The Childe Gordon Report
By Chris Daly
1. Preliminary Report, with notes and “eyes-only” material, including recovered communications, from the days prior to the incident which has come to the attention of so many, submitted by Sr. Volunteer Patrol Officer Childe Gordon, BS Criminal Justice Theory, BA English Lit, Bonito Beach PD.
Journal entry, previous month: the precise position / location of potential person of interest is seated on the curb between parked vehicles, east end of Old Electric Avenue, north side, by the row of new “skinnies,” or on curb next block west in front of the somewhat older “townhouse” building, comprised of rental skinnies, stacked in a pile at angles.
Profile of the PPOI: female in her twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, good muscle tone, good face across which flickers a variety of subtle millennial collegiate-level expressions when emotionally engaged in communication activity.
Individual typically arrives later in the daylight hour timeframe in a modest, clean compact with state school sticker in the window, exits vehicle ready or partly ready to exercise, assumes position on curb, lights a cigarette and indulges in a period of texting, after which she/they adjourns to the winding strip of median grass on Old Electric Avenue for an admittedly unobtrusively positioned workout consisting primarily of “on the-ground” “isolation” elements. This activity may or may not be followed by another cigarette on the curb before heading off at a moderate, determined trot to the naval station fence where the small tree has the sign reading Skeeter Johnson, loving husband, father, and friend, 1960 – 1991, “Good times then,” (possible dead POI), and disappearing to the right onto the walkway, east end of the strand. Has sometimes been observed returning more or less at dusk and hitting the curb again before entering vehicle and exiting city limits, proceeding inconspicuously in the direction of inner Orange County.
2. Following recorded information obtained by use of “Sub-rosa” (under a certain rose bush) technology, and concerns potential intellectuals of interest, one of whom resides in the front upper unit of the somewhat confusing townhouse; weed-smokers. – C Gordon, BS, BA, SBPD
“In skinny real estate, all functional areas are pushed to one side of the rectangle, mimicking the old railroad flats; my kitchen is like a passageway in a sleeper car, my bathroom is divided into consecutive sections, and the interior stairs are worshiped like a god. From the outside there is a certain grandeur, the three balconies, the partly angled roof with vertical skylight panels, you can’t even figure out the shape of this building; so why is it so annoying to live here?”
“It’s the Le Corbusier principle. He’s the French architect who undertook to rethink living space. The first thing he did was lower the ceiling to seven feet, and after that it was a foot here, a foot there. From the outside his medium-size building was a modern classic with a touch of something else. The nightmares and mental breakdowns began almost immediately. After a year, the remaining residents were transferred directly to the insane asylum.”
“Up and down the stairs all day drives me nuts. For a kid this would be a cool clubhouse. There’s the curb-squatter. I’m sorry but I don’t like it. I want to come to my immortal balcony, to escape the room overheated by the stylized skylight, without having a public encounter. Why doesn’t she park and walk a few steps over to the green strip?”
“Because Bonito Beach is smokey-freaky. In Arbuckle Cove we have our smokers hanging on every other corner, even outside the dispensary. Here you have to hide under your exhaust pipe to light up. Her legs aren’t bad.”
“She’s not bad looking but such a flat expression, don’t girls like fun anymore? A dancer?”
“I’m guessing no. She’s just taking exercise in a park in a better neighborhood. It’s all perfectly innocent.”
“Like the doctor and the maids over on Bonito Way. I’m enough of a hippie to have no sympathy for the real estate dog, who is central to the way the pig has taken over so much of the national life, and I don’t really feel like calling attention to myself by contacting the local PD, and what would I say? She’s scouting for somebody? Texting while smoking while brown?
“You’re used to Arbuckle types. If we just stand up here and project authority she will get the message. Wooden ships on the water and I want her the fuck out of here.”
3. Initial PPOI, first recovered message – C Gordon, BS, BA, BBPD
about2get2itbtwfuckoldcreepsonbalconies
4. Voluntary full disclosures and further notes on context and an Arbuckle POI
My thought process involves thinking, dissembling, putting back together. All situations are police situations when apprehended as discretionary units. In other words, follow the why. Is there a reason, one may wonder, wherefore a particular individual was drawn to the life of the Senior Volunteer Patrol? It was like this: A dear acquaintance of mine, a local senior, was completing some errands on a timely basis early one afternoon on Main Street when a somewhat unkempt white female approached him and inquired where she might find someone who might want a “blow job.” He guessed that this presumed citizen came in on the bus from Arbuckle Cove, and he, the senior, advised her to return from whence. He followed her but soon a medical condition, which he had been battling with notable courage, forced him to return home.
This senior was a friend of mine. He relayed the incident to me over the phone. Imagine the shock a few days later when I stopped by his house, which he as a widower had taken care of beautifully before and after he inherited it from the widow of Shep Shane, who had built the basic clapboard residence (and the identical one next to it) with army money from his (Shep’s) time down in the Zone in the 1950s, and I was a day late to visit the living man, my friend the Senior, who may have been done in by the mystery obscenity artist, presumably from Arbuckle Cove.
It was a crazy scene. Relatives of Shep’s widow had moved in on the property, taking possession of all papers and serving a 60-day notice to the two intellectuals (who lived in the matching house) and the dental lab thief/art film activist (of no particular interest) who lived in back. I knew there was one way to keep the case warm. The criminal personality will often grant unto his/her/their self the right of return. My inner narrator may be loopy but Childe Gordon is a cool observer. I know that the brown female adult PPOI who instinctively conceals herself down and out of sight on the curb between two vehicles—brought to the department’s attention by the same evicted eggheads from the basic beach bungalow next to that of the gentleman, that prince, whom I refer to as The Senior, (the same talkers now in the rental w/balconies on Old Electric)—is not my gal. However, if it is true that all random strays who find their way to Bonito Beach are of an ilk, one might proceed by being alert to nuance, and to what Proust called “involuntary memory.” If I can “become” the prime suspect, then I may draw the original again to Main Street and create an opportunity to initiate direct-targeted investigation.
5. Sub Rosa townhouse intellectual material, second exhibit.
“The only person I got along with on the old Shep street was the cigar boat guy, who’d a thunk it? With that big pickup and the macho watercraft, he took up half that side of the street. Otherwise, he was comfortable staying to himself, working through the sadness of life, hiding his midwestern secrets.”
“He was the only one on the block who didn’t give me hostile looks.”
“He had both kinds of luck. He inherited a piece of a well on the flat just in from what used to be Tin Can Beach, was able to retire early, and by fifty he had whatever the medical condition was that killed him. His wife, Gail the schoolteacher, is good looking, in a keep oneself neat and presentable way. They fit together. They coordinated activities. After he was gone, she redid the front of the house and then redid herself, dated guys who looked, but were not otherwise like, her dead husband.”
“I’ve had the odd surprise encounter with the new Gail in the Wild Oats market. Unlike the terminal cigar boat guy, can’t say that I like her. Probably not a Marxist.”
“After the house fell in her lap, she connected with a certain niche property group, only original-size lots or the very best skinnies need apply. What did Marx say?”
“Said, as later echoed from an earlier source by Billy Bragg, to buy and sell the earth for private gain is fucked.”
“I tell you what’s fucked. When cigar boat guy was hanging on at the end, I missed that opportunity for a deathbed visit; he never liked me, but out of spite for the suddenly appearing Shep relatives once-removed, might have thrown me the lot, probably worth a million.”
“I cried one day while driving on Old Electric with one of those senior patrol officers on my tail, thinking about the same thing. Of such pissers desperate eternities are made. Hey, the visitor’s in the hood. You can’t see her. You can see the car, and there’s the smoke.”
“I should have visited cigar boat guy on his deathbed. Prepare to visually engage, with prejudice.”
6. PPOI, second recovered message – C Gordon, BS, BA, SBPD
off2sandhighwaybeingwatchedunothefeeling
7. Random observations/notes.
Tenuous connection, possibly of uncertain mutual benefit, has been established with professional bounty resident who is patently not Bonito Beach material, and in fact had gone head-to-head with a charter member emeritus of the Skinny Association regarding untoward remarks to a dog walker. Bounty person of uncertain interest has feelers out regarding option on a residential opportunity in Lake Lucrezia. Remarked that the area was a more likely eccentric, ultra-patriotic-lifestyle community choice for other full-skill-set bird dogs of his/their ilk, as well as for the hideout types he/they were often paid to find. I do not mistrust this half-brother exactly but was surprised when the subject of the brown adult female (original PPOI), possible serial violator of the city smoker footprint ordinance, came up and he pronounced her OK. It was, the way he said it, as if he had an open file on her. Accomplices of opportunity, instinctive, reciprocal cover artists, who knew on this beat? I do know that The Senior had spent years setting up a retirement spot on a somewhat more rural lake up north and was finally ready to take actual possession of a simple and beautiful dream. I owe the man a duty. If our seniors are being taken from us, even if they would have expired anyway within the hour, I can only say: Not in the arc of my watch, sir.
8. Sub-rosa, Town house intellectual material of interest, third exhibit
“I started smoking when I was twelve. I was a smoker first, an intellectual second. I remember smoking in college classrooms, putting the butt out on the floor. The drop-in curb person is a real smoker, that’s her truth. I hate when actors pretend to smoke.”
“The cigar is my truth, I’m not a smoke puritan. Just not every day right in front of my rental angle-shack in the sky. Why not go right over to the green serpentine, or to the Isle de Lopez, or onto the naval base with the coyotes, or out sand highway to the jetty? I don’t like it, and I also have a funny feeling about it. What do you call this in literature?”
“A Tennessee Williams omen, a future member of the Skinny Association.”
“A spook of sorts, one supposes. It’s always something. The only good situation I’ve had in latter day, post–Emmy Lou Harris Bonito Bay, was the transitional year over on the strand. Upstairs was rented to the old doctor and perfect neighbor who came once a week on Tuesday afternoon to meet with the two “maids” upstairs for a couple of hours. I think he was too old to do anything but watch, but something got him up those stairs. I was gone one week and missed the fun on the afternoon they all went up there on schedule, and he came down feet first. Can you please go away, death person, can you please?”
9. PPOI, third message, partly encrypted? – C Gordon, BS, BA, SBPD
Navyonleavegobybyexcept4warnotready
10. Provisional Conclusion
The Bonito Beach incident in which the beauty salon was shot up by the embittered ex, that went worldwide, deserves this account in abstract from department volunteer, regular status, Childe Gordon, present the day of the incident. By instinct, which is the residue of a life of observation, I heard the squawk and took up position at the far end of Old Electric Avenue, adjacent to the Isle de Lopez. The suspect proceeded approximately three-fourths of the way along OE Ave toward the point of immediate egress from this slow-growth beach municipality, where the regulars pulled him over, took him into custody without further adieu. From a glance at his face I didn’t get crusty Arbuckle, I got well-fed (possibly on stipend from government or civil settlement), dangerous in a non-sophisticated way; the passing caravan received at least one smart salute, whether noticed or acknowledged in the heat of the moment, matters not.
I proceeded to the scene and provided back-up logistical support, and citizen education/direction. I was not born yesterday, nor will I cry tomorrow. Without delay, I began to think the whole thing was a distraction. Not on my pilgrimage. When the regular status officer had the recent PTSD incident resulting in the suicide/homicide of self and girlfriend in the newer streamline rental they shared, that’s an open and shut matter, clinically related to the stress of a necessary vocation. Unlike the case which I hereby pledge will not grow cold of the retired doctor and the so called “maids,” unlike, most assuredly, the matter of The Senior, who was guilty only of trying to continue a well-earned widowhood in a clapboard original on a street with a number on the quiet side of old town Bonito Beach. We deserve better. Hail to thee, blithe prince, may you be forever afforded respect, and a possible dedicated bench on the serpentine, and may particular PPOIs rest there and elsewhere not necessarily in peace.
11. PPOI, fourth message – C Gordon, BS, BA, SBPD
hardcurbmake4hardassoldcopsherecrybeautifulsmokedisciplinecalls
This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.
Photo by Scott Rodgerson.