from ICON

By Carl James Grindley

THE COURT WILL HAVE to forgive me. Unlike some, I did not learn proper allocution at Swiss boarding school. That's a joke, my broken little robot, and you must type it verbatim: ha ha ha. I suppose that as it is your job, to record what will become the public record, failure to do so will make you seem a little cunty. Ha ha ha. Let's do it again: ha ha ha. I could do this shit all day long.

Sorry. Yes, yes, I know.

And since we have no public except the future, and no past except what we remember to have happened or have typed into life, I am pretty sure that I should start off by claiming that my so-called schemes were hatched in Vienna or Cairo or somewhere in the rocky byways of the olde-fashionedy Crimea. I can tell you, my little robot, that the ink was of my own creation and included many of my own fluids.

Thank you. That was my understanding. I am trying to be helpful.

We have been here a long time, but it's been worth it, hasn't it?

Yes. When you're governor, Jim, perhaps you will thank me.

It is a nice day, your honor. I do appreciate that.

God help me, Bob, I am trying to be as honest as possible, but the world is an old place.

Okay. Sorry, your honor. It's just that Bob is so much more, you know, nice.

Sure.

Listen to me: outside the bar, tattered prayer ribbons frayed in the thin air. Vultures were gathered thirty or so yards down the road, just where its surface changed from broken gravel to dried ruts in the mud. The road did not lead back to the Chinese frontier but to nowhere. It wound down the steep hillside to rocky banks of a swift-moving river. There was going to be a sky burial later that day. The birds are mighty impatient but they knew to wait for the monks.

But until then, until that small matter of hacking a putrefying corpse into bite-sized hunks, it was going to be yet another drinking game in yet another miserable East Asian bar. At that time, you know, and here I am speaking directly to you, Mi' Lud, I despised Buddhists. Matter of fact, I still find them inordinately perverse. But I had spent the last two weeks laboring under the twin yokes of cholera and hate and wanted, more than anything else, to fuck them up. Reincarnation is the last refuge of the truly unmotivated. Only someone with inordinately low life goals would settle for the transmigration of souls. Fuckers. One day, they'll pay.

Fuck you, Jim, this is important.

Sorry, your honor, I apologize for that. I'm sorry. Really I am.

The truth of the matter is that I spent the '80s working in Catamarca, bouncing from wretched pit to wretched pit in the Capillias, chasing rhodochrosite, amethysts, citrines and ametrines, but it wasn't long before I fell back into my old vices. There were always preferential jobs to award in the mines, and a gringo, even un gringo surafricano had influence. Sit down in the office, boy, tell me about your village.

Nevertheless, it wore me down and I left as soon as the stones became scarce.

Sick and tired of chasing the dirty little Matacos gauchos from Buenos Aries to Patagonia, I slicked down my hair and followed the sound of jackboots marching into Paraguay. The lady Nietzsche, such a silly slut, was just as mad as her brother and was busy was stumbling around the jungle muttering nonsense. Yeah, yeah, I thought, verjungt und voller kraft, my ass. To tell you the truth, my little robot, I was just as eager to watch them starve in the jungle half cracked with filariasis as I was to let my ass rot penniless in Asuncion, so I walked through the Plaza Uruguaya, under the jacarandas, and left a calling card at their pensione.

Ich bin nicht Judisch, you crazy old bitch, I said to her, ich kann diese Leute bilden arbeite sehr stark. My teeth clicked shut with every syllable, but the lady Nietzsche simply batted her eyelids at me and introduced her husband.

Jesus H. Christ but Nueva Germania was a despicable hellhole, capable of doing much damage to the human psyche, but Bernhard Forster was definitely bent, and I realized I could learn a thing or two from the old fruit. Wir haben viel im Common, ja?

Well, what the fuck do you want me to say?

Yes, I will this time.

Look, Jim, it isn't my fault half of that shit was thrown out, but what can you do? Next time, perhaps you should use actual warrants and real fucking federal agents.

Yes, I understand.

I am just as bored of this shit, Bob, as you are.

Okay. Yes, your honor, I realize, that. I agree. I do thank the court and the government. This is a very generous deal.

Okay. Formalities are formalities. I can appreciate that.

Yes, I was the head of a well-organized and secretive criminal enterprise whose sole ambition was to defraud the American taxpayer of billions of dollars. Yes, I am willing to continue to cooperate with federal authorities regarding the specifics of the plan and the people involved. Yes, I will continue to help the federal government recover its property. Yes, I am also guilty of making certain terrorist threats against certain cities in the Great State of Kansas and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I tell you, your honor, I just wish that I'd threatened the fuck out of Idaho too, because that's another state that's just chock full of cocksuckers.

If you didn't like the deal, numbfuck, then why the fuck did you sign it? Bob here doesn't give a shit. He thinks this shit is funny. If I ever get out, me and him is going to have a big, fat party.

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