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=> Reynolds Reducks

Reynolds Reducks

Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Sunday, November 30 2003, 12:03:35 (EST)
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I'm moving this week. Got a room in a house in town until my studio is remodelled. Found an old jewelry factory built on top of the roof on old house with one entire wall made of nothing but glass. It's the third floor now...the building is pretty much deserted. A huge tree grows up from the courtyard...really rather charming. I'm having the roof lifted another meter and adding a bath and kitchen, some skylights...very like the lofts I saw in New York.

The owner of this ranch from hell and I came to an agreement, with the court standing behind us. He forks over the money the day I leave. Lawyers will be out here and he'll be able to get into his house after two years, for approval...I don't leave without the cash. He's just as happy as I am to see the last of us. Though a couple of weeks ago when we had to go to court to sign the agreemnt before the judge, he addmitted to me...as we sat outside waiting, that he wished now he'd have listened when I tried to warn them about Lew Garcia aka skunk. One of my lawyers was sitting with me as was his, so I think he was being sincere. He said Lew had screwed him as well, in the end...ahem. I couldn't resist reminding him of the day I stood outside his gate waving a message from Chilo Perez, US Marshal, about Lew...and they all huddled on the other side laughing, as retired Gringos will down here... and saying..."yeah, sure...CHILO Perez...uh-huh". Robert and Leslie got screwed as well. They supposedy sold their house overnight and left the country...then there's Luis De La Sota to whom they were in debt for feed for their animals and themselves...he got it as well. I sympathize...I know how good Lew and Celina are at what they do. Their job isn't Ranching, or cattle, or horse traning or riding stables...it's screwing people. They love it and it shows.

Funny thing was a local Jew Gringo psychologist, from New York I think. He'd been away on vacation when this thing spilled over and on his return called Lew and Celina to get to know them...to diagnose the situation. They very gladly came to see him...I mean this sucker was calling THEM. After a couple of hours of their skilled bullshit the psychologist diagnoses ME as a paranoid psycopath...probaby queer as well. He has the two certified nuts right in front of him and comes away diagnosing the person he hasn't even met!

He became so alarmed at how dangerous yoors trooli is that he warned a mutual friend of his and my lawyers to be carefull...watch out as I was one devious sucker. My lawyer assured the friend there was nothing to worry about and he in turn bet the psychologist a dinner at a fine restaurant here in town that I, for one thing, had indeed given Celina and Lew at least $10,000 I could prove. That was the ten grand Ceina told investigators I gave her to care for my kids for three weeks...which caused a huge shift down here in the economy with everyone quitting Medicine and Law to go into baby-sitting. The bet was on. Weeks passed and they went on their ways. Finally my lawyer agreed to show the friend certified copies of the bank checks with Celina's signature on them for a total of ten grand. The friend called back to say he thought he was owed a dinner and the once cocky psychologist immediately delivered and never even asked to see any evidence.

Then a few days ago I was stopped in town by a gringa voice saying, "Well hello Fred Parhad". That stopped me in my tracks. I don't know anyone in this town though enough of them know of me and the only words I've heard are, "you're under arrest" and "get out, Eye-Raki Terrorist". NO ONE says hello to me. I walked over to the woman who was getting ready to mount her four-trac...that's the new horse around here...and said, "Do we know each other"? She gave her name and she's the wife of the "very important person" who also tried to get me run out of town by going to Migracion with all sorts of stories about how I was here illegaly etc. The only time she and I sort of spoke was when she came flying ut of her Rover to ask if I was the one who'd had a letter handed to their daughter for them...you see they too were supporters of Lew and Ceina and believed I was the very devil.

So I says..."Oh, I didn't realize we were on speaking terms." And she says, "Well, I just wanted to say hello". Now that's odd as hell. Another incident like that the same day had some newer neigbors call out from their car..."hello neighbor"...to ME! What with the psychologist taking his friend out for humble pie...the lady in the four-trac...the neighbors and their cheery greeting...not to mention Cervantes and his regrets...I'd say something has circulated among the gringo community here that sort of maybe convinced some that they'd been as suckered as I was...and this was their way of making a litlle...a very litle amends.

The only chrge I still face is running Lew over with my Bourbon. Though Lew and Celina and their one "witness" Leslie are nowhere to be found...it would seem their testimony alone might be enough for me to be found guilty. This is when you appreciate the difference between the legal system we used to have in the States and the Napoleonic one they work under here. In America used to be when you were accused of a crime it was up to the State to prove its case...all you had to do was sit back and watch them do it...the burden of proof was on the government. A very wise place to place the burden for proof since the Colonists had all the experience they ever wanted of a King and his ways. In the old America a judge or jury could aquit you based on nothing more than a weak case presented by the prosecutor...no matter how much everyone THOUGHT you probably were guilty. That didn't work for Johm Waker Lindh though and may not work for many more Americans under compassionate conservatism...who never committed a crime in or against America but is sitting in jail for ten years anyway.

I guess Emperors are dfferent than kings...especialy when they come from the People, like Napoleon did. If Lew and his wife and neighbors say I ran him over deliberately and for no good reason that THEY culd see and lie convincingly enough to the investigators...and I don't lie...then I get charged with the crime. From that point on the State doesn't have to do anything but sit back and listen to me try to prove I DIDN'T. The burden of proof is on me...which is why no one will stop to help an injured pedestrian here because if he or she dies before witnesses show up...or if there are none and the police come onto the scene to see you there with a dead person and your car nearby...they could charge you with vehicular manslaughter and you'd be left stuck trying to prove you didn't hit the person...and that could be hard to do. How do you prove a negative?

Apparently they don't even have to show up for my lawyer to cross examine them...go over the statements made to the police. If three people, or five, or even two...set out to "get you" down here...they culd easily do it. I did indeed run the guy over but I didn't wake up that morning saying to myself..."I think my daughter's birthday is the day to run over Lew Garcia...in front of her". It turned out to be the day though that he decided to first run me down and then go for my daughter. In a mad rush to beat him away I ran him over. I'll never know if he tripped and fell first or if my car hit the horse's hoofs and that brought them down. But then I was convinced he was going to do the same to her...what was I supposed to do...wait till I was sure he'd done it? I figured if I stayed between him and where she was sitting on her horse he couldn't get to her and would just wheel around and go back home. It was in the heat of the moment..never calculated or intentional. Even after what he did to me, if he'd gone back onto is own property that would have been the end of it, for that day. Instead I had his last words to me ringing in my ears..."And where is YOUR daughter"? Then he raced off towards where she was...not to his own yard. I wasn't going to wait and I doubt if the prosecutors or the judge here would have waited...especially if they knew what I knew about Lew...what the Marshalls told me about how unstable he is and then what the Mexican FBI told me they won't repeat...that he is a very dagerous man involved in drugs and that's why he left Belize and Guatemala with the cops after him.

Anyway, the judge will decide soon. I don't face jail time because I didn't hurt Lew too badly. A fine might do it. Lew and I each came away with an indelible impression of the other...for Lew that impression was made by my tire tracks across his shoulder...for me it's the last look in his eyes as he turned to see where I was...and saw where I was. The man brought it all on himself...as he's done all his life. Seldom has a person so clearly asked for it than that man...and it may be the reason he does what he does...he just can't believe it's his own self doing the screwing and by the time he's done really fucking himself over, HAS to believe someone else was "behind it" all along and that's when he snaps and lashes out. But I figure I did this town a favor cause he's gone with a minimum of damage done...I tried everything I could think of to warn people...to cooperate with the police in the States and here, even as Lew was busy setting me up... and all it got me was in deeper shit till I had to clear a path out myself. It's just that when you dispose of garbage you can't help but get a little of the juice on your hands.

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