The Agendaneers: -Schematoria-

By Richard W. Custer

The Agendaneer's - Schematoria is the first book of a three-part espionage-thriller series exploring the disastrous consequences of the American Corporate Governance Committee's efforts to stage a global catastrophe and disguise their 'True World Order' agenda by way of the Planet's confusion and apprehension relating to the Apocalypse and Armageddon struggle of late 2012. This feature-length novel {~600 p.p.} includes the Author's especially popular 2012 novellas entitled "Cryptic", "The Pink Detective", "The Temporal Collective" and "Cadavarice" in a wholly-original commercial production for the 2014 marketplace with many media tie-in's and culturally-significant events [The Author is responsible for the production of over a dozen Library of Congress Special Collections {Listed U.S. National Treasures}] that reader's will recognize features of as they enter this dark world of intrigue, avarice and, far too mortal, ambition!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9788868859633

Book preview

THE AGENDANEERS

-SCHEMATORIA-

By Richard W. Custer

© Copyright 1981-2014 {U.S.A. and International}

-A  C.C.I.–Private Label Publication-

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No reference to any person, living or deceased, is implied or otherwise conferred of this fictional work. Please draw no conclusions related to actual persons, governments or organizations identified within this work of fiction; as none are inferred. Please also consider the description of potentially viable products, technologies and scientific principles within this book to be the wholly-owned and proprietary properties of both the Chronometry Company International and the Author; Richard Ward Custer. The right to derive or generate benefit of this work in any form; to include commercial, public and/or private financial benefit and/or entertainment value, is retained exclusively by the Author and available to third parties exclusively of separately negotiated [DFARS] Contracts and/or Agreements. Internationally Copyrighted and [non-fictional] Patent-Disclosed Intellectual Properties are incorporated into this Packaged Product, or group of works, and are the Owner/Author’s jointly and severally protected Properties under the following U.S.- Issued International Copyrights, U.S. Patent Disclosures and Writer’s Guild of America Identifiers:

Txu 335-898 ; TXu 781-111 ;TXu 880-828 ;TXu 943-056 ;TXu 1-132-546 ; VAu  976-431 ;Txu 917-268;VAu 516-573 ;TXu 4-758-134;TXu 882-825 ; TXu 812-776 ; TX 4-757-446 ; TXu 783-898 ;TXu 661-901 ; TXu 651-631 ; TXu 4-170-185 ; TXu 51-532 ; TXu 1-320-519 ;Txu 1-335-898 ; TXu 1-336-454 ; TXu 1-340-354 ; Txu 1-161-168 ; TXu 777-588 ; Txu 1-301-085 ;Txu 1-224-536 ; TXu 611-443 ; TXu 613-552 ; Txu 651-530 ; TXu 651-531 ; TXU 661-902 ;  Txu 769-920 ; TXu 772-630 ;  TXu 783-564;  TXu 1-174-210 ; TXu 6-419-622 ; TXu 1-2966-398 ;TX 6-444-028 ; TXu 1-319-116 ; Txu 1-322-188 ; TXu 1-319-115 ; TXu 1-319-114.

384267 ;  390238 ;  390239 ;  390240 ;  377453 ;  377161 ;  377068 ;  348054 ;  446374 ;  348052 ;  377032 ;  355770 ;  390246 ;  421247 ; 421253 ;  390236 ;  356796 ;  389426 ;  348053 ;  545781.   

WGA-W 1410776 ;  WGA-W 1412056 ;  WGA-W 1410765 ;  WGA-W 1410777 ;  

WGA-W 1410775 ;  WGA-W 1410771 ;  WGA-W 1407282 ;  WGA-W 1408128 ;  

WGA-W 1410767 ;  WGA-W 1412059 ;  WGA-W 1408383 ;  WGA-W 1408291 ;  

WGA-W 1405084 ;  WGA-W 1688025.

All Cover and Interior Artwork was produced by, or belongs to the Art Collections of,  Richard Ward Custer.

ALL ART-RELATED RIGHTS ARE RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR  -  DO NOT DUPLICATE

Copyright, Patent and Writer's Guild of America Intellectual Property crimes are investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under U.S.C. Title 17 § Sections 501-508; and are punishable on a, with or without profit, and per-instance, basis involving up to Five [5] Year Incarceration Terms and $250,000.00 - $5,000,000.00 private and/or commercial Fines.

ALL RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES RELATING TO THIS PRODUCT ARE RESERVED  -  DO NOT DUPLICATE

-THE AGENDANEERS-

CHAPTER INDEX

Chapter One; The Treasure of the Third Reich

Chapter Two; The Pink Detective

Chapter Three; Tissueware

Chapter Four; Pretend to be awake, rather than asleep...

Chapter Five; Enduring Returns

Chapter Six; The Gold Team

Chapter Seven; The Prophesy of Pe’an-ram

Chapter Eight; Warm Springs Harbor Executive Bunker Complex:

Chapter Nine; C.G.C. Gold

Chapter Ten; The Shaper of Fates

Chapter Eleven; Pe’an-ram’s Prototype

Chapter Twelve; Interspect

Chapter Thirteen; The Receiving Line

Chapter Fourteen; Static

Chapter Fifteen; Our Lady of Plastique Explosives

Chapter Sixteen; L'opera Paradiso de Laurence

Chapter Seventeen; Hail Mary

Chapter Eighteen; The Press

Chapter Nineteen; Archangel

Chapter Twenty; Extraction

Chapter Twenty-One; The Immortal Soldier

Chapter Twenty-Two; Anti-Psychotic

Chapter Twenty-Three; Compartmented

Chapter Twenty-Four ;Happy

Chapter Twenty-Five; The Metropolis

Chapter Twenty-Six; The Cheap Assassin

Chapter Twenty-Seven; Dear Crappy

Chapter Twenty-Eight; Race with the Devil

-THE AGENDANEERS-

Chapter One

The Treasure of the Third Reich

NAME GAME

Art theft cases were amongst the most difficult of the criminal investigations that the American Bureau of Investigations accepted; -and in support of this assertion, these cases actually enjoyed the lowest overall closure rate in law enforcement- making this office the perfect department for the senior management of the Bureau to throw ambitious, energetic and mentally-sound agents at, given that the Art and Antiquities Office's principal beneficiaries were the wealthiest and most powerful members of corporate America; -or the most consequential of clients, when one's managerial responsibilities included the expansion of Congressional funding for your agency, and this fiduciary function had become contingent upon the actions of wealthy patrons and powerful Congressional supporters.

Not altogether surprisingly, the inefficacy of this dilemma had eventually become the modulus of an enterprise conspiracy; just as it had subsequently become the paradigmatic purpose of any fine young Special Agent's role, within the A.A.O., to enact the absolute, irrefutable and unequivocal, but legally sufficient, failure of the Bureau to recover missing artwork for the insurance industry; an industry that was, ultimately, insured by the U.S. Government...

-Perhaps explaining why Special Agent Robert Dooley, despite this, somewhat well-understood, predicament of the A.A.O., had realized that his well-honed capacity to convert on malaise, nepotism and bureaucracy without developing an easily diagnosed mental condition would swiftly become his, well-intentioned Superior’s, greatest asset; -a position paper that S.A. Dooley had been offered the opportunity to uphold the tenets of, when it had been explained to him that the Bureau's latest headache involved the opposition's sudden interest in the production of elephant story conspiracies that were, much to the Bureau management's surprise, now proving to be the source of excellent intel on unsolved crimes; -making the A.A.O. into a Bureau asset again, if only for purposes of using this new source of intel as the means of identifying where the Bureau's investigative processes were being compromised...

And while the Bureau might have been willing to sacrifice every one of the A.A.O.'s cases in furtherance of this whack-a-mole agenda, had their clients been paupers, the current clients of the Art and Antiquities Office, for unknown reasons,  actually wanted their missing artwork recovered very badly, rather than a large insurance settlement, on this occasion, -thereby creating something of a conundrum for the American Bureau of Investigations...

Accordingly, the Arts and Antiquities Office had officially dropped it's newest star; Special Agent Robert Dooley, into the meat-grinder known as the catalog department; -within which location, S.A. Dooley would likely spend the best years of his career indexing the endless stream of photographs that accompanied the hundreds of art-related criminal complaints filed at the Bureau each week, should this would-be rising star fail to identify one of the especially consequential conspiracies hidden within the art theft elephant stories that had begun to arrive on the A.A.O. Agent's desks, circumvent the pith, and earn the right to lead a real investigation for a wealthy and influential patron such that the Bureau's Management could hand-tailor their Congressional patron packages around the finding; -just as things had been done in the Middle Ages.

-But rising-star Dooley's disillusionment with his circumstances had been very-nearly complete after but a single day spent with the high-profile staplers and copy machines of this department; -making Agent Dooley's receipt of a high-order Supervisory advisement involving his having been elevated to the lead investigator slot of the new Bureau task force dedicated to the resolution of this matter quite a surprising bit of ambiguous fortuitousness.

Some minutes later, however, Special Agent Demerolle; Agent Dooley's Supervisor, had disclosed that Agent Dooley's rare bout of good fortune had been predicated upon the findings of several, even more recently appointed, Special Agents of the Arts and Antiquities Office, -a group of Agents that had somehow managed, and within a single day, no less, to establish a definitive connection between the missing artwork and the aristocracy of pre-1940's Europe; -or a matter which could be correlated with the art thefts perpetrated by the Third Reich in World War II, within the hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence that now represented the Bureau's elephant story cases.

-And in accordance with this transposition of authority roles within the titles that had now been assigned to the case's paperwork, S.A. Dooley's Supervisor had only expanded Lead Investigative Agent Dooley's options relating to the opportunity potentiated of his task force's findings, thereafter; -next suggesting that the Bureau's senior management was strongly considering a focus on the official agenda of Russian President Lysenko within this conspiracy, -the Bureau's Manager's having come to believe that the art theft ring might actually be President Lysenko's means of accumulating western currency for an economic struggle involving advanced technologies; -a feature of this purported agenda and the related matters that was only now beginning to mature, but that was thought to involve this western art-theft ring being run by both the Russian Crime Syndicates and the Founders of the OS Corporation...

Needless to say, Agent Dooley had made it a point to accept his Supervisor's contentious advisement at face value; -his having accepted some minutes earlier that, even if these allegations were being staged as the opportunistic features of what had, in just a day's time, become the Bureau's very-own elephant story, his travel allowance did not exclude tours of hell; -and he really was dying to see what types of mileage points became available when an Agent chose the underworld, as their destination.

Also surprising to Agent Dooley, within this fateful afternoon's many discussions, were the mysterious position papers being presented by the Agents that had been assigned to the A.A.O. just prior to the arrival of these pronouncements; the most Jewish of which, had suddenly held that S.A. Dooley would eventually come to realize that, both he and the American public at large, had been the victims of a massive right-wing media conspiracy to conceal the true extent of the wealth that the Third Reich had stolen from the European Royalty; -a position that had been justified with little more than several spurious comments involving the well-understood predicaments relating to the Russians having annexed the Third Reich's spoils of war as the Allies had overthrown Germany; and of this priceless artwork having only now re-surfaced in the accompaniment of a Russian crime syndicate, following the arrival of a new Russian Premier that would have to be a patron of elephant story espionage packages, following his years of service in the KGB.

S.A. Demerolle had duly considered Agent Dooley's carefully-worded concerns relating to the paradigm shift, but had only suggested the need to verify the source of the artwork and evidence linking the thefts to the Russian Gangs, following the arrival of the league of Bureau ass-kisser's; -making Agent Dooley's life considerably more complicated until the evidence had suddenly supported a very clear and conforming conclusion; -that involving the theory that Russian Gangs were, indeed, both selling the Third Reich's stolen artwork to corporate America's collectors and robbing the same collectors of what could only be called the Third Reich's war booty, to raise a bit of western currency; -a finding that might not have seemed capable of undermining the bureaucratic pitch of the Bureau's Senior Management, but that actually did uphold justice, as these findings, -which implicated the art collectors in a grossly immoral and willfully-criminal act, could certainly now be used within Bureau sting operation's focused upon the activities of the Russian mob such that these eminent corporate art collectors could avoid persecution and keep the artwork while the Bureau's Agents dodged the bullets that would have been flying at the collectors, if the Bureau didn't want to lose its Congressional Funding- a conclusion that maintained the status quo and also tended to explain why so little of this artwork was insured, given that, under these exclusively Bureau-generated circumstances, the art collectors could have their cake and pocket the insurance money, too.

S.A. Dooley had done some quick mental calculations upon reaching these conclusions; and had determined that, so long as the complainants stuck to their stories, the insurance companies would not have to pay a recovery pursuant to the Bureau having arrived at the conclusion that this artwork had actually been stolen from Holocaust victims; -suggesting that the next contemplation of the Bureau's management would involve a political intrigue focusing on the use of this coy conclusion against President Lysenko, rather than the art collectors, -or such that all matters would eventually be set to rights.

-And S.A. Dooley had dutifully rescinded about half of the dirty things that he'd said about the Bureau's management over the previous days; -Agent Dooley having realized, or rationalized, that this sort of predicament was the stuff of dreams for Bureau politicians- as they could be used to convert inaction and failure into the modulus of advancement for Bureau Agents that were willing to trade a moment of Dudley Do-Right styled incompetence for a lifetime of fickle accomplishments...

Unfortunately, S.A. Dooley would later come to understand that he had not actually been hand-chosen to play a foundational role in what might well have become one of the Bureau's premier decades-long politico-gates; -just as he'd eventually come to realize that if he hadn't accepted and validated the Bureau's absolutely correct assertions relating to the complexities involved within this crime spree at just that moment, the President and the American Public might have been in a position to better-avoid the endless stream of apocalyptic repercussions that would eventually become associated with these elephant stories...

In preliminary defense of Agent Dooley's actions, or on the other hand, none might have been faulted for having failed to immediately accept that someone willing to employ the use of a cover-name such as Jethbilly Marzipam could have been assigned to manage this mission of utmost intrigue by the most competent of the U.S. Government's authorities... -A surprising direction for the government to go in on this matter, without question.

Further; -or in a more direct form of defense, Agent Dooley had only involved the best of intentions when he'd endeavored to protect the Bureau, the insurance companies and the American public from any effort to elevate the involved artwork's value from that of 'garage sale bargain' to that supporting an expanded insurance claim; -a decision that Agent Dooley had made after he'd come to the conclusion that the unavoidably odorous argument involving this fine art theft ring actually being orchestrated by a Jewish crime syndicate determined to file U.S. Government-sponsored insurance claims against fictitious holocaust-related artwork, was the more likely conspiracy present.

-Making it somewhat understandable that Agent Dooley had, not unlike his many A.A.O. contemporaries, all but ignored the Bureau's preliminary theory regarding the involvements of the OS Corporation's Founders; -a theory that would eventually emerge as a global conspiracy to accumulate the collective wealth of much more than Jewish Crime Syndicates, not to mention a conspiracy that was meant to act as an eminence-front to President Lysenko, if one could go by the statement that would eventually be made in the Bureau's Official Congressional Report.

Of course none of this explained the unusual role of Jethbilly Marzipam in the equation; let alone absolved Agent Dooley of some need to repair the damage resultant of his effort to generate an oral history of the data present within the elephant stories being generated by the presumptive agendaneer within this art theft conspiracy for the third-string operators that Agent Demerolle had assembled to enact the first of the ill-fated Bureau's sting operations...

-And Agent Dooley had really made a mess of this briefing; his having felt compelled to attempt the use the Bureau's forensic software when generating the keying-feature dialogue of the would-be conspiracy and ignored the fact that there were no parametric filters for elephant stories within the Bureau's software, -leaving Special Agent Demerolle's, somewhat odd, operators considering a laundry list of brain-teaser key words and story elements involving hypothetical correlations between the agendas of the Third Reich, the Russians Federation and Corporate American Crime Syndicates, rather than the involvement of the same key words and theories in an OS Corporation-specific agenda in some way related to at least one Jewish Crime Syndicate and what Agent Dooley had somewhat callously called the 'Treasure of the Third Reich' while attempting to make a few political points with the parties that might be listening to this briefing on Pennsylvania Avenue...

The Bureau's egg-beater software programmers would later blame Agent Dooley for not inserting all of the data necessary for a proper analysis, -and the value that would eventually become associable with the Bureau's, especially exasperating, Confidential Informants, deponents and textatrix's had, in fact, not been entered by Agent Dooley. He'd slit the sheet and was about to soil the mattress, but had been incapable of seeing this, at the time.

Moreover, the repair of these circumstances had not been in the cards, as Agent Demerolle had been insistent about Agent Dooley departing for Texas later that afternoon in search of some different treasure; -in this instance, the treasure taking the form of Mr. Marzipam; -an individual whose situation had barely presented as being a prospective investigative avenue to the Bureau, initially, but that had since become the target of Bureau mandates, courtesy of Agent Demerolle's team's, now pressing, need for a solid lead on the crime syndicate's next caper such that the Bureau could introduce Agent Demerolle's operators into the crime syndicate's business activities.

As unfortunate, was the fact that Agent Dooley had not had an opportunity to review many of the less mainstream dossier's that Agent Demerolle had provided him with, prior to the briefing, -a dilemma that had become consequential when Agent Dooley had, therefrom, become aware of an independent Bureau operator's assertions relating to this elephant-story crime spree having actually been little more than an elaborate cover story for a long-term OS Corporation Program entitled 'Enduring Returns'; a secret project that involved identity theft and tax-evasion features useful to any member of a crime syndicate, apparently, -though this operator had generated little direct evidence in support of his assertions and allegations.

Moreover, Enduring Returns was only identified as an enterprise with ultra-dark intentions within a single Bureau dossier; and the testatrix was a former employee of the OS black hat community, -further coloring this dossier's, otherwise especially confusing, content with what might only be called an, oddly soft, yet powdery substance that some wiped on their buttocks, to Agent Dooley's way of seeing things...

-But the Bureau's management had remained of the opinion that the testatrix was credible; and Agent Dooley would soon come to understand why, even if the testatrix's theories made little sense and had never been shaped into anything other than a, form-expose, type of deposition since this character had generated an Indictment against the OS Corporation predicated upon the separate, but similar, information.

For example, the testatrix, 'Happy', believed that Raul; one of the OS Corporation's Founders, intended to employ the Enduring Returns concept as his funding mechanisms for something called The Metropolis Complex, -purportedly a black hat haven project that was actually being developed to eliminate every black-hat employee that the OS Corporation's had ever produced; to include Happy; -an attribution that Happy associated most directly with Raul's need to conclude his black hat community's penchant for terminal levels of extortion whenever they ran out of junk, just as the same conspiracy was meant to provide Raul with the means to enact a plan which would, according to Happy, convert the Earth's forthcoming Apocalypse and Armageddon struggle into a cover story for Raul's agglomeration of the Planet's wealth by way of the Enduring Returns enterprise- allegorically explaining the utility of the elephant stories, for Raul's plan having required the use of multiple layers of deceit and treachery as it's means of confusing the, otherwise antagonistic, target groups, within the alleged conspiracy.

Unfortunately, this had been where the information available of 'Happy'; the Bureau's mysterious operator, had become a bit more sketchy; -as Happy had felt compelled, thereafter, to focus his rants on the deteriorating inter-personal relationships of the OS Corporation's Founders and on something called the C.G.I.-R.A.M.-Cloud; -a theoretical device involving the consecutive use of two and three-dimensional photographic representations of the same location intermixed with more fantastical representations of fictional creations, -or a device with which Raul apparently intended to prosecute some original brand of warfare on his own employee's, even as this device was meant to be used in the concealment of Raul's true agenda; -an agenda that, by the end of Happy's colorful series of e-published diatribes on the subject, happened to involve Raul's creation of a private government run out of Mexico and the, as yet completely undocumented, 'Metropolis Complex'; -a planetary government that was, according to Happy, or not too surprisingly, intended to involve the same vested interests in the space economy that the Earth's premier Industrialist, Horace Lundstrom, was currently creating in China with the assistance of a Presidential hopeful by the name of Senator Hastings.

At the core of Happy's, terribly jaded, argument was the presence of a deeply-rooted grudge between Raul and Bailey Faith; -the Co-Founders of the OS Corporation, and their own black hat community- an argument which was well-supported by dark-sync rumors of Raul having been brutally sodomized pursuant to Bailey Faith having made an especially colorful comment about the Founders of the OS Corporation's competitors 'in the fruit aisle'; but which were, otherwise, only founded in several assertions relating to Happy's many years of faithful service within what was most often made reference to as the OS skunk werks; or the OS black hat community, with one notable exception; -Happy's reference to a Principal of the Enduring Returns Program referred to as 'The Exchequer'.

And, believe it or not, this was actually the point at which the Bureau's briefs had grown most overtly odd, as Agent Dooley had next read the Bureau's dossier on the mysterious Jethbilly Marzipam; who had quite an unusual record, if only a record that had, of necessity, been developed while Mr. Marzipam had been awaiting the arrival of one of his especially expensive attorneys and chatting-up the authorities following one of his innumerable arrests...

To wit, -or according to the, highly-paraphrased, transcripts of his most-recent red-flag day, Jethbilly had been 'converting funds from the mash sales and running lightning for some Cousins when the cry for arms and provisions had been sent up by the Canadians'. '-And knowing that war profiteering had been outlawed in the North, but not by the Canadians, his confederates and he had immediately bought up all of the canned food and boom sticks from the bunker generals of their region and headed to Canada'.

-And they had apparently found the traveling fairly easy, given the mass exodus that had just taken place, as Jethbilly's crew had made it through to the Saskatchewan bridge unscathed and eventually landed on the upper-Eastern Seaboard with all three of their trailers still intact and a large number of willing buyers awaiting their arrival; -despite Jethbilly, in some controvertible feature of his dissertation, having next asserted that some asshole's had leased a container ship in North Carolina and beaten them to the battle with a heap of products that they had cleaned out hundreds of thrift stores to accumulate...

-In Jethbilly's defense, however, he had then qualified this contradiction by explaining that 'the chiefs' of this North Carolina organization had run into some export trouble on the boom-stick front, -perhaps explaining why Jethbilly's team had found a willing market space for their big iron after they'd rallied with the Prison Division that was being assembled as a forward; or counter-insurgency, battalion of the new Canadian Front; -or what Jethbilly would later call the 'Yukon Line', -a, presumably prepositional, set of terms meant to uphold some argument which, upon further elaboration, was meant to inspire a reader to more-fully appreciate the fact that these junkies had been more than willing to trade out what remained of their government-issued Canadian script for the crates of ammunition and the repeating rifles that Jethbilly's crew had bulked-up on at the industrial garage sales of the South.

The most important thing that Agent Dooley had gleaned of this reading exercise was that these idiots were under the impression that they would eventually be unified; as if by a single, and new, government that was to be called the True World Order. -And this was only important to Agent Dooley as he had heard many references made to a World Order, but never the True World Order.

And the Bureau's analyst had felt it advisable, at this juncture, to explain that Jethbilly was, more probably than not, making reference to the C.G.I.-R.A.M.-Cloud technology within these statements; -a conclusion which tended to be supported of Jethbilly's access to several highly-placed and well-heeled attorneys that were particularly adept at extricating Jethbilly from public exhibitions; -perhaps suggesting that someone very important was paying attention to Jethbilly, and wanted to limit the damage that might be generated as a byproduct of Jethbilly's rants while in custody. -A sentiment that would be re-visited by other Bureau assets; albeit somewhat later in the dossier and in calendaring terms, with reference to the content of Jethbilly's voluminous statements having involved information that was deemed germane to the elephant stories that were only now appearing, despite Jethbilly's statements having been made years earlier.

In light of all this, Agent Dooley had only come to agree with the Bureau analyst that had reached the conclusion that the agendaneers of the elephant story conspiracy had gleaned their story's most-misleading and rhetorical of statements from recordings of Jethbilly's meandering tales; -but both Agent Dooley, and the analyst, were definitely holding the minority view on that matter, and Agent Dooley had forced himself to read a bit more about Mr. Marzipam before the plane had landed and his own investigation begun...

-Of this effort, Agent Dooley had come to realize that it had been just after Jethbilly had cleared his last trailer of weapons that he had met the Super-Max bastard that would later become renown as the vaunted Prison-Division's ‘Supreme Commander’; -a villain that had apparently only been interested in the Angel Dust and Mescaline that Jethbilly's crew had packed-in on their Iron horses.

And Jethbilly had been pleased to report that this was the only encounter with the Supreme Commander known to have ended, not with organ damage, but rather with the exchange of a 'special form of secret exploit that only a fellow war profiteer could appreciate'... -Of course the form that this exploit might have taken would never be known, as Jethbilly had experienced another of his moments of dysfunction and returned to the stage with other pressing matters in mind.

Fortunately, this story had begun with a good one-liner; namely:

"Never date a tattoo artist; -the ‘palliative’ surgical procedures that follow will cost you even more than the uniforms."

"In my case, I dated a girl that had re-named herself Orus Volth; and while she was a looker, she might have been a bit too dark of spirit, for a traveler such as myself."

"Her family was a bit odd as well, just in case you happen to meet her."

"-Well, it might be irresponsible not to tell you more..."

-And Jethbilly had just about begun the Third Chapter of this novel; which Agent Dooley might have entitled ‘The Break-up’, when his Attorney had suddenly arrived from New York just an hour after he'd been contacted by Jethbilly; allowing Jethbilly to process-out of the Houston Police Department several hours later.

More interesting than the story, however, was the assertion of the Bureau psychologist that had red-flagged this transcript; -an analyst that had insistently argued that Jethbilly, despite his use of an obvious alias, was probably a fairly intelligent monkey- as he had carefully staged this story in such a way that he could remain the inconsequential and dubious victim of a much more elaborate conspiracy involving everything from the Colonel’s secret recipe to the rum runners of the confederacy; none of which could be proven to exist, but all of which existed in the interrogatories of Happy, and several of the contemporary elephant story declarations.

As importantly, the analyst had argued that Jethbilly was likely doing this as part of some effort to get his transcript red-flagged for review by someone in the intelligence community that Jethbilly, either didn't know the identity of, or didn't want to expose; making Jethbilly intriguing, as leads went, for Jethbilly having likely been a highly-placed mole of some other concern within the criminal organization that was running the art-theft ring.

-And having several days available prior to the arrival of the analytical studies on Jethbilly from the D.C.-Security Agencies, Agent Dooley had spent much of the next week running down leads generated by the National ATM camera records database prior to, and following, Jethbilly's incident with the Houston Police Department; a search that had yielded several interesting results, -the first of which having been that Jethbilly had left the Country for Paraquay immediately after his release.

As interestingly, the FAA manifest accompanying this flight had identified that Jethbilly had been hitching a ride on a Timberland jet during his flight from prosecution.

-But old Jethbilly had kept to himself for some time, thereafter; his not having popped up on an Airport camera again for more than a year.

When he had re-appeared, however, Jethbilly had made quite a spectacle of himself; -staying in a Four-Star European hotel suite that had been rented by the Munson Company for the Lundstrom Astronautics Division on one occasion; then appearing in Hong Kong and Beijing, -where several noteworthy assassinations had taken place within a span of hours before, or after, his arrival on local commuter planes that kept no official records.

-And none of this had constituted the form of evidence that the Bureau was required to produce when pitching a case to a Judge. Indeed, if Agent Dooley failed to apprehend Mr. Marzipam in real-time and in the U.S., none might ever catch him; and he would, more-probably than not, never again surface in a Country that had ATM camera and Airport camera footage that foreign Governments could gain access to.

Fortunately, and just since Jethbilly's last visit to the U.S., many governments of the planet had installed an excellent set of wi-fi servers for purposes of uploading their video data to foreign governments over the internet- a database that Agent Dooley's young tech/apprentice at the Bureau had been able to access over the poorly-secured global router systems.

-And the oddest of things had been happening around Mr. Marzipam while on his journeys, according to the catalog of back-logged data from these systems...

For example, Jethbilly had apparently learned how to disappear from ferries while sightseeing, but had occasionally appeared in tourist photographs uploaded over the internet following these disappearances, -inspiring Agent Dooley to conduct a careful review of the personalities present during these excursions; photo-journeys that had, to a one, only produced useless trails of evidence courtesy of an inordinate number of unexplainable technical deficiencies when it came to the head counts on the passengers, and the less than satisfying results of their background checks.

Fortunately, these discrepancies were fairly consistent; always involving a ferry-load of passengers heading for a warm island with sandy beaches and none of the passengers being transported by, or staying in, any of the island's hotels; -making the fact that no less than fifty of the multi-national tourists tracked from the past year's photographs had subsequently gone missing for periods of up to a month before they re-surfaced, if they ever re-surfaced anywhere on the Earth again, the perfect grounds for a criminal investigation which one of the Bureau's Judges could understand.

Agent Dooley hadn't wanted to consider the more paranoid theories; such as those involving organ theft rings or tourists that had begun to disappear from this region of Asia as a crackdown on child molestation tour groups by the locals took place, -but the Judge had reached these conclusions with so modest a measure of melodramatic inspiration being supplied by Agent Dooley, that he and the Bureau tech had continued to research the matter.

-And a picture had slowly begun to form as these tourists had, following their visit to the island, all died and stopped paying taxes according to the U.S. Government's computer systems. -A conclusion that was made more unusual by virtue of the fact that the same people regularly reappeared as other people on the same computer systems if one cross-indexed the local police databases involving closed-circuit video feeds from fast food or retail outlets most often updated when armed robberies occurred; -one of the only types of governmental video record that happened to be processed within a State, rather than through National or Federal computer systems.  

-And it had, at first, seemed strange that both the foreign governments and local governments of the U.S. used roughly the same computer systems when disseminating data to their law enforcement officials, but Agent Dooley had been assured by the Bureau's tech that this was not a back-door into something like the Majestic networks; rather the work of a sloppy tech at some agency that had taken credit for organizing these ‘clever’ databases into a network around salary negotiation time and then, incidentally neglected, to file the appropriate forms related to the source of his excellent data as they built a fiefdom around this, seeming, magic trick.

Needless to say, Agent Dooley had, incidentally, forgotten to file a report on this when the same computer networking software had identified Jethbilly’s mug on a piece of footage collected by ICE-South, just two days earlier.

-And it was fortunate for Agent Dooley that Jethbilly had re-entered the U.S. via Mexico, as this had allowed for the use of a scrubber program involving the comparison of unfiltered and unprocessed Border Patrol footage with the small local business security camera footage that was occasionally uploaded to online data storage sites over both telephone and broadband lines; resultant of which effort was a finding that had eventually led Agent Dooley to El Paso and Corpus Christi, where he'd determined that Mr. Marzipam must be traveling and operating under an assumed name; -an act which constituted a Federal Offense.

In Corpus Christi, courtesy of their use of the same techniques on a much more localized basis, they had isolated Mr. Marzipam along a two square block area of the beach; -and but a few hours later, they had been able to monitor Jethbilly while the Assistant U.S. Attorney had petitioned for an arrest warrant under the ‘imminent threat’ provision of the local law enforcement community.

With the case having become Federal and Mr. Marzipam’s having been released into Agent Dooley's provisional custody for purposes of being escorted to a Bureau lock-up in another State, Agent Dooley and Mr. Marzipam would now be allowed to travel in Bureau vehicles indefinitely prior to his arrival at a Federal lock-up; -and this arrangement had facilitated a much better relationship between the new partners. -A fact that Agent Dooley had been taking great pleasure in the explanation of to Jethbilly; who was still successfully withholding his one true name from both Agent Dooley and the gods of the internet, despite the Bureau's tech having run his fingerprints against everything that existed in the U.S. Government's databases...

And Jethbilly had eventually begun to break down; making Agent Dooley's greater problem the fact that nothing exiting Jethbilly’s mouth could be called reliable or be verified; thereby validating Jethbilly's convincing portrayals of random belief systems,- such as the one involving the randomly- photographed tourists from the video footage having actually been members of a crime syndicate called ‘The League’, into a fairly clever and reliable tactic, given that it was all but a guarantee that the Bureau polygraphist would be having some difficulty identifying the proper reference standard for whatever narcotic Jethbilly was on.

As ironically, Agent Dooley's tech had almost immediately established that the one person who Jethbilly had been able to finger by name from within the video footage records was, indeed, directly associable with two art theft cases involving a Swiss Financier known to work with Russian Federation oil tycoons; resultant of which finding was the unusual conclusion that Jethbilly might not be lying intentionally.

Consequently, Agent Dooley had been forced to accept that it would be wise to bring Jethbilly along during his investigation of the Swiss Financier in Europe; Agent Dooley's hope having been that Jethbilly might eventually spot another person that he knew and that the case would begin to make some sense...

THE ALLEYS AND SEWERS OF STADT

It had never been easy to fabricate an excuse to travel in Europe for long periods of time at taxpayer expense within the Bureau, but agents of the Arts and Artifacts Department had the ability to do this freely- as one of their only perks involved the use of confiscated property, such as jets, on their many deep-cover assignments. -And S.A. Demerolle had managed to get Agent Dooley some extra buy money for this high-profile undercover assignment, as well...

And as serendipitous as this arrangement had seemingly been, was a seminal happening of Agent Dooley's first day in Stadt, when some research on the ever-more consequential list of names that Jethbilly had been developing under Agent Dooley's ever-more cogent, if borderline psychotic, examinations had generated a name of interest in the obituaries column of the local newspaper.

Less fortuitously, Jethbilly had been unwilling to participate in the subsequent field exercises following a bout of the fear relating to his withdrawal processes.

-And this had been when Agent Dooley had made both a major decision, and a major mistake- his having been in a hurry to view the decedent's property and only hesitated for a moment before chaining Jethbilly to the hotel room's thick metal curtain rod while he traveled to the villa that the decedent had been leasing in a taxi.

The taxi driver, as was not too unusual these days in Europe, had happened to be an immigrant from Lisbon or Madrid; -leaving Agent Dooley incapable of interpreting the nature of the many cellular telephone conversations that had occurred between unknown parties and the cab driver during this brief trip- and making the taxi driver's failure to understand Agent Dooley's command as he had directed the taxi driver to stop and let him out on the street seem somewhat less sinister even as they'd all but driven over the large group of Albanians assembling in the villa's driveway with an assortment of automatic weapons and pieces of uncrated artwork.

Consequently, Agent Dooley had said little to the cab driver as he'd endeavored to locate suitable cover in the garden space furthest from the gangsters; -his efforts to distract the Albanian gunman by flashing his Bureau credentials at the statuary having worked for a span of moments, but having become a bit passe as the bullets had begun to fly over the roof of the taxi towards the Albanian gunman from the four sedans that had since arrived and come to block the cab's path of egress.

Needless to say, responsive gunfire had immediately erupted from both behind and in front of Agent Dooley; suggesting only that the local Albanian gangsters might also have seen the obituary as an opportunity to investigate the unoccupied villa of a wealthy art collector, and that the cab driver, or his cronies, had also become aware of this opportunity during the commute.

Fortunately, Agent Dooley's highly-honed skills had suggested his use of the taxi as a decoy during this altercation; and before the last of the still-working gangster-mobiles had left the scene with the opposition group in full pursuit, Agent Dooley had managed to procure several fully-automatic weapons, a dead taxi driver in a still-idling taxi and access to the artwork in the villa's driveway; artwork which Agent Dooley had quickly loaded into the taxi before he took a thirty second look inside the villa and left the scene of the crime.

And there must have been dozens of ‘B-Brandts’; or the paintings of Mona Lisa’s retarded cousins that Agent Dooley had been researching scattered throughout the twenty square-foot grand entry of the villa, given that more than a few of the works that were now in Agent Dooley's possession were also on Agent Dooley's list of stolen artwork from the United States. -Making it an act of kindness to his brethren within the local law enforcement community, when Agent Dooley had chosen not to leave any evidence behind that might end up on the local police chief’s wall, given that this crime syndicate was now established as being responsible for having shown up at a new collector's villa within hours of the collector's mysterious death.

And having an unregistered Bureau jet available for unofficial heists on this assignment hadn't been a bad maneuver either, in retrospect; Agent Dooley having, of this arrangement, managed to evade both the Customs officials and the government's security agents during his daring evidence transfer to U.S. territory less than an hour later...

Accordingly, Agent Dooley had been disappointed, if not surprised, to find Jethbilly missing as he'd collected his luggage; -a lost opportunity that Agent's Demerolle and Dooley had spent a few moments discussing as they'd eyed their new collection of precious art and chatted-up their new-found opportunities involving these artifacts that they had agreed to call downright ugly, -even if some of the pieces might have been called ancient and strangely beautiful in an alien light; making it something of a surprise to Agent Dooley when S.A. Demerolle had concluded that Agent Dooley's first heist had presented them with a remarkable opportunity... - S.A. Demerolle having suggested that the Bureau have a high-stakes charity poker game at one of the bigger Casinos in Atlantic City and the use this, at least thrice-stolen, artwork as their newly-established charity’s prizes; an effort meant to take advantage of the high theoretical value of our art collection, the art's ever-more ambiguous legal status, and our ability to draw out a large percentage of the crime syndicate's, especially brazen, membership without exposing the Bureau's involvement if we staged the event on Halloween; which was but three days away, and convinced the Casino's owners to allow the use of, otherwise traditional, but facially-revealing, costumes on the casino floor during the event such that the crime syndicate's members would feel less conspicuous.

In Agent Demerolle's plan, we would take full advantage of the heavy casino security staff presence and the generic use of disguises to conceal our operators' presence; just as we would be using the blanket Federal Courts Orders that the Bureau always had in-place at the establishment casinos to collect the video footage of the event without exposing our operation to the legal processes that this type of attorney-rich crime syndicate tended to take advantage of... A set of practices that should remain practicably applicable until the U.S. Attorneys took over, so long as the leads that were developed were only investigated by the freelance operators like the one's that Agent Demerolle had assembled for use as our deep-cover team.

Having ultra-secure vaults and armed guards, Agent's Demerolle and Dooley had only agreed that the Casinos were the perfect choice for this high-profile sting, and the Agents had gotten to work on their plan immediately- Agent Dooley's first inclination, within this process, having been to re-brief the Agent Demerolle's operators on all of the new information that he had acquired.

-But S.A. Demerolle had insisted that Agent Dooley had not again brief the Bureau's cut-outs and civilian assets scheduled to be in play as floaters and spotters during the event; S.A. Demerolle having convincingly argued that this sting required no further contact with his assets, given that the Bureau would simply be following the subjects in search of stolen artwork following the event- and had, instead, argued that it would be most advantageous if Agent Dooley could find some means of managing the event such that he would have access to the casino's Public Announcement system and the communications-bridging equipment necessary to deal with emergencies; -forcing Agent Dooley into the role of a casino caller, -which would only undermine his and the operators' cover if Agent Dooley needed to manage any of the assets while standing in front of a group of poker players, or the use of a disguise and a clever cover that would not draw the attention of the poker players.

Consequently, Agent Dooley had been indoctrinated into the ranks of the UFOlogy Trust; the group that had rented the entirety of the casino's on-floor convention center for Halloween night.

And it had only taken a few quiet phone calls to secure this auspicious organization's guest M.C. slot during the UFOlogy Trust event, given that most of the ‘players’ in the ever-exciting field of UFOlogy were relative unknowns- an arrangement that had seemed fortunate to Agent Dooley, given that his anonymity would not raise any red flags or incite cancellations so long as he pitched a good UFO story to the drunks in the crowd.

Indeed, the event planners had needed to do little more than add Agent Dooley's nom du plume to the banquet room’s sign; a sign that had already been situated behind an enormous cascading fruit and vodka dispenser array, to establish Agent Dooley's cover story... -And we had assumed that nobody at the Casino would even notice the alteration, which had been a safe assumption; perhaps leading to several of the issues that had, thereafter, arisen...

-THE AGENDANEERS-

Chapter Two

The Pink Detective

Agent Barone’s Post-Assignment Deposition:

I had been hired by the Bureau for an assignment in Atlantic City on Hallow's Eve, -and I had been directed arrive in a believable disguise; so I'd gone as a drunk...

ASIDE: -Just a note, but the local children had actually paid for my cover story during the assignment, as they had been willing to trade allot of hard currency for the candy vouchers that the Casino was distributing to their patrons- and I'd collected thousands of dollars worth of these vouchers from a couple of the Casino's refuse bins on my way in, to more completely establish my cover...In any event, I didn't use the Bureau's script to buy any of my drinks; and I'd like you to put that in the record.

In any event, I had been listening to the Master of Ceremonies speech through the doors to the Casino’s convention center and had been laughing to myself as I'd picked out the best waste cans to pillage while some drunk named Dickey was transporting the coupons to my runners outside of the Casino- mostly because I still, even after my having been there for a couple of hours, simply couldn’t figure out what in the hell the convention's party-goers were celebrating…

"And at that particular moment; and I will never forget that moment, I was listening as the M.C. said something what sounded like-"

It is Prophesy Theory…

-And from the prophesies of Mussah ‘Daddy’ Saleem now being found on thousands of old Russian vodka bottles to the extraterrestrial Prophesies of Pe’an-ram and Ma’no’ah, this plot has thickened to the breaking point; allowing Magnetallure’s Moon Gate to direct humanity’s fate through the portals that define humanity’s future.

And this reality coalesces into a purist’s empire of temporal dynamism for humanity, as well; the only fateful tapestry awaiting exposure being that related to the spider woman’s prophetic web of consanguinity.

Indeed, Prophesy Theory is the most profound of humanity’s ancestral rights; but remains a path littered with misperception, ambiguous directives and barely perceptible, but intertwined, fates that humans may never understand without prophesy, as existence is reductive without some comprehension of the greater future that awaits those who explore God’s experiment.

-In any event, I knew that I was pretty drunk by the time that I'd run out of excuses for why I was digging through the garbage cans; and I'd avoided the tank by pretending that I recognized some cat that was talking to a bird who might have filled my game sheet’s requirement to employ the Casino’s surveillance cameras and document some of the party-goer's that were involved in the Russian plot.

"-And I'd chosen what was anything but an uncommon choice of techniques for me to use when sweeping a place like the Casino for new clients, to accomplish my goal-"

Unfortunately, this couple happened to be fairly unpleasant about my choice of introductory tactics…

ASIDE: "Decisions are an important concept in this approach- as one bad decision can cost you a kidney; and I have to admit that I probably made a pretty bad decision on this particularly dark evening. To begin with, it was loud in the Casino and everyone was in a disguise of one sort or another due to the nature of the event; -factors that made it more difficult for the police to use the surveillance video of the events that later transpired, in my defense... But anyway;

"I don’t usually get belted within a second of introducing myself to a prospective client, but these prospects were unusual, even as my clients go; -and might have been a little paranoid when I arrived in-costume. I had also, for the record, considered the fact that Halloween revelers are often on drugs and out for some action, as I'd spent the next few milliseconds wobbling in front of the mutt that had belted me."

"And I'd dutifully apologized to my prospective clients for my oversight; using this as my opportunity to properly introduce myself and explain that my name was Johann Angelo, -the Private dick that they had ‘contacted’."

Forgive me if I  may have been over-stepping my boundaries, but given the nature of the statements that the M.C. had been blaring at the crowd, it had somehow felt timely to project a sense of the surreal as I'd introduced myself…

"-And this sort of approach would have netted me a look of confusion that doubled as an excuse to leave without further ado on most nights; but not on this occasion- the mutt having, instead, given me a  'peer review' involving the brand of abject frustration and fear that only the guilty carry on their sleeves- precisely why I'd chosen to use this technique on them..."

So I'd only figured that I must have been getting better at this with age; as I had become certain that I already had a winner- and on my first try…

" 'So you’re ready to get this matter resolved,' I'd queried with the straightest face that I could conjure up through my ballooning lip."

And the prospects had realized immediately that with a contusion like this as my evidence of their intent, they had better do more than roll the dice.

" 'Who sent you,' the mutt had bellowed, with a low growl."

-And I'd realized that I couldn’t ask for their names now, so I'd explained that if we could have a conversation like adults and they bought me a drink to make up for the bruises, I might tell them...

"And my timing had been excellent- the bouncer having just finished his passage through the obstacle course to break up the fight at our table, -and my new client and I were able to dodge a bounce when I'd explained to the bouncer that I had, a bit too literally, stumbled into my friends; and that my client hadn’t recognized me through the scintillation-scope glasses of his clown costume, as I explained it to the bouncer. In reality, my new client wore no costume, but that had just improved the chances of this brand of humor working on the bouncer; and the bouncer had, in fact, not been as angry, as amused, by this response, -merely doing my job for me by making all three of us stand and pose for the cameras as he checked out our identifications."

"Which was how I had surreptitiously verified my clients’ identities without embarrassing them and picking up a felony for impersonating a Bureau spook…"  

-And the bouncer had even called us a waitress before I'd explained the new predicament to my clients; so all was going well.

" 'Now I could have ended this right then, Pince,' I'd explained to the bird- using her surname to assure her that we were not working on friendly terms, just yet."

"To the cat, I'd explained that 'Rodney-' the Casino owner’s given name, would not tolerate a second incident given the number of patrons in the house tonight; and that I now had both the evidence of the assault and photographs of the Pince and Thompkins gang on file in the most secure location available next to the Federal building, I'd laughingly explained."

"And Thompkins had nodded understandingly; placing a twenty on the table to pay for the three drinks that the waitress would soon be bringing for me, given that my prospective clients were no longer in the mood to drink..."

Now Pince was getting nervous at this point; quietly whispering to Thompkins that she needed to use the lieu in their suite and something else that I couldn’t quite decipher when viewed backwards and as a reflection off an ice cube that kept shifting in my scotch…

ASIDE: Lip reading was one of my best skills next to my insistence on carrying a sound amplification device that I had already wired into my digital tape recorder; in this case, a device that I’d bought at the pawn shop when recovering my accordion, that morning.

" 'Personally, I prefer using the flowers to renting a suite,' I'd explained; but I'd agreed that the suite was a nice touch- adding that I was feeling the need for a little tinkle myself before we resolved this matter, and that the privacy of a suite couldn't hurt."

-Duane had continued to ignore the incident with the photographs, however, -and was still under the impression that he had remained clandestine, -so he had declined my offer for their instant gratification on the resolution of the matter; instead requesting that Chloe be allowed to collect the goods- explaining that he wanted to employ the same securitization scheme that he had during their final transaction.

And Duane was literally growling as he'd said this- so I'd almost argued with him, before accepting his terms…

While Chloe was away, however, I'd had a little heart to heart with Roscoe-Joe

" 'So you cleaned the place out,'  I'd asked; -and in as matter-of-fact a manner as I could, given my, still- complete, lack of information to work with."

-And Roscoe had checked with his crotch before answering, but the glazed eyes and pale face that he was wearing when his gaze next met mine was a pretty good indicator that I hadn’t stumbled, just yet, -and I'd pressed on.

ASIDE: "Normally, I would not press a mark when everything was going so well, but I had that Italian blood in me that insisted on tempting fate; and it was all that I could do to control myself and take the path up the middle of the road when I, instead of speculating further, forced him to explain himself; hoping that Roscoe might find my being a friend of the, at that time unknown, victim a plausible explanation for my presence, and spill his guts until Chloe returned with my juice."

" 'Nobody has ever had it coming more,' Roscoe had assured me."

And I'd just nodded; working my drink as I'd kept my eyes trained solidly on his.

" 'She wasn’t clean, you know. The Senate changed her. She was never the Saint that the party paid the media to say she was, but her head had followed the rest of her down into the sewer since she was elected,' Duane had explained; much to my surprise."

And I was actually getting scared; my near-perfect entrance having backfired on me and my having actually managed to get myself added to the list of Roscoe's accessories to the murder of a Senator; -and on a federally-monitored Casino Surveillance feed that showed me providing Roscoe and Bonnie with a scapegoat in the employ of the federal government, no less; -a full-moon smile forming on my drunken lips, as I came to realize the true ramifications of just how badly I'd just messed this up…

"And I got it, too; -when Chloe returned with my juice, I would be looking at a Criminal Conspiracy rap with a 1st degree Murder back; and that would make it a hat-trick for me- no going home, if the feds were going to protect their unrelated case."

To make matters worse, it didn’t matter what I did now unless I could manage to slip away and use the truth to the Bureau's advantage- but I could see that Roscoe wasn’t the sort to drop loose ends; and that I had already backed him squarely into the corner- making a clean getaway a real long-shot...

ASIDE: If it had been me exiting the corner of the rink, I’d have hung the rap on me and used the camera and conversation that had ensued, given that the Casino was, likely as not, recording us with a directional microphone following the earlier skirmish, to pin the frame to a bruised lip, -so to speak.

" '-And she was always promising everyone a slice,' Roscoe had lamented- almost sardonically, to my ears."

And then I'd realized that this was what the Bureau needed... -After all, if Roscoe'd just kept confessing I could of turned the tables on him and gotten back to my actual assignment while the Bureau's lawyers cleaned up.

ASIDE: I knew that I had stuck my shoe into my mouth on this one; and that I was not a Federal agent; but rather a non-descript p.i. from Cincinnati acting as a Bureau floater that had been brought on board by the Bureau to keep a group of ‘gangsters’ from using the databases against the Bureau’s agents during a complicated Sting operation. But you'd be surprised at what kind of stuff I've picked up after spotting a guilty soul and playing the wise guy... - t.v.'s, Stereo's and this suit, for example. It really works; and it was the perfect way to get their mugs on film... It was just dumb luck that they'd offed a Senator for one of the poker boys and chosen the casino as the public location for their pay-off.

-But if I was going to learn to enjoy the taste of shoe, catching the crumbs responsible for the Murder of a Federal Senator as they made their escape in a crowded Casino under Federal surveillance might have gotten the Bureau to overlook my professional oversight and salvaged my account with them, right?

I admit that I was a bit flustered at this point; and that I was becoming distracted by the Casino’s many  auditory, olfactory and visual convolutions for longer than was acceptable, -making it worse when I'd suddenly realized that there were three of the casino's whales armed with Social Security checks clearing the aisle behind me as they made their way to the penny slot machines- and that their passage would likely squeeze the life out of me as they insistently forced my chair out of their way; such that they could pass in unison.

-And by the time that I'd recovered my breath, Roscoe was gone- most likely having made his way back through a row of slot machines toward the elevators and Chloe, as I saw the matter.

I'd mentally reviewed my situation and knew that I didn’t have anything to defend my innocence with yet- courtesy of the Casino’s pod of whales; thus making it imperative that I locate Bonnie and Clyde immediately and before they could re-group with weapons. The only problem was that I had no idea where they were or even if they were staying at the Casino’s Hotel...

"-And it'd been a long time since I’d gone trawling for a bathroom in a hotel’s upper floors- but I had absolutely no cards to play if I didn’t find the assassins and clear my name double-quick… -All I really had to work with now was the security staff’s elevated level of distraction during the high-occupancy Halloween event; and that wasn’t much, when one was facing the prospect of being the party responsible for throwing the Bureau’s showcase trial against the assassins of a sitting U.S. Senator while working undercover for the Bureau on a gangster sting."

But I'd tightened my belt and checked my watch; calculating that I had at least an hour before the high-stakes poker game began or the Casino’s security cameras nailed me to the cross for having failed to check in with the Bureau and conducted my own search for Roscoe and Chloe, should I fail to apprehend them- and it hadn't slipped my mind that this didn't leave me with much time to spare.

After all, I still didn't know who they'd killed; -and all that I could do was keep an eye on the casino's  television monitors as I searched for this answer, -but the body hadn’t washed up on the C-shores just yet, right...

Then it occurred to me that I might be the mark; or be the one getting set up- perhaps by the gangsters' confidence people or scam artists working for one of the Bureau’s targets…

"-And I'd quickly reviewed the dossier information stored in my head as I'd envisioned a Senator being tarped-up and dragged down forty