Cobra and the delinquents 3

 

Chapter 3 shakedowns and showdowns

 

Tarquin dropped in to see the girls after he had dropped off the boys, to the horror of Hermione, and the cheerful greeting of the other girls. Hana had learned not to bow, but did not hug him with the ecumenical enthusiasm of Ruth and Olivia who were used to him. Marie and Hana were contented to have their hair ruffled, but greeted him as ‘Uncle Tarquin,’ happily enough.

“Settling in, Miss Obama? I hope so,” he said. Hermione swallowed.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Smith,” she said. “Really, your name is Tarquin?”

“Yes, and it is my own,” said Tarquin. “Having a name like ‘Smith,’ it pleases me to be different. Do you dislike being ‘Hermione,’ then?”

“Sometimes,” said Hermione. “A lot of people mangle it, rather.”

“None of us ever have,” said Ruth.

“Marie did at first,” said Hermione.

Marie went red.

“I thought it was ‘Hermi-own,’ she admitted. “But I didn’t know then that it was Greek, like ‘Penelope’ and you pronounce the ‘e’ on the end. I haven’t been confused since you set me right, Hermione.”

“No, you do learn fast,” admitted Hermione.

“Could be worse; you might have been ‘Siobhan,’” said Olivia, flushing to put herself forward. “I was at school with a girl named Siobhan, and even the teachers tried to call her ‘Siy-o-barn’. I mean, how hard is ‘Shevaan’ to say? She told me, Irish Gaelic was such that any collection of consonants is usually ‘v’ and ‘i’ after S makes it ‘Sh’ which is common to a lot of languages.”

“That is worse than ‘Hermione,’” agreed Hermione.

“Especially as one boy would insist on calling her ‘Autobahn,’” said Olivia. “She stabbed him with a pair of scissors, and if you ask me, he deserved it.”

“You’ll get no argument from any of us,” said Ruth. “But the authorities get knacky about doing that sort of thing. She’d have done better to wait until he was in the school pool and go into the boys’ changing rooms and rub hot chilli juice into his underpants. Claim it as skidmarks on the Autobahn.”

Tarquin winced.

“I don’t really want to know,” he said. “One of the boys here has previous in molesting girls; you need to be warned, but I don’t want to know how you take steps to cure it.”

“Are we allowed to?” asked Hermione, all eyes.

“Rick is a believer in rough justice,” said Tarquin.  “I’m inclined to say that it usually works but I’m not allowed to say so officially. And it goes both ways, Miss Obama; if you get jostled for being a busybody, you have to take it as well as give it.”

“I didn’t realise it would cause them trouble,” said Hermione.

“Ascertain facts, make a list of pros and cons, and only then step in to act,” said Tarquin. “And for goodness sake, ask Rick or Willow, or Auntie Fee if you want to do anything drastic.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hermione. She had firmly been dressed in the current fashion for girls, known as the ‘Biker Geisha’ look, or ‘Street Geisha.’ This tended to be a onepiece jump suit – or separates that could pass as a onepiece – in black leather, red leather, or denim, with a very short kimono, no longer than waist length, over it, highly patterened or embroidered at the high end. Versions of it included embroidered synthleather jumpsuits where the upper part wrapped over, rather than a separate kimono. Some young girls wore headbands with cat ears on as well. It’s something to do with a trope in anime films.  I’d seen the style – the embroidered wrappover jumpsuit version – on a catrobat^TM and her real ears did not look silly. Ears on headbands did look silly, and my girls did not wear them.  Out here, their off-duty wear was a denim top with their jeans and their disparate kimonettes, as I believe they were known, over them.

They’d be back in flannelette shirts for the morning chores, but educating Hermione, Olivia, Marie and Hana on modern fashion was also important, as a matter of self-worth. And it boosted Ruth’s sense of self worth to be able to help them make the most of themselves within the current styles.

Willow, of course, looks fantastic whatever she wears, but there’s something about skintight black leather that makes one want to peel it off.

 

I did not want Willow to have to put up with Jamie McNeal attempting to pull off her black leather – or, indeed, anything else. His first chore was washing up, which he undertook without complaint. I joined him to dry the dishes.

“So,” I said, “What is it with you that you felt a need to rufi three women working for your father?” The term was a generic one, ‘to rufi,’ though according to the records, the drug used was one called Excite^TM, a legal drug on prescription, but used as a date-rape drug and in illegal brothels. The interesting part was that the first woman had been given the male version.  It had been speculated that he had found this easier to obtain, and though nobody said anything, it was assumed by the cops that his father was using it on himself as a performance enhancer.  It acted simultaneously as an aphrodisiac with the calming effect of Valium, and the illegal uses often added something to confuse as well.

He scrubbed viciously at the plates.

“You won’t believe me,” he said. “I told my lawyer and he told me I’d have to come up with a better story than that, and laughed at me when I insisted it was the truth.”

“Try me,” I said. “I despise men who rape, but there’s something telling me that there’s more to it than that. You aren’t bad looking, and I am sure you could pull if you wanted to, without resorting to drugs. I have a feeling I’m looking at a victim of something, and something potentially nasty in the family.  Can you tell me if I’m wrong?”

He dropped the plate he was holding and it shattered on the floor, and he cowered.

“I’m right,” I said, putting down the plate I had dried, and getting the brush and dustpan to clear up the broken china. No, I didn’t bother to wait for the bot. The human hand and tools designed for it are more efficient for broken glass or china.

“It was Sylvia,” he said. “My stepmother. She… she asked me to drink a glass of wine with me because she was lonely when dad was on a business trip.  I’m not that keen on wine, but dad impressed on me, I was to treat her with courtesy.  So, I sipped it and tried not to grimace, and she was talking to me, and then I started feeling heavy and… and my head was floating, and I was as horny as a goat; and she stripped, and undressed me, and… well, I’d not had sex before but it was like a dream, and absolutely fantastic. But part of me knew it was wrong.  And I felt myself drifting off.  But I struggled to stay awake, and she phoned someone, and… and she was discussing that I was now hers to command, and that I would never realise that she was setting me up to take the blame for stealing all of dad’s money by electronic transfers. I think I passed out then, but I remembered. I woke up in my own bed with a sore dick and a headache.”

“And you went to her and confronted her about it?” I asked.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Because I can feel the anger in you, and I suspect you’re a straightforward sort of lad, never known to tell a lie, George Washington looks shifty next to you,” I said.

He flushed, angrily.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “Go on, mock me.”

“Actually, I was being up front,” I said. “I was imagining your father slapping you on the shoulder and booming that his son is as straight as a die, with integrity.”

“You know my father?” he gasped.

“I’ve seen him on the trid,” I said. “And I know fine well that if you’d gone to him and said that you had suspicions that Sylvia had been doing something suspicious with the finances, he would probably have checked for himself even if he blew you off.”

“I should have gone to dad,” he said. “But I didn’t want to upset him. He is in love with Sylvia. And I wanted to confront her and tell her to stop, and not to hurt my dad.”

“Sometimes, nobility of the spirit is a bar to common sense,” I said. “So, she laughed at you?”

He nodded.

“She laughed at me, and I said that I knew she was plotting with a guy called Cliff, and that was when she slapped me. I told her I’d tell dad if she didn’t cut her losses and clear out. She told me that if I did, she’d tell him I raped her. I was scared. I’d have to admit I had fucked her, you know? And I was scared dad might not believe she’d drugged me. Anyway, I was considering what to do, when I realised I had that same swimmy feeling, but this time, I think I blacked out at some point, and I came to in bed with one of the secretaries.  And dad and Sylvia burst in on us.  I remember him shaking me and demanding to know what on earth I thought I was doing.  And Sylvia was smirking. Dad beat me, but he bought the secretary off. She had no recollection of how she came to be in bed with me.”

“And you were just thinking that things were back to normal when it happened again?” I said.

“Yes; and this time, Sylvia ‘discovered’ me, and had the woman involved write an affidavit, but bought her off, as again, I had not actually… you know.”

“No penetration,” I said.

“Yes, that,” he agreed.

“And the third time was with a minor.”

“Yes, one of the managers brought his daughter into the office, as her school had closed for a couple of days for some reason. And that was when the shit hit the fan. Sorry, sir.”

“I have no problem with you swearing,” I said. “Yes, that would be one violation too far.”

“And Sylvia smirking like a Cheshire cat.  Why a Cheshire cat? Is that a special breed?”

“It’s a literary reference to a magical cat in a children’s story,” I said.  “And having destroyed your reputation for integrity, your father would never believe you again.”

“Exactly,” said Jamie. “Sylvia told me that I’d ruined her plan to blame it on me, but she would just cover her trail more carefully. Or wait until I came out of Juvenile Hall and make it look like me committing some kind of revenge.”

“And your dad would find out too late,” I said.

“Yes, he’d be ruined, and blaming me, and it would all be terrible,” said Jamie. He was crying.

“Well, Jamie, I have resources that Sylvia and Cliff could only dream of,” I said. “Actually, I have the sort of resources they couldn’t dream about, because I know more about black ops than the wildest science fiction writers could even invent.”

“You… you could manage to follow the trail of what she’s been up to?” he asked. “I… if you can’t clear me, that’s ok, if you can only stop her ruining dad.”

“I’ll have her and Cliff stitched up so tight, she won’t have a clue how it happened,” I said.

“I don’t want my dad hurt,” he said.

“Son, he’s going to be hurt to some extent, in finding out what she’s been up to,” I told him. “But I’m going to tell him that there’s more to what you’ve been through than he knows, so at least he has some inkling that you are innocent.”

He burst into real sobbing tears.

I sat him down and made him a cup of hot chocolate; he was too old for a cuddle, but I gave him one anyway, and he leaned against me.

“Please don’t tell the others anything,” he begged.

“I won’t,” I promised. “I’m old enough to realise that sometimes, real men can cry, but I know some people don’t understand that.”

He nodded in gratitude.

 

I phoned his father. In retrospect, it may not have been the wisest thing to do, but I wanted the kid to know that someone was on his side, and that his father had a heads-up that something was going on.

I had his private number; Tarquin made sure of that.

“Who the hell is this?” he yapped.

“I’m the one in charge of your son,” I said.

There was a heavy silence.

“What’s he done?” he asked.

“Told me a few things that his lawyer ignored, which should have been followed up when this started,” I said. “I believe your boy was under the influence of something nasty when the incidents occurred.”

“You mean, he’s a user as well as a sexual predator?” he said, in disgust.

“No, Mr. McNeal, I think he was set up by someone, and was also under a date rape drug,” I said.

“Well, why didn’t he say so?”

“I understand he was still confused when you beat him,” I said. “And he did not then think you would be ready to listen.”

There was a long silence.

“He… that may be true,” admitted McNeal.

“I’ll be taking hair samples,” I said. “Drugs can leave markers in hair.”

“If you can show him to be innocent, I’ll be delighted,” said McNeal. “But who would do such a thing, and why?”

“Ah, now that’s a good question,” I said.

I rang off. And I did take hair samples, and had Willow fly them to a lab via drone. I did not want anything to interrupt their passage.

And she would be into the McNeal system like an eel.

 

cobra and the delinquents 2

 

Chapter 2 The little victims play

 

“Come along, lads, the house is a little over a quarter of a mile,” I said, pleasantly.  “Bring your luggage; I hope you will be tidy with it, as you are sharing a room, and there will be collective punishments for untidiness. I’m the boss around here, but you can call me ‘Ranny’ if you like, as we’re on a wild west theme. You’ll behave for me, for my wife, for my aunt, and for the two senior hands, Dave and Julia, or you’ll find things unpleasant.”

“Where are the staff?” asked Briggs.

“Well, now, cowboy, as you’re here to learn about how to be cow pokes, I’d say that I’m looking at them,” I said. He looked horrified.

“You can’t expect us to do menial work, can you?” he said. “Our fathers aren’t paupers, you know, they’re important men.”

“Son,” I said, “Learn one lesson and learn it well. Your daddies don’t impress me in the slightest, and what’s more, they aren’t here, so I don’t care. You’ll be handing in your phones, and earning a call on the landline is a privilege, so you can’t play at being whiny six-year-olds to go complaining. Your background does not interest me in the slightest; all I care about is that you’re juvenile delinquents here to learn a few lessons in how to get a life.”

That managed to horrify the lot of them.

“Well, I’m not dragging this all the way to the house,” said Briggs. “This track is too rough for the wheels.” He let go of the handle.

I shrugged.

“You’ll start to smell after a while,” I said.  “Still, I’m sure your dormitory fellows will let you know how they feel.”

“He can bring it,” said Briggs, pointing at Dix.

“Why should he?” I asked.

“Because he’s a.....”

“Careful,” I said. “I’m a personal friend of Jay Silverheels and I object to racist comments. And as to what Dix is, he’s a juvenile delinquent the same as the rest of you but with more excuse. Fine, you’ve decided not to bother to change your clothes for the next six weeks. No skin off my nose. If you smell at me, I’ll throw you in a creek.” Jay Silverheels was the soubriquet I had taken for Tarquin’s previous little jaunt, into the world of extreme sport showbiz. He had acquired something of a following, and Dix had been one of the kids who had written him fan mail.

Briggs spluttered in outrage; but he had no intention of backing down.

“Man, did you mean it when you said I had more reason than most?” said Dix.

“I did, but I’ll change my mind if you call me anything but ‘Boss’ or ‘Ranny,’” I said.

“Sorry, Ranny,” said Dix. “Will we really learn properly how to be cowboys?”

“The intention is to teach you; whether you learn is up to you. But if you concentrate, you should leave here with a good working understanding of farming, self-sufficiency, and horse care,” I said.  “More than half the real cowboys of the old west were black guys, as it happens, whatever Hollywood suggests.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Thanks, Ranny. I’ll do my best.”

I nodded.

With luck that would be one who wasn’t any trouble.

“I forbid you to take orders from any of the others,” I said. “Briggs has a problem, though.”

“Huh?” said Briggs.

“You’re on the roster for cooking, but I can’t let dirty objects in the kitchen; health and safety, you know.  So, guess what? When you’re on roster, your three companions will go hungry. Of course, if they decide to make you collect your clothes so you can change and be less insalubious, they won’t be going hungry when it’s your turn to cook.”

“But you have to feed us!” said Fitzgerald.

“No, son, I have to provide the means to feed you; but this is a government initiative, so I also have to observe the rules of health and safety,” I said. “None of you will suffer for missing a meal or two, but I can’t risk disease from a dirty little boy. So, you want to eat, you make sure he’s clean.”

Fitzgerald turned to Dix and McNeal.

“We can pick up our kit on our way back up to the ranch.  Briggs is going to carry his kit.”

“I am not,” said Briggs.

“Bring your luggage the rest of the way, and then  you can take him to get his,” I said.

It would give me a chance to go over their kit whilst they ‘persuaded’ Briggs to comply.  The dawning realisation that I did not intend to be there for their ‘persuasion’ had the other three readily agreeing.

 

oOoOo

 

I went over the three suitcases whilst the lads were out making Briggs bring his kit. It would take them at least half an hour, I suspected. He’d have a job carrying it, the wheels would not work, and I doubted anyone would help him.  So I went through the three suitcases with the eye of a professional, and the expensive nose looking, mostly, for illicit substances.

If Fitzgerald could be turned off drugs and onto the secret services for his thrills, he’d be a shoe-in to take Tarquin’s place in about a quarter of a century when Tarquin retired. His hiding places were ingenious.

It takes dedication to undo a tube of toothpaste to pack it with Starburst, or whatever the current streetname was for the amphetohallucigen de jour. I’d have to provide him with a genuine tube of toothpaste.  When I was a kid, starbursts were boiled sweets. Maybe I should get him some.

He had more down the spine of the two permitted novels. No tablets permitted.

I confiscated all the mobile phones, the illicit tablet, and the smutty magazine.

That was McNeal’s, and I looked through it to see what sort of sexual angle the kid had, to give me some clue on why he might rape.

It was fairly mainstream, and the sort of magazine you might find under the mattress of any teenage boy. Some domination, but not unduly so, no violence, not even any spanking, so I was puzzled.

If he could prove civil to the other women, I might even let him have it back.

I also confiscated  his sketch-book, in which he had – rather competently – copied some of the pictures from the magazine, and tried to draw others of his own.

Their chosen novels were fairly revealing.  Dix had a couple of westerns; that was either for show to look as if he was trying, or the life really appealed to him. McNeal had a couple of trashy science fiction stories, the ones which go right back to the early tradition, with he-men in uniform and women in need of rescuing. That was interesting.

Fitzgerald had a book on car maintenance, and a gangsta graphic novel. If he understood the first, I would give him a job in my chop shop, if he could stay clean, and ease him into Tarquin’s orbit slowly.

He also had a gun, carried in parts, and hidden in amongst other things, like his shaving kit; a bit obvious, but probably not, to him. He had a lot to learn, but his instincts were good.

I put everything I had confiscated in the safe I had got for the purpose. It was behind a picture on the landing, and I had a web cam watching it, just in case. But it was not in my room, or in the office, and I thought being somewhere random was by far and away the greater likelihood of keeping anyone from trying to crack it.

And then the lads came in, harrying Briggs.

“Ah, well done, young Briggs,” I said.  “Just in time for kit inspection.”

He stared at me open-mouthed, and not a little fear when I hefted the heavy case effortlessly onto the table to open it. He knew how heavy it was, and I made it look easy.

“What, did you rob a bank to bring bullion with you?” I said, jocularly.

“I say, you’re not going to pry into my personal  possessions are you?” he demanded.

“What part of ‘you are a juvenile delinquent in custody’ are you still failing to understand?” I asked.

He gaped.

He was having trouble getting it, apparently.

I opened his outsize suitcase.

He had some very natty designer cowboy duds. They wouldn’t stand up to hard wear, but that was his problem.

“When your jeans give you sores for being too tight and you are ready to ask, I’ll find you better working clothes,” I said.

“I’m not wearing shit like you,” he said, rudely.

“Ah?  You’ll be sore, then,” I said. “I won’t, so I don’t care. Oh, and all these electronic bits and pieces are confiscated. No music, no tablet, no phones.  You hefted all the heavy stuff for no reason; you could have asked them to take it with them in the car.  Still, your choice.  Life’s about choices, as you will all find out.”

 

I gave them time to fight over who had which bunk, and to take a shower, and explore the ranch house, after discovering what had been confiscated.

They came sullenly to supper.

I introduced them cheerfully to Willow, Auntie, Dave, and Julia. Dix recognised them, and told the others. It garnered my deputies some respect, at any rate, and Fitzgerald had the brains to recognise that if two finalists in ‘Extreme’ showed deference to Willow, Auntie Fee and me, it might be wise to do the same.

“Why is there a baby?” asked Briggs, in some disgust.

“Because you inconvenient little twerps have broken in on my family life at a time I resent you doing so, when I was enjoying fatherhood, because you have placed your whining and useless butts in front of some justice  who needs me to lick you into  shape,” I said. “Touch my wife or my child or any of our foster daughters and I’ll kill you. This is not nice, safe, juvie hall, omae, this is real life, and I take the safety of my family seriously.”

“And that’s if I haven’t killed you first,” said Willow.

“We wouldn’t!” blurted Dix.

“From our point of view, you’re scum who haven’t had anyone able to teach you any better,” said Willow. “The onus is on you to show us you can behave. Dix, you’re on cook duties tonight and tomorrow morning, you got a by on the cooking, but you’ll be helping wash up.  Be down here at six to start breakfast; the rest of you can lie in until half past six.”

“And if we don’t choose to get up, then?” asked Briggs.

“I’ll come and pee on you,” I said. “Then you’ll be wet, and you’ll have to do extra laundry duty.  Your duties are posted in your common room which is through here. You will earn the right to have the billiard table unlocked, and also the trideo. This means a week’s exemplary behaviour from all of you and you choose which privilege to ask for. Individual exemplary behaviour buys you one five minute phone call. There are cards and board games you can use in your leisure time until you have earned other privileges, and you may spend time with the horses. Make the most of your leisure, there isn’t much on a ranch.”

They were aghast.

They were outraged.

“I want to go home,” said Briggs.

“So do a lot of other prisoners paying their debt to society, but funnily enough, incarceration in a gaol doesn’t permit that,” I said. “You have a last chance of making good with me, and if you squander that, believe me, being in the adult justice system is not somewhere you want to be.”

He went for me.

He went down.

He went for me again.

He went down again, and this time I held onto a pressure point until he screamed.

“I can play all night, if you want,” I said. “You think you’re tough because you’re large, and have thrown your not inconsiderable weight about. You are not tough.  You are an overweight slob who is used to pushing other kids around. I, on the other hand, am tough. You should pray you never find out just how tough.”

McNeal was looking terrified; I thought he was in danger of wetting his pants, he was so white in the face. I wondered what he feared. I looked at him thoughtfully.

“Don’t break the rules, and I can be as nice as pie,” I said. “Don’t break the rules, do your chores willingly, and I can be talked into all sorts of privileges – even returning some confiscated kit. Not drugs, though. That’s too much. You walk this path but once, and damaging yourselves with putting crap in your bodies is not something I can condone or permit. Wank magazines, maybe.” I had taken a few from Briggs, too.

They gaped at me for that.

“R... really? What’s the catch?” said McNeal.

“Stick to your schedules, do the chores, and behave like decent human beings,” I said.

“But I need my shit, man, for the thrills,” said Fitzgerald.

“Really?  You want thrills?”  I said.  “Tell you what, when you want a thrill, I’ll drop you in the desert in your underpants, and give you an hour to get started before I come after you to hunt you; only I’ll be tooled up. Should be the biggest thrill of your life, boy, because you’ve been playing with children who think they are big men, and to me, they are as big a man as a first grader with a toy gun. But you know, the offer is open. Just let me know.”

“Holy Fuck!” said Fitzgerald, staring at me in terror. He believed me.

Just as well; I’d have loaded with blanks, but blanks still hurt.

He wanted thrills.

McNeal was afraid of something.

Dix had temper issues over being insulted.

Briggs was a lazy little toerag who needed to learn that the world did not revolve around him.

The rest needed building up to know they need not fear, need not seek chemical thrills, need not lose their temper.

He needed breaking down before I could build him.

And that would have to be done with peer pressure.

I would let the others know what they were missing out on, when his dilatory habits wasted time so they did not get to do fun things... like learning how to track and hunt like a native American. 

Briggs would not be popular.

My heart bled.

No, it didn’t.  I could face Briggs’s discomfort with equanimity.