Chapter Twenty-Four

Decided I shouldn’t have my main character named Benjamin Fishbein. So I changed it.
***
Saturday evening arrived. David dressed in his workingman attire: blue jeans, old scuffed-up work boots, silk poet scarf, French poet hat (beret.) His new poem written specially for the occasion rested in the front pocket of his workingman shirt, just waiting to inspire the working masses. It was the same shirt he wore at the last party. Ghetto Traveler had miraculously removed the bloodstains.
A white banner strung between the gazebo and an elm tree proclaimed, “Happy Eightieth Birthday!” in big blue letters. The garden lights were dimmed so Howard Roseman wouldn’t suspect anything when he pulled up in the driveway. When they jumped out and yelled surprise, lights would flood the garden.
The same caterers were there; dressed in white shirts and black pants with black bowties, but this time they brought around different appetizers on their silver trays: barbecued ribs, corn on the cob, watermelon.
Elizabeth hired a medic for the party. She didn’t want David performing CPR in the event that Howard was so surprised he had a heart attack. The medic was Gorley Groats, a tall, shaggy, yellow-haired man with a scraggly beard. He was a retired paramedic who worked private parties now. He would be the one to do the Heimlich Maneuver if a rib got stuck in Howard Roseman’s throat. He sipped a glass of tea and stood in the gazebo.
The air was hot and humid, so the mosquitoes swarmed hungrily around Derrick, who stood in the middle of the gazebo on the duct tape, swatting around wildly. Tyrone and his friends gathered around Derrick in the gazebo, but the residents of Abbott’s Home for Exceptional People preferred to get up close to the flowers. Stephanie, the bagger’s chaperone, chased them around, trying to stop them from picking the flowers.
Tyrone looked down at her from the gazebo and whistled. He grinned and winked at Derrick.
“I’d like to mind her gap, knowwa I’m sayin?”
“No,” Derrick said. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand street talk.”
“Man, dis ain’t street talk. Don’t you know de Queen’s English?”
“Americans,” Loquacious Jackson muttered and clucked her tongue.
David walked down the gazebo steps and strolled around the garden. He figured he would help Stephanie stop her charges from bagging the flowers. At least he could get close to her.
A black man wearing a Chicago Bears jersey stopped David and gargled out something incomprehensible. David couldn’t understand a word the man said, but tried to be polite: he smiled, tried to nod and grunt in the right places. He felt his way through the conversation like a blind man. David wondered if this man came with Tyrone or from the residential home.
Two familiar-looking men crossed the grass to the tropical greenhouse. They weren’t on the guest list. Agents Black and Lugo weren’t wearing their trademark black suits. They had disguised themselves as workingmen, wearing overalls smeared with white paint. Agent Black’s hair, usually neatly parted, was carefully disheveled.
David hustled over to them. As short, stocky Agent Lugo was opening the swinging door to the greenhouse, David pressed his hand on the screen and slammed it shut.
“What are you doing here?”
“We came for the party,” Agent Black said, stretching his thin, angular frame and cracking his knuckles.
“You’re not invited.”
“We’re working people,” short and dumpy Agent Lugo said. “We make less than some of these baggers.”
“How’d you find out about the party anyway? It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“We have our sources,” Lugo said.
“What sources?”
“The flyers you printed out and gave to everyone.”
“Oh.”
“Just get away from the door. We’re going in there.”
“Don’t you need a warrant?”
“Nope. Read the Patriot Act.”
“I thought you were like vampires. You can’t come in unless someone invites you.”
“Patriot Act says we’re not vampires anymore.”
Lugo pushed David out of the way and burst inside. Black followed. David went in after them. The moist air struck him. Dark vines crept down from the ceiling. The dim lights from outside flickered through the opaque cloudy glass and thick brush.
Agent Black walked up to a patch of flowers, knelt down, and lowered his nose into the cup of a flower with alternating velvety petals of navy blue and forest green. He sniffed deeply and purred at the pleasant smell.
“Tasmanian Feather Poppies, he said. “A rare breed. Smells like cinnamon. The ancient Tasmanians worshipped their pollen as a deity.”
Black popped his mouth around the head of the Tasmanian Feather Poppy and started to chew.
“Stop it!” David shouted. “What are you doing?!”
“Tastes good,” Black gurgled, his mouth full of petals.
“You just gonna watch?” Lugo asked David. “Or you gonna help?”
Lugo grabbed a long stemmed purple flower and slapped its petals off. Black flopped on the soil, continued munching on the Tasmanian Feather Poppies, and kicked at long-stemmed white flowers with his feet.
“You’re the Department of Agriculture!” David shouted. “You’re supposed to protect plants!”
“Don’t act so disillusioned,” Black gurgled through the petals. “Everyone knows that Freedom requires trampling a few flowers.”
“But you’re killing defenseless flowers.”
“Look,” Lugo said, roundhouse kicking the pink leaves off of a sky blue vine. “You can’t just side with the underdog. The weaker side isn’t always right.”
“But these are rare flowers! They’re endangered species!”
“I don’t care!” Lugo shouted. “I’d club a snow leopard to death if it got in my way!”
Lugo glanced at a meter-high reed-like plant with a bright red sharp-petaled flower and sun yellow center. He licked his upper lip and strode towards it. David jumped in front of the flower.
“If you want to kill the flowers, you’re gonna have to kill me first.”
“Look,” Black said, sitting up in the soil. “She hasn’t contacted her supplier because she doesn’t need any new flowers. We’re going to make it so she needs some new flowers. Then we can find out who he is. Now she’s going to contact him.”
“No she won’t,” David said. “She’ll know it was sabotage.”
“No she won’t. She’ll blame it on her special guests.”
“Special,” lisped Lugo
“Or your urban friends,” Black said. “She’ll blame it on them. This party’s the perfect cover.”
“You’re gonna use them as a scapegoat?”
“That’s the plan,” Black said.
“It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I’m gonna tell Elizabeth.”
They froze. Lugo leaned in close, eyeball to eyeball with David.
“You’re not going to tell her anything,” Lugo rasped, his stinking breath cascading up David’s face. “You tell her and we’ll lock you up as an accessory to agricultural terrorism. Do you know what the penalty is for accessory to agricultural terrorism? It’s the same as if you did the terrorism yourself. By the time you get out of the penitentiary, you’ll be an old man Walt Whitman type writing about leaves of grass. Guantanamo Bay is full of poets just like you.”
David’s throat was dry. He swallowed a lump the size of a grapefruit.
“All right. Just leave the flowers alone now and I won’t say anything. You’ve done enough.”
“I’ll decide when they’ve had enough,” Agent Lugo said, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an aluminum baton. He walked up to the chocolate tree and began knocking its pods off like baseballs. One came flying at David’s head and he ducked just in time.
“What are you doing!? Chocolate isn’t illegal!”
Lugo sighed. “If we only go after the illegal plants, she’ll know it wasn’t the special guests. She’ll know it was a planned attack. We’re making it look random. I’m acting randomly.” He let out a crazed random squeal. “Hwweeeehhhaaiiiii!!!!”
He continued whacking at the chocolate pods while Agent Black trampled flowers.
***
כ''א בתשרי תשס''ח
ירושלים
October 3, 2007
Jerusalem