CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A short while after I got all of my contacts set up, I worked on my cover identities. I had to be able to move around the state freely, without the fear that some police officer or Highway Patrol officer would pull me over and run a background check on my real name.
Another activity I continued with was my martial arts training and fighting. As strange as it sounds, I enjoyed being hit. It had stopped hurting years ago. Now, it was just like rough playing with old friends.
I also enjoyed inflicting pain; maybe a little too much, but that’s how it was. I found a mixed martial arts studio about twenty miles from my trailer. My old instructor, Lee, had given me a letter of introduction, and the instructor at the new place accepted me without any questions. I went there at least twice a week to help me work off some of my stored up energy. I always made sure to go on the nights when they were having full-contact open fights.
I used my fighting skills to get entered into MMA matches all over the state. I also hooked up with a real pretty girl from my studio. I figured I could use her, like I did my old friend, Cindy, driving around with her to check out neighborhoods in and around the cities where I was fighting.
Her name was Genie Lopez. Her father was from Puerto Rico and mother from Florida. She had the light skin of her mother and had been born in Boca-Raton, a medium-sized city near Miami. She said she’d moved up to my area to attend college.
She said she’d been doing well in school, but had gotten side-tracked by her martial arts. Thankfully, she wasn’t muscularly built, because I don’t really like that type. Her looks and personality were great. She had dimples on both cheeks that deepened when she smiled and just made me feel warm.
Now, I consider myself a professional, and by no means did I believe in love at first sight, but I’ll tell you, I’d be lying if I told you that she meant nothing to me; that she was nothing more than a toss in the hay and to have along with me for cover when I was doing surveillance on homes.
No, I really liked her. For the life of me, I can’t understand what I was really thinking. I didn’t have time for a real relationship! My plans were to build up a large sum of money and to go live like a King in some place comfortable and where the cost of living was lower than the U.S.
I had met several men in prison who had lived in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and a few other countries in Central and South America, and these men had told me stories about their lives there; about how it was so different there than in the U.S: How things were more community-based and there was more unity among people.
I could see myself living out the rest of my days in a world like that, but you know, during all of my fantasies about that, I never once pictured who would be there with me. I had been a loner so long, I guess it just never occurred to me.
But now, after meeting Genie, I began to realize that something deep down inside me was missing. Maybe that something was Genie. There was definitely something about her that was different than other women I had met. I liked her. I enjoyed being around her, and she made me feel alive, more alive than I had ever felt before.
Genie wasn’t a shy person, but she was a loner like me. She had no trouble talking to people, but she didn’t go out of her way to make new friends.
Shortly after meeting her, she told me that her family had disowned her. They were the overbearing type that had to have control of everything, including their children’s lives. They had wanted her to finish college and had already picked out a few men that they thought would be perfect for her to marry. They had her whole life planned out for her, and she pissed them off when she refused to go along.
So, they wrote her off, and she seemed ok with it. She was living her life to the fullest, enjoying every minute of it.
She also told me that she really enjoyed being with me.
She reminded me a little bit of me. She made me remember my younger days when we went to matches a long way from home to compete, instead of staying in a motel, she would want to camp out on the beach, much like I used to camp out in the woods as I was growing up.
Genie was tough, she was adventurous, she was fun to be around. She was so very beautiful, and before I realized it, I fell in love with her.
Now, let me get back to the business. My next step after getting my cover I.D.’s was to do things similar to what I had done in Arkansas, I located a reputable, family-owned alarm company, (not a nationally owned chain) in the Orlando area of central Florida. It was named, Alarm Masters, owned and operated by Wendall Doree and his family. A nice, medium-sized business in a large area filled with retirees.
I went in and sold myself to him. I told him a story about how my father had owned an alarm shop and how I’d worked with him until he passed away when I was nineteen, then, had traveled around the country for a while until finally settling there in central Florida. I never told him my real name or that I had spent some time in prison.
The good thing was that he never checked. Wendall was a good man, and he was interested in two things—his family and his business. The funny thing was that the order of their importance changed from one day to the next.
Wendall’s wife, Laney, took care of all the financial accounts for the company and his daughter Renee answered the phones and set up all the installations. His two sons, Ricky and Manuel oversaw the sales people and installers.
Wendall had started the company seventeen years earlier from the trunk of his car. From those humble beginnings, the business had grown to three large offices that were able to service the entire state of Florida.
Wendall hired me as a salesman and that took care of my appearance of living a normal life. I was also competing in fights, and I had someone that I looked forward to seeing and spending time with. But, all the while, I was living two lives. Living dangerously.
I truly believe that my lifestyle would have been too much, too stressful, for anyone else to handle. But not for me. Not for Malefic.
I had read somewhere that my abilities, to be able to sense when someone was around, was a form of extra-sensory perception, and that my ability to give and take energy from a person was a psychic blood-letting; that I was a form of Vampire; a Psychic Vampire. When I read that, I thought it was funny that people would classify me as a Vampire. Much of what I did for a living, I did under the cover of darkness, and my sleep was almost always during the daylight hours.
The gold dust that I was ingesting had me back on top of my game. I was back in tune with everyone around me. I could feel if someone were good or evil, and also when they were being truthful or dishonest. What made me feel good was that Genie’s aura/energy was always pure and true.