Cortes Island and Industrial Logging

Below are links my off-island friends and readers might like to click. I encourage you to read the material.
The first link is a piece written by Carrie Saxifrage for the Vancouver Observer. Ms. Saxifrage is their sustainability reporter. The second is a reprinting on Tideline, our local on-line new source and internet voice of the Cortes Island community so you can see what else is happening on Cortes. The third is a connection to the petition. It's open to anyone.
There are a number of competing interests and areas of concern in the question of industrial logging on this tiny island, many articulated in the article and the petition.
Other questions I have, not included in the actual petition, include but are not limited to

• when logging activity commences, how will it affect ferry traffic (and route)?
• what provisions are in place for wildlife (and its interaction with humans) when habitat is destroyed? 
• jobs for islanders?
• is Cortes' fragile infrastructure (roads, power, trails) being considered?

I am troubled about the connection to the oil sands of Alberta. Although those companies now portray themselves as an operation based on sound sustainability and protection of the environment, there are still questions. Most significant to me is that even if things there reflect a more enlightened view, it was not always thus. For years, until that flock of water fowl landed on a tailing pond protected by scarecrows and flapping sheets of plastic, the decision-makers were very much shoot first aim later in their stewardship of their surroundings. Is that to be the approach here, too?
I respect private property rights and the rights of the owners to do with their holdings what they wish. I also believe in the the balancing effect responsibility. Until the questions are answered there is no balance.

A few visual reminders what this island means to its inhabitants:

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/earthmatters/2011/12/23/logging-pristine-bc-island-forest-begin-january-brookfield-asset?page=0,0

http://www.cortesisland.com/tideline/show4469a/Petition_to_Protect_Cortes_Forests_from_Industrial_Logging

http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions/PCIFores/signatures?page=1

Chapters 15,16, TMGTT

HEY, if you're reading this story, check in with me, please. Comments?

15

It was nearly eight PM. Gazing down the canyon that is 49^th Street from twenty-six floors up I was reminded of Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker cover often called the “New Yorker’s View of the World.” Steinberg called it “View of the World From 9^th Ave.” Hundreds of cities, universities, corporations, and throwers of cocktail parties ripped off his idea.

The piece’s reference point was above the avenue looking west. It showed a detailed Manhattan streetscape, the Hudson River, a wasteland bordered by Jersey, Mexico, Canada and the Pacific Ocean. Nothing of consequence lay in between. Farther to the west Japan, China and Russia rest as insignificant as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.

McClain and Fishman agreed to come to the Beekman. I met them in the lobby. Fishman was carrying Mislava’s cinch-top bag.

“I would love a beer, gentlemen.”

We boarded the elevator and rode the twenty-six stories to the cocktail lounge on the roof of the hotel. We took a small table in a tall window looking west down 49^th Street into mid-town. I ordered a Brooklyn Pilsner. My companions smiled at our waitress but declined to order.

“That’s Mislava’s bag, isn’t it?”

“Well…” Fishman poured the contents out onto the tale. “Perhaps you can clear up some problems we have with that very thing.”

“No gun there?”

“Gun’s gone to ballistics. Everything else is here, though.”

Strewn on the table were tissues in a cellophane package, a few inexpensive make up items, pill bottles, balled up gum wrappers by the score, a cell phone, contact lens case and cleaning solution, some currency rolled tight and wrapped with a thick rubber band, photographs, some whole and some torn and a denim wallet with the Old Navy logo.

Fishman drew my attention to a copy of the photograph I had received when I agreed to locate Ivana Grdesic. He spun it on the table so it faced me.

“Do you know the women in this picture?”

“I do. The one on the left is Mislava Hrvat, my former client.”

“Your left or my left,” Fishman asked.

“Sorry. Mine. She’s much heavier in this picture. And her hair’s different, too. It is she, though.”

My beer arrived in an elegant, heavy-bottomed crystal pilsner glass. I excused myself, raised the glass to the detectives and took a swallow. Perfect. I cleaned the residual foam from my upper lip with my lower.

“The other is Ivana Grdesic, the woman I was commissioned to locate in Portland.”

“So this one is Grdesic?” McClain was tapping on the photo.

“Right.”

McClain picked up and unfolded the wallet. He pushed it across the table to me. Fishman sat back in his chair and looked around the room. He coveted my beer. I know he did. McClain rested on his left elbow straightening his tie with his right hand. He crossed his legs beneath the edge of the table.

“Any ideas about this?”

The billfold contained an identification card with a slightly out of focus color Polaroid picture. The card had been issued by a school in Northern Ireland and bore the name Mary Francis Flaherty. The picture was of Mislava Hrvat.

“What I know probably won’t clarify anything for you guys. When Ivana Grdesic’s body washed ashore the Boston papers mentioned that she went – or had gone - by that name. I wasn’t in the country at the time so I don’t know the context in which that information was released. I am sure Bevilaqua at the Massachusetts state cops would have some idea.”

“We expect to hear from him tomorrow, but flip to the next card, Mr. O’Keefe. Tell us what you think.”

“But,” I was now tapping the picture, “Why Mislava has an ID with that name…I have no idea. I don’t know anything about that or the school in, where is it, Portrush, Northern Ireland?”

“Flip the card again Mr. O’Keefe.”

One of the differences between the Serb culture and that of the Croats is the alphabet each uses. The Serbs, with ties to Russia and Orthodoxy, use the Cyrillic. The Croats, mostly Roman Catholic, write with western letters. The third card in the stack in the Old Navy wallet was another ID card. The language was Croat. It contained another Polaroid photo of Mislava Hrvat, this one in sharp focus.

“Hmm, wow. I can’t explain this either, gentlemen. Can you?”

“Not yet.”

The identification card, the right upper corner of which carried the image of the woman who blew her own brains out in a dingy delicatessen earlier today as I lay inert at her feet, said it belonged to Ivana Grdesic. So did the next one in the plastic-coated stack. And the next one.

“May I see her phone? She made a call from my car. Perhaps the phone saves the numbers of calls she made.”

“Certainly,” said Fishman as he pushed the silver phone towards me. He sounded like Curly Howard when he said soitenly.

If this phone had that feature I couldn’t figure out how to gain access to it.

“Whyn’t you just hit redial,” McClain offered.

I just hit redial. It rang six times.

“You have reached the Croatian Consulate in New York City. Our business hours are Monday…”

“Gentleman, she didn’t call the Croatian Mission, she called their consulate.

The two NYPD detectives declared themselves off duty with a “whadaya say” followed by shoulder shrugs and a “yeah, sure…why not?” McClain pulled back his starched cotton sleeve to consult his round-faced analog watch. Fishman rolled his left wrist palm up, angled it to the light and squinted at his plastic digital. McClain called in.

“Fish” Fishman swept up the contents of the cinch-topped bag with that forearm into a neat little wave in front of him. He placed the items back in the bag while McClain got the attention of the waitress. He ordered a round by making a circle with his index finger pointing down at the table.

“So, you called Bevilaqua then?” I asked.

“Umm. And Whitney up in Portland. And we have a call in at the Croat Mission. We are waiting to hear back from all three. I guess we’ll have to call the Croat consulate tomorrow, right Fish?”

Fish shrugged. McClain took off his silk tie, rolled it around his hand and put it in his jacket’s flapped pocket.

“For whom did you ask at the Mission?”

“Anyone named Grdesic or Hrvat.” McClain pronounced them pretty well.

“It’s funny,” I said. “ In Croat Hrvat means Croat. It’s is as if you called the Mexican Mission and asked for Mr. Mehicano.”

I thought it was interesting. I was alone.

“Anyways, Mr. O’Keefe…”

“Fintan, please.”

“Sure, Fintan…seems those are both rather common names among Croatians. I had to ask if there was anyone with either name who suffered a family tragedy recently. The community relations woman said she thought not but she’d find out. Fish and I will pay them a visit tomorrow.”

“Do we have any idea who the guy in the deli was? I can’t help but think that had someone in any sort of official Croatian capacity been shot in the mid-thorax in midtown in mid-afternoon amid the work-a-day legions they’d know about it.”

“What are you, a poet? Fish, you hear that?”

“He’s a PI: a Poetic Investigator.” Fishman raised his glass while elongating the final syllable. It came out taaaaaah.

“The guy’s name was Niko Matulich,” said McClain. “He didn’t work for the Mission…at least the CommRel woman didn’t know him and couldn’t find him in the directory. He lived on Staten Island. Had a ferry ticket, a New York driver’s license, credit cards, and a fair amount of US and only US currency on him, so he seems to be a local. There are detectives down Staten Island looking into the guy for us as we speak.”

“Man, this is some good beer, ain’t it Frankie? Never had one before. And I live in Brooklyn, for Christ’s sakes.” Detective Fishman was holding his to the light. “Pretty, too.”

“It’s good, yeah, it’s very good, Fish. My son-in-law’s into the different beers. Me, I’m pretty much a Budweiser on the couch kind of guy, but I know a little about wine. He goes on brewery tours, makes his own and things, you know. It’s all mostly lost on me, but this is tasty.”

I ordered another for each of us.

“You guys mind if I eat something? I didn’t get any lunch.”

16

The entity known as Yugoslavia has had a number of different incarnations. The one that followed the fall of the Communist bloc and the death of Marshall Tito, once known around his neighborhood as Josep Broz, was more a creation of outsiders hoping to foster a little stability among its testy republics than something for which its citizens had clambered. This lack of internal commitment to the idea of Yugoslavia, coupled with what is perhaps the best-armed civilian population on the planet, seasoned with competing nationalistic aspirations and the grim-faced, itchy trigger finger mistrust only religious and ethnic differences – real and imagined - can generate made this reality of Yugoslavia folly.

The rhetoric, often as inflammatory and destructive as Mr. Molotov’s cocktail, hasn’t changed very much in the last one hundred plus years. Nor has the clockwork conveyer of the dead.

Among the Serbs, the Croats, many Albanians, most Montenegrins, and Kosovars sharing the Balkans it seems that attaining one’s own nation’s goals has to come at the expense of one’s neighbor attaining his. The grudges and lockstep hatred are as deep as a mountain glen at dusk and as wide as a cartridge belt draped across the narrow chest and bony shoulder of a fifteen year-old boy.

When Croatia declared herself independent of the Yugoslavia that was in the throes of self-immolation in the early 1990s, many western countries, including Germany and the United States of America, recognized her right to do so immediately. Just like that there was a sovereign nation known as Croatia backed by some impressive international muscle. Problem: not everyone living in Croatia was Croatian.

The Serbs, both in areas they controlled and ones they did not, saw it as a plot of the newly slapped-back-together Germany to gain in peacetime what they could not by conquest four decades earlier. Serbian politicians even warned of the rise of a Fourth Reich.

The World War II snuggle-up of the Croats with the Nazis still informed and shaped perhaps more than any other single factor the decisions each of the groups made about their Croat cohabiters in the region. A freestanding Croatia made her non-Croat citizens more than a little ill at ease.

Croats blamed the Serbs for most things bad in the world. The Serbs shared the tunnel vision, they just stood at other end. The same tunnel held trains, big long trains running headlong in both directions. The bad feelings bled all over the other groups as well. No one felt safe. Few were safe.

And everyone had guns.

Sometimes You Can Observe a Lot Just By Watching

There are times here in the Channel Islands, mostly mornings, when there is more light than space to hold it. It pushes quietly against everything. The trees bend slightly, the ocean calms, the sky lightens to the point you might paint on it. This is one of those lucent mornings. The windows need washing.

We brought the dogs to Mansons Landing yesterday for a beach gallop. The tide was so high one could dive right off the beach into water deep. There's a plywood boat lashed to the dock draped in weathered tarps. She has passed from the useful. I picked her owner up as he hitchhiked Cortes-style - standing at a crossroads using both thumbs, prepared to go in any direction his benefactor was travelling - a couple of weeks ago. His chosen aromatics, tobacco, rawhide and pot, linger still in the backseat. He shared his tale of  galley fires and empty extinguishers while at sea. He also described his recent brain-surgery. It seems he thinks the harbor master bears a grudge as he was asked to either fix or remove his vessel. It's probably more that the harbor master recognizes the inevitable: he will abandon his boat. In my view, having spent half an hour with Captain Wobbly, the concern is prudent and well-founded. The good Captain asked if he could give me something in return for the transportation. He suggested a tune on his recorder. It was either Good King Wenceslaus or Brother, Can you Spare a Dime? Wobbly can't play a lick.

Could be the Good Captain and his first mate

From the beach, we gathered stones and shells for Mackenzie, our budding geologist. She's also a budding invertebrate zoologist, linguist and a hundred other things. Mailed them to her today. We suggested that she use some of her new sea stones to replace the ones that fall from her dad's head on occasion. Some spectacular driftwood revealed itself in the sand. Mac would love that, too, but she's going to have to come here to get it.

Driftwood buffalo?

.
The water by the ferry landing is sparkling. It's reminiscent of a Star Trek beam-up, circa 1968.

Marigolds, Ch. 14

14

I considered ransoming back my car from the swarthy garage attendant to whom I had entrusted it just a few hours before. Damp, and draped in a sleeveless formerly white tee shirt with small tufts of wiry, salt,pepper and something else hair peeking out along the edges of the ribbed material, he had been the most memorable image from this trip. It had been trumped.

I left the car where it was and walked toward 1^st Avenue and the East River. There were hotels in the neighborhood catering to diplomats and those having business with diplomats. I had just spent time with a diplomat, although he was dead for much of that time. Still, I thought I qualified.

The Beekman Tower Hotel, 49^th Street at 1^st Avenue, was pet-friendly. I envisioned the wife of the French Minister of Finance and her fatuous poodles or the cousin of the King of Morocco, Mohammed the Whatever, with his menacing Maltese availing themselves of the Beekman’s four-legged hospitality. It was also as expensive as hotels used by people not paying their own bills usually are. I had a pocket full of cash courtesy of my late client. I checked in.

“How long will you be staying with us at the Beekman, Mr. O’Keefe?”

“Just tonight, I hope.”

“I see.” The desk clerk pecked purposely at his keyboard. “I see you won’t have need of a bellman?” It was not judgmental, just an apt observation. I was unencumbered. To my left was a tall, well-groomed Afghan. He sat quiet as if awaiting a command. So did his dog.

I am very fond of Art Deco. Besides being a haven for animals with international pedigree and in a great neighborhood, the Beekman was a terrific example throughout of that architectural style. I took the studio suite I was offered on the twenty-sixth floor even though it would devour most of my folding money. I had decided that I would be happy to render the remainder to the Beekman’s Tower Restaurant after I cleaned up.

I parted the curtains affording me the lush and lively saturation of Brooklyn’s lights reflecting on the much-maligned East River. After dark it is as pretty and as sensuous as any river in the world. My phone chirped.

“Mr. O’Keefe, this is Detective McClain. Can we talk about Mary Frances Flaherty?”

Oh, Oh, Tannenbaum

Lots has happened in the last little while here on the island. We have confirmation that Lili's folks are coming in March. Her sister Brenda (Michael) will make the crossing in April. We have had a chicken assassinated by a bird-of-prey. We have spent our travel budget to repair our vehicle. Christmas preparation is underway. Let us start with the Christmas run up.

On an island where lush, healthy evergreens abound, we decided we would dig up, roots and all, our Christmas tree. One could not live in a better place to bring back the ancient custom of  a "live tree" Navidad. We've all seen the images of the Swiss or the Laplanders or the hearty Danes bringing their vibrant, bushy Douglas Fir, Spruce or White Pine back to the homestead on a sleigh in the ebbing light. I envisioned those trees taking 2 days for their branches to drop, the fronds so thick there were spots no ornaments could go. Yet, the sap-filled limbs would hold even the weightiest of decorations. The aroma would last for days after the tree had been returned to its hole, safe in the forest.Well, this year we are living that Christmas Card

Christmas 2011

Are You Reading the Serialized Story?

If you're reading These Marigolds Grow Too Tall on this site, would you please let me know? Just drop me an email. Chapter 13 was posted tonight.
mhorgan2@gmail.com
Thanks,
MHH III

Ch 13, These Marigolds Grow Too Tall

13

I had been hand-cuffed and folded gently into the back of an NYPD cruiser. Someone may have asked me a question or two beforehand, someone may have told me to watch my head as I got in. I could still smell corned beef.

The ride to the 17^th Precinct was loud. The sirens and the lights made us, or me I guess, a curiosity for pedestrians. I had never been in custody before. A small boy on a corner wearing a Mets’ hat, holding onto his mother or his nanny with his left hand waved to me with his right. My ears rang and my eyes watered. I tried and failed to wave back. I rested my forehead against the window and smiled instead. We went through a red light. I don’t think we had to.

Someone called me by name. I responded.

“Mr. O’Keefe, I’m Detective McLain and this is Detective Fishman.” Fishman had removed my cuffs and was standing by the door. McClain sat opposite me. Both men were fit; McClain was well dressed.

“Yeah, OK,” I said rubbing the back of my left wrist under my chin.

The irregularly shaped room had walls of small alternating black and white tiles from the worn wood floor extending up about three feet. Soundproofing tiles, a number having come loose of their glue creating a giant cross word puzzle effect, went the rest of the way to the water and tobacco stained plaster ceiling. There was an empty metal cage in the corner. I hoped it would stay that way.

“Did you shoot those people, Mr. O’Keefe?”

“No, sir, I did not. May I have a cup of tea?”

“Tell us what happened.”

“I am a private detective from Boston… tea?” my synapses were firing randomly.

“We know that, Mr. O’Keefe.” McClain placed my ID on the table. “Were you working for someone here?”

“The woman who had been sitting to my left. Mislava Hrvat was her name. She shot the man on the other side of the table and then herself.”

“How did…”

“At least I think she shot herself. I was under the table with the dead guy when I heard the second shot. He is dead isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” McLain had returned his attention to me. “What were you doing for Hrvat?”

“She asked me to witness a conversation she was going to have with a man here in New York.”

“That’s it? Listen to her talk?”

“That’s it.”

“What was she going to talk about, Mr. O’Keefe?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what she hired me to do.”

“Who was the man?”

“All she said was that he was from the Croatian Mission to the UN, I think. It’s right around the corner from the deli where…”

“Did she have that conversation before she opened fire, Mr. O’Keefe?”

“Well, she had a conversation, yes. But, it was in Croat. I didn’t understand a word they said to one another.”

“So, this woman employed you to come to New York with her to listen to a chat, a chat the subject of which you don’t know with a man you did not know in a language you do not understand for reasons you are unable to give us?”

“Yes." The two cops looked at each other. " I know how that sounds.”

“I hope you got your fee up front.”

McClain sat back in his chair shaking his head. He asked Fishman to make me a cup of tea.

“Mr. O’Keefe, how did you know this woman?”

I recounted the story of my two visits to Maine. Portland PD Detective Whitney’s name popped into my head and I gave it to him. I could not remember the name of the Massachusetts state cop who had briefed the press.

“So, someone from the city, the Croat Mission, came to Boston to ID the girl’s corpse?”

“My understanding is that her father worked here and it was he who did…Bevilaqua…Sergeant Armand Bevilaqua was the state cop who talked to the press.” I hated it when New Yorkers said the city as if there were no others; size envy I guess.

Detective Fishman placed a cup of tea on the maple table in front of me. I took the bag out of the water and looked around for a trashcan.

“May I throw this away?” I asked pointing at the can.

“Sure, whatever. How do you spell that name?”

As I walked, more or less straight, across the room I spelled Grdesic for him. “Ivana Grdesic. I don’t know his – the father’s - first name. Is it OK if I throw this in here? There’s no liner in this can.”

“It’s OK, Mr. O’Keefe. Ga’head.”

McClain chortled, shook his head yet again, and folded the paper on which he had taken his notes. He slipped it into the pocket of his white shirt.

“Would you mind staying here for a while, Mr. O’Keefe?”

“No. I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

The detectives left, slipping their jackets back on as they did. A uniformed officer entered the room with a copy of the New York Daily News. I thought it was for me. It wasn’t.

I felt my breathing returning to normal. I sipped my tea.

“My legs are sore. Would you mind if I put my feet up?” I asked the cop now seated on the other side of the table drinking coffee from a mug he briefly rinsed.

“Whatever the fuck…”

I took that for a yes. Fifteen minutes later he rose, slid the folded tabloid-style paper under his arm and walked toward the door.

“Why are you still here?” He asked without turning around.

“The detectives asked me to stay.” My answer was equal parts question and statement. He turned to face me.

“Not here,” he said pointing at the floor. “Here.” He opened his arms in a sweeping exaggerated circle. “They want you to stay in town.”

“You weren’t sent in here to keep an eye on me? I thought…”

“I was in here for coffee, shit head. You can go if you want. Could have fifteen minutes ago.”

I thought it prudent to wait a moment after he left to walk out. The desk sergeant returned my wallet, keys and cell to me. I gave him a slip of paper with the phone’s number on it and walked out, past a cluster of blue sharing a laugh at someone’s expense, onto what turned out to be 51^st Street.

Marigolds, Ch 12

12

Were you to ask a New Yorker what separates his city from a Bostonian’s or a Bostonian what distinguishes hers from a New Yorker’s answers might include culture, attitude, intensity, class, fashion, pennants won, pace, size, size-envy, late night eateries, and relative importance. The only measurement with a significant digit, however, the distance between them: two hundred miles. Even that changes depending upon the route one chooses.

Mislava was out on the deck, facing east and shielding her eyes from the sun when I got out of the shower. Michael, she said, had gone: termites in Tewksbury. She was not as animated as she had been with him the night before.

“If you want to shower, go ahead,” I said. “Otherwise we can leave in five minutes.

Yes, I need shower. We leave after?”

“Sure, right after.”

I ground some beans and made a carafe of coffee while she showered. I asked through the door if she wanted breakfast. She said no, just coffee with cream.

I poured it into two travel mugs, one my highly effective detective’s special stainless steel with black trim shaped-like-a-bullet insulated like a lawyer’s heart mug. The other one, a thick plastic cylinder, in dishwasher worn letters said Java Sun on the side. I snapped the lids on each. Fifteen minutes later we were wending our way through the remnants of Boston’s Big Dig project, heading south.

Mislava asked if I would mind taking the coastal route, through Providence and down along the south-facing Connecticut shore. It was longer but more stimulating than the route through Hartford and the rest of central Connecticut. She handed me fifty dollars.

“For petrol,” she said.

Four hours and a little later we had crossed the bridge into Manhattan and were on FDR Drive south. Mislava loosened the drawstring on her bag and took out her phone. She punched in a chain of digits. Her brief conversation, after a pause, when I assumed she was awaiting connection to the person to whom she wished to speak, was in Croat.

“We need go Second Avenue. Is not far from here.” She pointed to the sign for the next exit.

I slid down the ramp depositing us on 38^th Street, east side. We pulled into a garage on Second Avenue at 44^th St.

“You seem to know New York pretty well,” I said.

“Yes, I have been here many, many times.”

The Croatian Permanent Mission to the United Nations is between East 43^rd and 44^th Streets, not far from UN Plaza and the East River. It shared a building with a center for Jewish women, an office furniture retailer, and a commercial real estate enterprise that specialized in high-end condo sales.

There is a world of difference between the Croatian Mission to the UN and a UN mission to Croatia. It is an interesting twist within the language of diplomacy. The former is often incorrectly called the embassy, while the latter is an international attempt to keep one group in the region from exiling, “cleansing,” or exterminating another. It appeared we were to see someone from the Mission.

Mislava and her contact person, she told me, had agreed to meet at a small less-than-world-class deli around the corner on 43^rd near Third. We arrived first. He came alone from the direction of 4^th Avenue, walking with hunched shoulders and his hands in his pockets against the wind. We sat at a Formica table in the smudged window, she and I, side by each, were dressed as though we belonged there. He was not: Armani suit and Bruno Magli shoes. There were no introductions.

I had never been fully sure why I was here. Nor was this man. He cocked his head in my direction, asking something in Croat. Mislava answered. He never looked at me again.

When the two began to converse in Croat, my “never fully sure” became utter, face borne confusion. It was obvious I wasn’t there to hear something, at least something I could understand.

The exchanges crossing the narrow scratched and chipped table quickly were becoming louder and the gestures larger and more confrontational. No one in the dingy deli cared: this was New York, after all.

I was trying to figure out if Mislava had been less than truthful with me or if her meaning or my understanding had been a casualty of her limited English, when my concern became academic. She pulled a small handgun, as small as her hand, from her bag and shot the man on the other side of the table square in his solar plexus. His chair tipped backwards from the impact of the bullet and at once sideways from his vain escape attempt. I slid hard to the floor, my arms flailing as I went. He and I were sharing space and a stare beneath the Formica table. Only I was blinking. Before I could compose myself enough to roll from beneath the table, and well before I could stand, another shot. Mislava’s legs, at my eye level, were quivering and then they were not. Something metal hit the table above me. I sensed in an opaque sort of awareness that people were colliding in the doorway fleeing from the deli. I lay there until the sirens were audible, though with the blood rushing in my ears as if released from behind a dam they weren’t all that audible. I pulled myself up from the floor and from the two commingling flows of blood and stood. As I did Mislava slumped towards the window and out of her chair, sending it clattering into mine. She hit the floor hard. The air filling her lungs when she fired a bullet into her right temple rushed out. I put my hands up and walked out to the sidewalk. A New York City police officer, with her weapon out and lain against her thigh, suggested sharply I lie down and put my hands behind me. It was a really, really good suggestion. I couldn’t support my weight anymore.

Marigolds, Ch 11

11

Johnna dropped me in Chelsea Sunday evening. She stayed only long enough to meet and greet Mislava and Michael, respectively. I walked her to her car.

“Drive carefully,” she said. “Call me when you can.” She slid into the driver’s seat and lowered the window. “I must say I am dying to know what she’s going to say.”

“So am I,” I said. “And to whom she’s going to say it.”

“Yeah. Just don’t lose track of the fact that there’s already somebody dead in this thing, Finn.”

“Jeez Spark, somebody? We’re talking about Croatia…the former Yugoslavia, for Christ’s sakes.”

“I know, but this one was close to home.”

Johnna was involved in an interesting case of her own. She couldn’t tell me much other than two brothers “from a nearby state” turned themselves in for tax evasion. Just walked with their attorneys into the Federal building in Springfield and said, “hey, we did it.” No warrant had been issued. No one in any agency was even looking into these guys. A week later one of them is dead and the other’s missing. That’s all she was able to tell me.

Her job, to head up the inter-agency forensic accounting part of the investigation, excited her. She was as mystified as everyone else, but excited. It was her first chance to run a team. I watched her taillights shrink and blink out in the evening’s settling darkness. Maybe I’ll go due north from New York, to Springfield, when my work down there is done.

“Michael…” Mislava said. When she said it all its charm was gone. Her accent removed whatever lilt the name possessed. “…you are crazy…”

Michael and my new roommate were giggling next to each other on the futon, a bowl of popcorn between them, watching the Sox play the Orioles. They were drinking El Presidente from long-necked bottles. The ones on which they were working were not the first. There were a number dead Presidentes scattered around.

“No, my good woman, I am not. I’m telling you, it is a special play…” Michael’s brogue and his tongue had both thickened. “…and it is called the hit and run play.” Hit sounded more like hith.

“Of course it is hit and run play you crazy big Irish bear man…” Mislava was bending back and forth at the waist in a shallow arc as she yelled to Michael, two feet away, and all the ships at sea. “They are all hit and run play. Man hits…” she paused and spread her hands. “…and man runs. No special play. Is always hit and run play.”

The contrasting tracks of the two European accents were striking. When Mislava spoke her words tumbled out as if being chased downhill. Start high and finish low. Michael’s pattern was up and down, up and down, sometimes within a single word. If she paused at all it was only to translate in her head from Croatian to English. Michael paused regularly to catch his breath and for effect. They both gestured, though, as if taught by the same master.

“Fintan, I know how you love it, so tell this poor deprived eastern European what the hit and run play is. Enlighten her, my friend, to one of the most beautiful subtleties of the most subtle of games.”

Michael was in full trans-Gaelic poetic flower, pointing with both hands to Mislava. His large, mostly unkempt body rested in counterpoint next to this tiny woman. It looked as if an old quarter were sitting next to a new dime. An old quarter that needed a haircut.

“Go on now, Finn, pull her up from her continental ignorance as once you did for my own self.”

“She’s right. They are all hit and run plays. It is the foundation of the game. I have no idea what you mean, Michael. Good night.”

“Aye, you bastard!” Michael grunted both before the sentence and after. He tried to stand, tried again, and abandoned the idea.

“Hah! See, Michael Devlin? You are very crazy Irish man.” His couch companion said. “Now, a run and hit would be special play.”

The ex-pats on my couch were play fighting and laughing. I had become irrelevant if not invisible.

“Oh, kids…?” I had to be tired: I was doing Jack Benny. “I need to get some sleep. I’ll see at least one of you in the morning. Don’t open the door to a stranger, don’t play with matches, and be sure and shut off the lights.”

These Marigolds Grow Too Tall, Chapter 10

10

“Are you sure you’re not just feeling sorry for yourself?” Johnna asked.

She was standing at the foot of the king-sized bed, arms folded across her chest, facing into the bathroom. I had just spat out the residue of my consciously applied oral hygiene. I straightened and focused on her in the mirror.

As we ate last night I had told her of my inefficiencies earlier in the day. They had become larger and as I recounted them more visceral to me as examples of my ineptitude. A night of fitful sleep followed.

“What? Me?”

“Christ, you just listed about a million reasons you think you suck at your profession.”

“They’re all accurate. And that’s just from yesterday. And I don’t think I am feeling sorry for myself. What the hell is that?”

“I have seen you under pressure and here’s my assessment of your reaction to it.”

“Fabulous. Let me have it.”

“In the moment when you become aware of the pressure you panic, but just for that moment. I have always thought it had to do more with the expectations others may have of you than anything else. I saw it in Springfield and I heard it in your voice from Canada. I saw it at supper last night. You can handle the pressure, but the fear you may let others down…that’s a different issue.”

I closed the toilet lid and sat. I pressed a brilliant white hand towel from a brass rack to my face and listened. I knew it was my task to separate the emotional from the intellectual in what Johnna was telling me. Knowing one’s task and executing said task are not the same thing.

Johnna was equally smart, smarter than I, and intuitive. She also was the primary agent, perhaps sounding board is a better term, in my evolution as a person. I valued her opinion even when it was unwelcome.

“See sweetie, once you have worked out the expectations shit, you’re OK. You’ll be OK this time, too.

“I’d feel better if I had been more productive yesterday. I went into a meeting with a woman who considers her life in danger and had zero idea…shit, I wasn’t even sure why I went to Portland in the first place.”

“Shake it off, it’s over.”

“I know, I know. I just needed a little of your sledge hammer to the thoracic vertebra bedside manner.”

“Happy to oblige.”

“Now, if I had a better handle on what this woman wants of me…”

“Well, look at it this way: perhaps you can’t worry about living up to her expectations if she hasn’t defined any.”

“You know you’re right, but that points to what a fuck up I can be, too. I took a job from someone who was either unable or unwilling to articulate what she wanted of me. That’s not the wisest way to conduct business in this profession, is it?”

“Yeah, and you saw fit for some reason to give her your car and your home.”

Johnna was pulling a silk tee shirt over her head. If Mislava could see what I was seeing she would have no questions about Sparky’s gender.

Through the material she said, “I can’t solve all your problems, asshole… Come on the boat will leave without us.”

Marigolds, Ch 9

9

Johnna and I were walking northeast along Middle Street approaching Congress on our way to Market Street. We had settled in at our bed and breakfast. The proprietors were friendly, helpful and when they learned we had been to Portsmouth many times before, left us to our own devices.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine had much in common including neat places to eat and drink. The Portsmouth Brewery, very much in both categories, was tonight’s destination.

“So it seemed to me that sending her to Chelsea for the weekend was the best thing to do. At the very least, I won’t have to go back up to Portland on Monday to get her. I suppose I might have brought her here. She could stay with us…” I said as we walked.

“Yeah, right Finn.” Johnna was shaking her head. “You might have put her on the train. I just wonder about the wisdom of giving your car and your condo to a woman you met four hours ago. That’s all.”

“You would be a fool not to wonder, but I got five days of per diem from her in cash. The roll from which that money had been peeled was big enough around that I lost all fear it was a ruse to abscond with my car and go through my underwear drawer.” I waited for a chuckle. I couldn’t hear it but I saw her shoulders bounce, exactly twice.

“Besides, Michael will be waiting for her in Chelsea when she gets there tomorrow to see she settles in and doesn’t have any boys over.”

“ Funny. This of course means you’ll owe Mr. Devlin another dinner at the Border Café?”

“ Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Money well spent. Listen, it’s as fool-proof as any plan based on naiveté, greed and stupidity can be.”

“This means I have to drive you home Sunday, though, too, right?” Johnna was shaking her head again. Perhaps she had never stopped.

“I should have cleared that with you, you’re right. I suppose you could put me on the train in Newburyport, I guess. That’s…”

“I don’t mind taking you home.” Johnna was redirecting my path into a gallery of art and artifacts. I held the door for her and took her hand.

“Not knowing where we are going in New York or with whom we’re to meet is a little disquieting,” I admitted. “And the fact that when I told her this afternoon that Ivana was dead there was no real manifestation of anything I would call emotion. That gives me pause, too.”

“She might have been in shock, you know, hearing for the first time that her friend is dead from you…some guy she just met.”

“Maybe. A guy who was indirectly responsible for it, too. Or, she might have already drawn the conclusion Ivana was dead based on things I don’t know.”

“ Or, don’t know yet. Seems to me there’s going to be a lot of information at your disposal that isn't now once she speaks to this guy in New York.”

“Yup. So it seems.”

“She’s not... is she expecting, I don’t know, body guard I guess is the word, services is she? No danger involved?”

“She says all she wants me to do is hear what she has to say to this guy, whoever ‘this guy’ is. She intimated I might want to continue on after I do, but that option is mine and mine alone.”

Johnna had picked up a Save the Children Christmas ornament. It was glazed porcelain.

“Pretty isn’t it?” She asked.

“ It is.”

“What happens after you’ve sat through her chat?” We were moving toward the door.

“For her? I’m not sure. She told me after she speaks to the guy I’m done. As I said, I can come home. Maybe the Mets are in town. I could sneak out to Queens.”

“Or maybe the Yankees,” she said without looking at me.

“The Yankees? Are they still in the league?”

Marigolds, Ch 7 and Ch 8

7

The Brian Boru’s lunch crowd does not linger at the door. I did.

The long tables awash mostly in flat natural light and attended by quick-footed wait staff were filling quickly. Shepard’s pie and a stew of some sort competed with huge handmade cheeseburgers. Frosted shaker glasses and pitchers of iced tea and lemonade dotted the landscape. There was a beer here and there. It was Friday noon, after all.

The woman I had followed stood stiffly by the bar, once extending to her tiptoes to see the back of the place. I wondered if she were regretful she had chosen lunchtime to meet or if the din and movement was exactly that for which she’d hoped.

I moved to her side and slid the photograph of Ivana Grdesic along the bar into her peripheral vision. She picked it up saying nothing and walked to the back of the rectangular room. I was three steps to her rear. We went up the stairs that spilled out on a sun-drenched deck. She chose an empty table, one of the few remaining, and sat. Removing my cap, I filled the chair adjacent to her. Five minutes later and there would have been nowhere to sit.

“That day was her birthday. Last year, I think. Students are standing behind.”

“It looks like a Catholic prep school…the uniforms I mean,” I said

“No, is not Catholic. A school, yes, but not Catholic.”

Our waitress introduced herself as Alanna and handed us laminated menus. Shaking her straight streaked hair back against the breeze she had begun to describe the daily specials. With a raised hand my companion refused her menu. She requested two glasses of iced tea. When she punctuated her request with an abrupt “thank you,” the waitress, a little startled, backed away.

“That was a little more dramatic than I would have preferred,” I said. “It probably isn’t wise to call such attention to yourself if you are, and it seems you are, seeking to avoid attention.”

It occurred to me that she was not avoiding attention. Avoiding detection, perhaps, but not attention.

My companion sat silent. Holding in a deep breath, she slid her sunglasses from her face, folded them and placed them on the table. She took the paisley kerchief from her hair and jammed it into her pocket.

“Yes. Probably you are right, Mr. O’Keefe.”

“I am afraid you have the advantage, here. Are you going to tell me who you are? Or, perhaps suggest a name I may call you?”

“Call me Mislava. I am in your photograph.”

That she was, though her hair was much darker in the photo. Even though her raincoat was still buttoned to her chin, it was obvious she had lost quite a bit of weight since that day.

In the picture both young women were smiling, leaning in over a cake topped with “Happy Birthday, Mrs. Flaherty” written in contrasting icing. The i in birthday was dotted with a heart. The girls behind them had struck grinning street-wise poses no self-respecting street-wise person would ever strike.

“Where was this picture taken?” I asked.

Our ice teas arrived. The waitress asked if we had decided on lunch.

“We will have only teas. We will not eat. Thank you.” Her dismissal of our server was sharp and practiced. I touched the waitress’ arm as she began to step back and shrink at the same time. I grinned up at her.

“May I have one of those cheeseburgers I saw downstairs? Blue cheese, medium rare?” I smiled. “I’d like a Geary’s Pale Ale, too. Draught if you have it.” I kept smiling until she smiled back. It was a few seconds. I think it was my bouncing eyebrows accompanying the grin that got her.

“Would you like that cooked? I mean ‘how…’ Oh, you already said that, didn’t you? Great. OK. Right away.” She touched my shoulder as she left the table. I turned to my companion.

“I want to thank you for being thoughtful enough to look after my lunch needs. This iced tea is very good.” I figured I could get a little more mileage out of my waning, two-dimensional smile. “But, I can do that for myself.”

“I am in danger and you want fucking cheeseburger?”

How is it that someone who doesn’t use the definite articles when speaking English does use the word fucking? In this case not using “a fucking cheeseburger” changes the nature of the question. I chose to respond to its content rather than its form.

“The latter is indisputable. Did you see the size of those things? Man!” I unfolded my napkin and secured it to my lap. “Now, tell me why you believe the former to be true.”

8

Mislava Hrvat was how she spelled it. She pronounced it Mizshlava Hurvatch, accented first syllable in each. She had been with Ivana Grdesic both in Croatia and, for reasons not entirely clear to me yet, at a school where English was the primary language. The birthday photo, celebrating a Mrs. Flaherty, was taken there.

I had said nothing about Ivana Grdesic’s death. Mislava had yet to mention it, either. Nor had she asked me any questions about Grdesic’s whereabouts. Perhaps she did not know. Perhaps she did and thought I did not know. The only piece of concrete information I was able to discern in the first fifteen minutes I sat with this woman was my cheeseburger and beer were both good choices. The only solid fact I had provided was I was capable of ordering my own lunch.

“Mr. O’Keefe…?”

She waited until I had taken a bite of my burger before addressing me. I swallowed as quickly as I was able and used my napkin to hide it.

“Call me Fintan or Finn, if you don’t mind.”

“Can you tell me please,” She was tapping her index finger on the photograph. “When you came to Portland?”

“Let’s see…”

She leaned in to get a better look at my burger. “Burger is not enough cooked. You have not heard of Mad Cow Disease?”

“Yes, I have heard of it. In fact…” I stopped myself. It was a story for another time.

“I believe it was the last week in April that I was here. I’d have to check, but I think it was. I am sure it was on a Sunday.”

I checked today’s date on the front of the newspaper. I was surprised to find it was still July. Christ, I would have sworn it was August. I counted backwards the Sundays in my head factoring in the time I had spent in Canada.

“No, I take that back. It was early to mid-May. Maybe even early June.” I was embarrassed.

“Yes, makes more sense. Do you know what happened after?”

“What do you mean ‘after’?”

“After, when man came to condo?”

“No, I do not. All I know is that I called the person who employed me and the police here in Portland. After telling each what I had discovered I left.”

“Who was your employer?”

“I am afraid I cannot tell you that.”

I had disguised the fact that I had been duped by invoking professional confidentiality. In truth, I had no idea who hired me.

“Can you tell me, you were also looking for me for this employer?”

“I can tell you that. I was not.”

“Did name Hrvat…?”

“I had never heard your name before this afternoon.”

“I see. May I today be your employer?”

When this woman called me this morning I was not sure what our conversation would entail. Perhaps I thought she’d have some information for me I might pass on to the Portland PD or the Massachusetts State Police. I must have thought that because I sought her out, right?

Maybe I was under the impression I’d be able to fill in a gap or two for her. Bottom line: I am not sure what the hell I was anticipating. I placed my cheeseburger back on its plate and sat straighter in my chair. One thing for sure: I certainly had not anticipated an offer of a job.

“That depends on what it is you would wish me to do.” I sipped my Geary’s. My mouth was very dry.

“I want you take me to New York City and be with me when I talk to man there. I would pay you to do this. If you don’t want continue after, you don’t.” She was spinning the flexible straw that had been stabbed into the crushed ice of her tea.

“What man?”

“ I do not know, yet. Excuse me, please. I need lady’s room.” She rose abruptly while still speaking, removed her London Fog and headed downstairs. In a vain attempt to rise, I nearly dumped myself backwards from my chair.

I estimated Mislava Hrvat at about five feet four, one hundred pounds. What seemed a disproportionate amount of her too-little body mass was below her waist. Hrvat’s face was broad and pale with raised cheekbones and a wide extremely well defined mouth. Her light hair was directed harshly back into a bun to accommodate her kerchief, I surmised. The severity of her hairstyle seemed to stretch her pallid skin. She wore contact lenses that made her squint and blink. I wondered if the color were real.

At the top of the stairs as she returned Hrvat stepped aside to allow a waiter and a patron to pass, each without acknowledgement or eye contact.

She had let her hair down, but only in the literal. It fell to her shoulders along the sides of her face and curved under her chin. The hairstyle, the lack of substantive contrast between her hair and her skin and the vivid brightness of the day all made her look wan, bordering on sickly. While she re-situated herself in her chair I re-engaged our conversation.

“Were I to decide to sign on, when would you like to go to New York?”

“Now is best.”

“It almost always is, but I cannot now. Monday perhaps, or Tuesday??”

“Monday? Monday. Sure, Monday. Then you will do this thing?”

“Hold on a second here. You still need to tell me what you want me to do, but if I choose to do it…”

“Fine, then. Is best I leave Portland…”

My phone sounded. It startled her. She put her sunglasses back on. I placed the flat of my hand on the top of her wrist as I checked the caller ID and answered Johnna’s call.

“Hey, Sparky.”

Johnna was able to leave Springfield a couple of hours earlier than she had thought. She would be in Portsmouth in the middle of the afternoon.

“Great. See you at the B&B.”

“Portsmouth is nice town,” Mislava said. “Your Sparky…?”

“Yes?”

“Is boy or girl?”