A little detour…
I’m taking you on a side trip from my usual politically oriented newsletter.
The working title of my new novel is SILVER SPRING. I’m posting the first chapter here to get feedback, critiques, and most of all the answer to the question, “Would you want to read Chapter Two?”
I’m looking forward to hearing from you before I send it to my agent in New York. I’ve never done this before, but what the hell. I think it’s called “crowdsourcing”?
Feel free to share it, like it, and subscribe. Here it is.
Silver Spring
Shocked, Leonard Watkins looked at the throwing knife sticking out of his navy blue Dockers just above the knee, completely ruining the crease. A drop of blood dripped into the cuff of his pant leg. His thick lensed, black framed glasses slid down his nose and almost fell off of his face. His heart raced, but his brain raced faster. He shouted, "Son of a…godda…mother freaking" in pain. Leonard pushed his glasses up with his index finger. He wasn't sure whether he should pull out the knife, or leave it there. In all of his thirty-seven years of life, he had never had a throwing knife sticking out of his leg. That wouldn't be an unusual statistic coming from someone who worked in Customer Service. Leonard Watkins didn't work in Customer Service. The fascination of looking at the spectacle could have gotten him killed.
Leonard squinted his eyes to look in front of him on the sidewalk about twenty yards at Theresa Hargrave. At dinner just a few moments before, the unconventional term, 'quirkily cute' came to mind. She was, at the moment, reaching under her conservative pleated flower patterned skirt that fell just two inches above her knee. Above her pink knee socks were about a dozen throwing knives strapped around her upper thigh. She drew up the sleeves of her pink cardigan sweater to give herself more ease of motion.
"Why are you trying to kill me?" He shouted towards Theresa Hargrave. Once again, he had to push his glasses up. She had told him that she worked for the FBI, but that didn't fit into a scenario where she had to kill him.
"Because I have to!" Theresa shouted back.
Well, evidently she did.
She looked a bit remorseful, as evidenced by her full blondish eyebrows furrowing, but it didn't slow her down from the task at hand. She pulled out another knife and got a bead on Leonard through her own thick lensed wire rimmed glasses. It was a case of the almost-blind killing the almost-blind. She pushed away her wavy, a bit frizzy, strawberry blonde locks from her face. Theresa didn't necessarily like killing, but she was very good at it, and her superior assured her there was no other alternative.
"But I thought you liked me!" He reached behind him to pull out the Glock 19 that was tucked inside his pants underneath his tweed sport coat. He was required to carry firearms at all times because of the nature of his position, but he had no idea that he would be using them on his date. Leonard fired the gun at Theresa, but he hit the mailbox. Goddam glasses. He pushed them back up his nose. Putting a bullet hole through a mailbox was probably a Federal offense, but he'd think about that later. He thought about the way she fumbled with her silverware at dinner making him believe that they were both unaccustomed to the whole dating procedure. If they weren't both in their thirties, their actions resembled a date between high school freshmen.
"I do like you!" She did like him. At dinner, she thought it endearing that his smile was self-deprecating and uneasy. Like a child who thought he got away with something. Like he wasn't sure whether or not smiling was acceptable on a first date.
People who were walking by on US-29 in Silver Spring, Maryland had sprinted into a run. Unfortunately, they were not coordinated in their direction of escape. They bumped into each other, some falling down, and as quickly as possible returning to their feet and trying a different direction. It looked like a bad video game. They had no idea that neither Leonard nor Theresa had any intention of harming any of them in any way. They were not quiet. Silver Spring was supposed to be quiet. Silver Spring, Maryland was a suburb of Washington, DC in the same vein that New Jersey was a suburb of New York City. The foot traffic were all looking at the two combatants. The pedestrians were trying to cover themselves with their arms, and looking for cover. A few had their cellphones out. A few were calling 911. A few were screaming, obligatorily. The rest, naturally, were recording the incident to post on Tik Tok or Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or all of them.
It began innocently enough. The couple had taken a short walk outside after dinner, and they were less than a block away from The Society Restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland. They both lived in Silver Spring, and agreed to meet at the restaurant. Ample parking on the street. Many store-front restaurants, and tree lined curbs were along US-29. It was a popular place. How could it not be? It's where The Big Greek Cafe was located.
Leonard had pointed over his shoulder upon exiting the restaurant with Theresa. "I'm this way." He pointed to where he had parked his car. He smiled. He had no idea why he smiled. Like being parked in a particular spot was somehow amusing. He loathed his lack of social skills.
Theresa pointed the other way, up the block. "I'm this way."
It was the awkward moment. The end of the date. Does he shake her hand? Does he give her a platonic hug? She solved the problem by giving him a soft kiss on the cheek. "I had a great time, Leonard."
"Me, too, Theresa." He had smiled, and gently squeezed her hand. She hadn't mentioned that they should do it again some time. Perhaps this was why.
Leonard knew what was next and he dove to the maroon colored cobblestone sidewalk in front of the Ethiopian Restaurant. Leonard was not a big fan of Greek food, or Ethiopian food, and he was glad they had chosen the bland, exquisite, American cuisine of The Society Restaurant. People who were walking along Georgia Avenue, adjacent to US-29, probably wished the couple had picked another location for their evening out. Like perhaps the Wild West in the 1890s. The knife stuck in a sidewalk tree behind him. It made more of a thud than a twang.
The trees along the border of the sidewalk were surrounded by patches of dirt, enclosed by wrought iron arcs to prevent the trees from escaping. People scurried into the alleyway between the Ethiopian Restaurant and the Pawn Shop. A man vowed to his wife never to argue with her again. While Leonard laid on the cobblestone, he pulled the knife out of his leg, which caused another painful shriek. It took a second, but the expected flow of blood appeared, ruining a perfectly good pair of Dockers. Faces appeared in the windows of the store-front restaurants to watch what had taken the term 'squabble' to a whole new level.
"Didn't you like dinner?" he shouted.
From the ground, he fired another round at his date. The sound of the gunshot made the faces in the windows disappear. He missed again, flattening the tire of a car parked at the curb. He mumbled to himself. "Twice? I missed twice? Am I trying to miss?" He pushed his glasses back up his nose. The whole thing didn't make sense to him. She hadn't mentioned anything about being weaponized at dinner. It would have been an interesting topic of conversation. It couldn't have been a spur of the moment decision. Leonard's mind raced to find an answer while still attempting to stay alive. Theresa had to have been hired by someone to kill him. The whole thing seemed so random. She showed no signs of being a psychopath during the course of the meal. On the contrary. She was bright. She was funny. She was a great listener. Where did it go South? It didn't make sense that she had an assignment to kill him. He certainly wasn't a threat to the FBI.
"I loved dinner! It was wonderful conversation!" She threw a Cold Steel Pro Balance at Leonard who was still lying on the sidewalk. Theresa liked that one because it didn't spin. She hated doing what she was doing to Leonard, but she was going to have to get over it. Theresa knew from her vast amount of training that looks were always deceiving. Her responsibility wasn't that of research. It was tactical viability. The sweetest most charming person could be the hired killer of a Columbian drug cartel. She had always prided herself as being a good judge of character. It was true that she wasn't the most experienced in the world of dating, but there was nothing about Leonard that flagged him in her instincts as being anything other than what he appeared to be at dinner. Her superiors had to be wrong about this one. Then again, they had never been wrong before. At least, not to her knowledge. If they were wrong, she bore no responsibility for their error. She carried out assignments. Hers was not to question why. She had not risen to her level of expertise by second guessing anything. The brain can rationalize anything. One doesn't become the master of her craft by rationalization. Second guessing, even by a millisecond, is what got her mother killed.
Leonard rolled on his side, narrowly escaping the thirteen inch blade. It skid on the bricks causing sparks. "Then stop throwing knives at me!"
"Then stop moving!"
"You stop moving!" One date, and already they were arguing.
They both heard the sirens. According to both of them, they had about three minutes before the police showed up, and neither of them wanted to spend the night in lockup until it was all sorted out.
Leonard reached into his argyle sock and pulled out a smaller caliber pistol. It wouldn't necessarily kill her, but it would stop her from throwing those goddam knives. He didn't have time to attach the elastic lanyard to his glasses to hold them on his face. He knew Theresa would be hurling another throwing knife at any second. Leonard fired errantly, missing her entirely. A small hole in the plate glass window appeared in the office building across the wide street. He winced. He would hear about that if he made it to the morning.
Leonard returned to his knees, which was a bad decision. Primarily, because his left leg which had had a knife sticking out of it screamed in pain. Secondarily, because he actually heard the knife whizz past his right ear before it stuck in the tree behind him, very close to the previous one that had been thrown. "That almost hit me in the head!" he screeched.
"You're the one with the bullets!"
"It's a .22. You won't even feel it!"
"Not that first one you fired!"
"Seriously? We're gonna argue about that?"
A black Cadillac Escalade, with dark tinted windows and Maryland license plates, screeched to a halt near the curb on US-29, right next to Theresa Hargrave. The back door flew open. She looked towards Leonard and shouted. "My Uber's here! I had a wonderful time. Call me!" She jumped into the getaway vehicle, the door slammed shut, and it sped away.
Leonard could see the flashing lights of the police cars getting closer. He didn't wait around, but he did pull the two knives out of the tree, collected the third knife from the sidewalk, and the one laying next to him that he pulled out of his leg, before hobbling quickly to his car which was three parked cars away. He hopped into his 2015 black Toyota Supra, and prepared to drive away as inconspicuously as possible.
It was a straight shot home going north on US 29 to his townhouse on Sandy Point Ct. A tad less than seven miles. Less than twenty minutes if he followed the speed limits, and he was sure he would follow the speed limits.
The first thing he said out loud as he turned the ignition on was, "That wasn't an Uber." If nothing else, Leonard was a master of deduction.
Through his rear view mirror, he saw the police cars stopping at where the action took place. About twenty people gathered around the officers offering a hundred variations as to what had occurred. People pointed in different directions depending on the account they were willing to swear by. He looked down at his pants. His pant leg was soaked with blood from the knee down. "A perfectly good pair of Dockers. Ruined." The crease, ruined. He had spent twenty minutes ironing the no-iron pants. He looked at the four throwing knives on the passenger seat next to him. Leonard spoke to no one in particular. "I don't go on many dates, but I can safely say that this was the worst first date. EVER."
The side street leading into Sandy Point Ct. was barely noticeable from US 29. You had to know where it was. He pulled up to his two story townhouse on Sandy Point Ct. It was a circle of small streets of townhouses that butted up next to each other. He found his designated numbered parking spot on the street right in front. All the parking spots were numbered. He limped into the house, leaving the knives under the seat of the car. He'd let Vince Callan in the office check them out in the morning. If there was an Enemy of the State who preferred a certain mode of destruction, Vince Callan was the encyclopedia of knowledge.
The house was dark, and he turned on the hallway light. His mother had gone to sleep. She didn't wait up for him, anymore. Leonard felt bad about having to wake her up, but if he didn't, he was sure he was going to bleed out and die. "Mom?" he called out. "I'm home."
"I know, Dear. I can see the light on downstairs." The voice came from the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. "How was your date? Was she nice?"
"Well," he scratched his head. He smoothed back his widow's peaked, and pre-maturely thinning dark hair, and adjusted his glasses. "Can you come down here for a minute?"
"Can't you come upstairs? I'm already in bed."
"Well, honestly? I'm getting a little woozy."
Eleanor Watkins appeared at the top of the stairs in her long blue terrycloth robe. It was tied at the waist, but she still held it closed with her hand. Before she looked at her son, she made the obligatory comment. "Have you been drinking, Leonard? You know you can't handle liquor. And you were driving." Her short, white, coiffed hair enhanced her crystal blue seventy-two year old eyes as they opened wide in shock at what she saw at the bottom of the stairs. "Leonard!"
Leonard looked up apologetically at his mother.
She pointed with her free hand. "You're getting blood all over my clean floor! You know how hard it is to get those stains out of hardwood. I'm not doing it, young man. You are cleaning that floor on your hands and knees before the morning." She shook her finger at him as she spoke. Leonard was in big trouble. It wasn't the first time he had been told not to bleed on the floor. It began in grade school when he was consistently bullied because of his small stature and poor eyesight. The kid on crutches got picked before him during recess.
"Could you maybe stitch me up? I don't know how much more blood I can afford to lose." He pushed his glasses up with his index finger.
Eleanor dropped her arm and put it on her hip. She made a 'tsk' sound. "I'll get my kit. Do I have to dig for a bullet?"
"No. It was a knife. Could you hurry?"
She paid no attention to her son. "Well, you've never been stabbed before. How did that happen?"
"Mom. Please?"
"I'll go get my kit." She disappeared momentarily into her bedroom, and reappeared seconds later holding a brown briefcase. She held onto the oak bannister and made her way down the stairs atop the dark red runner covering the wooden steps. She passed the old framed family pictures that lined the wall leading down the stairs. There were pictures as old as Eleanor and her late husband Henry's wedding photo which had already displayed the beginnings of Henry's male patterned baldness, and pictures of Eleanor and Henry and toddler Leonard, already with glasses, looking awkward and happy. In one of the pictures, Leonard's father was holding him, and Henry Watkins was prominently wearing a shoulder holster on his button down shirt. They all looked so happy. The patterned wallpaper behind the framed photographs was beginning to fade, and it looked like it should have been replaced. In the 1980s.
"Take off your pants, and sit on the welcome mat by the door. No sense in tracking blood all over the house."
Leonard did as he was told. He held out his pants. "What do I do with these?"
She sat on the floor in front of him, avoiding the small pool of blood. "Well, I don't think I'll wash them, Dear. I think you should throw them out." She smiled slightly at her only child.
He nodded obediently, and put the pants in a heap next to him on the mat. Leonard looked at his mother's face as she set about to get to work. They had been through this before. It seemed like his mother didn't age. He realized that she had filled out a bit, but her face still seemed youthful to him, and thankfully for Leonard, her hands were as steady as when she was an ER nurse before she had retired.
"Weren't you on a date tonight, Dear?" She opened the briefcase and shelves folded upward, tiered, on metal hinges with an assortment of drugs and medical stuff. She looked inside the case and lowered her half reading glasses. Eleanor took out a frosted plastic bottle of liquid and some gauze pads. She soaked the pads. "This is gonna hurt like a sonuvabitch, Leonard." She said it gently, but honestly. Eleanor proceeded to clean the wound, and Leonard bit on his knuckle. Tears came to his eyes.
"I was on a date, Mom," he said through his knuckle.
"And she did this to you?" She took out what appeared to be a needle and thread. "This is gonna hurt, too. I'm sorry." She began to stitch the wound.
Leonard couldn't suppress a gasp. He reached behind him and grabbed the edge of the welcome mat and held on tight. He would have gladly replaced the knife in his leg. It hurt less. "Yes!"
"Don't yell, Leonard. I'm just curious."
"I'm sorry, Mom. It's the pain. And yes, she did this to me."
"Did you say something to her she didn't like? You're usually very well mannered."
"No!" Every time his mother put the needle through his flesh, it was a brand new flash of pain. "Don't you have novocaine in there?"
"If I had it, I would have used it. I don't enjoy hurting my son. I haven't had time to restock. And since I retired from nursing, keeping my supplies updated has become more of a chore. Did she stab you in the restaurant?"
Leonard shook his head from side to side. "We were outside. She used throwing knives."
Eleanor's eyebrows arched. "Throwing knives. So impersonal for someone who uses knives. I never understood the concept of throwing knives. Usually, when someone gets stabbed it's up close and personal. I remember one time when your father was stabbed. He was nose to nose with the poor soul, and your father had a gun to his head. It didn't end well for the other gentleman, but I was the one who had to clean up the mess. He had a shifty name, like Rocco, or Lefty, or Paul or something like that. It seems so long ago, now."
"She said she liked me!"
Eleanor was finishing up. She sat up straighter to admire her work. She smiled slightly. Another job well done. Eleanor was an expert at that kind of thing. She had done it so many times, both professionally in the hospital and at home for both husband and son. "I think she does like you, Leonard." She looked at her son. Leonard's brown eyes came from his dad. Eleanor's eyes were an azure blue. She was hot in her day. Henry Watkins lucked out. She proceeded to wrap up the mended wound.
"How do you know that?"
"Because she sounds like a professional. My guess is that if she didn't like you, you'd be dead. You didn't shoot her, did you?" She finished taping the bandage securely around his leg and she looked at her son. Concerned.
"I shot at her."
Eleanor smiled. "You didn't come close. Did you?"
"My glasses kept sliding down."
Leonard's mom smirked. "And you didn't attach your elastic glasses lanyard?"
"I didn't have time."
"Mmhmm." Mrs. Watkins couldn't hold back a smile. "You like her, too. What's her name?"
"Theresa. Theresa Hargrave."
"I wonder if she's any relation to a Margaret Hargrave. Your father worked with a Margaret Hargrave when…well, you remember when. I remember it was a combined FBI, CIA operation."
"We had a real nice time before she tried to kill me."
"But she didn't kill you. And you didn't kill her. I'd say that's a good sign. It's nothing Erich Segal would write about, but it's a start." She gently patted her son's leg. She pointed at the pool of blood on the hardwood floor. "Clean this up before it coagulates. If you wait until morning, it'll take you all day, and the ammonia makes the house smell like a nursing home, and it'll stain the wood. There's a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen cabinet. For your pain. Not for the cleaning. The cleaning supplies are in the laundry room. Try not to use the ammonia. She seems nice. I can't wait to meet her. Call her. She likes you, Leonard."
"She tried to kill me, Mom."
"Probably a misunderstanding. Inter-agency communication has been appalling since before your father. Then they thought creating Homeland Security would tie things together. No one ever believed that. You'll talk about it on your next date." Eleanor slowly rose to her feet to make her way back up the stairs with her briefcase.
"How do you know she works for an agency?"
"Because a black van didn't pull up next to you with machine guns blazing. My guess is some association of the FBI. Especially if she's Margaret Hargrave's daughter. You'll let me know if I'm right after your next date."
Leonard talked to his mother's back. He was still sitting on the floor. "You think there's gonna be a next date?"
Mrs. Watkins smiled, but her head was turned away from her son. "She didn't kill you. You didn't kill her. That's so sweet. Of course, there's going to be a next date."