Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (49 page)

“No way! You knew Mick Jagger?” D.H. sounds like he wants an autograph.

While Lloyd explains how he and the lead singer for The Rolling Stones were educated in fractional-reserve banking, fiat money, and the covert machinations of the House of Rothschild, Gordon tunes in to the sexy French chanteuse singing “Ballad of a Thin Man” on the stereo. She’s turning Dylan’s sneering accusations into a seduction. Her band, Les Veilleurs, has traded the original track’s jangly upright piano for a Steinway playing at a much slower tempo in a nightclub deep underground. Ice clinking against whiskey glasses, velvety murmurs from the crowd, and a shimmering drumbeat provide a dreamy sense of drift and dislocation. The lyrics, sung with a languid French accent, have never sounded more erotic:

You’ve been with the professors

And they’ve all liked your looks.

With great lawyers you have

Discussed lepers and crooks.

You’ve been through all of

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books.

You’re very well read

It’s well known.

But something is happening here

And you don’t know what it is,

Do you, Mister Jones?

Oh crap…
Gordon thinks to himself.
Who’s Mister Jones here? Me?
Jimmy’s uncle seems to be doing his Mephistophelean best to clue them in to the Big Picture–
The History of Corporate Evil in America
, or whatever–but Gordon is having a hard time following him. He’s too buzzed to concentrate. And that French girl isn’t helping. Her torchy singing is giving him a brain-dimming boner screaming, “Fly me to Paris and
get me laid!”

“Predatory lending...” Lloyd is saying, “that’s the key. Goad your intended victim into taking on debt and then use that debt as a means of control. It works on governments as well as individuals. The Rothschilds understood this method and exploited it better than anyone. Using the National City Bank of Cleveland as a front, they financed John D. Rockefeller’s monopolistic acquisitions for Standard Oil. Now the Rockefellers control several key transnational corporations along with Chase Manhattan–arguably the most powerful bank in America–but who controls the Rockefellers? The answer is: the Rothschilds, of course.”

“
…‘Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan,’
” the French singer purrs.

“Yeah, well… so how does that relate to any of us?” Gordon asks, feeling surly. Lloyd’s mouthful of expensive dentistry has been clacking away as he speaks, affronting Gordon’s nostrils with a funky halitosis. It smells like a raw Porterhouse steak that’s been left in the refrigerator too long. It isn’t doing anything to make Gordon think more highly of him.

“It relates in two ways,” Lloyd says, heedless of the slaughterhouse images he’s conjuring inside Gordon’s skull. “On a microeconomic level, you have the pernicious influence of credit cards, the means by which bankers feed off the financial life-blood of the masses, much the same way as vampire bats feed off of cattle. It’s predatory lending on an unimaginably vast scale. You probably didn’t know this, but that little experiment in picking your pocket got its start right here in Fresno County. Back in 1958, Bank of America did the first credit card mass mailing to 66,000 unsuspecting Fresno County families. It was a huge success, obviously–for the bankers. By 1960, over two million cards were in circulation throughout California, at generally usurious rates.

“On the macroeconomic side of things, we handed over control of our economy–and thus our government–to a cartel of international bankers when Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. That ingenious piece of legislation was cobbled together in a secret meeting at J.P. Morgan’s private retreat out on Jekyll Island. Morgan was in on it, of course, as were the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. The American public has been whipsawed for gigantic profits from pre-engineered bouts of inflation and deflation ever since. Wars, recessions, even Presidential elections–the Fed controls it all with monetary policy, our economy’s magic elixir.”

Didn’t Robert Louis Stevenson write
Jekyll and Hyde
right around the turn of the century?
Gordon wonders by association. (He’ll look it up in a few days and discover that
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was published in 1886.)

“All this predatory lending bullshit is giving me a headache,” D.H. says. “I need another beer. Anyone else want one?” Gordon and Lloyd both say yes to the beers and D.H. heads off to the kitchen to get them.

“Sadly, that’s how most people respond when confronted with the truth about their role in a consumer society,” Lloyd says once D.H. is out of earshot. “They either seek oblivion in alcohol and mindless entertainment, or distract themselves with sex.”

“Or they convince themselves they’re above it all by gorging on expensive meals and buying into a cool but ultimately hollow and meaningless lifestyle,” says Gordon, indicating his surroundings.

“Thank you…” says Lloyd, patting Gordon’s shoulder. “I truly mean that. Your honesty is a breath of fresh air. Deep down, I know I’m just a fat man without a family. But we all have our little foibles. For instance, I can see that
you
fancy yourself as a bit of a spiritual seeker.”

Gordon shrugs, embarrassed, but drunk enough to plow ahead with a sloppy sort of sincerity. “I just want answers to a few basic questions,” he says. “Like: Why are we here? Where are we going? And why do we have to suffer along the way?”

“I’m not suffering, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, but I think
I
would, if I had to live the way you do.”

“You very well might,” Lloyd says with a thoughtful look unseen up until then.

“I’m just curious… what makes you think you deserve so much more than most other people? And why doesn’t it bother you when you screw them over to get it? I mean, your happiness is predicated on someone else’s misery. That’s seriously fucked-up….” Gordon staggers a bit as he says this, as if flinching from an anticipated punch.

“A fatal lack of love must have warped my conscience,” says Lloyd, but he’s just being droll. There’s more amusement in his eyes than malice.

“Have you ever been married?”

“Always a mistake, but yes, I was. To a Miss Laura Olivia Selden-Biddle–of good stock, but my God, what an ice queen she turned out! Don’t believe anything you hear about the divorce settlement. I screwed that soul-killing shrew six ways to Sunday.”

“And you’ve been obsessed with how the government screws you ever since.”

“Along with the big corporations and the cartel of international bankers, yes.”

“Y’know, I’m not sure I believe even half the stuff you’ve been telling us. For all I know, it could be just a bunch of lies and Masonic disinformation.”

“Masonic disinformation… it’s funny you should mention that,” says Lloyd. “Let’s go upstairs to my office. I have something there I’d like to show you. It has to do with your father.”

Gordon’s first thought, uncharitably, is that Lloyd is a pederast who just wants to get him alone someplace so he can put the moves on him. In close quarters with nowhere to run, Gordon wouldn’t stand a chance against Lloyd’s massive bulk. It would be like getting humped by a pervy bull walrus. But then he thinks,
What if Lloyd really knows something about my dad? What if he has some sort of clue that would help explain the plane crash?
He decides it’s worth the risk to find out. Lloyd is already halfway up a wooden flight of steps next to the foyer. As Gordon pushes past his partying classmates to catch up to him, the twitchy guitars of Television’s “Marquee Moon” ring out through Lloyd’s powerful and expensive speakers. Someone has cranked up the volume. Like so much else Gordon has heard this evening, the song seems to convey a deeper meaning that he isn’t quite ready to fathom. As Tom Verlaine sings it in his CBGB’s-honed yawp:

I spoke to a man down at the tracks,

And I asked him how he don’t go mad.

He said: “Look here, junior, don’t you be so happy,

And for Heaven’s sake, don’t you be so sad.”

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

The first thing Gordon notices when he steps into Lloyd’s office is a big red tin umbrella cut in half perpendicularly and protruding from the wall behind Lloyd’s desk like an awning. It’s a three-dimensional replica of the famous red umbrella logo used by the Travelers Insurance Company in all their advertising. Lloyd is seated beneath it, the top half of his face obscured by the umbrella’s shadow.

“I know I’ve fed you quite a bit of information tonight,” says Lloyd, turning on a desktop computer. “The brain is like the stomach–there’s only so much it can absorb at any given time. But if you take away just one thing from this evening, always remember this: the banks and insurance companies are only too happy to sell you an umbrella on a sunny day, but they’ll yank it away from you at the first sign of rain.

“Now, as an example, take my own company…. We issued accident policies for all three of the manned Skylab missions, believe it or not. But did we pay anything out when Skylab scattered itself in flaming chunks across the Earth’s troposphere? No, we did not. If some New Zealand Aborigine caught a piece of meteor shield shrapnel in his Maori-tattooed forehead, that was just his tough luck.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Gordon asks, perplexed.

“Because I like you, Gordon,” Lloyd says, leaning into the light. “And I feel bad about what happened to your father. I knew him, you know…. Not in any sort of public way, but behind the scenes–through mutual friends.” Lloyd takes a small, black-framed picture off the wall beside his desk. “Here…” he says, passing it to Gordon, “this is what I wanted you to look at. Recognize anyone?”

It’s a photograph of Lloyd grinning wildly, most likely drunk, with his fat arm around the waist of a pale man in a navy blue suit. The man in the suit has the lipless, bland, lizard-like countenance of George H.W. Bush.

“Is that the Vice President?”

“It is indeed…” says Lloyd. “And that’s me. But what about the third man?”

There’s another man on the opposite side of the Vice President wearing tinted aviator sunglasses and a grin nearly as demented as Lloyd’s. His face isn’t immediately recognizable to Gordon–Hunter S. Thompson would be his first guess–but then it dawns on him:

“That’s Arnie Andersen!” Gordon exclaims. “He played the bagpipes at my dad’s funeral.”

“Correct,” says Lloyd. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but Arnie is a 33rd degree Mason–the highest degree attainable in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. He’s now a servant of the
arcanum arcandrum
, the sacred secret. As am I, and as is our friend there, Mr. Bush.”

“I thought Arnie knew my dad from the Hoo-Hoo Club.”

“So he did. There’s no rule saying a man can’t belong to more than one secret society. The Hoo-Hoos and the Masons have similar origins and share a similar agenda. Both are doorways to the Ancient Mystery Cults of Babylon and Egypt, tracing their lineage through the Rosicrucians, the Knights Templar, Euclid, Melchizedek–and even so far back as Hermes Trismegistus and the sons of Lamech.”

“The Hoo-Hoo Club? Are you shittin’ me? They’re just a bunch of ego-tripping hardware store clerks. They might get wild and crazy at the Ramada Inn every year and bite each other in their underpants, but that doesn’t make them wizards.”

“True. There are yahoos aplenty in the ranks of the Hoo-Hoos,” says Lloyd, “and jackasses of every stripe among the Masons and their other affiliates as well. But all of those organizations have a pyramidal power structure, and the men at the highest levels have far more in common with each other than they do with those under them, whom they govern. Your father, as you must’ve been aware, was next in line for the top position in the Hoo-Hoo Club’s leadership. The Snark of the Universe, I believe they call it. That would have meant he was being tested. I’m not certain as to their exact methods, but it’s likely your father would have been required to pass through trials by fire, by earth, by air, and by water–to see if he was worthy of being entrusted with the sacred secret.”

“What sacred secret?” asks Gordon.

“As they’re so fond of saying in the military,” Lloyd smirks, “
‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’
”

“Oh, get over yourself…” says Gordon. “What secrets could you guys possibly have that are so fucking important? I mean, you were about to tell my dad. He wasn’t exactly James Bond–
or was he?”

“No, he wasn’t. But that’s my point. He may have been tested and found wanting. The Great Architect of the Universe may have deemed him unworthy.”

“You mean –”

“That plane crash might not have been an accident.”

“Shit…” says Gordon. It comes out as a dry wheeze. “Do you know who did it?”

“Who? Or
what
. There are forces at work in this world far beyond the ken of the ordinary man.”

Archons… a Dark Brotherhood…
thinks Gordon, but he keeps his mouth shut for now. He wants to hear what Lloyd has to say about it.

“I think you need a little grounding in Masonic history,” says Lloyd, coming around from behind the desk to put his blubbery arm across Gordon’s shoulders. “It might help you better understand what was at stake.”

What’s at stake is my anal virginity
, Gordon is thinking, but to avoid a possible end to their conversation, he just shrugs himself free and goes over to check out the computer on Lloyd’s desk.

“Is that one of the new Apples?” he asks.

“It is,” says Lloyd, walking over to stand behind him. “They call it the Lisa. Its official release date is set for this January. It’s the first home computer with a Graphical User Interface. Which means, in other words, that it was built with alien technology in use here on Earth prior to Noah’s Flood, but then lost–or nearly lost. The knowledge of that technology was kept safe for millennia by the world’s secret societies. But that’s getting ahead of the story I’d meant to tell.”