Undetected

1 The Other Road

The bright noon day sun was at its zenith; the lake waters were uncharacteristically calm and the beer that he was nursing was cold. He and Fabrizio were well on their way to paradise. They both enjoyed sailing the Golden Mushroom that seemed to slice smoothly through the water like a sharp knife. The Golden Mushroom was an eighty-foot-long luxury sloop that had a day bar, onboard Wi-Fy and four custom cabins with king size beds and elegant furnishing was their prize toy.

It now had become their way to escaped from Chicago.

Their departure was sudden. They had acted immediately and closed down their operation and were fleeing for what they figured was their lives. They both knew that there was no way to say no to the drug lords that ruled Chicago, who had taken notice of the new drug they were distributing.

They were both enjoying the peace, the solitude, and the sound the water made as the sloop seemed to gently part the waters.

They had acted rapidly and they hoped that they would make it to their final Caribbean destination.

The two of them had made a fortune growing what they had named Golden Mushrooms.

They were sure no one would know where they were or how to find them.

They both agreed that the million dollars the mafia had offered but that they had left on the table was insignificant compared to the money they had sent to their offshore banks in the Caymon Islands. It was what they needed to leave on the table that allowed them time to make their escape.

They were both army veterans that had met by chance on a Friday night as they both ordered the same beer while watching the Chicago Bears taking a sound beating.

They were both Iraqi veterans. Both had chosen to exit the army and pursue life as a civilian.

For Randy, the transition from being in command to learning to manage people had been huge. It was a deflating feeling to learn that most people didn’t care that he had been a captain who commanded more than fifty soldiers in combat. His days of direct control of people around him ended the day he walked out of the gate with his DD 214.

That was the day he started to learn how to be patient, to use charm, and his power of persuasion to get things done.

He worked on those skills as he overcame the bureaucracy of becoming certified as a teacher and getting hired. It was during this period that he inadvertently stumbled on the knowledge that resulted in his current life and the wealth he had accumulated.

His West Point education was the golden ticket that parted the bureaucratic waters and let him move unobstructed through the Illinois State Board of Education gauntlet. He applied for an Educator’s License and was immediately hired by the Evanston school district with the requirement that he take evening certification classes. Both his SAT and ACT scores were high enough that he was able to bypass having to take the test of Academic Proficiency. He passed the Licensure Test in general science and became the principle at New Horizon Middle School in Evanston.

He thought it ironic that none of those days that he struggled to get through the maze and successfully get hired was of insignificant importance.

It was a random serendipitous comment by the person next to him in a chemistry lab who said he had found a magic mushroom that was ten times more powerful than cocaine that changed his life. The comment triggered a mental calculation of what that would mean based on the current street value of cocaine.

Mushrooms flipped his world on its head.

He laughed to himself as he thought about the fact that growing a mushroom literally cost him a fraction of a penny but the chemicals they produced had a synergistic potentiator effect when mixed at a ten to one ratio with cocaine and that sold for half the price of what one ounce of cocaine sold for on the street. It magically turned his pennies into millions and millions of dollars.

The days of following the straight and narrow and his beliefs in life took a sharp turn. He enjoyed both his role as the king of the school and enjoyed the chatter and laughter of the students. Their seeming carefree life and attitudes were a contrast to his own experience and that was pleasing to him.

Ironically, it was opposite of the authority he had in Iraq where his authority was absolute. In the civilian world, he became just a guy in a polo shirt. No one cared or knew that he had been a Captain in the army. He had to command with charisma, patience, and empathy.

This all went on in parallel with his new adventure of leading an organization that was trying to keep the pipeline of his magic mushroom powder flowing.

His army experience prepared him well in dealing with the many problems that surfaced from both the students, the teachers, and his venture into the drug world.

He also assumed the role of being the substitute teacher for the school. This offered the teachers a level of flexibility they had never previously experienced. He was on the good guy list with all the teachers.

Managing the golden mushroom flow at first seemed easy and a no brainer. Early on there was no street competition. Fabrizio found that handling the individual dealers was a very easy job.

While Fabrizio focused on the distribution, he handled what became the big concern and challenge. The firehose of cash that they collected required that they rapidly learn how the financial system needed to be managed.

He had paired seven banks in the Chicago area to banks in the Caymon Islands. Every week he had to go to each bank each day to deposit the maximum amount he could so that he would not trip any alarms. A steady stream of money flowed to the Caymon banks.

He was the busiest of the two, but he knew that Fabrisio had the riskier role.

Fabrisio was the street contact and was the one that inadvertently found the old building where they set up a massive, low-cost operation that generated a profit margin that reached to the stratosphere.

The mushrooms were grown on two floors, dried and ground into powder on the second floor and bagged for distribution on the third floor. It was a smooth operation that only required ten full-time workers.

The location of the building seemed to him to be a signal from the gods.

It was across the street from the school where he was principle! He had a good laugh when Fabrisio said that just for finding that building he wanted a bigger share of the RSFM company that they had set up. As it was they were already having trouble spending the money that was flowing in.

When he stood in the school yard and looked across the street to the stately old building that was growing mushrooms he had to fight the urge to go and see what was happening inside.

Fabrizio had fought depression, almost got hooked on drugs, only had female companionship with street walkers, and knew he was drinking too much. He was on the way to another night of drinking when he struck up a conversation with the guy next to him.

It turned out that they were both Army, both long time Chicago Bear fans who were watching them take another beating. The conversation wandered all over. Somewhere along the line the drug scene became the focus. It was a scene that he was very aware of because not only had he gotten into the middle of it, but his apartment overlooked a corner were the drug dealing never stopped.

He became friendly with one of the street distributors and inadvertently learned a ton on how business was done.

When he learned that his new bar friend had a way to increase the strength of cocaine ten to one, dollar signs rolled in front of his eyes like the spinning four-reel pokies he usually walked casually by.

This time he kept pulling the handle until he figured out how to get all four reels to match. He knew that once they matched his days would take on a green glow.

The first reel was to get the dealer across the street to agree to distribute the TenX one-ounce packets that they had named their product.

The second reel was finding a place to grow and process mushrooms.

The third reel was staffing and getting the mushrooms growing.

The fourth reel was setting up the handling of the cash.

He handled the first three reels and Randy handled the fourth.

Their business was an immediate success, and he could not get enough TenX bags into the hands of the distributors.

They both enjoyed the tsunami of wealth that rolled over them.

They both bought homes in high end neighborhoods that were just a few blocks away from the building that housed the operation.

They both bought X5 Porches.

They partnered to buy the two-million-dollar ketch they named “The Golden Mushroom.”

Then after everything seemed to be operating in automatic overnight the scene and their elation changed when both the Mafia and the Gulf Cartel picked him up and wanted to become “partners.” Each of them warned him about making a deal with anyone else. He knew that one of the two organizations would end up killing him and controlling the TenX market.

That was the day that he and Randy agreed they needed to cash in.

They were now on the run. They had agreed that the money offered by both the Mafia and the Cartel was a trap and chose to sail away and leave that on the table. They had returned their X5’s and had their homes up for sale.

Each of them had more than one hundred million in offshore bank accounts in the Caymen. They were set for life, and it was a life that they were looking forward to.

When they stopped to refuel in Detroit they were sitting in a bar when the evening news highlighted the burned-down building they had used to grow and process mushrooms.

The reporter on the scene pointed to one of the only things that was left of the building and commented that the only survivor had been saved because she had made it to the top of the stairs and was then rescued by the person that turned out to be her English teacher.

They had looked at one another shrugged their shoulders and the girl whoever she was should not have been in the building.

The next day they sailed along the Canadian side of Lake Eerie and celebrated having successfully crossed into Canada. They figured they were now out of the country and would stay out for the rest of their lives and go live happily ever after and enjoy sailing around the Caribbean.

2 View From the Window

The journey to the top of Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland had been one of the highly touted experiences described as a once in a lifetime experience. The view was breathtaking, but the lifetime experience was when she came face to face with Tess, the Black Widow that had escaped from her jail in The Netherlands.

Master Kim’s teaching came alive as she engaged Tess, who was also a black belt, but who had no idea she was about to face another black belt that was only half her size but one that knew that surprise was the only advantage she had.

Her surprise attacks ended up with Tess laying on the ground unconscious.

When she looked around she was surprised by the fact that the entire staff of the detective agency had flown out as a surprise and had a party room reserved at the Inn.

Vacation ended with the surprise party at the top of Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland.

Afterwards everyone flew home on the company plane and life returned to normal.

Normal for her was Fishing on the Golden Goose, eating Sloppy Joes and onion rings at the restaurant named for her and riding her bike in the neighborhood with her friends.

This had all come to a close on the first day of school.

She was sitting in the desk she had chosen and had sat in since the first day of school. It let her look out the window and daydream. She had finished all the homework all the way to Christmas and seldom brought her books into class but instead had her folder with the notes she had made for each day of the week.

Her very pretty young teacher, Miss Kirsten, was reading passages from one of Henry David Thoreau’s novels. She could not remember the title, but she did remember that Henry had graduated from Harvard as David Henry and then change his name to Henry David. This was the name he used for the rest of his life.

She thought about her own journey to her name of Aurea Carvallo-Evercrest. She had acquired her hyphenated name by keeping her birth mother’s and father’s last name and adding the Evercrest when she was adopted.

Her parents were fugitives from Brazil attempting to leave a life built on trafficking drugs. They fled to the US where they hoped to raise her in a country where they could live an honest life.

The dark hand of their past caught up with them. They knew no one and as they tried to make their escape they put her on the porch of the only person they felt would keep her safe. Their departing words were, “We love you. You will be safe here. Be strong. Have a good life.”

They were right.

Alex and Matt the two people that she now called mother, and father took her in and soon adopted her. She left Cincinnati with her new parents and now lived in Evanston just north of downtown Chicago.

She was surprised but also fascinated by the menacing and seemingly endless action that followed her mother from Cincinnati.

The fact that she spent much of her day on a yacht called the Golden Goose docked at a marina owned by her parents, and had a newly opened restaurant named after her,

She was able to walk five minutes to her mother's detective office and bicycle another five minutes to the grand two-story brick and stone home she thought of as a mansion, clearly let her know she had been adopted by rich parents.

When she made this point to them, they at first denied they were rich. She then rattled off why she knew they were rich.

It was an easy argument for her to win.

She remembered her mother saying that for her rich meant to be surrounded by the ones you loved and then gave her a hug.

She knew then that she was very rich.

It was interesting to her that her Grandparents, owners of the house they all lived in, were successful working professional people but had not amassed the wealth that their daughter had somehow been able to do as a detective.

It made her curious. She asked and her curiosity was rewarded by being given chores and told to work hard, treat others as you wish to be treated and do well in school and the rest would follow.

It was not the answer she had expected.

She did learn that rich did not mean easy. She had a set of chores for which she got an allowance. After school she was required to do her homework before doing something else. And the something else included doing some sort of physical activity and some reading for enjoyment.

There was a requirement that each evening dinner be shared together without interruption or any other distraction. It was the time they each shared how they had made it a good day. The emphasis was on “made.”

She agreed to take Tae Kwon Do once a week with her mother.

She asked to be a weekend deck hand and a fishing facilitator on the Golden Goose.

She chose to learn to play both the guitar and piano.

She wrangled a paid job cleaning the black, customized, bullet proof agency van each day.

She waited on tables at the restaurant and kept her tips.

She felt loved, appreciated and had no doubt that she was, in every way, rich.

She also knew that her mother’s adversaries were many and were a constant threat.

She learned how far the Mafia would go on the day she was kidnapped and held as bait to lure her mother to risk saving her. She earned the name “Disruptor” for the aggressive and deadly actions she took as the entire detective unit stormed the Mafia’s headquarter to save her.

Johnnie was the one that described her gun blazing journey through the mafia head quarter and ended by saying that he had never seen such a “Disruptor.”

She knew her mother felt that it was her fault to put her at risk.

It was a scary event that let her know that she had an extended family that was willing risk their lives to protect her.

She was not as stressed by having been kidnapped or as concerned as they were about the effect it might have on her. She attended all the counseling sessions with the phycologist with all of them and was still having monthly sessions.

The kidnapping reinforced what my birth mother and father had told he as they left her on that porch “this is the only place we can leave you where we know you will be safe.”

Suddenly, Miss Kirsten stopped reading, called her name, and asked if she agreed with Henry Thoreau’s view of the world.

The first thought that entered her mind was that her mother was so right that knowledge, planning, and preparation was a shield against the challenges of the world. The challenge was to use what she had.

She smiled because she had no idea what Miss Lacey had just read. She responded that Mr. Thoreau’s belief in individualism, deep harmony with nature, deliberate living and having an unwavering moral integrity was her mother’s teaching as well and she agreed with most of it.

There was a moment of silence in the room as everyone looked at her as if I had just arrived from Mars or Venus. Then someone called out, “smart aleck” and the room burst into laughter.

Miss Kirston put her book marker into the book smiled, closed it, and said that class was over.

As I walked out she smiled at me and mouthed, “smart aleck.” I knew she knew that I had no clue what she had just read.

The next day was the day that her distraction was not what she was thinking about, but it was the view out of the window.

The window framed an old building that reminded her of many of the buildings on the grounds of Northwestern University where her grandfather’s office was located.

It was a massive structure that to her seemed to be from another time. Four stone sections connected by bricks, which needed to be cleaned, went straight into the air. Arch topped windows staring at her from three floors and a similarly arched door at the center that seemed to want to talk was what had captured her imagination.

The row of huge old, knurled oaks that seemed to be stubbornly fighting to keep its brown leaves that fluttered in the breeze coming off Lake Michigan and seemed to be guarding the building from a row of equally old bare leafed maples that appeared to be attacking the walls of an old castle had initially caught her attention.

It caught her imagination and she was deep into a make-believe story, which had popped into her head. Suddenly there was a movement above the third-floor window. Now she was juggling paying attention to what was going on in class and what was transpiring across the street.

A figure hanging down headfirst, dressed in the same color and hue of the brick was exposed momentarily as it moved in the transition over the black window frame. For a moment he was outlined by the white frame of the window that he had somehow opened as he hung from above.

Almost immediately he disappeared inside and the rope he had used was pulled in after him.

The black gaping open black window denied that anyone had entered then the white frame closing of the window panels announced that she would not see anything else.

She once again focused on what Miss Lacey was reading and was relieved when she remembered reading the same passages.

Class came to an end and as she walked out, Miss Lacey asked if she had seen anything interesting out of the window and reminded her to brush up on Thoreau in preparation for the quiz.

She thought about telling her about the thief that had entered the old building but thought better of that.

Instead, she went to her last class and tried hard to concentrate on the history of ancient Rome, but her mind kept asking the question of what might be in the building to cause a thief to enter it so expertly.

It was clear to her that that person was not a common thief. He or she was an expert climber and most likely a specialized thief.

The vision that popped up in her mind was a movie scene of the thief lowering herself from a roof opening to the treasures of the art museum.

What would an old abandoned looking building contain that would attract such a thief became the obsessive thought that played through her mind like the Disneyland tune of “It’s a small world,” that when heard was impossible to unhear for at least a month.

When school ended, she led her two companions by the building so she could get a picture of the building entrance and the number chiseled into the stone.

As usual her two friends were talking about a show that they had both watched the night before. Her friends were always surprised when they asked for her opinion about a show they had watched and she let them know that she had either been playing her guitar or the piano or attending her Tae Kwon Do class during those times.

They teased her about becoming a wall flower.

Once she got home, she did her math homework and a quick review of Civil Disobedience by Thoreau. She agreed that an individual’s conscience should guide them but felt mixed about ones conscience holding higher authority than the government. She agreed with his negative critique of the government for supporting slavery. She agreed with his assertion that each person had the moral duty to passively resist unjust laws but felt that those who felt that way needed to do something about that in a positive way. After a quick review she knew she was as ready for the quiz as she was going to be.

She retrieved the address of the building that had now taken a captivating life of its own. She went to the local property records and traced the history of the building.

She smiled when she realized that the building had been built in the same year Thoreau was born. This made the building almost two hundred years old.

She was a history buff and enjoyed tracing the events from the time the building went up to the present day. She decided that her grandfather would be interested in the fact that Northwestern University and the old build came into existence at about the same time around the 1850’s.

She also liked learning the fact that Evanston was named after the university’s founder Dr. John Evans and that the city had enjoyed steady growth from that time to present.

Records let her know that the building was called the Lake Horizon Building and it had passed through at least a dozen owners. The most recent owner was RSFM inc., which meant absolutely nothing to her. She searched the internet and could not find it. This suggested to her that something clandestine was happening in the building.

She chuckled about the fact that a very mysterious figure had climbed into a what was turning out to be a very mysterious building.

The next day her obsession caused her to skip lunch, walk over, and get a better feel for the building.

She noted that it had five sections spanning across the front with the door at its center. Each span had windows on the three floors. She walked around the side and found that the corners were interconnected columns and there were two smaller columns along the side wall with windows but no door.

A slanted entrance into what she took as the basement between the two center columns remined her about the first time she saw such a structure and was surprised to learn it was an entrance to a basement.

The back was almost a duplicate of the front, but the black back door was padlocked and appeared to be metal. She continued around and noted a fenced in area with two large electrical transformers mounted on white concrete.

The bell rang signaling lunch time was over, so she hurried back and returned to class.

That afternoon she aced Ms. Kirsten’s quiz. She learned later that she was the only one that did.

That evening, she went online and dug up the current blueprints for the building, but she could not locate the permit or the erection of the electrical supply area. To her this made whatever was going on in the building even more mysterious and clandestine. She knew she had to find some way to unravel the mystery. She was just not sure how she was going to do that.

She searched all the news outlets to see if someone had reported a thief stealing anything from the building. She was not surprised that the search yielded nothing, but she was still disappointed.

She thought about how the thief would have climbed to the roof and where he had come from. She decided to do some more investigating.

On the weekend she got her two friends to ride with her so she could get a closer look at the building. This time as she walked around the building she looked for how she might climb to the roof. The only place at the back was a heavy-duty iron down spout or maybe a water pipe that came down near the padlocked back door.

Then it struct her that the padlock was hanging open on the door. It warned her that there was someone inside. She guided her friends past the hedge in back and took the path that went to the beach. She let out her breath once they were behind the hedge.

She led the way up the steps to the wooden walkway that ran for miles along the beach.

It was a warm afternoon and there were several sunbathers laying in the sun, a few walking along the edge of the water and several older folks walking along the raised wooden walkway.

She had run the full distance of the walkway with her mother. It started at the harbor where the Golden Goose was moored and ended at an ice cream parlor at the other end. They had made the run down during the morning, had enjoyed their ice cream treat, run back and eaten a late lunch at the restaurant.

It was a pleasant memory. She had not noticed the old building at that time even though it was clearly visible and seemingly out of place.

It was now a mystery magnet that seemed to be pulling her toward it.

She invited her two friends to ride to her grandmother’s Pizzaria where they could share a pizza.

As they got on their bikes she noticed that the door lock was locked. There had been no cars on the street in front nor any behind the house. Who was the person coming and going? Did they live in one of the beachside homes?

Things seemed to be getting stranger and stranger.

She knew what she would do next.