Chapter 47
An Unholy Trinity
By the time we reached Skip’s sister’s place, the weather had changed – for the better, mild and sunny. “The Herbery” is in the Appalachian foothills between Staunton and Lexington, Virginia, a little west of Interstate 81. Skip’s sister, Jancis (“call me Jan”) showed us around – “that’s Jump Mountain over there. And just beyond that, White Sulphur Springs, where Sam Snead was the golf pro, and FDR used to sneak off to.” We admired Jan’s gardens, herbs and plants, stretching over 30 acres, and then took a walk down to the pond, with a creek flowing into it, and tiny cascading waterfalls coming down a series of rocky ledges, like steps. There, at a picnic table, we were greeted by Jan’s husband, Pete, with a cooler, ice, limes, and a bottle of gin.
“Skip says gin is the Rumpkins’ consensus favorite, but there’s beer and wine if you prefer. Glad you made it. Jan’s been showing me trip highlights – some close calls, ehh?”
Steve was glad to see Jan seemed perfectly healthy, but made a note to himself to press Skip again about why he seemed so anxious and preoccupied, not like Skip at all.
Patty asked Jancis (what a pretty name, she said), “Tell us some stories growing up with your brother – should I turn the camera on?”
“Oh, Skip’s such a good storyteller, I’m sure you’ve heard all this already,” Jan replied.
“No, tell more!” we all said.
So the afternoon was pleasantly spent learning the name of the family cat [Purry], the family dog [Leifka, Dutch for “My Love”], the time that Skip ran away from home for one night, and so on towards dusk.
Skip ended the time at the pond saying he was for calling it an early night, and told Jan and Pete we’d all be leaving the next day – which sort of surprised some, but not all, of us. Patty and Sally, still unaware of the dangers lurking, prevailed upon Skip to spend another day at his sister’s. “This is a fabulous place,” Sally said, and Patty followed with “Your sister and Pete are some of the nicest people we’ve met on this whole trip.” Huck said, “Yeah Skip, we’re only a day or two away from New York City, and I’ve got plenty of time to get up to Westport and get things set for New Years Eve.”
On Interstate 81 the following morning heading north towards Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Steve started telling us about this old girlfriend he had on the list. Patty whispered to Sally, “Can you believe all these old girlfriends these guys have? And Skip, still such an enigma. We sure didn’t get much out of his sister. I know he’s had girlfriends, even for months, but never a steady that I know of.”
“Don’t know if she’s in Harrisburg or Philadelphia this week,” Steve said, twitching his moustache, “but I just texted her. Go north and we’ll end up one place or the other. If it’s Harrisburg, that’s the State Capitol – where she works – and we should have time to scout out the local Yang Gang.”
When Skip didn’t jump in with “Great idea,” or something, and instead just let the remark pass, Steve made another mental note to get to the bottom of what was going on.
At the first rest stop, Rocky took Skip aside saying, “You and I have been friends a long time. I’ve been doing some soul searching. I can’t go along with you on this. Two things I need to know ASAP, like right now, or me and Max are out of the ‘1,000 percent thing.’ First, why did that bomb at Dodger Stadium go off where it did – and who was in on the planning? Second, what the heck is the plan for New York City – how is that going to be headed off? Max says Lisa doesn’t have a clue.”
“Well today is December 14 and we’ve got sixteen – seventeen days, before the shit hits the fan. I checked back with Susie and asked her if Dougherty and Furbush were still in town. She hadn’t seen either of them for several days. I asked her if there was any chance Joey could be part of the terrorist thing. ‘No,’ she told me. ‘Joey’s a thousand percent with us on this,’ her words, not mine. Apparently, Joey decided his mom was in too deep and told her just to lay low and he was going to figure the god-damn thing out for her.”
“Okay, then what’s the other fucking name? Joey knows it. Why hasn’t he coughed it up?”
“Good question. I’ll press Susie to get it. Give me just two days to get you some answers, then if you jump ship, we’re still buds and I don’t give a rip what Ken thinks of me for turning him in,” Skip said. “But maybe Lisa would prefer we at least try to save Ken’s ass first.”
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Turns out Steve’s ex-girlfriend, Phyllis, has an apartment in Harrisburg for when the legislature meets, but otherwise mostly lives in Philly, so Philadelphia is where we headed the Land Yacht. Nobody spoke on behalf of a detour through Harrisburg to do some Rumpkin organizing. In fact, no one was even talking about a next Rump Session. And Patty had been doing zero blogging. Weird, Steve thought.
Phyllis has been into local politics all her life, growing up in Germantown and eventually becoming an aide to a long-time state senator. She said she had the week off, but wasn’t sure where we could stay. Huck then convinced us to take up a collection so he could rent a car and go off to visit his musician buddies, the New Year’s Eve Party planners. “Besides, we’ll need a car getting around New York City – the Land Yacht will find most streets impassable.”
Patty found a place in Philly calling up a friend she knew from the youth conference she’d been to, and got Sally invited along. This left Steve, Skip, Rocky and Max to stay with Phyllis. Phyllis said she could handle four of us, “but park that Land Yacht as far from my house as you can.”
The next morning, Steve and Phyllis took off for the Rodin Museum, “the best museum in the world,” according to Phyllis, “because it’s small enough to see everything in half a day,” Skip, Rocky and Max had Phyllis’ place to themselves. It quickly became “amateur detective hour,” as Rocky put it, adding “We’ve also got to know more about the jihadi connection.”
We used Phyllis’ sophisticated phone system to get Lisa on the line with all three of us, and then the four of us placed a call to Ken, basically to put the screws to him: “Here are our questions. Either answers today, or tomorrow we’re not 100 percenters anymore.” All we got was his voice mail. Rather than twiddling our thumbs, we put a list together for the FBI of everything we knew – or didn’t know.
When Ken called back, Lisa played the good cop role: “Look Ken, I think I can keep Max, Skip and Rocky on board with your plan. But I agree with them it’s time to start planning your safe way out of this mess, and to hell with the others. So, what gives?”
Ken said he hadn’t slept much for the past three nights and appreciated our thinking of him first: “So yeah, I’ve been thinking about the same things, and told Gordy, ‘You may have been in the SLA, but I wasn’t, and I’m not joining now.’ Told him if he went to the cops now with my Sacramento lawyer buddy, probably he could work a deal to turn state’s evidence and be the hero.”
Ken continued: “But Gordy said, ‘We’ve got to save Jane’s ass as well – she’s been on the good side for a while now – Jane’s the one who made sure nobody got killed by the bomb going off at the Dodgers’ game. In fact, Gordy told me it was Jane who actually brought the bomb to Dodger Stadium.”
“Jesus,” Lisa said, “go on.”
Ken continued: “In fact, Gordy says he and Jane worked up that plan together – to just strike fear, not kill anybody, but he wanted to warn me off – just in case. At any rate, Jane plans to stay tight with Rafferty, aka Dougherty, right up to the moment she has all the details about the next planned attack, and then Gordy has the plan to get Jane somewhere safe, just when we expose the whole operation. Seems clear, Jane is looking at doing a stretch in prison for what she’s already done.”
“One more thing,” Ken said. “While Jane and Rafferty/Dougherty were doing some of their original scheming together, before any of the Syrians got involved, they started calling themselves ‘Jihadi Jamie and Jane,’ and came up with the genius idea to lay the blame for everything they did at the doorstep of the jihadis as a way to cover their own tracks. Then, and get this, the jihadis actually found them, and having checked into their backgrounds, figured them to be true revolutionaries against the American way of life. The birth of the Dodger stadium idea followed. Jane says it was more like the jihadis recruited them, to get them involved with their plots – and that’s when she started getting cold feet.”
“What a friggin’ unholy trinity,” Rocky said, “the SLA, the Proud Boys, and the Jihadis!”
“Don’t forget sex trafficking too,” Lisa said.
“This is front page all over the world,” Max said.
“We’ve got to get Steve involved, he’ll know the lawyer angle for Jane,” Skip said.