In Love and Law by Drake Koefoed - HTML preview

Chapter 22 Marine Research

Musical Theme;

Giuseppe took the fishes in his truck and went to his shop.  Poquita called Guido’s, a local restaurant, and found the banquet room was not booked.  She took it for a party of, uh, she was not sure.  About 30.  Guido was pleased to see them.  What would the name be?  Marcie Della? Oh, that was very good.  Mr. Ames would not agree, as a matter of principle, to any fixed gratuity.  He would tip as he wished.  That would not be a problem, either.  

They took the bus.  When they got to Guido’s, the covey was withheld for a moment while Will trailed Marcie into the restaurant.   The covey got the chance to change and do make up.  Marcie greeted Guido, click click, and his wife, click click.  She visited the kitchen.  Click click .  They went to the banquet room where Guido was caught in a gulf of pretty girls.  The camera fired on full automatic.  Marcie came in like the Queen of England, and gave Guido a peck on the cheek.  Of course the camera got that.  Then everyone took their seats.  Guido explained that they could have a banquet dinner, and everyone could eat whatever they liked.  The price seemed reasonable to Will and Marcie, so it was done.  They ate pizza and calzones.  Shrimp, and little crab cakes.  Spice breads, breadsticks, Spicy little meat things, small bowls of vegetables of all sorts, made up differently.  It went on and on, and it was all great.  Eventually, everyone was full.  Marcie paid the bill and Will handed out some pretty high tips.  They got back on the bus to go home.

“Remember when we first went on the road, Will?  That old Buick, staying in cruddy motels, you would check in and say it was for one person, and then we would sneak in with a sleeping bag, and usually that was the better place to sleep?”

“You went to that, I think it was Lorenzo fashions, and you wanted to do their lingerie, but you didn’t have a nice dress for the interview, so you walked in wearing a baby doll outfit, but you got the job.”

Chrissie came up behind and sat in the seat behind Will.  She put her hands on him, massaging his neck and shoulders.  “Will won’t usually tell me these stories.  The salad days.  I worked in an inconvenience store and went to law school.  It was boring.  But you guys traveled all over the country selling pix.”

“Will getting a call at 4 in the morning, the cops had his hotel phone number from his mom, and could he photograph a crime scene right now?  Horrible things.  I would go with him sometimes to make checkout time, and sit in the car while he did those jobs.”

“How did they know where to find you?”

“Marcie might have to drive 500 miles right after I had done the same.  We would be in Kansas city trying for a job with Sunday supplements and get turned down, and then head to Minnesota for a crime scene.”

“Why would they get some guy on the road to shoot a crime scene when they had their own cameras?”

“Because they wanted a good photographer.  Because some times they didn’t want to take the pix themselves.  Because I knew how to document blood splatter and they didn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t they want to take the pix themselves?”

“Subject matter.”

“Oh.  Something bad.”

“Something really bad.”

“But we’re talking homicide detectives.”

“Detectives are not photographers.  The best witness you can have is a freelance photographer.  I don’t work for the department, I don’t even live in the state.  I saw this.  I took a picture of it.  Want to know what it is, I was in the gulf war.  I can tell you.”

“Something really awful.”

“Of course.  If you were defense counsel, would you want ask me?”

“I don’t think so.  I see how good you would have been.  I could call this freelance guy, and defense counsel would just want him to go away.  I would just stipulate that these pix were taken at the crime scene.”

“I was never asked to testify.”

“Will, are you and I ever going to be normal?”

“No.  We might be happy, but we will never be normal.”

Marcie said, “I will never be normal, either.  Maybe nobody ever will be.”

The bus arrived at the house, and the covey rushed to their quarters.

Will asked, “Anyone remember being that happy to go to the bunkhouse or whatever?”

The ladies shook their heads.  Everyone got off the bus.  They went into the living room.  Will passed around Jose Cuervo and Jack.  There was beer in the reefer, but nobody seemed to care.  

Poquita asked why Marcie had said she would never be normal.

“Because of a lot of things.  None of you guys would repeat any of this?”

She looked around.  “I was abused as a child.  It fucked me up in ways I still don’t understand.  Therapy was useless.  Will helped me a little, but he has PTSD, so you can kind of wonder how much therapy a traumatized kitten can get from a psychotic lion.  He would have killed the guy who did it to me, but I wouldn’t go for that.  I could hope God would do something, but I think, excuse me Father James, that God doesn’t care much about us.  Will and I worked an eighty hour week, and spent the rest of the time driving.  We chased news stories and people who wanted pix, and we found some.  I was pretty, and he was one hell of a photographer.  We did any kind of work there was, except porn.  Will is real against models doing nudity.  I don’t know what that’s about, but to him that is the thing you just cannot do, never ever.”

Will jumped up.  “Because you’re ladies.  Because you deserve to be treated with respect, and when someone sells you like a side of beef, they demean everything good about us.  I don’t mean the cute little stuff guys like Marc shoot.  That’s just fantasy sex.  But the crude stuff, that makes you whores, that is not all right!”

Father James said, “I think the line has been drawn in the sand.  Will, do you object to prostitution?”

“No.  I don’t like it, but.”

Josh asked, “If some lady asked me to bang her, would it bother you, whether she bought me dinner or not?”

“You can do as you like.”

“So just women have these restrictions.”

“I don’t think that is what I said.”

“So, fine.  If she in fact is a whore, can she pose nude?”

“Not in front of my camera.”

“So you don’t want to do porn.”

“Josh, you know I don’t.”

“But Marc Douglas can, it’s all right.”

“Yes.”

“Marc does very nice, tasteful pix of pretty girls with their clothes off.?”

“That’s true.  He is a super photographer and he likes to take pictures of ladies with their clothes off.”

“So what you object to is crude, ugly presentations of women as some kind of meat to be purchased.”

“Right.”

“So do we all.  But to have a First Amendment is to permit the crude and ugly as well as the nice and tasteful.”

“You win, Josh.”

Father James spoke. “Perhaps we should discuss something else.  We seem to be agreed that yucky porn is yucky, and artistic nude photos are all right.  Exactly where we draw the lines could be debated endlessly, but to no gain I can see.”

Will said, “Josh is right on the First Amendment thing.  So even though we are not in the US, we agree on the principle.”

Chrissie said, “I was thinking about something more complicated.  What do you think of this marine research thing?”

Will answered, “Seems like it should happen.  Is there a down side?”

Chrissie pondered, “There always is, although I do not yet see it.”

Roberta put in.  “I’m going to try to give you no reason to regret letting us have this.  We have no contract, no rights, so if we make Marcie mad, she stops writing checks.  If we make you mad, you throw us out.  We will have a very small group of people who come here.  They won’t drive up the driveway fast and raise dust.  They won’t be noisy.  We want to use Marcie’s Apache S-T 51.  We want to put fish in the big aquarium, and we will watch them when you aren’t using the room yourselves.”

Will said, “The Carabiniere will need the Apache S-T 51 from time to time.  Nobody will say anything about their business or look at what they are doing.  They will come in, lock the door to the room, and do whatever they do, and I will not ask, nor will anyone else.  Marcie has two operators at Yuma right now, a biochemist and a physicist, both from CIT.  Italy’s department of fisheries has yet to pick one.  The Carabiniere is going to send someone there very soon.  Marcie’s operators will work for whomever she likes.”

“Did you guys come to any conclusions on fish in the tank?”

“We want to limit the pelagic fishes to about a 6” perch.  We’d like some eels in the rocks, and they might be a little bigger, but we think the smaller fishes will usually stay out of the way.  We want crustaceans.  We are going to have a fiber optic light transmission system to bring sunlight down there.  So we can have some kelp or, well, you would have to tell me.  I want you to design this tank.  Quint and I don’t know enough about Mediterranean fishes to make the decisions.  We would like you to dive with Josh, and/or some of your own people, and select us a bunch of good rocks with tube worms and barnacles and kelp, and arrange them in the tank.”

“We will do that, and we will also gather specimens for the population.  I would like to dive with Josh.  We also have lots of divers, and lots of places to gather nice rocks.  We will find a good gravel patch, and you can have a transit mix spin your gravel in ocean water and dump off the water, and put the gravel in your tank.”

They talked for a while, and then went to sleep.  In the morning, the contractor came and dug the hole for the fish tank.  The forms went in, and the concrete came.  Then there were the huge pieces of plate glass.  When the sealant was dry, the water was put in, just half full for the moment.  The transit mix came and poured in the rinsed gravel, and Josh and Roberta got in and leveled it out.  The rocks got brought in, and arranged by Roberta.  Roberta, Will and Quint ran in new water and drained out old, clearing the dust.  The contractor put down the floor, and started building the stone walls.  In not much over a month he was done.  Apache brought the microscope, and various other suppliers brought desks and filing cabinets, all Steel Case.  

Will and Chrissie went down one afternoon when the crew was busy with little details upstairs.  The tank was lovely.  Big rocks covered with barnacles and kelp shrouded eels and shy fishes, while big bunches of fishes swam around above.  Crabs and lobsters cruised the bottom.  Octopi lurked in the rocks.  

* * *

Roberta had designed a feeder that allowed shrimp and krill to be brought in, and then the ones that died would not be dumped in.  Instead, the active ones would swim into the stream of circulating water and into the tank.  The dead stuff would be perused by the cats, and whatever they passed on would go into the garden soil, or down the pipe and into the Med.  There were always a few shrimp and krill in the tank, but they didn’t last very long.

The concrete walls of the tank first got algae, and then barnacles, mussels and oysters.  Huge marine snails worked the glass between razor scraping by divers, usually Roberta and Josh.  The fiber optic system lighted the aquarium about like two meters deep in the Med.  The artificial lights were brighter.  Roberta and Quint thought it didn’t much matter.  Fishes don’t really sleep.  If there was light and food, they would eat.

They sat in the moonlight and the sunlight.  They cruised the coast of Italy with Roberta, taking bottom samples and plankton samples, and doing a little fishing.  They loved each other very much.

END