AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

“Well, they don’t talk to me.” I volunteered then thought to myself, “Why did I say that?”

“Why not?” Tom asks.

I definitely shouldn’t have stumbled into this; I think to myself.

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Why not? Tom pushes, “What else have you got to do today?”

After a long pause I figure, “Oh what the heck.”

“They don’t talk to me ’cause they blame me for a lot of junk.”

“Like what?” asks Tom.

Before I could stop my big mouth I say,

“My mother and my sister’s suicides.”

Tom stops eating and with a mouthful of hamburger he chokes out,

“What?”

Well you really did it now JD. One year of FBI psychology profiling and you can’t even make it work on yourself.

I pause. Take a deep breath and think about some really, really painful stuff. After a long pause,

“When I was a kid all of us, except my father, lived in this weirdo Oregon cult in the sticks. My sister got pregnant when she was sixteen to the cult leader. The cult leader who was against abortion secretly took her and, without anyone knowing, forced her to have an abortion. When she finally told my mother what happened, my mother made her feel so guilty that I think it drove her to commit suicide.”

“I lived there with my mom ’til I understood better. Then one night when my mother told me I could never speak to my father again, I ran away.”

“My mother, feeling guilty, I guess about all of this, committed suicide too.”

“I found out he died just days before I located where he was living.”

“I think he died of a broken heart.”

I really am an idiot. I really didn’t want to tell this story to anyone at work. It was in my personnel file but no partner ever knew this, until now. I really have a big mouth sometimes. Annoying even myself at this point, I continued:

“After my sister committed suicide I tried to get my mother out but I was never allowed to see her. She died never seeing me or my father ever again.”

“How awful! How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“You were ten years old when your mother and sister killed themselves?”

I’m embarrassed and all that comes out is,

“Ya.”

Oh my god, how many years in therapy were you?

“Sixteen.”

“You were in therapy for sixteen years? With who?”

“Navy SEALs.”

Tom hasn’t eaten another bite of hamburger since the double suicide line but now a half chewed hamburger just hangs out of his half open mouth.

“That’s disgusting. Close your mouth,” I said.

Tom catches himself and swallows his burger whole with one big gulp before saying,

“So you’ve been kicking down doors trying to save people ever since?”

“Ya. I never looked at it quite like that before but ya, I guess so.”

Just then MAA appears on another monitor and we hear him speak with someone.

All our attention is suddenly directed to this conversation.

It turns out to be just brief chit-chat.

MAA walks off campus and down the street.

Tom says, “Okay, JD you’re on. Bring me back a piece of huckleberry pie.”

“If you put on any more weight sitting in here eating all day the FBI’s gonna put you on the ‘TFS’ list.”

The name was not politically correct but most agents were annoyed with all of the stupid politically correct rules that put more emphasis on file names than on catching criminals.

Official name: Weight Efficiency Program (WEP).

Unofficial name: The “Fat Squad (TFS!)!”

No agent wants to be “weight” listed as you are pulled out of the field and put behind a desk, sent to a doctor and told to eat better.

Tom says, “Maybe I’ll get my lawyer and sue them for my “glandular problem.”

I jump out of the van, look back at Tom and say,

“And good luck with that!”

I slam the van door on Tom before he has a chance to answer.

For some reason I hadn’t noticed:

This city is beautiful.

Garland, lights and wreaths are everywhere.

I high tail it across the street in hot pursuit of MAA. We walk a few blocks to a five-star Middle East restaurant: Jamil’s.

No wonder my partner’s huge:

Portland’s a great city for food!

There are more five-star food carts with Indian and Thai food here than probably anywhere in America.

I walked across the street and into a little dive that will, likely, soon be out of business. I knew Tom preferred the Pacific Pie Company, Petunia’s, or Divine Pie but if they baked anything today here that would just have to do, Mr. TFS.

Inside this place are only four tables. It was empty, as always. I sat down by the only window seat in this dreary, damp, dark, little hole in the wall so I could watch my target.

Sally, the sweet looking, waiter-owner comes over to me saying, “So JD what can I get you?”

How ’bout a cup of coffee, Sally?”

She answers with a nod and disappears behind an old, greasy Indian beaded curtain.

I look across the street and can see MAA busing tables. I pull out my iPhone 7 and scroll through the video feeds we’d set up at Jamil’s crowded restaurant.

This really is a waste of time: A kid is probably just trying to get an engineering degree, bussing tables. What have we become?