Chapter 100

After breakfast Rita pulled me aside. "I have a message for you."

"Message from who?" I asked.

"Sylvia, " Rita said.

"Now that is creepy," I said.

"This coming from the woman who talks to a dead man," Rita commented.

"I know that I'm not really talking to a dead man. I'm just answering the voices in my head," I said.

"And you find that less creepy than a message from the grave?" Rita asked.

"Well if you put it that way," I replied. "So what's the message?"

"Run," Rita said.

"Is that all, just run?" I asked.

"Without Sylvia the house of cards comes down. There is going to be a congressional investigation. The people who used to cover your asses are going to hide. If someone wants your ass jammed up, they can do it now. My guess is Sylvia knew someone who wanted your head on a pike," Rita commented.

"I'm no longer involved with this group of cutthroats," I said. "Bart and I run legitimate businesses. Did Sylvia have the same advice for him?"

"Yes, you should all lay low," Rita said. "This will all blow over in a year or two."

"So what happens to the operation?" I asked.

"Oh the work will go on. Someone has to keep the country's business going," Rita said. "It's just the politicians are going to be in hiding till it blows over. So go somewhere and lay low."

"I'll give it some thought but I expect I'll decide to lay low in Mossberg Ala. If they want me, I guess they will come and get me no matter where I am," I said.

"It isn't so much the politicians want you. It's more that if someone else wants you, they won't intervene," Rita said. "From cops looking at you every time someone goes missing to drug dealers with a grudge."

When she said it, I thought about the dog man in the swamp. I knew what she said was the truth. Some politician with a hard on for me would have me on a watch list somewhere. I could stay and live right, or I could run and live free. My other alternative was to just live free knowing there was no safety net under the wire.

It sounds rather cavalier, but it was something that really did deserve some serious thought. It sounded to me like a decision I should make during the long drive home when I wasn't distracted.

There was going to be a sandwich buffet at noon, then they would prepare the room for the memorial service. People would be arriving from early in the morning till the service began at 3 PM. People who hadn't seen each other for a while, some for years, would be in attendance.

I used the bathhouse that was used by men and women alike. I really didn't mind men seeing me naked, but some women probably obsessed over it. I carried a pair of white panties and a black tee shirt to the shower room with me. It was for sure that I had not come to Church Camp to make a fashion statement. I pulled the running suit pants on before I walked back to the cabin.

One of the neat things about Church Camp, for which Silvia was responsible, was not changing the single bath house even though there had been some pressure from the guys to do so. The men were the ones who had a problem with women seeing them naked.

Sylvia's answer had been, "We are all grown up here. It's hard not to stand up for someone you have seen naked. The bathhouse stays asexual. She had even built a nest of new cabins with their own bathhouse, which was also asexual.

I sat around the cabin in my running suit bottoms and tee shirt while I checked the mail. I read the emails from the two men who were occupying my farm. Each of them sent me an email the night before. According to them everything was fine.

"Bart," I said when he entered the cabin after his meeting with Andrew. "You want to ride back with me? I'll be leaving after the service."

"Do you have the Ranger?" Bart asked.

"Of course," I replied.

"Then I need to see how much longer Rita has to be here. If she can come home in the next couple of days, I'll stay. If it is going to be longer, I'll ride back with you, if that is okay."

"Of course it is okay, I did ask you," I said a little pissed that he had to check with Rita.

I went back to my searches on the Internet. I found a live streaming newscast from each of the news networks. There was no mention of Sylvia by name but the bullshit about an American Foreign Legion was all over the place. Newsmen just loved a good sound bite and that one gave it to them. Swamp Dog was truly in the shit, I thought.

I stayed with the news until I went to the dining hall for lunch. It was no more than a ham and cheese sandwich on a fancy bun. I ate half then walked out with the half empty glass of dark beer.

I went back to the cabin to begin following the news online again. I stayed there until the service was ready to begin. When I returned to the dining hall all the tables and been removed. There was seating on the benches for about half the crowd the rest of us stood behind them.

The beer keg from lunch sat at the rear. Since everyone else was doing it, I filled a cup myself. I was talking with Bart when Rita and Andrew entered.

Bart watched with a strange look as Andrew approached the podium that sat on a few boards atop a few concrete blocks. The make shift stage put the speaker only a few inches above the audience.

"We are here to say goodbye to Silvia Porter. For the last few years she led our organization. We had great success under her leadership. She died as I know she wanted to go. She died in an operation launched in an effort to protect the organization from terrorist, to make the terrorist fear our names, to bring terror to the terrorist."

"There are some dark days coming. We are going to see our good name sullied. We are going to be called some pretty awful things. We are going to want to take revenge, but Sylvia did not believe in revenge for the sake of revenge. Revenge had to produce a lasting positive outcome or she would not sanction it."

"So we will swallow our pride and answer their questions and try to protect each other. It is what she would want." Andrew stepped aside.

From the front row a man walking with a cane and fresh bandages on his face stood and walked onto the stage. "In this urn are the ashes of Sylvia Porter. Her body was Cremated in a crematorium we took control of for the night. Her body went through the crematorium that night along with the heart of the man who killed her." Then the man lifted his cup and said, "Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacre mercenaire."

There were tears in a lot of eyes when the men and women in the audience raised their cups. The service was over in just fifteen minutes. People stood and milled about. I found Bart and waited until he had a long conversation with Rita.

I avoided the beer keg for the twenty minutes it took for him to finish his conversation with Rita,

"Okay," he said when he was standing in front of me. "I'll get my backpack and we can get the hell out of here."

"Hold on I have to pack," I said falling in beside him. We walked all the way to the cabin before I could stand it no longer. "So is Rita staying," I asked.

"Yes, I have no idea when she will be coming home," he said.

"Or if she will be coming home," I replied.

"Why do you say that?" Bart asked.

"These guy need a spokes lawyer and Rita is the obvious choice. To do that she needs to be either at the Swamp Compound or the Church Camp. She has family near the Church Camp, so it just makes sense," I said.

You need to sell the tea company and move with her, or you need to let her go," I said. "Hell you could probably get a million bucks for it."

"And that farm of yours is worth five million. You turned that 50,000 'potalot' into two million in two years. That's a good return on your money," Bart said sarcastically.

"Prick, you completely omitted that I bought that farm, built the greenhouse and made other improvements to the place, because you and Rita stole the tea business from me. I would have been perfectly happy to make $300,000 a year doing nothing," I said. "But no I had to make room for that lawyer bitch."

"Careful what you say," Bart replied.

"I'm driving the fucking car, what you gonna do shoot me," I said.

"I have a long memory and I'm patient," he said. He took a long time before he added. "I think it is a good time not to be working for Swamp Dog."

"Oh there was a Swamp Dog before Sylvia and there will be one long after this blows over. There have always been operatives like those at the Swamp," I suggested.

"Well maybe someday I will do it again for the adventure, but it will never be for the money again. That freedom I owe to you," he said.

"So, do you want to stay were you are, or take over the farm?" I asked. "You do know there is more money in the farm than in making tea."

"Yeah, but nobody comes around the tea factory wanting to steal the stalks," Bart explained. "Why don't you work a deal with those two guys you have out there?"

"If you don't want it, I will most likely do that," I said.

"You will have to use that half ass lawyer in Williamston. You are right that Rita most likely won't be back," he said.

"I know Bart, it sucks don't it?" I asked.

"Yeah, I can't be just Rita's husband any more than she can be just my wife. It has nothing to do with money," he said.

"Yeah, once you get past the price of a Big Mac, it's just about the score card," I said.

"Yeah," he said looking out the window. "You want me to drive?"

"Maybe later," I suggested and kept on moving south.

"Where you going to go?" he asked.

"I don't know maybe the old bank building on the corner," I suggested.

"Good, I'm glad you don't feel you have to run," Bart said.

"I do have to run, just not all that far," I suggested. "There is no one looking for me. I don't think I want to give anyone a reason to arrest me."

"You are running a straight up shop, why would they want to arrest you?" he asked.

If they want something I have they will frame me. If I do something a little questionable they will see the dark side," I said.

"Every time you make a decision in the pot business it is questionable," Bart agreed.

"That is true, that's why I'm getting out of the business. If you and the two guys don't want it, I will sell the potalot to some mega farm," I said.