Nathaniel's Chorus. Gary Lightfoot

Bahamas + chum = no arrest, on his pad, he then says,

      “Sir, Branch alluded to aiming his investigation to, as he put it, “highest offices”. How high do you think he meant?”

      “Well, son, we both know what his real aim is, so you just keep doing what you’re doing and not worry about tomorrow.”

      “Sir, I was sleeping.”

      “Ha! You get back to it, I just wanted to let you know what was coming.”

      With that, the caller hangs up and Nathaniel attempts to fall back asleep.

      Φ Π Ψ

      In the back room of Footboards in Long Beach, Nathan is writing on the dry erase board, highlights of the past several days. Nathan begins to think out loud,

      “Okay, so let’s take a look at what we have so far, Neil and I are watching the coverage of Nathaniel’s Senate hearing when two guys in black suits confront Neil in Guadalajara. Neil takes the two guys down and finds out that they were actually Feds.”

      “Wait,” says Neil, “I only knocked out one; Pedro hit the other guy with his Quince Brandy.”

      “You like that stuff?” Chris adds.

      “Anyway,” Nathan continues, “two Feds appear in Mexico.”

      “Then as you’re driving out of Guadalajara, an old Pontiac starts following you.”

      Neil stands up, walks to the dry erase board, circles his description and says, “A Fawn ’67 Catalina with a really built motor, details Junior, details.”

      “Right, right. Okay lets keep going.” Nathan continues to think out loud.

      “Neil’s able to lose them halfway out of Mexico and arrives in Long Beach ahead of schedule but being chased by a cop who gets hit broadsided by a black van as he slides around the corner in front of the Big Donut.”

      Nathan walks around the room thinking, as he does, Chris picks up the photo album on the coffee table and begins to flip through the pages.

      Nathan starts underlining the important facts on the board,

      “Then today I load up the file/seek program and insert Neil’s thumb drive. We pick up Chris and go to his house where we think that Chris’s computer has been pinged.”

      “And then you fixed our computer.” Asela says as she mimics Nathan’s movement of slamming the computer to the floor.

      “Ha, don’t worry, we’ll replace it.” Nathan says as he writes down a note that he owes Asela one computer. Chris doesn’t respond, but continues paging through the albums, stopping occasionally to make note of the friends in the photos.

      “Then we pick up Neil’s backup drive and find that someone else had been there and replaced the drive.”

      Nancy, who had been sitting quietly perks up and looks over at Neil, “Whom did you tell about the Foot brothers secret hiding place? Junior hasn’t even told me!”

      Nathan walks over to Nancy’s chair and sits down on the arm. He wraps his arm around her and says, “who do you think?”

      Nancy glances first at Neil then back at Nathan then back at Neil, “Have you talked to her?”

      Neil shakes his head, as he says, “No I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with her she’s probably got people that filter out old friends like me.”

      Asela stands up and says, “Her who? People filter? Who you guys talking about?” Asela stops mid sentence and then points at Neil, “you’re still nuts about what’s her bucket, aren’t you.”

      Neil holds his hands up, “guys, guys, please. Our brother is about to be arrested and we’re talking about past history.”

      Nathan circles the words “lost thumb” on the board, “I don’t think its past with her, she has your drive.”

      Neil knows that he will have to find her, but for now he wants to move on with the recap of what they do know. Neil stands up and walks to the board to restart the recap.

      “So after the thumb, we start to leave, get bumped from behind by a van and then a cop pulls in front of us. That’s way too convenient.”

      Chris looks up from the albums and says, “don’t forget, another Black van.”

      Neil writes, “black van” on the board and says, “Right, and that ring that the policeman was wearing was just like the ring that the Fed had on in Mexico.”

      “What?” Nathan says, “you mean you saw that same ring on the guys that approached you in Mexico? You’re the one telling me to not forget details?”

      “Yep, but it didn’t click until just now.”

      “Hey guys”, Chris says solemnly as he continues looking at the old albums, “we’re going to need guys with skills, you know, like some of the guys we had back on the Teams.”

      Nathan snaps his fingers, “Nuts! The program, I left running. Nancy, did you notice if the screen was finished before you turned the computer off?”

      “Yes honey, I looked before you had called. It finished shortly after you two left to pick up Chris.”

      “Did you print the results?”

      “Honey, I left it in the printer.”

      Nathan pulls the printout from the printer and places it on his drawing table. He starts to read it, stopping to read aloud a few names that both Neil and Chris would know.

      “Crap, did you know that Jim died in a motorcycle accident?”

      Chris closes the album and says, “I didn’t think Jim even liked bikes, wasn’t it Steve who always rode a Harley?”

      Nathan scans down the list and finds the result on Steve,

      “Holy cow, Steve became a motorcycle cop and was ran over just last month.”

      “Henry was recovering from a heart attack and died when he fell out of a hospital bed?”

      Chris hands the album to Neil and then walks over to where Nathan is and looks over his shoulder,

      “That’s too weird, all three of those guys died within a few weeks of each other.”

      “Who does that leave?” Neil asks as he starts to flip the pages of the old album.

      The three old friends continue into the night comparing the list of old friends with mysterious deaths. By midnight in Long Beach, they realize that only a handful of their fellow “Team Tiger” buddies are still unaccounted for. As far as the ones accounted for, most had either died from unusual causes or had recently been arrested for unspecified charges.

      Nathan steps back from the drawing table and sits down on the couch, “this is looking too organized, isn’t it?”

      “What do you mean?” Chris asks as he joins Nathan on the couch.

      “Well think about it. Within a few weeks all these guys die from really strange things? Would you ever dream this stuff up?”

      Neil sits in the chair next to the couch and adds to Nathan’s conclusion, “yeah and don’t forget, we might be next.”

      Chris rolls his head back and looks up at the ceiling, “I keep thinking about the black vans and that cop with the ring.”

      Neil sits up in the chair and starts searching the coffee table, “where’s that pad of paper?”

      Nathan reaches to the floor and picks it up, hands it to Neil and says, “You got an idea?”

      “That ring, I should have done this hours ago.”

      Neil begins to sketch the scene in Pedro’s Cantina in Guadalajara. As he does he first quickly sketches the entire room with the