Chapter 3

The next day I made my weekly phone call to Joel. I have a normal Bell phone line at my home, but I never use it for 'business'. Way too easy to trace. A few years ago, I did a favor for an IT uber-geek who set me up with a 110% secure Internet phone line that bounces off half a dozen private servers and tele-comm satellites before it ever touches a terrestrial landline, probably somewhere in Paraguay. Any bad guys short of the NSA wouldn't have a chance in seven hells of tracing me.

Joel was happy to hear that I'd be contracting him for another week, and that I would then continue to keep a two week cushion for his contract unless I directly told him otherwise later. The petty account maintenance stuff handled, we got right down to the brass tacks.

"Foole, if they were pissed last week, they're way beyond livid now. Finding you is nearly everyone's pet project now. Old hatchets have been buried and old rivals are holding hands and singing "Kumbaya". You don't want to know what the current price is for finding you, since you'd get unhealthy ideas about turning yourself in for the reward." Let unsaid was the very clear thought that if Joel wasn't already on my clock, that he'd be out there too in the search for me.

"Fuck. The girl is that hot?"

"Positively radioactive. Her real name is Angelina Monroe, of the Boston 'Beacon Hill' Monroe's'. Old, old, well-seasoned and very respectable money, boatloads of it, and enough political clout to get anyone's favorite idiot syphilitic nephew elected to Congress or appointed to be Ambassador to Botswana. He's a Kingmaker with a capitol 'K'. Any Senator with a hint of higher ambition has him on speed dial and he knows at least four different Presidents on a first name basis. Angelina is old man Monroe's only child and heir, and big trouble since the day she was born ... but he still loves her to a fault. Anyone that controls Angelina has a major hook into the old man and he'll dance to their tune."

This made absolutely no sense to me. A young woman from such a powerful and politically connected family used as a starved captive, made to die by inches. This just didn't sound like a normal political kidnapping, at least originally.

"Why?" Was about all I could mutter while my brain locked up in thought.

"Your mark wants their toy back at all costs. Everyone else wants the girl either as a pawn to sell back to the mark or else to hit up her father for either political favors or a golden ticket for a future ride on the gravy train. You have the girl - so everyone now wants you. And they're pissed as hell that you've turned out to be a complete ghost. You've done jobs for dozens of people but not one can even provide a halfway decent description of you, let alone know where to find you. For now at least, no one has the faintest clue who you really are and what rock you've crawled under. Tuck in your little angel and give her a kiss for me. For now, you should be safe and sound. More film at eleven, your mileage may vary, and don't worry about the pants cuffs they'll ride up with wear."

That pretty much was that. Joel didn't have a firm line on my mark yet. He had a list of prime suspects but was having trouble whittling the list down. He hinted that he was sort of at a standstill on that front and to make any further significant progress he'd probably have to pop way out of the shadows and pretend to be offering prime information and see who popped up to take the bait. Neither of us was ready for that yet. That's fine. We had time at the moment.

"You're a thief, aren't you?"

Thus started the first real conversation my Angel and I managed to have a few days later. She had been making vastly improved progress. No one ever sleeps well in a hotel bed, and my large Regency four-poster bed whispered happy thoughts to her and cradled her in her recovery like a happy warm womb. By her second day 'home', I was feeding her small bowls of watery porridge, which she loathed, calling it a "Dickensian gruel", but still ate every morsel. Milk, soup, Jell-O and pudding rounded out her limited diet, but I offered as much to her as she would take. Her skeletal frame began to slightly round out and while helping her to change her diaper, I began to notice that once again she was becoming a grown young woman, instead of a waif rescued from some death camp.

I pondered how best to answer her. I'd been thinking about the answer to this issue for about a week already as I was certain this question would not be far from her lips once she awoke. I had hardly made a secret of how I had discovered and 'rescued' her.

"The optimal response, I suppose" I told her with a wicked gleam in my eye, "would be to do some sort of, Alan Rickman impersonation from "Die Hard" and say that I am in fact an exceptional thief, and not a common one at all. In fact, and I take great pride in saying this, I am perhaps the best stolen art recovery agent in the business! Now I do in fact happen to be frequently employed by rascals, scoundrels, deviates, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and even the occasional Methodist. In short, if the good lord had not intended me to steal from such swine, he wouldn't have given me two good hands and a large bag marked 'swag' to put stuff into!"

My Angel smiled and repressed a definite laugh all the while trying to look severely at me. I at once confessed (nearly) all of my many faults and begged earnestly for her forgiveness. My penance was most severe — a dinner presented to her for her dining and delectation that did not include any gruel whatsoever. She left the subject of my moral reformation to be resolved on a future day.

The next two months passed as if they were mere days. She soon regained bowel and bladder control and was able to take personal control once again over that very personal business. Within a few short weeks, I dared to allow the angel some real food, and discounting some minor intestinal inconvenience, she was well on the road to recovery with astonishing progress.

We started to have meals together at the dining room table; an original and very genuine signed Chippendale. I began to show her around the old farmhouse, telling her the history and stories behind every special item I had. It was the first time I had ever shown off my treasures to anyone, and I reserved and held nothing back. I told her that I had a knack for finding special pieces, but not the exact nature of my unusual gift. While we talked about nearly everything, left unsaid was my own very criminal past, along with the reasons for her fall into drug abuse and the clutches of the mark.

Several times, I came close to admitting that my Angel was indeed the most precious and valuable possession I had ever found, but I never could find the words to tell her. I never once called her by her real name; to me she was just "The Angel".

The costs of keeping Joel occupied and firmly in my camp continued. I didn't mind or begrudge the expense at all; long after Joel had ceased to provide any new and useful information. He was still at a standstill trying to identify the mark, and the word out on the collector grapevine was still to 'locate us at all costs'. I kept him paid and was happy to do so, even if I had to sell everything I owned to protect her. It was as nothing to me — The Angel was now my all.

We began to take daily walks together, at first short brief ones, but later increasing in distance, and we would walk hand in hand, speaking of nothing but trivialities, until one early winter's day right after the first snow, we took a long walk together across a pasture and up to the top of a hill that overlooked the entire valley. This was the longest walk we had ever taken together and my Angel was very tired, her weak muscles still rebuilding from her ordeal. Her body might have still been weak, but her spirit grew by the day.

She had become vibrant and alive in every sense of the word. Her aura permeated everything she touched and my treasures all sang at her caress. Looking into her eyes was like looking in to the sun; blinded, my soul would become but a pale shadow of her glorious reflection. She consumed me and I could never deny her anything, even when she asked me about my most secret gift. There is nothing more foolish than a fool in love.

"How do you feel what items tell you? You touch them and they tell you their secrets. I see the light that comes over your face when you caress them. It's like the look you have when you see me. Ecstasy mixed with sadness. Tell me your deepest secrets and I shall tell you mine. There should be no clouds between us."

I could deny her nothing.

It should have been easy to disclose the real nature of my knack to her, but after a few minutes of hesitant confession, a different story began to emerge. A more deeply hidden sort of truth that I kept locked into the deepest parts of soul where they could never see the light of day again.

My Angel was healing, arisen from the ground nearly whole and perhaps almost ready to take wing again, away from me and out of my life forever. I wanted to keep and hold her tight; keeping her safely kept away from danger, where only I could look upon her and glory in her beauty.

I wanted her to be my greatest treasure. She in turn had the right to know what sort of calloused and jaundiced eyes would be admiring her, and exactly how many sins had stained the hands that longed to hold her as a lover would.

My sins were indeed many and the blemishes deep and I withheld none of them. The story was long in telling, the afternoon had passed, and the sun had quite nearly set before my tale was complete, with every sin itemized and accounted for. I shan't itemize the entire catalog of my misdoings, but let this suffice for a suitable overview.

I was born to a single mother, a recent immigrant from Thracian Greece, and of an utterly unknown father in San Angelo, Texas in the late 1970's. He might have been a one-night stand found in a bar, or my mother, who certainly had a very long laundry list of sins and character flaws of her own, may have been indulging in prostitution at the time. As she died when I was ten, I never heard her explain my parentage, or rather, I never remember her telling the same story twice - or a believable version even once. She had come to the US illegally a few years previously and had travelled across the country fairly randomly since. Once I was born, in order to receive welfare benefits, she remained in rural West Texas to stay.

My birth name was Symeon or "Simon" Salos, named after the Byzantine patron saint of fools, as I had been born on his holy day of July 21st. Already from birth, I had been already marked as a fool. Little did I realize that I would be marked yet again and again in the years to come.

My childhood memories are a vague blur of a succession of very cheap apartments, the smell of cheaper whiskey, and even cheaper boyfriends or visitors who apparently paid by the hour. Apparently she never had enough money for more than the first month's rent and we would stay until evicted a few months later, moving to a new unsuspecting landlord. School became a haphazard thing for me those first years, with numerous transfers between school districts. I never got to make any friends and it's a wonder that I even was able to get the basics of an elementary school education.

As the book of Proverbs says, "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." In my case, my inner fool stayed put, rearranged the furniture, and settled in to stay.

Everything changed about the time I turned nine when my mother, already deep into alcoholism, began to work as a domestic at the home of a fairly well-to-do rancher outside of Big Spring, Texas and about six months later they were married. At the time, I couldn't imagine what charms my mother might have possibly possessed to ensnare such a good prize, other than the fact that both of them had a deep and unrestrained fondness for the bottle. It wasn't until later that I realized that his now uninhibited access to my young body was in fact his primary desire for formalizing the relationship. In return for a roof over her head, occasional food and clothing, and all the booze she could drink, my mother was more than willing (in fact even pathetically eager) that I should now handle the 'marital relations' of the family with my new stepfather.

There is no need to relive any of the more intimate and sordid details here, I hope.

My stepfather, now quite enamored of me and wishing me further under his control, formally adopted me, and I now took the legal name of Simon Glemann. It wasn't until many years later that I learned this was an early 20th century German mis-transcription of his grandfather's birth record in Great Britain. He'd apparently married a Prussian girl he'd met while on business in Berlin in 1912. His true proper family name, Gleeman, marked me yet once again as a fool, being the traditional medieval name for English fools and minstrels.

As Euripides more or less said, I was born and fated to "do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm".

The marriage was not fated to last long and they fought like feral cats on a daily basis. My peculiar relationship with my stepfather was not an issue, but they disagreed and fought about nearly everything else. Especially when my mother was drunk ... which was probably most of the time.

Late one night, in the middle of summer, my mother 'disappeared' forever. They had drunkenly fought all day, and late into the evening. I had stayed in my room reading a book and trying hard to ignore everything I heard. Dishes were thrown, and maybe even punches. There was an especially loud blood curdling cry then followed by silence. A few minutes later, I heard loud dragging sounds and my stepfather left the house for about an hour. I had heard his truck start up and tear out of the rocky driveway in front of the ranch house scattering pebbles everywhere hitting the sides of the house.

My mother was gone, as was a large Indian rug that once covered part of the dining room floor, near the kitchen. There was a large dark stain on the floor where the rug had been but it was scrubbed clean and gone the next morning when I went to take a closer look at it in daylight. Her clothes were all still present in her bedroom and her two small suitcases remained in her closet, but these were also gone by the next morning. I had been quite certain that my mother had never returned with my stepfather when he returned to the house about an hour later.

Even a fool could tell that in a fit of drunken rage my father had killed or badly wounded my mother, but the problem was no one seemed to care. In the light of day, when my inquiries and protestations began, any remaining 'evidence' had already been disposed of. My mother's clothes closet was empty and her bags were gone. There was no trace of any disagreement or struggle, let alone any remaining blood traces on the floor, which appeared astonishingly clean and newly polished. Even the bed of his pickup truck was freshly washed and scrubbed with not even the slightest spec of dirt, let alone blood. That truck had never been washed before to my memory, nor was it ever cleaned ever again in the future. The Indian rug also naturally never reappeared.

I repeated my accusations long past the point where it would have been wise and prudent to shut my mouth and bide my time. But being a fool, I failed to heed the advice that "Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish".

The Sheriff took absolutely no stock of my accusations, and my stepfather's command over my body began to include other more physically painful forms of abuse. Unrestrained by any remaining moderating influence at home, our domestic affairs began to include increasingly sadistic and degrading sexual practices. Often his treatment of me was so violent that I had to miss many days of school due to obvious signs of physical abuse that could not be hidden or otherwise disguised.

For years, I was too young and powerless to interfere with or escape from my world of chronic abuse. I sullenly accepted the increasingly dark and perverse world of sadomasochistic oppression that I lived under then. That is, until the first time I could clearly hear the other voices, right after I turned thirteen shortly after I discovered my first minute growing pubic hairs.

I had spent that day tied naked and spread-eagle face down on his bed, my hands just touching his bedposts, which were carved of a dark oak. I had been hearing vague whispers sometimes that I couldn't understand for a while, at least a week or two, but nothing ever recognizable. I just assumed that I was slowly going mad and was actually looking forward to it as an escape from my life of pain.

Then I experienced my first ejaculation. This was a matter of intense and overwhelming shame to me, that I had achieved orgasmic pleasure from the stimulation of a lengthy whipping followed by severe and lengthy anal penetration. I hid this shameful accident from my stepfather, who soon finished his business and left me alone for a while in my heart-wrenching misery. That's when I realized that the bedpost I was holding was weeping along with me, sharing my pain.

Naturally, I thought I had gone quite insane.

It took me many years to get over this memory of shame, and similar incidents that occurred afterwards. I learned later from a professional therapist that such occurrences are far from unusual in rape cases, and in fact even quite common. It's a simple physiological reaction to stimuli, not a deep internal admission of acceptance or even pleasure at being abused.