Tinker and Blue (32 page)

52

Capricorn's arrest stunned the Human Rainbow Commune.

After Tulip and Cory had broken the news, the members sat around the council table, first in inarticulate silence, then trying to piece together what they had heard.

Cory explained that Special Agent Bud Wise had been picking up members of the Black Panthers, questioning them, accusing them of being connected the Human Rainbow Commune and the elusive Tinker, asking them if they had heard anything regarding the existence of an oxygen bomb.

“The brothers,” Cory explained, “couldn't help but make half-hearted denials about a conspiracy between the Panthers and the commune to produce an oxygen bomb. Ah, man, we hardly ever get a honky FBI guy so scared. If he wants to believe in the oxygen bomb or the System or even Santa Claus, that's none of our business, is it? So the brothers kind of helped Wise hang on to that belief by not quite denying that Tinker and his bomb exist. Tinker doesn't really have a bomb, does he?”

The week before Easter, Cory told them, one of the Panthers, whom Cory called Chug, had been picked up and taken to Wise's office for questioning. In the middle of being grilled by Wise in his own office, another agent knocked on the door and said that Reginald Regent the III was on the phone. Wise told the guy he would take the call in the office next door, telling Chug to stay where he was until Wise got back. Chug recognized the name of Reginald Regent the III as being one of half the population of San Francisco who was arrested when the counterfeit Tinker posters hit the city's post offices, and the one person whose arrest made so many headlines that anyone not already buried for at least a week was aware of who he was. Chug saw the blinking light on the phone on Wise's desk and picked it up. Not good manners, but then again, it was the FBI that invented wire-tapping, Cory reminded the commune council.

“Old Reggie the III was raging at Wise that Fucdepor shareholders were becoming unnaturally interested in, and worried about the idea of an oxygen engine. ‘That engine, if it works, will destroy this country's economy as we know it, replacing it with some idealist's idea that everybody can generate their own power for a few pennies a day. Communism! Wise, you'd better find this fucking Tinker character and get rid of him.' Christ, he told Wise, if the oxygen bomb actually exists it couldn't do more damage than the reality of the oxygen engine. ‘Bring those engine plans to me,' the president of Fucdepor Petroleum ordered.

Wise, clearly intimidated, stuttered and muttered and tried to explain that being an FBI agent there were certain rules he was required to follow, and getting rid of people, if he understood the petroleum president's message correctly, wasn't part of the bargain.

“You've already made your bargain with the Devil, Wise,” Reginald Regent the III told him. “I make your rules now. But I can assure you that if this Tinker character is caught and shot while trying to escape or simply disappears, there will be no serious legal consequences. You're not my only pet cop, but if you don't turn him up by the end of the week, your own career with the Bureau is as dead as this Tinker is going to be, and your second career as my mole in the FBI dies along with it. I have every record of every bonus ever wired from this company to your account for every favour you've ever done for Fucdepor. Get the job done, and when it's done, you can begin thinking about retiring and taking on the role of head of security for Fucdepor.” With that, Reginald Regent III slammed the phone in Wise's ear, and Chug slowly lowered the phone he was holding.

“Chug told me this after they released him. I had to get in touch with Tinker. I couldn't chance being followed here, so I wrote what I just told you in a note and left it at the Aquarius Café to be passed along to the first commune member who came in,” Cory explained.

“And that was me,” Tulip said, picking up the story.

Tulip had brought the note back to Capricorn. When he read it, he told Tulip that the conversation Chug overheard proved beyond a doubt that democracy was a facade behind which corporations like Fucdepor Petroleum hid and governed the country only in their own best interests. Anyone who gets in their way is expendable, he had informed Tulip.

“When I asked Capricorn if we should rush a message to Tinker, he said no. If there was any surveillance on the commune that we're not aware of, it could be Tinker's death warrant. Tinker's doing a fine job of hiding himself, Capricorn said, but there's something else we can do to help Tinker and every man, woman and child in the United States of America.”

With that, Capricorn spent the night fashioning remote surveillance equipment from the accumulated inventory of the commune's recent recording venture. He then asked Tulip to help him load up the van. Early next morning, Good Friday, a holiday when the downtown business sector was tomb-quiet, Tulip and Capricorn drove to the sixty-story Fucdepor Center where the monster petroleum company kept penthouse offices that oversaw its international purchases of oil and governments around the world. He asked Tulip if she would wait in the van for him to come back. “If I walk out of the building, just wait and I'll come to you, but if I come out running, start the van and come for me,” he instructed, and made his way toward the building.

One of the maintenance crew coming on shift didn't object to Capricorn standing behind him, whistling softly while he waited for the door to be opened so the two of them could get to work. The maintenance man even held the door open for him, since Capricorn was burdened down with an obviously heavy toolbox.

What would happen inside, according to Tulip, who listened through the night while Capricorn planned it all out aloud so he could listen to his own thoughts, and so Tulip could question them, was that Capricorn would find his way to the lockers where the staff coveralls and utility belts were stored. Then he would make his way to the penthouse suites and install eavesdroppers so he could listen to conversations from inside the van parked below. If Reginald Regent III could be taped making the kind of statements Chug had reported, and those tapes were turned over to the proper authorities, i.e., the underground papers and radios, it would go a long way toward taking the heat off Tinker, perhaps buy enough time for the truth about Tinker to get out, or better still, for people to forget about Tinker altogether.

Depending on the content of the tapes, they could also force the Senate or President to order an FBI investigation of Reginald Regent III, Fucdepor Petroleum and Special Agent Bud Wise.

Tulip, in her van, imagined Capricorn's progress up the elevator, picking the lock, prowling through the offices, placing his tiny microphones. The operation was going flawlessly until her visualization was interrupted by the very real arrival of a fleet of three limousines, pulling to a halt before the glass doors of the main entrance. Someone important seemed to emerge from every door the uniformed chauffeurs opened, each accompanied by two or three thick, dark thugs in sunglasses and black leather gloves. They made their way into the building, and from the way the rest deferred, and from her own memories of sketching him, Tulip knew that the first man going through the door was Reginald Regent III.

Immobilized, Tulip slipped into her head to try help Capricorn. There was no other hope for him. With no physical way to send a warning, she tried to subdue her panic by transmitting danger signals to Capricorn through spiritual vibrations. Remaining calm did not, unfortunately, stop the film of Capricorn's situation from un-spooling itself behind her eyes. She saw armed bodyguards rushing him, guns out, cornering him, waiting to be told by Reginald Regent III what to do. He all but ordered Agent Wise to have Tinker killed. Why not Capricorn?

The long, suspended moment of merely imagining Capricorn's danger was shattered by the siren-wailing arrival an FBI vehicle from which leapt a plainclothes agent. Although she couldn't see his face, Tulip knew that the man with his arm in a sling was Wise.

A long period of fear-filled time passed before the main doors re-opened and FBI Special Agent Bud Wise, assisted by the muscle-bound corps from Fucdepor, concealed Capricorn in their midst and led him to the car in which Wise had arrived. Surrounded like a fortress by the four corporate limos driven by the bodyguards, Wise's car moved away from the Fucdepor Centre.

Tulip started the engine and pulled away from the curb, following the convoy. It led her not to the FBI office building where most of the federal agency's business was carried out, and where she and Cory had been questioned, but to a different building several blocks away. Once she had watched Capricorn shoved inside that building by Wise and the petroleum company strongmen, she brought the news of Capricorn's arrest back to the Human Rainbow Commune, where a deep, fearful silence punctuated the end of her story.

53

By Good Friday night there was still no mention of Capricorn's arrest in the news. The commune members kept vigil at the windows, waiting for what many expected to be an inevitable FBI raid on the house. Throughout the night, they monitored all directions, relieving each other in shifts.

Blue and Karma, having finished a tour of duty, were back in their room, Karma losing herself in her painting, Blue strumming his guitar, toying with ideas for the ninety-sixth verse of “The Red Lobster.”

“If they come tonight,” Blue said finally, “I just want you to know that what I said one time about you being a nun, well, I didn't mean it the way it sounded, Karm. It's just that ever since the accident, it hasn't been the same with us. You've been, I don't know, far away or something, and we hardly ever, you know, do it any more or anything. Everything just seems to be changing so fast around here, with us, with me, I'm even the friggin' president now,” having been the surprise choice by the commune members to fill in for Capricorn since his arrest – the other members figuring he was the person most likely to come up with a scheme to rescue their leader and his friend.

“I don't know what to tell you, Blue,” Karma said, staying concentrated on her task, a small brush working character into the desert landscape. “But yes, you're right, something is changing. Maybe you're right about me being a nun. There's just so much confusion in me.”

“You, confused!” Blue said. “Now there's a diagnosis I wouldn't of made. I thought you always knew exactly what you believed. Remember you told me once that if a person knows what he believes then he knows who he is? If you're confused, God help the rest of us.”

“He probably will. Blue, what do you think will happen?”

“If, on the off chance that God doesn't help us, you mean? There's a few things I've been thinking over. Capricorn should of phoned a lawyer by now. We should of heard something. Maybe they were trying to beat some information out of him and they killed him instead. Don't look so shocked! You heard what Cory said. They want to kill Tinker, don't they? Boy, there was never any of this in Modern World Problems. Back when I was in high school, it was just us and the Commies, and we were the good guys. Now our own friggin' government is out to get us for just trying to sit around and talk about a better world. Your frigging government, I should say. I bet you'd never find the Mounties treating Canadians like criminals. Unless they were Commies, of course, but it's legal to be a communist in Canada. We call them NDPers.

“The other thing that could of happened is that they're just torturing Capricorn, keeping him alive to get information. But I can't figure out why Wise hasn't been calling the newspapers and the television people, getting his mug on the front page. It should be in the post office, I think.

“Or maybe because it's the Easter weekend, people aren't watching the news very much, and Wise is like one of those guys that goes around in a long overcoat, flashing his thing at little old ladies, or his little thing at old ladies, as the other fellow says. It's no fun doing it unless you have an audience, and Wise likes an audience, that much I know. I hope that's the only thing I have in common with that creep.

“If we get through the night, Karma, we have to talk about moving out of here in the morning, all of us, to a new place.”

—

The Saturday morning newscasts made no mention of Capricorn's arrest, although Blue noted while turning the tuning dial up and down the amber panel of numbers, that two stations were playing “Failure To Love.” There was no time to stop to listen.

Commune members were in various stages of sleep, some who were on the late shift watching for the FBI, deep in slumber, others groggily trying to snap themselves awake with coffee. Blue said that he wanted everybody around the council table by noon. Then, accompanied by Barney, he left the commune.

“Hello, Mrs. Rubble. Is the man of the house around?” he asked into the pay phone.

“No, I'm afraid there's no man around this house,” Mrs. Rubble replied.

“It's okay, Mrs. Rubble, it's Blue. Can I talk to your boarder?”

“I don't have a boarder anymore, Blue. The two of them left last night.”

“And never came back?” Blue asked, panic rising.

“They won't be coming back. They moved.”

“Where?”

“They didn't want me to ask, so I didn't, but I miss him something awful.”

—

Blue and Barney walked the distance to Mr. Lo's, where Blue sat at the counter and ordered two hamburgers, one to go with no bun, and asked in a whisper Mr. Lo barely understood, if he had seen either of Blue's friends.

“Not since they were here with you,” Mr. Lo replied, and their conversation fell to other topics that Blue distractedly engaged in until a cup of tea was set before him. Blue looked out from his fog of worry into Mr. Lo's smiling face.

“You look not so good. Drink this good tea. Remember, we be doing this for five thousand years.”

Blue and Barney returned to the commune before noon, and Blue called the council meeting to order. Two subjects were on everyone's mind: what, if anything, they could do to help Capricorn, and whether or not they should move. Blue kept silent while others discussed the options open to them. Should they move all together to another residence like they did before? Should they split up and scatter around the city, using the Aquarius Café as an information and message drop? Should they stay put?

“I'm staying put,” Blue announced as the discussion petered out without resolution. “There's no right or wrong way to do this. We're just groping in the dark, to quote the other fellow. I think everyone should make up his or her own mind about what they want to do or where they want to go. I've made up my mind. I'm staying.”

“Why?” asked several voices at once.

“Because I'm pissed off, that's why! They made my best friend disappear. God knows what's happened to Capricorn. They've got us all shitting our pants every time we see a shadow, and that's what they want. It gives them big hard-ons to throw their weight around and beat people up or even kill them. So I'm staying put and I'm staying calm, because we need to find a way to help Capricorn. That's what you want me to do, isn't it, find a way? I know enough about selling horses to know that you don't lose your temper in the middle of making a deal. It'll just cost you money and maybe even a customer you could of sold another horse to later on. Just because I'm pissed off doesn't mean I'm stupid. If we stay calm we'll find a way.”

Blue's passion made up everyone's mind. The members of the Human Rainbow Commune voted to the person to remain where they were. “We're all in the same boat, so we might as well sink or float together,” Tulip noted. “I'm glad. Besides, I'm not worried about Capricorn betraying us or where we are, no matter what they do to him.”

“Truth serum,” Blue said. “He couldn't do much against that.”

“Has anyone got any ideas?” Tulip asked.

“As long as nobody knows Capricorn has been captured, there's nothing anybody can do,” Blue said. “What we have to do is make Wise show him to us so we can see he's all right, and the best way to do that is to tell the newspapers ourselves. We'll just call them and tell them and a reporter will talk to the FBI. They can't lie to the newspapers, can they? At least then people will be watching, following the news, so they'll have to treat Capricorn well. Once we know he's alright and where he is, we can plan how to help him.”

—

“Well, Capricorn didn't rise up singing on Easter Sunday morning after all,” Blue said to Karma as he turned the radio dial from one station to another. There was nothing on the news about Capricorn. Blue was afraid there wouldn't be. On Saturday afternoon, he went back to the phone booth with a pocketful of quarters and called every major radio station and newspaper in the phone book. Over the holiday weekend, there was barely anyone available, and barely any interest in the anonymous caller. News people who had drawn the short straw for the long weekend yawned questions back to Blue, who refused to give his name, and told him they would look into his claim that the FBI were holding Capricorn prisoner and withholding his right to call a lawyer. Obviously no one had called the FBI or the FBI had lied. The lack of news was eating away at Blue's stomach, aided by the fact that he had not heard from Tinker or Kathy since they left Mrs. Rubble's apartment.

“I have to go,” Blue told Karma as he threw the bedclothes back and got up.

“Where are you going?”

“I haven't been to church since Christmas, and something tells me it might be a good idea to make my Easter Duties. The only thing that can guarantee a Catholic will go to hell is if he dies without making his Easter Duties, going to confession and communion. Miss that and that's the biggie when it comes to sins.”

“I'm coming with you, Blue,” Karma said, getting up as well.

A couple of hippies in a crowd of Easter bonnets, Blue thought after coming out of the confessional. He and Karma made their way down the aisle, looking for a pew that wasn't jammed with once-a-year families, most of whom frowned at the threat of intrusion from these two denim-clad dregs from Haight-Ashbury. Finally, Blue pushed his way into a pew, making room for the two of them, and knelt to say his penance before Mass began.

A decade of the rosary and three “Our Fathers,” not bad for a guy who just confessed to being the head of a commune that was filled with all sorts of non-Catholic theories about how the world should be run. Finishing his penance, Blue remained kneeling.

God, he said in his head, yesterday, Tulip said we were all in the same boat, and I've been thinking ever since about that night Tinker and me stole Rory Dave's lobster boat to pull some of his traps and make some money selling our own live lobsters. First, the engine quit, then the sea started heaving us around, then Tinker and I started heaving our suppers over the side and nobody even knew we were out there. We made some pretty serious deals that night and we didn't drown. We didn't even get caught. You just washed us up near the Marsh wharf at dawn, and we walked home. The big question in town for a week was how did Rory Dave's boat get tied up way down there? We never told a soul.

I didn't keep all the promises I made that time, but God, I was only sixteen, just a kid. But I never forgot, and I'll never forget how it felt to crawl into my bed that morning, tired and warm and safe when I suppose I should of been dead or at least in jail. That was my dark night of the soul, to quote the other fellow, and ever since then I've known You were there, even when I didn't wear the halo I promised.

I'm not a kid any more, God, but I'm in just as much trouble. More! We all are, like Tulip said, in the same boat and people are hoping I can get them out of it. I wouldn't say this to just anybody, but You already know that I'm scared as hell— I mean heck, scared as heck, don't You? It's a different kind of a boat, but the fear's the same. At least this time, I'm in a state of grace which is more than I can say for that other time in the boat. I've been to confession, as You've heard, and Karma and me didn't even do it last night or anything. Actually, we haven't even done it for quite a while, which probably makes You happier than me, but I'll offer that up for Your help. I don't know what to do.

And God, Tinker's been gone for a couple of days and I haven't heard from him. I think he's safe, but the truth is no one's safe anymore, not really. I know Tinker promised You that night in Rory Dave's boat that he'd join the priesthood, but don't hold it against him now, please. Just get the two of us out of this, okay, and Capricorn and Karma and Kathy and Tulip and all the others at the commune. Thanks for Your time, God, and I'll probably be talking to You again. In fact, there's a pretty good chance of that. Oh, and Happy Easter. Amen.

“Let's walk to Mr. Lo's and get breakfast,” Blue suggested after Mass. “You never know, maybe there's a message....”

There wasn't. They sat across from each other in what had become their own booth and waited for Mr. Lo to bring breakfast, bacon and eggs for Blue, unbuttered toast and jam for Karma, tea for both of them, Mr. Lo's choice since Blue had long since given up arguing that the restaurant should be offering King Cole on its menu.

“I'll tell you one thing for sure, Tinker put his last tank of Fucdepor gas in the Plymouth,” Blue said, making small talk to drown out the noise in his head.

“Did they take the Plymouth?” Karma asked.

“That's a question I didn't ask Mrs. Rubble, but of course they did. Tinker might go somewhere without me, but he'd never go anywhere without the Plymouth.”

“Would he go back to Canada without you?”

“No way! Maybe. I don't know. Nobody's ever wanted to kill Tinker before. Well, maybe this nun in grade nine. Kathy wanted him to go, said she'd go with him, and he's only one day's hard driving away from Canada, and that's not far when your life's at stake. There would of been a message, though, I know that.”

“Unless there wasn't time,” Karma said. “Would you be angry if he is gone?”