*************BOOK II************
**********THE DOTS START CONNECTING********
Chapter 37
Charlie Furbush’s Other Business
By Monday, November 22, the Rumpkins were in Sarasota, Florida.
Along the way they had an enjoyable, humorous stop in St. Mark’s on Florida’s panhandle (population 293) to visit another of Max’s Peace Corps friends. This time Carl, who for years now was the Park Ranger in charge of protecting the few remaining Black Panthers in existence.
Although it didn’t look like it on the map, it was a longways to Carl’s house. Making good speed on U.S. 98, the most southern U.S. highway, Max said, “This is it – turn right.” Now on Port Leon Drive, the going got slow. The road was built-up out of a swamp, a murky green dense swamp. You couldn’t see more than fifteen feet into the swamp through all the tangled mangrove trees. Finally, we got to Carl’s. He lived in a house on stilts, a house barely big enough for one person. No one else lived within miles.
We were there less than 5 minutes, when Rocky joked, “So this is the Everglades? Just you, the alligators, and some Black Panthers? Like being back in L.A.”
“Any Black Panthers really live around here?” Sally asked, not laughing at Rocky’s joke.
First pointing out to Rocky that the Everglades are in South Florida, and we were in “Spanish Florida,” Carl goes on, “There are only 26 known Black Panthers in the Northern Hemisphere, none in L.A.” He added he has names for the seven he knows.
“Ahhh, so these seven with names, like . . . ‘Gertrude’ I suppose, or maybe ‘Big Paw’ . . . Good chance we could meet them?” Rocky asked in a way intended to scare Sally.
“Well,” Carl said, “just yesterday I think I saw ‘Newt’ streak across the road right behind me – he’s my closest neighbor. Let’s take a drive into the fishing village of St. Marks, and maybe Newt’ll say ‘Hi.’”
“Is St. Marks on the way out of here? Then let’s go,” Sally said in a way that sounded more like ‘Let’s Get Out of Here!’ Sally added, turning serious, “What kind of fishing is there in St. Marks?”
“Bass, and if you like six–foot long armored fish,” Carl said, “then garpikes too.”
After a quick oyster lunch in St. Mark’s, and a Sally decision to skip fishing, we were back on the road to Sarasota, hoping to arrive around daybreak.
Meanwhile, Skip had gotten a call from Susie back in Boulder; said he’d call her back; and offered, once again, to drive the Rover and let Jack and Sally get some sleep in the Yacht.
Riding in the Rover, just Rocky and Skip, Rocky called Susie, who couldn’t wait to share what she had learned:
“Guess what you guys, when you hire Charlie you get more than a hunting guide – You get girls! That’s right, I sleuthed it out! First, I overheard some guys talking at the restaurant, wondering if Charlie was still laying low or back in business. They never said what this “other business” was, so I called Joey, hoping he’d clue me in, but he told me to back off or I could be the next person killed. Great! But I used some old-fashioned feminine charm on one of the restaurant’s old-timers and he told me Charlie runs a brothel, a whorehouse, out of the hunting lodge! That’s right – he’s pimping sex! So I called Joey back again to say I sure hope that isn’t why he knew Charlie, or why he had been out to the hunting lodge. He told me he wasn’t happy I couldn’t leave this Charlie Furbush thing alone, and then told me the whole story hoping that would convince me to back-off.
“He told me:
‘It’s worse than that, mom. Furbush is part of a human trafficking ring bringing young girls from Thailand through Vancouver and into Canada with fraudulent visas and promising them the good life here in the states. I don’t know what that guy Abdul had to do with anything, but some of Charlie’s friends are into the militia thing, you know The Proud Boys.’
Susie continued:
“Joey also told me one of the names he had been given to look up in Vancouver was another Muslim sounding name, like Abdul’s – the guy who got murdered.
“And there’s more, I know Joey well enough to know that he wouldn’t cross the line to be involved in that kind of thing, sex trafficking, but he did follow the Bundy stand-off deal and talked about how the federal government should butt out of local land use issues, so that fits with him being out to the hunting lodge – if that’s what those guys were up to.”
“Wowww!!!” Rocky shouted-out, “Amazing! Holy Shit! Really great work! What was the other Muslim name, did he tell you?”
“I asked, but he said, ‘Mom, I’ve told you enough. You’ve got to back-off.’ Then I remembered what you had said, so I told him, ‘I overheard talk at the restaurant that there were other people in danger, not me, others right here in Boulder, who knew too much – so we got to put a stop to all this before someone else gets killed.’
“Then Joey exclaimed, ‘Don’t be one of those, mom – drop it!’ But I said ‘Not on your life! I’m 66-years-old and I’m finally going to do something important with my life. Are you going to help me or not?’ That’s pretty much how we left it. So now what do I do?”
“Well, for starters,” Skip said, having heard everything on speaker phone, “we need to bring that human sex trafficking to a stop. How the heck have the local cops missed all that?”
“Oh, that’s another thing,” Susie said. “The word on the street is that our local sheriff is corrupt, and people have been asking me and Eloise to help them run somebody new in the next sheriff election. Do you think a Forward could ever be elected sheriff? I know we elected a county clerk and a county board member a couple weeks ago . . . “
“Oh Geez,” Rocky said. “Now we have another front – a friggin’ sheriff in on sex trafficking! Listen, we’re on our way to sunny Sarasota, Florida. You wanna buy a plane ticket and come down and see Huck some more?”
“Wish I could, but I don’t have the money. I’ll keep after Joey to get on board with helping me out. Let me know what you guys think,” Susie ended.
After they hung up, Rocky told Skip he was becoming convinced that there was a tie-in somehow between the jihadi hint of responsibility for the Dodgers Stadium bombing and the posse, now being called Proud Boys, in Boulder. “Remember back a few years ago when the Somali population in Minneapolis was being heavily recruited by the Islamic State? We need to find out if there is any sized Somali population in Vancouver.”
“So here’s a theory to ponder: We know Furbush is connected to Abdul some way – after all he allegedly shot him. We know Furbush is connected to Vancouver – he gave Joey some names to look up in Vancouver. Now we know Furbush and the mountain camp are connected to a sex-trafficking ring operating out of Vancouver. I think the next step maybe should be getting Max in on all this,” Skip suggested. “See if he can get his ex, Lisa, to tell us more about her brother Ken – and what Ken knows about Vancouver.”