Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I am Mashie Niblick.  I am presently employed as the greenskeeper of the Hoity Toity Golf Club in the big city of Tracy.  While these reports are usually pieced together from various accounts, I was here for this entire misadventure.

Hugh McAdoo and his wife, Sue McAdoo, were visiting.  And for a second time in a few months, Hugh was not sending us out on a mission.  We had put Baffy to bed, but I doubt if she was really sleeping.  Hugh was sitting at our small kitchen table, enjoying watching me put all the dishes into the dish washer.  It was like he had never seen anyone do that before.  He even asked questions.

Other than briefly meeting Sue at a social gathering during Pauline’s training to become an agent, Pauline had only brushed past Sue during the Mayor’s and Easter’s wedding.  Before anyone gets upset, the brides, Cassandra and Jemima, should also be mentioned.

Hugh and I heard most of the Sue-Pauline conversation, but the first part of this is Pauline recounting the conversation the next day.

Pauline asked, “Sue, how did you and Hugh meet?”

Sue responded, “You first!”

Pauline laughed, “Not much to tell.  I was working on my Kinesiological Psychology techniques for golf.  I played golf with a friend called Dolly.  I have a hard time calling Dolly a friend as she basically treated me as a servant, but with her father donating to my research and referring golfers to me, maybe I was their servant.  But I put one of Dolly’s golf bags in the wrong locker.  I was already late to class, so I was in a hurry.  Then, a few days later, she was wearing yellow again and she wanted to use the yellow golf bag.  She had to play with the clubs in the pink golf bag, and that ruined her game that day.  Mashie was this homeless guy who hung out in the dining area at the club.  He would find things for people.  After a few minutes of putting up with Dolly’s craziness about color coordination and a few glances in my direction, he told Dolly that her golf bag would be found before her next golf date, if only I would go on a date with him.  Dolly was all into Dolly, so she would gladly have her servant do the hard work of finding the bag.  Mashie read my expression and knew that I had put the bag in the wrong place.  It was fixed before Dolly had driven out of the parking lot, but that left me having to date a homeless guy, but he really just wanted to play a round of golf.  But that started it.  We started having lunch together, going on walks, and, of course, playing golf.  Then Mashie would get to a romantic part of the evening and something would happen.  When he finally announced who he was and why he was at the Hoity Toity Club, I planted a kiss on him for our first kiss.  He was not just slow in the romantic arena, he was iceberg melting slow.  But we have made up for it since then.  Now you.”

Sue groaned, “I was finishing up my undergraduate degree in drama and theater studies at Georgetown.  Hugh, but that was not his name then, approached me and asked if I already had a job.  Every question that he asked, he already had the answer, but he was setting me up for the big question.  ‘How would you like to spend the next several years in Central America on top of a mountain playing the role of my wife?’  I guess that’s the way they teach them how to propose at Brown.  Something inside me said to slap him, but instead, I asked how much he was offering.  He opened a briefcase filled with tens and twenties.  He said that this was for my wardrobe.  I would make about $80,000 per year and it would be tax free if we remained outside the USA long enough.  If I got homesick too quickly, I would have to pay back taxes upon my return.  Well, I had already looked at apartments in NYC, getting an agent, auditions, and then maybe a commercial or two, maybe some modeling.  I might be starving in six months.  So, I accepted his offer.  Classes had not finished yet, but he kept in contact by phone and letters.  He never was very romantic, but he was definitely a money man.  When I graduated, we moved in together and I went to spy school while he started setting up our life in Central America.  Sorry, after all these years, we have not divulged where we really were, but the deal was that we were a station along the coyote routes.  Hugh worked out deals with each coyote team to pay them if we could remove this person or that one from their latest group going to the Rio Grande and freedom.  Our job was to pick out the foreign spies, the drug mules, the terrorists, and others that pour over our borders every day.  The coyotes got some money, and we got some bad guys.  What we did not plan was that the birth control pills would not work so well, and I got pregnant with Frankie.”

Pauline said, “I heard you have three children.”

Sue nodded, “Frankie born about five months after we got back from Central America and another couple took our place.  Then Freddie came into the world about a year and a half later.  Then with two children not ready for kindergarten, we were assigned to a financial job at the same island where the Mayor, Cassandra, Easter, and Jemima went on their honeymoons, just a different bank.”

At this point, Hugh had exhausted all the questions he had about pre-rinsing the dishes, what soap to use, etc.  Hugh entered, bringing Sue a cup of tea, “But why did we get reassigned?”

Sue groaned, “Do we really know these people that well?  That was personal!”

Hugh snickered, “Confession is good for the soul.”

Sue groaned again, “Okay, I developed the ‘poker face’ course.  Helping people lie without any tells.  Management thought the course needed a male and female teaching the course, and I had to teach the course with this hunk of a guy.  We had an affair.”

I asked, “Wait!  Are you two really married?”

Hugh said, “I will let her answer, but then I will give my rebuttal.”

Sue said, “But what I tell everyone is the truth!  On the plane back from Central America, with me four-months pregnant with Frankie, Hugh leans over and says, ‘We’ve done this fake marriage thing pretty well for the past few years, do you want to do it for real?”

Pauline cackled, “What a charmer you are, Hugh!”

Hugh growled, “Yes, I said those words, but I talked about how our love had blossomed…”

Sue retorted, “Sure, I was pregnant!”

Hugh continued, “And how we had been faithful to each other …”

Sue retorted, “You were faithful, but I had a one-nighter with a cute DEA agent, and I really think the organization sent us home for something other than me being pregnant.  I slept with one of the coyotes.”

Hugh grumbled, “I told you not to mention that ever again.”

Sue responded, “But Hugh, you just said confession was good for the soul, and I had never had brown before.  You graduated from Brown.  I thought I should experience brown in my own way.”

Editor’s Note: She really said that, but some people might get offended.  The management apologizes.

Then Sue added, “But the affair did not start until after Freddie was born.”

“But the deal is that,” Hugh interjected, “when that plane from Central America landed, we went to the courthouse the next day and got our license, and then we got a nice judge to perform the ceremony.”

Sue snickered, “You mean a Justice of the Supreme Court who owed you a favor.”

Hugh smiled, “Hey, he didn’t charge us a fee!”

I asked, “Hmmm! No fee?  Without a fee, do you have proof that it really happened?”

Hugh growled, “Cut the crap, Mashie!  It was legal.  We had witnesses.  Her parents and a few guys at work that wanted to meet a Supreme Court Justice.”

Pauline added, “Guys who had taken the class on how to lie and make it look like they were telling the truth?”

Hugh groaned, “Mashie!  Now you have gotten your wife cracking jokes!  And Pauline, we got married before Sue was assigned the task of developing the course.  And Freddie was born before she started teaching it.”

Pauline smiled, “Might I say that I enjoyed the course, but I might have enjoyed it better if Sue was teaching it?”

Sue snickered, “Nice recovery, dear.”

Pauline said, “So, you were unfaithful in Central America.  You were unfaithful after you got legally married, and you had returned to the USA.  Did this trend continue?”

Sue said, “No, I was faithful to Hugh, and he was faithful to me except for when our bosses told us to have an ‘open marriage’.”

Pauline groaned, “Oh, no, what brought that on?  And did you do that in front of your boys?”

Sue shook her head.  “They were tiny.  My parents became the boys’ guardians, legally, while we went to the Caribbean island that the two Christmas honeymoon couples went to.  This was before they had online banking with all the security.  The banks down there were paranoid, and Hugh was told to get information off their servers.  It seemed that the bank was the money exchange location between the crooks in the USA and the crooks from down south.  The DEA wanted the drug traffickers.  ICE wanted the coyote information.  The ATF wanted weapons and explosives information.  And the FBI wanted to know what crooks were staying in the USA.  This one bank had most of it.  Hugh sized up the situation and he needed to distract the company president to hack into the computer and get the information.  A diligent bank manager would sniff him out in a heartbeat otherwise.  He had already become friends with the guy, a tall handsome African.  I flirted with him, but our bosses said that since I had a reputation for cheating, I should bed the guy.  In one of my flirting sessions, I found he was willing only if we had an ‘open marriage.’  That meant Hugh had to be sleeping with someone.  Our handlers found a woman who had flirted with Hugh.  A background check confirmed she was a yegg, a safe cracker, not related to your neighbors in the next cul-de-sac.  Hugh fumbled through an introduction and even offered her money, but she said she would sleep with him for free.  She was no prostitute.  So, as Hugh enjoyed the afterglow, she broke into our apartment’s safe and took all our cash, a lot more than what Hugh had offered her, but then she left the island.  Lesson learned, the organization flew down a woman a little older than we were, Dewey.  They arranged an accidental meeting and then, the bank president was satisfied.  We started sleeping together while Hugh and Dewey slept together, just not at the same time.  When I was sleeping with the bank president, Hugh was getting the information off the computer, but by the time the bank manager was finished with me, he would check a video camera he had hidden in our bedroom to make sure Hugh was doing his part, and there Dewey and Huey were naked in bed.”

Pauline and I both said “Wow!” at the same time.

Sue added, “And after that, the only man that I have slept with is my husband.”

Hugh added, “So, Frankie and Freddie were enjoying living with her parents so much, they stayed there half the time after we returned.  They really are more her parents’ children.  They come to family events, but no drop ins to see how we are doing.  Freida though, she is Daddy’s little girl.  She and her husband recently moved to Tracy.”

Pauline asked, “So, you will be around more often?”  Hugh nodded.

Sue grumbled, “I hope it is not as boring as this trip.  Two days ago, Hugh had my day planned: spa treatment, massage, a class about how wonderful Tracy is, a little tour, blah, blah, blah.  Then yesterday, we went to the Crystal Mountain for a tour and a visit with Pink Lady.  Hugh had a private meeting while a woman named Fannie Packer gave me a tour of the cider house and let me test all the different flavors.  I think I got a little tipsy.  But last night we went to the Deviled Yeggs home for dinner.  They are nice, but boring.”

Pauline snickered, not knowing what to say in that Naomi Yeggs was her boss for her day job.

Then Sue did something totally off script.  Her blouse had snaps and she was not wearing a bra, with one smooth motion, she went rip, or whatever twenty snaps sound like when popped all at once.  Sue said, “Pauline, I have a way to cure the boredom.  Why not you and I start kissing each other all over, and then when our husbands decide they are horny enough, they can join us.  Right here on the living room rug, all four of us.”

Pauline, looking at her part-time boss’ wife, naked from the waist up, tried to speak, “Uuugh.  Wha… What?  How did we get here?  What porn films have you been watching?”

Sue giggled, “A lot of them, and I know how to pleasure you.”

Pauline said, “Maybe you do, but this is not my thing.  I do sexual therapy, but I do not participate.”

Hugh groaned, “Sue, snap your blouse back on.  Pauline and Mashie are not swingers, and I am not either.  The woman who suggested this activity to you last year has been forced into retirement.”

Now it was Sue’s turn to groan, “No, not her!  She has become my best friend.  And why not Pauline and Mashie.  They work for the same organization and the Bible does not say anything about two girls having a little fun!”

Pauline retorted, “I am prepared to teach that this Sunday.  Romans 1:27 speaks of women being inflamed with lust.  And then it mentions men being inflamed.  It is clear that this verse is talking about same sex relationships.  Leviticus 20:13 tells the Israelites to kill both parties if two men engage in such activity.”

Sue said, “But due to Jesus paying the penalty for sin, we can ignore Leviticus, right?”

I turned to Hugh and asked, “I thought you had joined a church and were taking Bible studies.”

Hugh shook his head, “Yeah, but Sue listens to the friends that she wants to listen to and never cross checks what they say against the Bible.  This lesbian activity has been going on since I was flying back and forth to help Millennium and Gwen last year.  Dewey came by to visit Sue and suggest that she knew a way to get me back for ignoring my wife.  Dewey was one of our dirty tricks instructors before she became my secretary.”

Sue protested, “Dewey said she found the films in an old closet at work, and she thought we could learn together.  Forget her being an instructor.”

Hugh cleared his throat, “Dewey took your course on poker faces, Sue.  Dewey is a master at making false statements with a poker face.”

Pauline asked, “But what is this department of dirty tricks?”

Hugh sighed, “Do you remember the Cold War?”

Pauline blinked her eyes and spoke in a childlike voice.  “Oh, yes, sir, I studied it in elementary school.  I think it was when people threw ice at each other.”

Hugh groaned, “The younger generations did not experience life!”  Pauline and I laughed, but Hugh continued.  “The USSR had the KGB.  They had their dirty tricks.  They mostly turned people in two different ways.  If they could buy a turncoat with money, they would.  If the loser who was passed over for promotion suddenly started driving a Lamborghini, he would get fired and the KGB had to find someone else, but if you found a smart guy with a clearance that did not get a promotion because the boss had a personality conflict with him, then the KGB could buy his services to steal secrets.  And as long as he did not spend money too quickly, he might never get caught.  But the real dirty tricks were through sex.  Giving a store-bought wife to the private guy, introvert, socially awkward, was one thing, but then having a party among friends and suddenly the guy with the clearance is drunk and he wakes up in bed with another man, then you might get the man feeling guilty, since that was a taboo in those days.  If he liked that kind of thing, the KGB kept supplying it as long as he kept giving them secrets.  So, you bought their services, or you got blackmail to ruin them within their employment, within their social circles or family.  Whatever it took.”

Pauline then asked, “So that is what the KGB did.  What did we do?”

Hugh protested, “This is about the time I was in Central America.  It was two Hugh McAdoos before me.  The decision was that if the KGB could do it, so could we.  But we only had limited success.  The moral compass in the USSR was non-existent among party members, and usually, it took a party membership to have the security clearance that made the effort pay for itself.  They could be bought, but sexual deviance or a wife who was a spy was a badge of honor.  So, Dewey became our lesbian recruiter.  Remember, no one advertised that they were LGBTQ in those days.  Dewey was a master at playing on people who were dissatisfied in their marriage, and she convinced them what their problem was.  Of course, she was supposed to go after people who could speak eastern European languages, and Sue, she was told to shut down decades ago.  We had a guy going after the gay community, but Dewey went overboard.  They knew she had no moral compass, so she easily became my lover in the Caribbean.  But when the wall came down, I pulled her into the secretary role rather than the bosses firing her as an unstable asset.  She was excellent with paperwork, but, last year, I think she missed me being around, the guy who kept her from going crazy.  But by now, she had too many years in.  I think she’ll end up on a small Pacific Island.”

We looked back at Sue.  She had her head in her hands, and she was sobbing.  “I was tricked by a monster that my employer unleashed on friendly soil.  Hugh, I swallowed her lies.  I was unfaithful to you.  Can God forgive me for all this?”

Hugh went to her side and put his arms around her.  He looked into her eyes, “God can forgive you, and I already have.  I sensed things were wrong between us when I got back.  I showered you with Christmas presents, but you were aloof.  Yet, you brightened when Dewey planned on coming by for a visit.  I interrogated her and she confessed.”  Without taking his eyes off his wife’s eyes, he asked Pauline, “Pauline, can we sign up for sexual therapy?”

Pauline said, “Sure, I can have you satisfying your wife better than Dewey had done, but we will have to make weekly sessions for a few months.  I can accelerate some, but it is less effective.  Weekly trips here will be too expensive.”

Hugh smiled at Sue, “Dinah, it’s time.”

Sue shook her head, “No, I have too many friends in DC.  I am in some very influential tea parties and social clubs.  No, not Dinah, not now.”

Hugh kept smiling, “Frieda has a new job at T.R.U.S.T.  Maybe she’ll move from physical therapy to become a follower of Naomi Yeggs.  You said you had to be near Freida, the only one of our children that we did not screw up.  She and her husband have already joined the Messianic Jewish Synagogue downtown.  We can start a new life here in Tracy, Dinah.  We already have friends here.  Now, make the transition complete and call me by my name, Dinah.”

Sue was still crying, “Jacob Levy, what if I don’t want to?  Why did we come here this week?  Have you got everything arranged without me being involved in the decision?”

Hugh swallowed.  The tears started to flow.  “Dinah, forcing Dewey’s resignation and retirement was my last act as Hugh McAdoo.  We had already decided to return to what was on our birth certificates when I retired.  I made a clean break except for the transformation crew at our new house.”

Pauline asked, “What new house?  Where?”

Hugh said, “You know that house that is one house closer to Naomi and Deviled’s house from the corner that is empty?”

I laughed, “That is the weirdest thing.  Six months ago, the Coatswells moved to North Carolina, a huge promotion to VP, but they never put their house here up for sale.  They even hired people to house sit, not full time but for a couple of weeks at a time.  Wait, those aren’t house sitters, are they?”

Hugh, now Jacob Levy, shook his head.  “They are the transformation crew.  They have been adding security to ensure our safety.  Even though I will no longer be Hugh McAdoo, I still have enemies.  I do not wish to have my friends in danger.  Besides, they have camouflaged a trail entrance, but there is a trail in the woods to connect our backyard with the trail from your cul-de-sac to the Yeggs’ backyard.  We can visit, virtually unseen by most of the neighbors.”

Pauline had a strange look on her face.  “Jacob Levy, formerly Hugh McAdoo?  Your last act as Huey had nothing to do with getting Dewey to retire.  You set this whole thing up!”  Hugh tried to look innocent.  “You used some political clout to get Mr. Coatswell promoted.”  Hugh said that he was the best man for the job.  “You got your son-in-law promoted to move here.”  Hugh denied it, but again, he was the best man for the double step promotion that rarely happened in his company.  “You bought the Coatswell house before they even decided to take the North Carolina promotion.”

Hugh sighed, “Okay, I pulled the strings on everything.  I was the Spy Master.  I had to save my marriage and no way would I be having that kind of therapy with a stranger in DC.  I found out how the pieces could fit easily so that everyone involved got a much better deal.  I pulled the strings so that Dinah could be happy.”

Dinah jumped up from her chair.  She hugged and kissed him.  Pauline and I gave each other a confused look.  He had done all this behind his wife’s back.  That never worked out, but here she was elated.

Dinah said, “Jacob, you have always pulled the strings that made our marriage interesting.  I can’t wait to see the surprises you have in store for me.  Should we drive to our new home, or should we walk down the trail?”

“Let’s drive around.  The intersection in the trail is hidden and it is dark.”  Jacob said and Dinah nodded.

Pauline said, “Woah!  You are not going anywhere until you answer one more question.  Are you a Jew or are you a Christian?”

Jacob laughed, “Yes!  But my father was not a practicing Jew.  I was basically an atheist until I met a couple of weirdos in the big city of Tracy.  I think we will join the Metho-Presby church downtown.  It has this weird group of people that fill three or four pews, but the rest of the church is nice.”

With that, the Levys left without even saying good-bye to the weirdos.

Credits

The Perils of Pauline was a movie serial started in 1914. It defined many serials that followed, including the Perils of Pauline “moment,” the cliffhanger that caused you to return to the theater for the next installment.

And Huey, Dewey, and Louie are the nephews of Donald Duck, and Scrooge McDuck is their great-uncle.  Baffy just shortens it to Who-Doo Louie.  You can only tell them apart by their caps: red, blue, and green.  But as mentioned when Hugh McAdoo was first introduced, besides the rhyme, his name was derived from the Roger Miller hit song, Do-Wacka-Do.

People who guide illegal immigrants across the border into the USA, some starting their trek in South America, are called coyotes.  They charge a lot of money.  The trek is arduous and at times extremely dangerous.  Sometimes, the coyotes work with drug traffickers and require the illegal immigrants in becoming drug mules (people carrying drugs).

Pauline may have been around before the wall came down, but she got most of her knowledge of the Cold War from books.  The ice throwing idea was supposed to be a joke.  Hugh did not laugh.

As for the KGB dirty tricks, in the mid-1970s, I read the book, KGB, The Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents by John Barron.  Our battalion commander wanted officers who were well read, thus a monthly book report.  When the other officers learned that I had that book, one after another “borrowed” the book.  I never got the book back, but I remember the techniques that they used.