For Your Personal Amusement...

I'm picking up a novel I started late last year then dropped for about 6 months to work on other projects. It's entitled Romanov 12:19, after Romans 12:19 in the Bible. The daughter of a Wall Street tycoon is kidnapped right after she arrives at her private school in Westchester County.

Desperate for answers and frustrated with the NYPD, the family's Russian chauffeur Vasiliy recommends Josef Romanov, aka Joe Roman, former NYPD and Moscow militia detective. Joe occasionally does work for and sometimes against the Russian mob of Brighton Beach. Vasiliy was his partner in the Moscow Militia police.

The trail leads them to the CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), once infamous for its sweatshops and now infamous for its child prostitution rings. Roman and the father fly to Saipan on the tycoon's private jet and Roman brings with him two Russian hit men, a disgraced FBI agent and his former partner, Vasiliy. The six are guided around the island by Norma Campo, the director of the real-life Guma Esperanza shelter for battered and exploited women.

One of the leads they find on the island is a right wing radio host who goes to Saipan every November for "special visits." Any relation to Cecil Humphries and the fat fuck pictured above is strictly intentional. These are the Humphries chapters.

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Chapter 36
Cecil Humphries walked down the folding steps of the Learjet that he’d leased. “Why do they have to make these fucking things so narrow?” the obese man muttered under his breath. “What do they think, we’re all anorexic?” There was no brass band, no dignitaries, no politicians, no reporters or photographers, no red carpet, no one there waiting for him which, if he was still stateside, would be unusual. Here in Saipan, having no one waiting for him was exactly what he wanted. No sense in taking chances, he thought, and pulled down the front of the brim of his trademark white Panama hat and put on his Ray Ban sunglasses.

Putting down his carryon luggage, the fat American took out a gold-plated Zippo lighter embossed with the GOP national symbol and lit up a Cuban, putting the empty aluminum tube back in his coat pocket. The little girls liked to play with them afterwards and he chortled when he thought of the times he’d used them as dildos and they’d complain about them being cold.

Now 58, Humphries was sleek, bloated and ruddy with good health and he was in a mood for celebrating. The syndicated radio network for whom he’d been working as a conservative iconoclast for 11 years had just signed him to a 10 year contract estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million. The day after he’d signed the contract, he devoted his entire five hour-long radio show to bragging about it and merrily hit the kill button every time some jealous Al Franken wannabe liberal pinhead would call with outrage.

He was the new face of the Republican Party in the minds of not just the conservative grassroots but also to the new Obama administration. He’d achieved a new level of celebrity when he openly wished for the new president to fail and to get impeached. What angered a lot of people, including some turncoat moderate Republicans, was that he’d said this last November on Election Night.

No doubt those same liberal pinheads would make a lot of hay over why he was here just as they did when it was revealed after his arrest 9 years ago for being in possession of illegal pain killers to which he’d been addicted. Humphries’ attitude was that they could all take a flying leap off Banzai Cliff. It wasn’t anyone’s business what a grown man did in his free time, especially when he was on vacation.

Still, leftist fathead bloggers would create a conspiracy theory out of whole cloth if they found out that he’d secretly or without fanfare traveled to the same island that he’d ceaselessly fought to keep exempt from US Immigration laws. Since customs quotas, minimum wage and tariff laws didn’t apply to Saipan and Guam, why should the immigration laws?

He’d railed against Bush from his bully pulpit when in May of last year he’d signed the Natural Resources Act of 2008 (or S. 2739) into law. That was why he’d decided to abruptly take a vacation here on Saipan mere days after signing the largest contract in American broadcasting history. Later on in the month, the federal government would be handed over complete control of the CNMI’s immigration laws. He wanted to see the island’s precocious new talent before INS put a clamp on it.

Humphries hailed a cab just like any ordinary tourist and made his way to the same five star hotel where, unbeknownst to him, a group of dangerous-looking men from the United States had checked in the night before.

Chapter 39
Cecil Humphries dispatched the bellhop with a ten dollar bill and a grunted approximation of gratitude. He lit up another Cuban with his famous gold lighter, his only concession to his celebrated identity, and serenely exhaled the smoke through the open sliding glass door. The spacious, tiled patio overlooked the beach and he lowered his Ray Bans to look down at the small, colorful figures lounging, swimming or running on the sand.

Of course, Humphries wasn’t there to openly enjoy the surf, work on his tan or look for seashells. He could do that in Ft. Lauderdale where he lived year-round. No, what he was here to do would be frowned upon by his countrymen, especially liberal fathead bloggers quivering for a Gotcha moment.

He’d just taken a Viagra and was beginning to feel the effects. The pundit’s penis stirred as he looked at the children on the sand in their bathing suits. He turned around, took out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory. Humphries was smart enough not to put it in his contacts list and every time he’d called this number in the past, he also deleted the phone’s memory of the call. Of course, it would still be on record with his cell phone provider but that wasn’t an issue as long as no one had any reason to go looking through his call history.

“Rodrigo. Guess who? That’s right! I’m back and just in time to head off Eliot Ness and his damned Do Gooders. Is my favorite girl available? What?! Well, that sucks. Who would do such a thing? OK, who else have you got for me? I have to be on a plane by tomorrow night and I don’t have much time. Really? You sure she’s 12 and not 18 who looks like she’s 12 but really 12? You know how young those Filipinas look. No, I know you never let me down. I trust you. I’ll see you at the usual spot at 6.”

Humphries folded the phone and walked back onto the patio, eyeing the little girls in their skimpy bikinis and enjoying the effect the Viagra was already having on him. He’d been saving up for a long time and he planned on using up every one of the six condoms he’d brought with him.

Chapter 41
Fat, sleek men are lining up for your daughters and they all have lots of time and money. To them, they are just a couple of tight orifices and a ponytail to pull in pursuit of their long-lost adolescence and activities that polite society denies them. You call them pedophiles. I call them my accomplices.

Cecil Humphries, America’s most recognizable political pundit, was dressing down before his big night. Considering the tender age of the young lady he’d be entertaining tonight, it didn’t pay to draw attention to himself. Wearing generic sunglasses, plain khaki slacks (44 waist), cheap Panama hat sans hat band or any adornment, and a stereotypical, flowered print shirt (size 18 neck), the colorfully-attired Humphries was hiding in plain sight by masquerading as what he fancied the typical American on vacation in a tropical paradise. While packing in Florida, he’d briefly considered a fake beard but nixed the idea. Even considering the embarrassing Cialis incident, he hated the thought of plastering his puss with spirit gum. The hair would make his face itch, too.

He’d been to Guam on several occasions on behalf of the Armed Forces Radio Network that had faithfully carried The Humphries Radio Show for over nine years to the tacit exclusion of everything to the political left of the radio dial (the frequency on his flagship home station was 1700 AM, about as far to the right as one could turn the knob). Al Franken’s Air America and pinheaded liberal talk show hosts had come and gone in the last decade but Cecil Humphries went proudly marching on where ever our troops were sent (in spirit, anyway). The ultra conservative pundit was, if anything, more concerned about the troops being exposed to liberal propaganda than that of al Qaeda’s or any other terrorist network. Acting as a filter or antidote to such subversiveness was, to Humphries, less of a job as it was a calling.

Tonight, he’d be going to Guam, dealing with the US Navy yet it wouldn’t be to entertain the troops but himself. He needed to make contact with just a handful of men and officers who were expecting his clandestine visit. Rodrigo, as always, had set up everything on his end but the cash payments to smooth his safe and discrete arrival on shore and back was still up to Humphries.

He counted out 50 crisp hundred dollar bills, $5000, for the five men who’d get him on and off Guam before the sun shone on him. He didn’t know if the men were aware of the true nature of his special visit or if Rodrigo provided him with a cover story. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t talk unless they cared to explain the thousands of dollars that passed hands while allowing an unauthorized civilian into a US Naval installation.

The cash was withdrawn from a Saipan bank this morning out of a secret slush fund that he’d maintained for years. He could have taken the bribe money out of any of his several Florida-based accounts. But doing so would’ve left an easily-discovered paper trail. His Saipan account was in the name of a dummy corporation (Friedman Capital, named in honor of the conservative economist, Milton Friedman). His deliberately illegible signature on the withdrawal slip would’ve foiled any but the most dogged investigator. Mama didn’t raise no fools although she sure slept with more than her fair share of them.

Satisfied for the third time that all five grand was there (one can’t trust the hired help of even five star hotels), he tapped the edges of the bills on the dresser and slid them into his Gucci calfskin billfold. Humphries then took out his cell phone to ensure that Rodrigo had chartered the boat and was already waiting for him at the most isolated point in the harbor a mile from the hotel. Humphries insisted on making the others wait, especially during these special visits, so he wouldn’t be left waiting and exposed to scrutiny for longer than necessary. He wanted to duck in and out of the cab and slip onto the boat.

Humphries’s go-between, whom he’d stubbornly refused to acknowledge as a pimp, was actually a surprisingly urbane Filipino who spoke English with hardly a trace of an accent either way. Always impeccably dressed in a white blazer and matching slacks and Fedora, Rodrigo had an infallible instinct for being able to spot the officers and men most susceptible to the irresistible siren call of several Ben Franklins.

“Rodrigo? It’s me,” Humphries quietly announced in his famous Indiana twang but not using his equally well-known, bombastic radio voice. Who knew if the walls had ears and how sensitive they’d be? “Are you at the harbor? OK, are you sure you’ve never used this captain before? Outstanding. You’re the man, Rodrigo. I’ll be there in 10 or 15 minutes.”

He clapped his cell phone shut and looked out the window, satisfied that dusk had sufficiently deepened so that no one could possibly recognize him in the gathering dark. He used the phone in his room to alert the desk to have a cab waiting for him by the time he got to the lobby. With a little luck, he’d be having the time of his life within two hours. The six condoms in the right pocket of his Bermuda shorts dryly rustled as he walked to the door.