Román Leão

Tag: writing

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Down on the Mission [ficção]

    MEMORANDUM FOR: THE RECORD
    SUBJECT: Project MKULTRA, Subproject 3

    1. This project will involve the realistic testing of certain research and development items of interest to 
Chemical Division/Technical Services Staff.
    2. During the course of research and development, it is sometimes found that certain very necessary experiments and tests are not suited to ordinary laboratory conditions. At the same time it would be 
very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct these as operational field tests. This project is designed to provide discrete dedicated facilities to fill this intermediate requirement.
    3. This project will be conducted by REDACTED. Certain support activities will be provided by CD/TSS, APD/TSS, and when necessary, local law enforcement personnel.
    4. The total cost of this project for a period of one year will not exceed REDACTED.


    
REDACTED
    CD/TSS

    APPROVED:
    REDACTED
    Chief, CD/TSS

    APPROVED FOR OBLIGATION OF FUNDS:
    REDACTED
    Research Director

    Date: 11 November, 1971

    Carol Davidson parked the 1963 Volkswagen Beetle she had been saddled with on Bartlett Street, around the corner from the Agency’s clandestine office on Mission. Driving the drafty German “people’s car” always put her in a foul mood, but she couldn’t be seen cruising around in her own Mercedes-Benz 280S, especially when she was supposed to be a penniless 21-year-old hippie girl. Just the look of satisfaction on her face as she floated by in a luxury leather seat with more springs than a Barcalounger would raise an eyebrow from her supposed cohort.

    Davidson took a moment to look around the regularly busy neighborhood street before using her ID card to unlock the unmarked office door, another anomaly that would be hard to explain to anyone unfamiliar with the new technology.

    As soon as the door closed, sealing off the ubiquitous thrum of the Mission District in full midday bustle, the sound was replaced by another, more abrasive noise: the sound of her angry superior.

    “Davidson,” the orotund voice rattled the framed portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon hanging in the entry hall. “In my office. Now.”

    The woman took a beat to leave her purse at her assigned desk, strategically leaving her weapon behind on the long walk to the Operations Officer’s lair, lest she feel like putting a bullet in his fat head, or one in her own if she had to endure his post-lunch onion breath again.

    As soon as she crossed the threshold into what Urban Wyrzykowski had curated over time from a faceless bureaucratic office into something resembling the burrow of a large animal—which now that she thought of it, was exactly was it was—she was hit with a miasma of stale cigarettes, sour sweat, and… yes, onions.

    “Shut the door behind you,” Wyrzykowski belched.

    “Shut the door?” Davidson protested, giving a performative half-turn back toward the empty office. “Nobody works here but me and you.”

    “The door.”

    “Shit.”

    “Shit is right, Davidson. Would you like to explain how you ended up overdosing a very famous British subject, leading to his apparent suicide?”

    “Oh, that.”

    “Yes, that, goddamn it!” Wyrzykowski’s face empurpled.

    “Well, you see, it was really quite clever,” Davidson jumped into the deep end of the story, figuring that she was drowning either way. “It was simply the old magician’s trick of misdirection. When I blew a giant hit of some pretty good Acapulco Gold into his mouth, I gave him a quick injection of the substance.”

    Wyrzykowski sat silently rubbing his temples as if trying to coax enough blood into leaving his skull so that he might black out and not have to listen to the woman’s story for a moment longer. After a pregnant pause, he opened his desk drawer and removed a orange plastic prescription bottle and began to wrestle with the new child-proof cap.

    “Would you like me to help you with that, chief,” Davidson asked as innocently as she could manage.

    “Would I… ? Fuck!” Wyrzykowski resisted the urge to throw the pills across the room and carefully placed them out of Davidson’s reach. “May I ask you a real question, Agent Davidson?”

    “Shoot.”

    “Would that I could,” the beleaguered senior agent tented his stubby fingers and stared at his single charge. “Are you trying to kill me?”

    “Sir?”

    “I’ll ask you again,” Wyrzykowski straightened in his chair, falling back on the well-worn interrogation skill set that got him into this mess in the first place. “Are you actually trying to kill me?”

    “Not in anyway that anyone would suspect,” Davidson allowed. “Or be able to prove.”

    “I see,” the man eased a bit, now that their relationship was finally coming into focus. “It’s like that.”

    “I would say that is isn’t personal, sir,” Davidson eschewed any hint of remorse, “but, you see, it kind of is.”

    “Agent Davidson, sometimes I can’t tell when you are kidding.”

    “Agent Wyrzykowski,” the woman sighed, “sometimes I can’t tell either. Isn’t that the gig?”

    “About the Brit,” Wyrzykowski changed the topic, at this point not really caring if the crazy broad wanted him gone or not, “is he really dead?”

    “Lucious Cole?”

    Wyrzykowski began to chuckle, realizing that the agent’s plan was probably to make him want to kill himself before their conversation finally found its finish. “The same.”

    “He is safe as houses, as they seem to like to say.”

    “Are you going to enlighten me as to his current whereabouts?”

    “OK,” Davidson rubbed her hands together in misplaced glee, “I know this opportunity just kind of fell in our laps, but I do have a plan.”

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 2)

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell [ficção]

    Joaninha pulled her 1982 Honda Accord up to the high curb in front of the Boonville Mercantile and killed the engine. The weary mid-size sedan, however, had its own ideas and continued to diesel as if it was having an epileptic fit as the young woman gathered up the items that had rattled out of her purse on the bumpy drive over from Ukiah.

    She was glad that she was almost done having to make the daily trip over to the college, but wasn’t looking forward to sinking money that she didn’t have into the aging car to ensure that she could achieve escape velocity from her hometown. Graduation was coming up fast and Joaninha was hoping that the Accord and her journalism degree would get her at least as far away as the East Bay, maybe Humboldt County.

    “Just a moment!” A cheerful voice from the Mercantile’s backroom called out as she triggered the tiny bronze Tibetan bells hanging on the shop’s front door.

    “It’s just me,” Joaninha called back. “I can take over if you want, Mom.” The familiar earthy smell of Nag Champa incense filled her senses as the stress of upcoming finals melted away, at least for the moment.

    “Sera, thank goodness,” a lively gray-haired woman in her early 50s bustled out from the stockroom, wrestling herself into a wool sweater as she walked. “Where is Kiḍa today?” Joaninha’s mother asked, using her native Marathi translation of a name she found, frankly, ridiculous.

    “He drove over the mountain today, mom. He is finally starting the interviews for his project.”

    “I don’t know why your boyfriend wants to talk to those idiots,” an old-timer shopping with a female eclectus parrot on his shoulder chimed unbidden into the conversation.

    “I don’t remember asking your opinion, Floyd,” Joaninha’s mother snapped, long having had enough of the local’s morning commentary on everything from the weather to Bill Clinton’s recent remarks on the Oklahoma City bombing.

    “Hey, I’m just saying… ,” the man replied. The bright red and purple parrot, uncharacteristically, was silent on the matter.

    “That’s your problem, Floyd,” the woman pointed out, “you are always ‘just saying!’ Why don’t you keep your trap shut for a change.”

    “Keep your trap shut! Keep your trap shut!” The tie-dyed-colored bird joyfully joined in the dialogue.

    “You should follow the advice of your feathered friend, Floyd,” Mrs. Joaninha advised as she grabbed her keys to leave. “Between the two of you, she’s the only one with any sense.”

    This last parry finally brought a moment of quiet to the Mercantile as the parrot bobbed up and down on Floyd’s shoulder in silent agreement.

    “Where are you running off to, Mom?” Joaninha asked as she punched the No Sale key on the ancient cash register. “It looks like we have enough change in the till to take care of the afternoon rush.” She raised one eyebrow toward the store’s one customer that her Mom was finally done berating.

    “I need to go drive your father to the clinic,” the woman explained, speaking back over her overtly parrotless shoulder as the bronze bells tinkled again. “He was in the wood shop and chopped off a finger or something, I don’t know. You know your father.”

    “Mom! How long ago did he call you?”

    “Don’t worry, mulagī,” the woman dismissed her daughter’s fears out of hand. “Your father is such a drama king. I’ll probably be right back.”

    “Shut your trap!” The parrot called out in farewell.

    “What can I do you for, Mr. Anderson?” Joaninha made the decision to not worry that her father might be bleeding out on the floor of his shop.

    “Just the usual,” the man sighed as he hefted a ten-pound bag of Roudybush bird pellets onto the counter. “I’m serious, you know. I don’t think your man should be out there kicking over rocks that are better left undisturbed.”

    “Well, for starters, he’s not ‘my man’, Mr. Anderson, but I’m sure that he would appreciate your concern. That’ll be four dollars.” Joaninha took the fiver proffered from her customer and hit the till, handing him back his change. “TK’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. I think it’s important that he works through his abandonment issues while he’s still relatively young.”

    “Is that what he’s up to?” Anderson asked, the parrot leaning in to hear the response. “Those cultists didn’t abandon your man, the State had to go in and take him away before those dummies killed him!”

    “TK says Girrasol was a commune, not a cult,” Joaninha said, now thinking back to her own misgivings about the project. “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”

    “Commune, my ass!” Anderson snorted. “You just tell that boy to watch his six.”

    “I’ll do that, Mr. Anderson. You have a good day, now.”

    “Commune, my ass! Commune, my ass!” The parrot repeated as the pair retreated. “Commune, my ass!”

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift [ficção]

    The Kid zipped up the nylon track bag he had just stuffed with everything he would need to conduct the interviews to complete his Senior film project. He had just spent the morning checking out one of the college’s brand new Sony DCR-VX1000 video cameras upon penalty of painful death.

    He had also mortgaged his soul to the drama department for the use of one of their portable lights. If he failed to bring it back, he would be damned to be cast as Idiot One for whatever production called for protracted humiliation for the foreseeable future.

    On a whim, he had started out creating a documentary on his name. First name: The; last name: Kid. His unusual appellation had caused equal parts confusion, intrigue, and down right hassle in his twenty four years, but it wasn’t until he started digging into the origins of his name, that the strangeness of it really began to reveal itself.

    The Kid, or, as he preferred to be called these days, TK (which at least teased the possibility of a name to be named later), had been born on one of the most notorious Mendocino communes of the early ’70s. From an early age, he had been told that his parents didn’t want to propagate any moribund Judeo-Christian mythologies by giving him a handle that echoed the very values they were trying to eschew.

    When Child Protection Services finally showed up, wondering why the child was not only missing from the closest school roster, but from any such registers, they had scribbled his no-name in the blanks where it remained even after they finally hauled him away from the wreckage of his parent’s utopian project.

    A knock on the door of his rented bedroom broke The Kid’s reverie. Serafina Joaninha, a young woman who often felt that she had more name than she knew what to do with, entered without waiting to be invited and asked the very question he had been asking himself, “Are you ready for this?”

    Joaninha was a startling young beauty of Portuguese and Goan extraction, and The Kid was routinely unnerved by the way she always just seemed to appear when he was thinking of her. Of course, he did think of her a lot. The two met cute in a Mendocino College film class, the pair being the last two sitting through a screening of the 1932 Danish film, Vampyr.

    The Kid, having been mesmerized by the slow-moving, dreamlike movie, hadn’t noticed the fellow cinephile sitting next to him until the final frame. When he finally turned, for a moment he thought the Polish actress Rena Mandel had somehow escaped the screen and had joined him. Joaninha had the same uncanny dark eyes and doll-like mouth as the character of Giséle. The fact that she was wearing an antique lace-collared black dress only added to the illusion.

    “I got you something, Ken Burns,” Joaninha plopped down on The Kid’s bed, giving the bag of equipment a little bounce while perfectly sure The Kid wasn’t go to complain, having long recognized the effect her presence had on him. She had originally been flattered by his look of disbelief that he was lucky enough to be noticed by her but she was growing tired of The Kid’s tendency to put her on a pedestal.

    Perhaps when he finished his damn documentary, he would finally gain the confidence to realize his own worth. Joaninha was willing to wait a little longer, but she wasn’t interested in being worshiped. She had enough self-awareness to know that if they were going to make it, they would need to be equal partners in the relationship.
    “It’s a clapperboard!” The Kid exclaimed as Joaninha handed over the wooden device she had hidden behind her back. “That’s the one thing I forgot!”

    “I even got you some chalk. What are you calling this opus?”
    “I thought I’d name it after Cole’s last album,” The Kid said.
    “Kingdoms of the Radio, it is,” Joaninha pronounced and proceeded to chalk the title onto the clapperboard. “Let’s kick this thing off right now. Grab the camera.”

    The Kid, excited to start his long-planned project, dug out the video camera and tripod and set them up before the young woman.

    “Scene one apple, take one!” Joaninha announced. “Mark!” With that proclamation, she struck the clapperboard’s striped sticks together and they were both off to the movies.

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 2)

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    With Shane’s solid presence gone from the scene, the concrete bunker seemed to close in on the pair left alone for the first time since they left the airport.

    “So…” Rosenda began before being cut off by a recalcitrant Cole.

    “Look,” the fallen star looked down at his bare feet, “I’ve been a right twit, and I’m sorry. For everything.”

    “No, it’s all right,” Rosenda sought to diffuse whatever heartfelt confession was coming her way. If pressed, she actually preferred her musicians to be unrepentant messes. If Cole was going to start blubbering on about how he grew up playing in bomb sites and the like, she may have to pitch him into the lagoon herself. Everybody had their own bombsites to navigate, and it was by living vicariously through free spirits like Cole that made them feel as if there just may be a way out.

    “I can’t do this anymore.”

    “PCP? I think that’s probably a good idea,” Rosenda offered.

    Cole chuckled in spite of being in some sort of obvious torment.

    “No, not PCP, although, come to think of it, that has just made the list. I mean this, all of this. The whole business of fame and art and bullshit.” Cole sat down on an overturned five-gallon bucket and stared at his hands.

    “Come on, Lucious,” Rosenda sought to snap the man out of his funk before she had to slap him. “You’ve got it made. So many people would kill to be in your position. Albert King is opening for you tomorrow night. Albert fucking King!”

    “My position? Do you have any idea what my position costs a person? Did you know I had a wife and a kid?” Cole asked.

    Rosenda was shocked, knowing—and even somewhat admiring—Cole’s roguish rap sheet. “No, I guess I didn’t,” she began.

    “You wouldn’t,” Cole explained. “A beautiful little daughter. It doesn’t fit the profile does it? The thing is, I bought the hype and became this “Lucious Cole’ wanker. The wife packed up their stuff and left one night when I was out doing God knows what. And that was that.”

    “I’m sure that she still cares…”

    “No. That was that,” Cole rued. “I’ve been told by her South London gangster brothers that if I so much as phone, I’m a dead man, and I am predisposed to believe them. Sometimes I wish I was a dead man.”

    “Come on, Lucious!” Rosenda exploded. “Get your act together, man. So your old lady ran off with your kid, do you think that’s the worst story you could hear within a block’s radius of this building? Let alone in this city? Jesus. You have a gift that helps people forget all the shitty things that have happened to them. Maybe just three minutes at a time, maybe for a few hours; but man, that’s magic. Can’t you see that?”

    “How can I help others forget when I can’t even help myself?” Cole answered her indignation with a primal wail. “I didn’t sign up to be their fucking psychiatrist. I certainly didn’t sign up to be anybody’s priest. Why do you think I stumble around this shitty planet high out of my mind? I can’t bear being left to my own thoughts. Do you know what that’s like?”

    “No,” Rosenda conceded, starting to feel a little empathy toward the man she had primarily seen as a cartoon rock star. “I guess I don’t.”

    “God bless you, then,” Cole offered, more than a little jealousy creeping into his voice. “I hope you never learn.”

    He began to sing in a mournful tenor, the sound filling the hollow concrete chamber and reverberating until the air was wholly suffused with his song. “The wind doth blow today, my love, and a few small drops of rain; I never had but one true-love, in cold grave she was lain.”

    “That’s beautiful, Cole,” Rosenda whispered as the last word hung in the air, a catch in her quiet voice. “Is that one of yours?”

    “I wish,” Cole gave a sad snort. “No, love, that song is older than this here fair city.”

    “What’s it called?”

    “The Unquiet Grave.”
     

    The damp cold followed Shane under the colonnade as he returned carrying a bag of ice and a twelve pack of Olympia, which he promptly dropped when he saw Rosenda tied to a wooden chair in the middle of the room. Several bottles shattered when they hit the floor and cold beer seeped out of the carton and began to pool on the fresh concrete.

    “What the fook ’appened?” His secondhand accent surfaced as Shane rushed to untie the woman. “Where the hell’s the English?”

    Rosenda had been crying, and Shane naturally thought that it was either from the non-consensual bondage or the thought of what Avidan was going to say when he found out that his star had flown the coop.

    “Don’t worry, Karoline,” he tried to soothe her, “we’ll get ’im back. They aren’t too many places to hide in this town that I don’t know about.”

    “Forget it, Bear,” she sighed, looking up at him as he worked to undo Cole’s rope work. “He’s gone.”

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 1)

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Prisoner at the Palace (Pt. 1) [ficção]

    A heavy drizzle spattered the Lincoln as it rolled through the damp San Francisco night. Karoline Rosenda was silent and still except for periodically twisting around in her seat to check on their charge. Be OK! Be OK! Echoed over and over in her thoughts like a fire alarm, but she wisely kept it to herself.

    Shane, of course, said nothing. Rosenda knew him to adopt the platitudinous “silent type” affect whenever things got tense, and she had to admit; this was bad. Really fucking bad. If Z found out that she had let her star get dosed and subsequently lobotomized by their driver, both of them were going to be looking for jobs. That’s if the dumb son-of-a-bitch lived through this. If he died on them, they were really fucked.

    It was bad enough that they were cruising around town with a naked and hogtied British national trussed upon the backseat. God forbid if they got pulled over for something. Rosenda breathed a small sigh of relief that they had the Lincoln. This was San Francisco; nobody was going to mess with a Lincoln Continental with an Irish driver. They might as well have diplomatic plates on the car from the borderless nation of Privilege.

    “Wash going on?” A slurred voice from the backseat made Shane and Rosenda jump. “I can’t moove.”

    “Lucious, listen to me,” Rosenda tried to explain. “It was for your own good, you were going to hurt yourself.” She climbed around to face the beleaguered rock star and searched his swelling face for a sign that he understood. Cole, for his part seemed to be taking in this new information and weighing its merit.

    “Oh, all right,” he ultimately conceded. “Can you untie me now?”

    “Sure…”

    “No,” Shane interjected, “we can’t. Not until we get to our safe house. There you can run around like a chicken with your head cut off all you want. In my car, you stay tied.”

    “Oh, all right.”

    The Lincoln moved with the stealth and purpose of a panther north along Scott past Alta Plaza Park toward the Marina.

    “Are we going to hide him at some millionaire’s house?” Rosenda asked as she watched the buildings get fancier and fancier as they got closer to the Bay.

    “Just keep an eye on him and don’t worry about where we’re going,” Shane growled. The Lincoln caught the green light and swung left on Lombard, following the sparse traffic along the curve toward the bridge, before suddenly swerving right onto Lyon. It wasn’t until Shane turned past the newly restored Palace of Fine Arts rotunda and parked behind the science center that one of the Oppenheimer brothers had opened in the old exhibit hall that Rosenda began to guess what his plan might be.

    Designed by local architect Bernard Maybeck, and built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Neo-classical Palace of Fine Arts framed a picturesque lagoon, complete with swans that slowly floated through their private dream world. The tableau was designed to echo a decaying ruin, and until the last few years, it had done it’s job extremely well; the original wood, plaster, and burlap finally succumbing to the harsh weather arriving from the Pacific.

    The City had just finished rebuilding everything in poured concrete and steel, and Shane, who knew everyone from the contractors to the supervisors, had the keys.

    “Hold tight, I’ll make sure we’re sound,” Shane stepped out of the Lincoln and took off toward the museum. Rosenda watched him go, fully expecting the night to end in the cavernous exhibition building. Shane, however, veered off toward the rotunda before completely disappearing into the fog.

    “Say, sweetheart,” Cole tentatively tried his luck at using his battered charm. “Can’t you loosen this rope a bit? I mean, bloody hell, your friend there is either a cowboy or in to some really kinky shit. I can’t feel my hands.”

    Rosenda thought hard about the possible ramifications of loosening Cole’s bonds, then thought about what Shane might do if he came back and Cole was back on the loose. She quickly realized that he might not do a thing. It was really no skin off his balls if Cole fucked right off and was never heard from again. She, however, did not have that luxury.

    “Look, Lucious, I don’t care what issues you are working through that make you act like a drunken clown juggling lit torches in a lumber yard, but you are not going to burn down my career.”

    Cole was still trying to muster his faculties enough to construct a pithy rejoinder when Shane yanked open the rear suicide door. He reached into the Lincoln and without a word, grabbed Cole by a confluence of knots, which invariably made them all suddenly cinch tighter.

    The rock star yelped as he was hauled out of the car and to his feet. Shane silently took his measure, and deciding that the man before him was probably not going to bolt, produced a large, very sharp knife.

    “All right, I am going to cut you loose. If you bolt, I’ll catch you, and when I do, I’m going to pitch you into the lagoon,” he explained, pointing with the blade toward the murky, freezing pond that reflected the ornate colonnade and rotunda. “We need to get you inside and find you some clothes. Are you onboard, smart guy?”

    Cole, whose core temperature was dropping fast as he stood buck naked in the fog, only nodded his head enthusiastically.

    It was mere minutes before Shane reappeared and ushered the pair toward an open door in one of the larger columns that held up the soaring Greco-Roman dome. A concrete angel impassively watched over the proceedings as he stood off to the side, making sure that Cole wasn’t going to make a break for it. Once inside, he shut the door behind them, throwing the space into total darkness.

    “Don’t move,” he warned. “There’s a lot of construction tools laying about, and I wouldn’t want either of you to break any of them.” With that, the pair could hear his retreating footfalls moving away from them.

    “How the hell does he know where he’s going?” Cole asked in genuine wonder.

    “Don’t ask me,” Rosenda shrugged in the void. “Maybe he’s a fucking leprechaun.” That garnered a snort from Cole somewhere to her right, which was as close as she could come to seeing in the dark.

    With the sound of a powerful electrical contact being thrown in the distance, a row of flood lamps suddenly bathed the narrow 60-foot-tall room in blinding light.

    Cole, whose retinas had just retracted to the back of his dry skull, recoiled and looked for someplace to hide as if he were a giant cockroach. He didn’t, or couldn’t, see Shane step out of another door across the room carrying a paint-splattered pair of coveralls which he threw to Cole without a word as he approached, hitting him square in the chest.

    “Put those on,” he instructed. “We’re tired of looking at your bony ass.”

    Rosenda, who to that point had been too freaked out by the situation to process that she was basically alone with a musician infamous for his sexual proclivities and prowess, only nodded her head in slight disappointment.

    “Look, Cole, I’m sorry I had to clock you, but I’m sure you’d have rather stayed out of the county psych lockup, and there was no way to reason with you.”

    “It’s all right, mate,” the Englishman acquiesced. “I would have done the same for you.”

    Shane considered the slight musician doing his best to knock him out and laughed despite himself.

    “That shot was ace,” Cole asked probing his outraged face with his long fingers made for playing guitar. “Is there anywhere around here to get some ice? I’d hate to do the gig tomorrow night looking like I caught the worst of a rugby scrum.”

    Shane thought about it for a moment and ventured he could trust Rosenda to babysit while he popped over to the liquor store on Chestnut. Besides, it was her ass if the fool went AWOL. He could go for a cold one himself.

    “I’ll be right back,” Shane said, surveying the scene as someone coming in off the street might. “If anyone comes by—they shouldn’t, but if they do—you two work for Shamrock Construction. Mick Jigger here, is a painter, obviously, and you…”

    Rosenda lifted one carefully sculpted eyebrow, curious to how Shane saw her fitting into his alibi.

    “You figure it out.” With that, he left the way they came in and disappeared into the fog.

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 3 [ficção]

    That must have been some really good coke. It what seemed like no time at all, Zongo and I had hacked our way through the heavy stuff and were starting to see moonlight coming through the other side.

    The night was dead quiet except for what I took for the hypnotic crashing of the surf somewhere far in the distance. I was the first to break through the undergrowth and distinctly heard the sound of a bullet being chambered. Once you’ve been on the wrong side of that sound, you never forget it. I stopped cold. Zongo, clueless to the situation, blundered right into me knocking us both out into the open.

    My mind reeled as it took in the scene of the biggest Moon I had ever seen silhouetting a Victorian mansion and a helicopter with a surfboard lashed to the bottom of it.

    “Hey, man, ever been shot?” A voice out of the darkness questioned.

    “Holy fuck!” Zongo exploded and shoved me aside. “It’s Charlie Fucking Perigo! Who shot you, you fucking maniac?”

    “Charlie did,” Perigo said. “Zongo, you son-of-a-bitch. What are you and your buddy trying to do, give me the heebie jeebies? You know I have a delicate constitution.”

    “The only thing delicate about you, Chuck, are them fancy panties you wear under those baggies.”

    “You ought to know, Freddie, I got them from your sister.”
    The two went on and on, playing the dozens until I finally broke in. “So I take it you two know each other?”

    It turned out that Zongo and Charlie met right after he’d come back from Vietnam and they had been thick as thieves for a while. I guess they just kind of lost touch when Zongo went south to to be part of the San Francisco scene. Both Charlie and I laughed our asses off when he told us the story about the how the Condor sign talked to him one night. Who’s to say? I’ve seen, if not crazier things, some pretty weird shit out there on the edge.

    Well, we spent a good piece of time there in the courtyard, laughing and smoking some primo weed that Charlie was holding. At one point, we had been talking about all the heads that had been showing up in Mendo, and wouldn’t be cool if we had a place where we could all hang out together where we wouldn’t get hassled.

    Zongo took a big hit and looked kind of philosophically up at the moon so that we followed his gaze. “Have I got an idea!” he said once he had blown out the hit, and that was that. Girassol was reborn.

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 1 [ficção]

    I guess every community has its own creation myths; stories that bring members together in shared tradition while allowing new people to understand in a deeper way where the group was coming from. Girassol was no different.

    My favorite one was when Charlie almost shot Zongo and Enrique as they first popped out of the forest. I had taken a little hike into the woods to pee, so I missed it, but I would have loved to see Zongo’s face; not just at seeing the property for the first time, but staring down the barrel of an automatic for the first time as well. I’m guessing.

    Charlie used to love to tell how the huge Moon we had that night had risen above the tree line behind the mansion. It was a full moon at vernal equinox and came over the house due east, throwing some spooky shadows back over the courtyard.

    He’ll probably kill me for telling you this, but Charlie was always afraid of the Menehune. Ever since he was a little kid. So, imagine the scene; it was dark, with this big full moon rising over an abandoned ranch from the 1800s and there are noises coming toward him.

    What would you do?

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 3 [ficção]

    I had been surfing the late afternoon break at Manchester, north of the lighthouse, and the sun was starting to drop behind the mountain. The great whites off the coast have been known to come in to feed when it gets dark, so I rode one last wave all the way to the beach, collected my stuff, and lashed my board to the copper’s skid.

    Chae came and met me at the edge of the dunes. I had talked her into exploring the old ranch with me and she had showed up ready to go, dressed in cutoffs and hip boots. She looked so good, I almost asked if she wanted to forget the ranch altogether.

    I mentioned once before that being alone on the Girassol property always made me feel paranoid, like I was being watched from the tree line. This particular evening was really bad. I had a serious case of chicken skin by the time as soon as I landed the chopper. I could swear I heard voices, but I wasn’t about to say anything to Chae.

    It’s embarrassing, but as a kid, I was deathly afraid of the Menehune, the race of little people who live …well, in remote forgotten places just like Girassol. I had an auntie from the Big Island who told be about them, and I never got over it. I know they’re supposed to be friendly; they were the ones who came out at night and built all the ancient temples and fishponds, but for some reason, they freaked me out. Maybe it was because they only came out at night. I never did like that story the cobbler and the elves, either.

    I know it’s wasn’t really in keeping with the whole peaceful warrior trip, but I used to keep my service piece, a Colt Commander, in the chopper just in case I got bum rushed by a wild boar or some critter out in the deep country. I grabbed the gun and began a recon of the perimeter. By this time, the sun was down and one of the fattest moons I had ever seen was rising up, casting the courtyard in an unearthly light.

    Across the clearing from the main house were the ruins of some smaller buildings, maybe worker’s quarters or something at one time. Behind that mess, was a dark tangle of green that made ’Nam look down right barren. That’s where the sound was coming from. Of course it was, right?

    I have to say; I didn’t spend a whole lot of time down in the shit, not as much as the grunts, but the whole scene that night was bringing me right back to my time in-country. I took a defensive position behind one of the collapsed walls and waited for the little fuckers to come out of the woods. To my surprise, it wasn’t Menehune at all.

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3 [ficção]

    It had been a couple of years since I’d been back north, but I thought I knew every place there was to know. In fact, that’s one of the things that made me want to leave in the first place.

    I had directions and a map to Garissol from Mrs. Chaves, but they didn’t really make sense. Where she had drawn the road to the old ranch, there was only a solid wall of brambles. I knew that the fuckers grew quickly in the county, but this looked like virgin territory.

    Enrique had a couple of big old machetes in the back of his bus from a harvesting job, so we decided to try and see what, if anything, was on the other side of the blackberries. We had spent so much time trying to find a road that seemed to no longer exist that the sun was starting to go down. I guess if we hadn’t still been a little wired, we probably would have waited until the next day.

    It was pretty rough going, but we did start picking up signs of an old wagon road deep in the thicket. I found it incredible to think that maybe no one had been out this way since the first cars drove up the coast. The very thought sent a chill up my spine especially since the next thought was, “Why not?”

    Follow the story:
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Serafina’s Gift
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Kumalo 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 1
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Ride a Painted Pony
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Fadeout (Rock Hound Magazine, 1970)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Tibetan Bells & a Bird from Hell
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 1

    Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Karoline Rosenda 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 2
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 1)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Don’t Poke the Bear (Pt. 2)
    Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 2

  • Happy 80th, Van the Man!



    Belfast’s beloved son Van Morrison has been a recording artist longer than I’ve been alive. Them’s first, and penultimate, album—having dropped in ’65—preceded me by a full year. This is to say that the mystic blues shouter has always been around as far as I’m concerned.

    Growing up on AM radio, Dr. Don Rose on San Francisco’s KFRC must have introduced the first Morrison classic I fell in love with, probably 1970’s Domino from His Band and the Street Choir, still one of my all-time favorite records.

    Although our childhoods were separated by a good 21 years and the Atlantic Ocean, I have to think of him as a soul brother equally steeped in Blues and R&B from our respective impressionable ages. My father used to sit me down, when he wasn’t blaring Fats Domino or Little Richard’s Specialty catalog as loud as it would go, and explain what the drummers on Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s seminal First Time! The Count Meets The Duke were doing before continuing his ongoing dissertation on Jimmy Reed’s Live at Carnegie Hall.

    As a result of what the less-enlightened among us might consider prolonged polyrhythmic brainwashing, I have often felt that perhaps I was grown in a weird sonic test tube to be a Van Morrison fan. The way that our man can stretch a phrase so that it lands off the beat like a jazz singer, or drop into a shamanic trance state to rival John Lee Hooker, it was a language I was well familiar with by the time he began to eschew the easy radio hit.

    I can still remember watching Van Morrison: The Concert on PBS late one night in 1990. I think I was half paying attention, digging the traditional Irish songs that had been on his collaboration with the Chieftains a couple of years previous. A good hour into it, the band broke into In the Garden from 1986’s No Guru, No Method, No Teacher at a frenetic pace. My first thought was that they were disrespecting the elegiac beauty of the song, a meditative highlight of the album.

    And then, with the crack of a snare drum, as suddenly as we were launched into the firmament by the upward thrust of the band, we break gravity and jettison the boosters. Van touches the seventh verse (so lightly) and then slips into a gravity-free trance, repeating, “You fell, you fell, you fell,” tasting and twisting both syllables, recasting them, rejecting them, pacing the stage like a nervous panther in a cage, and finally placing them, “from the garden.” I remember walking toward the TV, and saying out loud, “What the fuck?”

    I had seen plenty of live music by then, but I had never seen someone so enraptured by the moment, in the moment, of the moment. And who the hell is he talking about? Is he singing to mankind or speaking to the angels that were cast out of heaven? Maybe he doesn’t even know. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. It’s fucking poetry, it is.

    That song still makes me tear up every time I hear and I don’t know why. Is there a primal longing to return to the proverbial garden that Morrison tapped into? I am sure that he would just remark, as he has many times, “It’s just a song. I’m just a songwriter.” I call bullshit, but OK, I get it. The creative arts, when one is open and lucky, exist in a realm of real magic. It is best not to piss off the muse by calling it out.

    I have always respected Morrison’s high regard of the muse and his willingness to follow it wherever it might lead. The two records he produced during the COVID pandemic, and subsequent lockdown, gave his critics plenty of raw meat to devour. However, after a good 60 years in a game he, himself, has eschewed in both in song and action, I felt, and still feel, that the man has well earned the right to respond to societal events however he might feel appropriate.

    One can’t be surprised that an artist who sang the following, nearly 55 years ago, might not give a shit what anyone has to say about his business one way or another: Don’t wannna discuss it / Think it’s time for a change / You may get disgusted / Start thinkin’ that I’m strange / In that case I’ll go underground / Get some / Heavy rest / Never have to worry / About what is worst or what is best

    A re-entrenchment along the lines of Bob Dylan’s two solo folk records of 1992–93, seem to have redirected Morrison’s inspiration. 2023’s Moving on Skiffle revisited the type of music he played in his youth, before the trap and trappings of fame; whereas Accentuate the Positive, from the same year, celebrated rock & roll at it’s earliest, and least calcified, incarnation.

    This summer’s Remembering Now reads at first as an aural CV of all of the genres that Morrison has explored over the years, with familiar places and themes bubbling up in the fragrant stew. The closest cousin in the Man’s deep catalog sounds to be 1991’s Hymns to the Silence, one of my all-time favorites.

    Eighty years on, Morrison’s voice sounds as strong as ever; age bringing, if anything, a resonance that was missing in the early days. Listening back, I hear the young, brash rocker of 1965–66 as a trumpet, blasting out the theme over the roar of the band, announcing the new world as it was unrolled before it. These days, Morrison’s instrument has become a tenor sax, deep and luxurious, able to evoke longing and defiance with equal strength and intention.

    Roll me over, Romeo.