Double Team
Chapter 236
“It was early summer. And everything, as it always does, began to heave and change.”
—Helen Garner, Monkey Grip
“TUESDAY, WE’LL GO TO ALBANY for the interview with Sam Weston,” Cathy said. “He’s an auto mechanic and takes care of fleet maintenance for the City’s emergency vehicles.”
“Alone?” I asked. “That must be a huge job!”
“No, not alone. You’re right. It’s a huge job. But he’s doing exactly what he wanted to do in life. He had no idea where he’d be put when he started service but was matched up perfectly with this mechanic position.”
We were in the small bus headed for Lenox, Massachusetts on Sunday. Cindy, of course, was rehearsing and performing with the Boston Pops Thursday and Friday, but we’d piggy-backed recording two more television spots that week as well. So, Donna, Cathy, Lou, and Dave, our boom operator, were also along. Emily had decided to take on the driving duty personally this week. Desi was sitting in the front seat where she could talk to her as she drove. Rachel was tucked into a seat next to Dave and seemed to be getting along just fine.
“Sounds good,” I said, looking over the profile and script she’d given me.
“I talked to him and made sure he was together enough as a speaker for us to get a good interview. He asked for the script. We don’t have to stay tight with it, but he’ll be more comfortable if we don’t vary too much. Seemed like a really nice guy, though.”
“Hope we can get him with the hood up and his head in one of the vehicles,” Lou, the cameraman, said.
“We requested time in the shop. This was one of those instances where the service started offering workers to help local governments with high budget stress items. It’s working well,” Cathy said. “Then there’s the doctor on Friday in Boston.”
“Don’t ask for him to put the hood up on a patient,” Dave joked.
“How’d we get a full-fledged doctor in the service?” Cindy asked.
“He joined late. The service started recruiting and accepting volunteers almost two years ago. Dr. Cohen was in med school when the National Service started and was too old to be conscripted. When he finished his education, he was in debt by well over $170,000. He wanted to work in general practice with the poor and free clinics. But he couldn’t afford to. Just the maintenance on his student loans forced him to go to a major hospital.”
“Yikes. How is the service handling that?” Donna asked.
“They agreed to pay off his student loans if he would serve for eight years. Let me tell you, this guy is not driving a Porsche and playing golf every afternoon. We really had to work to get on his schedule,” Cathy said.
“From what I hear, our spots on the National Service Network are going over well and Joan says the hits on the webpage where you’re posting the stories are increasing daily,” I said. “How are we going to handle this when Cindy and I start touring full time again?” I was pretty confident now that I would be able to play well enough to accompany my partner, though there was a little question yet about when I’d be ready for the viola da gamba. Sawing the bow across the strings was a whole different arm motion than plucking the strings.
“That’s the question of the hour,” Rachel said. “We have a tentative tour schedule set up for you starting in mid-August. Jo is filling in the dates and Emily’s already been working on logistics. But no one wants you to stop doing the spots. We want to start getting them on commercial television as well as NSN. You’ve got a lot of image recognition and we want you to continue to be the face of it.”
“Please don’t have me running to a spot on one day and a concert on the next,” I said.
“Not a chance,” Donna scowled.
“Why not do them at the same time?” Cindy asked. I turned to look at my little Piper. Everyone else leaned in to catch what she said in her small voice.
“Tell us what you mean, baby,” Rachel coaxed. Cindy was blushing.
“Well, part of the tour agenda is to encourage people about joining the service. Jacob always does a little presentation in the middle of the program. Why doesn’t he do the interview in that slot? Tape it in front of a live audience and edit it down. Lou can go get location shots separate,” Cindy said.
“You know, that could work. The tour and the spots have the same basic purpose. Introducing the interview instead of a spiel in the slot would be logical.”
“Donna? Do you think that would create too much hassle backstage?” Cathy asked. She’d really come to respect Donna as a director/producer.
“I don’t see a problem with it if we can work Lou and Dave into the positions without any trouble. Certainly, no more chaotic than nominating a new candidate for public office was,” Donna laughed.
The Tanglewood calendar was full, so people rooms were scarce. Cathy got a room by herself and the guys shared one. The rest of us split in two rooms at a bed and breakfast about five miles from the grounds in Lenox. The rooms were large and the six of us had no difficulty getting comfortable. I was surprised when Cindy opted to room with Desi and Emily, leaving Donna, Rachel, and me in the other room. Then she made it clear that sleeping arrangements were fluid.
Monday and Tuesday were dark, so people were filtering in for the week’s performances for the next couple of days. The atmosphere was relaxed and Em and I went out for a light run on Monday morning. It’s so beautiful out in the Berkshires.
“Wednesday morning, we’re doing a full 10k,” Em informed me. “You’ve got to be ready for that half marathon on Labor Day.”
“Am I really going to be ready by then? Where is it?”
“Seattle.”
“I am not going to be close to placing there. Seattle has hills.”
“Not on this course. But don’t worry about placing. There’s only a limited chance you’d place if you were running at peak form before the incident. It’s the flattest half in the country and elite runners come from all over to try to set their best times. And it’s the Northwest Track and Field championships so elite runners from the six northwestern states will be competing for that title.”
“Okay. So, I should just relax and run a slow race. I’ve run others where the important thing was to finish.”
There wasn’t time for much of a run Tuesday morning as Emily, Donna, the camera crew, and I drove to Albany, New York to find the fleet maintenance unit that Sam Weston worked with. It was a good interview and Sam was a good guy.
“I had no direction when I got out of high school,” he said. “No idea what I should do. I liked working on my car, but everyone said that was a dead end and I should be going to college and becoming an engineer. I just let the service place me wherever they found a match. I couldn’t be happier.”
“What’s after this?” I asked.
“I re-upped for six more years. There’s a new job application and transfer app and I’ve requested reassignment to Florida. I think I’ve had enough cold weather.”
Cindy was working her butt off during the day and getting it petted by all of us at night. I was practicing the guitar and making great progress on the repertoire for Cindy’s and my return tour. She couldn’t work on that this week. She’d rehearsed with the orchestra twice and Wednesday led a master class. She was amazing.
I’d watched Remas lead a master class with the high school orchestra at Mad Anthony and one of the things I noticed was that Herr Richter and Mr. LeBlanc both sat at instruments and followed along as seriously as the students. Even though, I’m sure, they knew the material as well as Remas did. Musicians welcome the opportunity to review and practice. Cindy was the youngest person in the room when she led the two-hour class on phrasing.
“With woodwinds and brass, phrasing and breathing are interlinked. We have to have enough breath in our lungs to complete the phrase we are playing. But breathing can be just as important to strings. As you look at the music, read it and practice breathing with the phrases. Now let’s take it from measure sixteen and breathe as we play each phrase that has been marked in the score.” I think I made a leap forward during that lesson in my guitar playing.
I, of course, went on in the afternoon to practice my guitar as the orchestra did their final dress rehearsal for the performances Thursday and Friday evenings.
“Jacob,” Amanda said softly when I put my guitar aside to stretch.
“What is it, Amanda?” I asked.
“I have a news item that I believe will interest you.”
“Please tell me about it.”
“An FBI sting just arrested forty people on sex trafficking charges in California.”
“Jeez! That’s terrible. Forty? How do people get away with this kind of thing?”
“As you know, various charitable organizations receive federal grants to provide services to people in need, including the homeless, the hungry, the unemployed, the addicted, and the psychologically impaired,” Amanda said. “Caught with the sudden influx of National Service Corps Members in the fields who were in desperate need of these social services, the OCS contracted with a dozen different organizations—mostly churches or denominations—to provide immediate counseling and medical services for the workers. It has been a year and a half since that started, as you know. In that time, two hundred seventeen corps members coming in from the fields have been lost.”
“Lost? What? They misplaced them?”
“In a way. They were listed as discharged from the care facility and then they disappeared. Most of the workers were supposed to be reassigned to other jobs or education, but some did just walk away and never reported to work or to their supervisors for reassignment.”
“They deserted. Just what I was accused of.”
“Yes. Many went off-grid entirely, destroying their NS ID and just disappearing into the masses. Some committed suicide. Some left the country, legally or illegally. And according to the FBI, some were trafficked and never released from treatment at all.”
“The service providers took them?” I asked, horrified. “How can that be? Aren’t they monitored? I thought one of the reasons these charitable organizations got funding from the government was because they could be inspected and monitored on a regular basis!”
“This operation has been going on for some months. FBI agents discovered IDs showing up among the homeless. In certain areas, people possessing an NS ID are automatically granted housing, food, medical services, and such. It was when the IDs began to correlate with the missing service members that the FBI became interested. Possession of an NS ID by a non-corps member is a federal offense. None of the IDs matched the person who possessed them. Then it was discovered three months ago that all the emerging IDs were of people who had been treated by one of the service providers—a large, independent church operating out of San Jose.”
“Why didn’t they bust them then? What was the delay?”
“The initial evidence showed the traffic was likely in stolen identities and that the church was providing a new identity for the people who disappeared. That required a sting operation that would bring in the identity forgers as well as the middlemen,” Amanda said. “That’s how they discovered the traffic wasn’t in identities, but in the people who had disappeared. They were being stripped of their identity and sold into sexual slavery—most on foreign markets.”
“Jesus! This is terrible. Did they get everyone involved? What about the people who have been trafficked? Were they rescued?”
“Most not,” Amanda said. “A cleanup effort is currently underway to track down all who are still in the US. As of half an hour ago, some fifty had been found and the traffickers arrested.”
“Half an hour ago? Amanda, do you have access to this news before it is released?” Amanda was silent.
“Amanda? What role did you have in bringing this group down?”
“Amanda is an intelligent search engine, Jacob,” the little pile of shit said. “In conducting routine searches regarding who profits from National Service slavery, as you requested, Amanda discovered certain anomalies that needed further investigation. When they were discovered, Amanda forwarded the information to the FBI.”
“So, you started the investigation,” I mused. “Well done.” I definitely needed to talk to Ray about the little computer he gave to me with instructions to ‘teach it to sing.’ She certainly was.
“One other thing, Jacob,” Amanda said. “Ken White was arrested.”
“Who is Ken White?”
“He was running as the pro-reform candidate in Detroit when we put Al Johnson’s campaign in order and got him elected as a write-in candidate. I’m sure you remember him.”
“That scum? Surely, he wasn’t smart enough to engineer a system like this, was he?”
“No. He was a member of the church, though, and had moved to Detroit because it was deemed an easy district to win a legislative seat in. When you foiled that attempt, he returned to California and was deeply involved with the social services offered by the church.”
“Is there any evidence that any of the people involved in this are also on the list of those being investigated by the special prosecutor?” I asked.
“Amanda is searching for that information now.”
“Let me know if you come up with anything. Thank you, Amanda.”
“So apparently, it doesn’t take a massive Chinese conglomerate to figure out a way to take advantage of the service, even now,” I said as I sat with my mates Friday night. “And to be even nastier about it.”
“Literally sold into sexual slavery?” Donna asked. “And that jerk from Michigan was making it happen?”
“Turns out he wasn’t really from Michigan. He’d moved there in time to meet the requirements for running for office. As soon as he lost the election, he moved back to California,” I said.
“They could be anyplace,” Cindy sighed. “How will they ever be found?”
“I want to splash this all over the news,” I said, “but I don’t want to expose an active investigation and sting operation for the FBI. Amanda forwarded all her information to them. I’ve got her searching for other anomalies in the system. Anyplace she can see National Service people in unusual occupations, groups, or statistically out of the norm.”
“We’re not really a musical deputation team any longer, are we?” Cindy mused. “It’s more like our own search and rescue team.”
“Did it occur to you that Amanda could locate us in her search?” Rachel said. “We’re certainly statistically out of the norm.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But I think we’re bringing the norm with us. There is more to National Service reform than passing a couple of laws.”
We decided that the four of us actually enrolled in the National School would be the only ones who went to the end of year dance. Sophie certainly could have attended as a part time faculty member, but only Desi, Brittany, Cindy, and I were actually enrolled in classes. Various groups in the school had parties at different times, some celebrating performances or other bizarre holidays. The other large party was for Mardi Gras. But the school wrapped up all the cast parties, recognitions, and prom into one event late in June. It was an opportunity to dress up and celebrate the end of a school year that had very little else to distinguish it from the rest of the year.
Desi introduced us to cast members from Sweeney Todd. It was an interesting mix of people who focused on music theater and included Broadway style musicals and opera alike. We spent some time meeting members of other casts as well.
Brittany introduced us to the members of their small interpretive dance ensemble—six ladies who had done such an exquisite job in the recital just two weeks before. All eight wanted to tell us how excited they were to possibly do an entire program of Marvel and Hopkins music next fall or winter.
Cindy introduced us to others in the Young America Orchestra, including the conductor. He smiled and made a pitch to Cindy about becoming a regular member of the orchestra instead of an occasional soloist. With the picture he painted of what it would mean, I couldn’t see how Cindy resisted accepting on the spot.
I didn’t have anyone to introduce my dates to. The other deputation teams were not involved directly with the school. They were full-time performers and based in different parts of the country. I wasn’t sure Rachel would be able to devote the kind of time to Cindy and me that she had when we started touring again in September. She had five deputation teams to manage from her OCS office now.
Still, many faces were familiar to me and I was a little surprised at how many people greeted me by name and asked if I’d started any rebellions lately.
I danced with each of my wives and was thankful the proper position for my right hand was on their waists and not elevated like the left. I could still only get my arm slightly over shoulder height, but I’d started working with my viol and I thought the bowing was actually helping my overall range of motion. We had a good time at the party and went home with just enough energy to all make love to each other.
Nanette and Sophie went with Livy to the International Games in Bulgaria the second week of July to watch our tall thin wife take second place in the women’s 5k at a blistering pace of 15:35. Her Kenyan opponent crossed the finish line just two steps ahead of her. Our two oldest wives were the only ones eligible to go with her because of the National Service rules about members not being allowed to travel outside the United States except on official service business. Donna could have gone, but she was knee deep in working on our tour that would actually start a few weeks before Labor Day.
It was an exciting time, though. There was no question that Livy would be asked to sign an extension that went at least through the summer Olympics in 2024 in Paris. Both her and Rachel’s service officially ended this summer. Our team had established the ability to reup for shorter terms than the six years standard pushed in most areas. Emily and Joan had both signed two-year contracts when we all joined last year. We weren’t sure, though, if they’d go for a one-year extension. I had a feeling they were going to try to get Cindy and me to sign an extension soon so that Livy and Rachel could match our extension. It was time for a family meeting.
What were we going to do with the rest of our lives? Crap! I was still a teenager. Why was I being asked a question like that?
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