Chapter 3

The little town that we lived in had so little crime that the attempted robbery of the gas station was their first crime of the year. The cops were happy to have the perps and a reliable witness, so they were not worried about finding the good Samaritan who had broken the thing up. Therefore, I was not bothered by this little escapade.

I continued to rock along, taking seriously only the driver's ed class I was enrolled in. The teacher was very impressed with my grasp of the details of the proper way to drive and agreed that all I needed was practice. I worked hard, and the instructor agreed that I was ready to take the exam for my license any time I wanted to. The problem, now, was that I needed a car to use for my exam, and I didn't have one. The only person who might help out there was Sheila's mother.

She wasn't too excited about letting me borrow her car for the test, but she finally gave in with a lot of prodding from Sheila. I took the test and passed with a perfect score. Now, all I needed was a way to buy a car. That was going to be a problem.

Meanwhile, time had finally come for the GED test, and I passed that test with flying colors, too. Other than a little paperwork to clean up, I was finished with formal highschool.

Sheila still had two more years of highschool to finish after the current one, which had about six weeks to run. We tried to stay together as much as possible, but it just wasn't working, and we drifted apart. By the time the summer vacation started, Sheila was already dating another boy.

That ripped it as far as I was concerned. My mother quietly thought that I had stuck with Sheila longer than Mom had expected. OK, we were now free to move. Mom and I wanted to go to Miami, and, of course, Genie had no opinion. We packed up the few things we wanted to take and Genie transported us to the appropriate restrooms at a Miami bus station. We met in the lobby and went looking for a taxi.

The first thing we wanted to do was to buy a car. Genie asked us why we wanted to buy a car when he could produce one for us out of thin air. When Sue asked how that was possible, Genie asked her where she thought the money was coming from.

We went to the back of the bus station parking lot and Genie conjured up an SUV for us. Mom was startled, but I laughed and we climbed aboard. The next step was to find a place to live. It was early summer, so it was off-peak for the tourist season; therefore, we had no trouble coming up with a nice place to stay at a beach-front hotel. Mom started to complain about the cost, but I reminded her where the money was coming from.

Now we wanted to find a house. We wanted something with at least three bedrooms and an indoor swimming pool. It would be nice if the house was on the water, either the bay or a canal. We were not looking for a palatial estate, but we would take one if it became necessary. We found a real estate agent and began looking in earnest. Genie had fixed us up with an outstanding credit rating, so there was no problem with that.

It took too long to find what we wanted. I lost count of the number of unsuitable places we were shown. I don't understand why an agent will show a customer a house when it is clearly not what was asked for. Maybe it's the commission? I don't know.

Finally, about the time I was getting ready to sic Genie on that damned agent, she showed us what we were looking for. We knew it was what we wanted the moment we walked in the door. It had four bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom on the main floor. There were four bathrooms upstairs and two on the main floor. There was the mandatory kitchen, dining room, and living room. And there was an indoor pool. It was 20 feet by 40 feet and deep enough at one end to allow diving. Furthermore, it was adjacent to a canal which connected directly to the bay. Everything we had asked for. The agent explained that she had not shown it sooner because it had just become available. OK, I was no longer mad at her.

Our credit was so good that we could close the following week. Thank God, that was out of the way!

We were able to move into the empty house because Genie could put in the furniture we wanted as fast as we could think of it. I wanted to use the downstairs bedroom as an office. I had heard a lot about the latest in computers, so I asked Genie to do what he could for us and then teach us how to use them. What Genie came up with were his own version of the laptop, but it made the kind you see in stores blush with shame. Not only did it have the usual built-in keyboard and display, but we had a separate contoured and split keyboard of the best ergonomic design and a 21-inch LCD display with 120 Hz refresh. Man, I tell you, it pays to have your own resident genie!

We had the latest in broadband internet connection and were set up with Firefox and Thunderbird. If it was available on the internet or for the internet, we had it. Genie insisted that I would want all of these geegaws as soon as I got comfortable with the machines. Well, I wasn't going to argue with him. He sure as hell knew what he was doing in other fields, so whatever he said, I believed.

The last item on my list was a place for the stuff associated with The Chameleon. Miami is not the best place for underground storage, so that was the ideal place to put The Chameleon's car and, to my delight, motorcycle. If you saw the motorcycle Batman used in the movie, then you have the merest hint of The Chameleon's motorcycle. I won't go into detail on it now, but will wait to describe each feature as it becomes important. Suffice it to say that there has never been a better concept or execution for a motorcycle.

The car was spectacular in that it looked like a common Chevy SUV on the outside, but the inside was a crime fighter's paradise. If you needed a weapon, it was there. If you needed a climbing device, it was there. And so on and on and on. In keeping with Genie's flair for the unusual, that SUV was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Needless to say, I loved it. A great feature was that I could drive it around town and have it ignored as just another common SUV. It would be great for stakeouts and such.

The second night we had moved into our new home, I just had to take the SUV out for a trial run. I still was not familiar with the city and its suburbs, so the GPS system was a wonderful help. I had heard so much about drug dealing in the Hispanic sections of Dade County that I had to take a look for myself. Since most of my information at this stage came from TV, I was probably not getting a true picture, but I had to start somewhere.

I just started cruising the neighborhoods, looking for I don't know what. Undoubtedly, I was guilty of stereotyping a whole group of people, but, as I say, I had to start somewhere, and it wouldn't be a stereotype if there was not some truth in it somewhere.

The vehicle was equipped with highly directional listening devices which were very sensitive. I had the sensitivity turned way up as it got later in the night. People had cut off their TVs and radios, so I was not being blasted by them. I could hear what was going on in a house as I drove passed it. I had almost been lulled to sleep by the lack of activity when I suddenly heard a woman screaming in Spanish. Genie had already given me a complete grasp of the local Spanish, so I could recognize what the woman was saying.

She was not completely coherent, since she was obviously very frightened, but she was calling for help and shouting about somebody cutting bodies into pieces. Well, this definitely sounded like a job for Chameleon, so I parked a couple of houses down the street and got out to investigate. I had Genie switch me into a dark gray color which would be nearly impossible to see against the dark sky and the shadows among the houses. I approached the house where the woman appeared to be held and looked for an easy way to enter. As I was rounding the house, I heard her clearly scream in pain just on the other side of the window where I was listening, so I didn't hesitate.

I swung up and kicked in the window. This was a room that looked like an operating room in the cheapest sort of B movie. A woman was lying on her back on an operating table and her arms and legs were tied to immobilize her. A woman and two men were in the room. The woman was holding a scalpel, and the men were holding assault rifles. They were not pointing the rifles at the woman with the scalpel, so she was not acting under duress.