter within the last hour.

She went into terminate-local-mode: Save all data to encrypted cloud system—local deletion—bleach drives—disconnect external hard drives and remove. She opened a pilot’s suitcase and threw in dozens of static flash drives, flipped open the sides of the computer cases and extracted all the RAM modules and hard drives.

She powered down all of the computers. In the pilot’s case went three laptops and six satellite phones. She lifted the latch on a rusty water heater in the corner, revealing a safe. She spun the dial of the combination lock with finesse and opened the safe door. She was in execution mode now. Flat out. Methodical. Focused.

She removed three stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, several dozen Krugerrand coins, and several flash drives. She threw all the items in the suitcase and closed it. Remaining in the safe were a pistol and ten magazines. She removed the g*n and placed it on the desk. From a desk drawer, she removed a Kydex holster, slipped it on her belt, then holstered her weapon.

She put on a Safari-type jacket and placed the magazines in the lower bellowed pockets. She pulled up the handle on the suitcase, stood it upright, and rolled it away from the computer setup. She sprayed lighter fluid on the keyboards, chairs, and desk, then lit them on fire.

She pulled the suitcase up the stairs, rolled it out of the building to her old Range Rover, and placed it in the trunk area, then returned to the cellar and doused the flames with a fire extinguisher.

Once the fire was out, Cinder left the building and drove away. She kept her Range Rover at the speed limit and proceeded along Main Street through downtown Ventura. She glanced at the PublicFigure building and kept going, continuing past the West Main street area, the tents of the illegals and the aimless and the hopeless. Dodging the staggerers; the hungry, the high, the homeless. She flipped news stations in rapid-fire.

A reporter with another alert blurted, “Yeah, Bret, I’m in Washington, outside the residence of Heinrich Tenner, the current Governor of the World Bank, and our sources here tell us he was taken in the middle of the night as well. There is now no doubt that some type of coordinated attack, or k********g, uh, I should say we have no information at this time that any of these victims were murdered, uh, it seems they have been extracted from their homes at about the same time.”

Cinder hit the brakes. She saw a car closing in from behind, pulled over, and stopped. Breathing heavy, her hand darted to her waist, feeling the butt of the pistol. An instinctive move to make sure it was still there. The car passed her. She rolled down the window and coughed, then spat out the window.

The Range Rover pulled into the parking lot of the Little League park. Casey, her son, came running up.

“Hey Mom, you’re early, but it’s okay, my tryout is over. I did good,” Casey said. The ten-year-old ran up and hugged Cinder.

“Can we go to Ben and Jerry’s like you said?”

“We’re going on a little adventure.”

“Again?”