Chapter 15

My flight to Montgomery was made at night, more for my peace of mind than for anything else. The main reason that I did not want to be spotted was because I was afraid of looking foolish. I still made mistakes while flying and had to make adjustments on the fly, so to speak. I found these to be embarrassing, and I figured that flying at night would make them less visible. Oh, well, just chalk it up to the insecurities of a teen male.

I arrived in Montgomery while it was still dark. The flight had only taken a few minutes. I flew just enough under the speed of sound so as not to produce a thunderclap on the ground. The direct air distance was only on the order of 100 miles, so I made the trip in a few minutes. I did stay close to the ground so that I would not show up on somebody's radar. All I needed was to be chased by some jets, especially if they were trigger-happy!

Anyway, the worst part of the trip was me worrying about it. I could not have asked for an easier journey for my first crosscountry trip. Sometimes I think that I am luckier than I deserve.

I figured that I would not find any gang members until after daylight, so I found a roof to perch on near the address that I had. My plan was to scan the minds of passersby until I found a gang member. From there, I would play it by ear until I could find the leader of the gang. I had no idea how long that was going to take, but I was learning patience. I was sure that I could make myself wait until the right person came along.

Well, wait I did! It was nearly noon before I found a gang member who was headed to the gang headquarters where he expected to meet the boss of the bunch. This forced me to move in daylight, but I stayed above the roofs as I followed my mark to the gang leader. I followed for about seven blocks until I came to a restaurant that advertised "food like Mom used to make." Yeah, I'll bet!

The mark went into the restaurant and joined another man at a table. He was eating lunch, and the mark ordered the same special of the day: chicken-fried steak. I could see the two men through the front window of the restaurant, and I could mind read what they were saying. Actually, neither one said much as they concentrated on downing the food which must have been delicious, judging by the way the two gobbled it down. They lingered over coffee, still not saying much of any importance to me.

Eventually, they paid their bill and left the restaurant. They headed for a building a few doors down the street from the restaurant and went in. This was a nondescript office with two rooms. The front room was rather large, and it had a desk with a man sitting behind it. I assumed that he was the receptionist and bouncer, considering his size. There were 11 men lounging in the room reading, napping, playing cards, and otherwise passing the time. The boss and the mark went into a room opening off the front room, and that was when I lost sight of them.

By now, I had lost interest in the mark. The boss of the gang was the one I was interested in questioning, but I was stymied for the moment. I checked and found that the only door to the office where the boss was sitting was from the main room. There was not even a convenient window. I suppose that I could have broken in through the wall if I had needed to, but that did not seem appropriate at the moment. The same could be said for forcing my way in through the main room. I decided to wait until the boss left the headquarters before making my move. I had him positively identified, so I did not expect any difficulties in following him when he left. My current thought was that I would catch him on his way home.

A reading of the boss' mind had told me that he lived in an apartment with his girlfriend. She had a daughter of about 14, and the boss was fucking both of them with no objections from either one. I hoped to grab him before he got home, but I would invade the apartment if it turned out to be necessary. By the way, for what it was worth, the boss was Black and his harem was White.

The boss finally left his office about 6:00 o'clock and headed home. His apartment was only two blocks away, so he was walking home. This was fine with me, because I was able to snatch him as he walked past an alley. I used TK to bring him up to the roof that I was using, and he was temporarily scared shitless by his flight through the air. I set him on the roof and bound his hands and feet with air molecules. He was not going anywhere until I released him; if something happened to me, he was going to die where he sat!

I asked him a few questions and got the usual nonsense for answers. I was expecting that, but I showed him the error of his ways by squeezing his balls with TK. By now, he was sitting in a mess of piss and shit, and I did not want to put my hand in it. A bit of gentle persuasion got him to tell me what I wanted to know. Of course, I could have simply read his mind, but I didn't want to give away knowledge of that ability until I had to.

Anyway, I got the details of his contact with the man who wanted the fire set in our yard. As I expected, the man was White and gave his name as Elvis Strango. This guy's description did not match that of the other two Elvises, so that was of only minor help. However, this time, the meeting was in full light and I could pick the image of this one from the boss' brain. I figured that this put me one more step up the ladder toward identifying the man behind the attack.

In the process of questioning this guy, I found out that he was the main distributor of hard drugs in South Alabama. I have a particular aversion to drug pushers, so there was no way I was going to let this guy go free. I took upon myself the mantle of judge and jury, and I declared the boss guilty of capital crimes. I used TK to lift and transport him up to 10,000 feet and dropped him on a paved farm-to-market road that was not being currently used. I expected the next motorist to find and report the body, so I thought nothing more about him.

I flew home after dark because I needed to spend some time giving Montgomery a thorough brain scan to try to find this latest Elvis Strango. I would start out assuming that he had a regular job in the Montgomery business district. That meant that I had to scan during the day, but it also meant that I could spend my nights at home. I did not want to neglect my concubines, but I also did not want to leave my home unguarded.

By staying low to avoid radar and flying just below the speed of sound, I could make the trip in less than 10 minutes. People on the ground would feel a blast of wind, but they would not hear a sonic boom, so they should assume that it was just a stray wind gust that they felt. That close to the ground, I would be moving so relatively fast that I probably would never be seen. Even if I were seen, as Dad pointed out, who was going to believe his eyes?

I still got home in time for supper that evening. I was very happy to make it because Mary had fixed some strange concoction for which I cannot remember the name, but it was delicious. I always wanted to be home for supper because of the wonderful dishes that Mary managed to prepare. Her cooking alone made her worth her weight in love!

I related what had happened in Montgomery and my plans for the search for Elvis Strango. Nobody made a negative comment on the demise of the gang boss, so that was a "dead" subject. I planned to guard the house tonight, but there still would be time for a session of loving sex with each of my concubines before I adjourned to the roof. I cheated and mind read all of them, and everyone was happy with that prospect.

Sally had a schedule worked up in short order, and I asked her if that was a list of the "pricking" order. I can't understand why she was not amused; I thought the pun was hilarious. During supper, the subject of my nom de guerre came up and I was informed that the committee of concubines had chosen Hades, the name of the Greek and Roman God of the Underworld. Their reasoning was that they wanted a name that even the most ignorant crook could recognize the significance of, and, besides, I could fuck like Hell! What could I say to that?

I spent an uneventful night on the roof and came down for my usual BE&G breakfast. I was already dressed for the trip, naked, that is, so I bid everyone goodbye and headed for Montgomery. Again, the trip was made without incident. Dad had prepared a map for me to make it easier to section off the city. I only had to look at it once to have it memorized, so I was not encumbered by the map as I flew. I arrived and parked myself on a convenient roof. I was a little early, so I amused myself by looking for signs of criminal intent. The business district was generally free of that except in the lawyers' offices, but I figured that was a regular part of the business.

I started a serious scan at 9:30 AM. I figured that most people would be at work by then, so I might as well get started. As I anticipated, "Elvis Strango" did not show up that day, so I returned to Dothan. This was repeated for two more days, and I had only one section of the business district left to scan. I was already expecting to have to spread out my survey, but I was going to stick to the original plan for now.

On the fourth day, I hit the jackpot! It was a lunch time when I got a flicker of Elvis Strango in two men who were walking from an office building to a fancy restaurant just down the street. I jumped in immediately for a detailed scan and found that both men had used the name when contacting people for nefarious deeds. It turned out that neither one of these men were the Elvis Strango whom I was looking for, but they were associated with other men who used the same alias. This was looking interesting!

I simply tagged the men and waited until they went back to their offices. When they arrived at the office, I saw that they were employees of Conner & Conner Consultants. I could imagine what sort of "consulting" they did, but I wondered if any of it was legitimate business. Yes, some of it was real consulting; they used architectural engineering as a cover. In fact, most of their employees were honest engineers working on honest projects.

However, a section of the company did anything a customer was willing to pay for, including "wet" work (murder). There were 13 people working on this side of the business, and not all of them were men. In fact, the person most often called upon for wet work was a mixed-ethnic Asian woman who had 19 contracts to her credit. She had never missed on an assignment. Dammit, that was a scary outfit!

Conner and Conner Consultants were going to get a lot of attention from me even if they turned out not to be the ones behind the attempts to kill me and harm my family. Further investigation showed that they were the ones behind the threats to Dad, so I knew who I was after, at least in the short run. I wondered what they had in mind for the hacking software they were extorting from him. What I really needed to know was who had hired them for both these jobs. I planned to put Conner & Conner Consultants out of business with extreme prejudice, as they say in the movies, but I wanted to know who was paying them for their skullduggery.

I headed back to Dothan to discuss my information with Dad. I was dithering between going after Conner & Conner Consultants immediately or using them to lead me higher in the chain. I was leaning toward the latter option, but I wanted Dad's input.

The only solid intent that I had at the moment was to eliminate Lilo Hue, the Asian woman who took such pleasure in murdering people. She had even killed one child, and that really put me out. When I went back, I was going to give her mind a thorough scanning. That might take all day, but I was going to learn everything that she knew about the business of Conner & Conner Consultants and try to find out who had ordered the killings. She might not know that kind of detail, but I was going to find out if she did. Once she had given up her information, she was going to take a long walk off a short window ledge!

Dad agreed with me about tracing what I could from the records and brains of Conner and Conner Consultants operatives before I eliminated them, but he also agreed that Lilo Hue was so vile that I could start with her right away. That was what I had in mind when I flew back to Montgomery the next day. I perched on my roof top and searched for Ms Hue. Dammit, I searched until noon without finding her. That's when it dawned on me to check on her official whereabouts.

I found a clerk who processed travel records for the company. The company wisely did not separate the travel records of its two kinds of employees, and that way no one would get suspicious about the trips their agents made. Anyway, a brain scan of the clerk showed that Lilo Hue had made a trip to Huntsville. Okay, I knew where she was going, but I didn't know whom she was going after. I spent the rest of the day searching the minds of appropriate individuals in the office and finally found out that she was going after a chemist working on rocket propellents at Redstone Arsenal.