“How’s your wrist, Jed?” Roy asked nicely. “I don’t want to hurt you; I just want you to hold still.”
Jed let another string of curses.
“He doesn’t usually talk that way,” Roy apologized to the camera watching. “He’s having a bad day.”
“It was such a little thing—” Jed tried to explain.
“What ‘Oceanna’ is he talking about?” the citizen asked.
Roy’s partner answered the citizen. “They battered a drag queen earlier today and then—real bright—put the video of it on YouTube—”
“Kennie!” Roy said to shut him up. “That’s not our part.”
Frank started to speak up, but Roy gave him a dirty look that slowed him down. “Don’t you start, too, Frank. It’ll heap more charges to mess with.”
Roy brought Jed’s free wrist down to cuff it to the other, behind his back.
“Kennie, Would you cuff Frank properly?”
Roy held Jed down onto the hood of the car, even though he was cuffed, while he watched Kennie.
Kennie cuffed Frank’s hands together nicely behind his back and removed the first set between the two.
Roy checked his work with his free hand.
“Nice work, Ken.” Roy said with a smile. “That feels about right. Not too tight, but won’t come off.”
Kennie beamed.
“Now we put them into the car.” Roy let go of Jed and Kennie held onto the cuffs for both men. Roy opened the back door of the cruiser. “Now, when you put them in, hold their heads so they don’t bang on the doorway. Some people would claim we did that, and we didn’t.” He smiled nicely to the watching phone.
* * *
Regina poked away at her computer to find any more information she could and found the second video, as well.
Paula had made some tea and served some to Regina, taking a seat in one of her office chairs.“ We could call Oceanna back,” she said.
“She’s not answering right now.” Regina picked up her phone.
* * *
Hila answered her phone and listened. “Right. And you know, I was also thinking—”
* * *
Regina laughed and talked into the phone with Hila. “And you think I should make that call? Me?”
“What?” Paula asked, beginning to smile.
Regina talked into her phone. “One sec.” She explained Hila’s plan to Paula who began to laugh as well and capped her hands.
Regina talked to Hila on the phone. “You think it would work?” she asked.
“Yeah! Friends there are pissed!” Hila said.
“Give me some phone numbers,” Regina said.
* * *
Hila entered the television studio in San Francisco and walked through a maze of cameras, cables and lights to find Connie Lauder talking with someone by her set.
“Connie!”
“Hila! So glad to see you again!”
They hugged.
“What is so urgent? You called and begged me to get you in here so quick—”
“Well,” Hila said to her with a devilish grin. “Something’s breaking, and—I want your help, but also, it’s a good news story, and I think you might just want to carry it.”
* * *
Judge Hangum O. Back and his bailiff talked quietly to the side of the bench.
“Would a nice prostitution case raise your spirits, Your Honor?” the Bailiff asked.
The judge looked at the Bailiff. “Would it have anything to do with international espionage?”
“No.”
“International jewel thievin’?”
“I could see.”
The front doors of the court room burst open and a crowd pushed through. They turned to look.
Jed fought to get his arm away from Roy. “Judge! It’s just a drag queen! And he was talking with the children! Frank! Tell him!”
Frank opened his mouth to speak—
—but everyone else interrupted him.
Derie led Oceanna behind her to the front. “Your Honor! She is not a drag queen—”
“That’s true,” said Lenny Wintz, Jed and Frank’s lawyer, whom they found in the hallway. “No actual proof as of yet about the children, but the day is young, and my clients tell me they were defending—”
Derie’s mouth fell open. “What kids?”
Larry from the gas station tried to jump in. “Judge, I saw the video, and I had to call—”
The judge leaned back in his chair. He nodded to his bailiff and smiled. “This a’ do. There were kids in the video?” Judge Back asked, squeezing a few words in edgewise.
Roy tried to get the judge’s attention. “Your Honor!”
“Stop it! Stop it everybody!” The judge stood and banged his gavel down hard on the sounding block. Okay, look: Any one of you kidnapped by aliens?”
* * *
Hila and Connie sat at a desk and watched Mason’s video.
On the video, Oceanna’s face was alternately bruised and bandaged.
People were reaching through the air to get the Judge’s attention.
Jed was spitting angry.
The judge ordered Mason to stop videoing with his phone. “… designated by a T.V. station or not. Still photos only in here or I’ll grind that gadget and you both up to a pulp with my bare hands!” the judge ordered.
Connie’s phone rang. She picked it up. “Mason. What have we got?”
Connie’s phone chimed, so she pressed an icon to integrate the new call as well, a conference.
“Mason, Regina. This is Connie. We’re all—”
Connie’s phone chimed again. She looked at Hila and pressed the button again on her phone to integrate Hila.
“Okay: Mason, Regina, and Hila. We’re all on the phone together, and Hila is standing right beside me.”
“I wanted to hear them, too,” Hila said to Connie with a smile.
“No problem. This is Connie Lauder with you all, and I’ll be recording this call to document. Please accept.”
“That’s okay,” everyone said.
“Wow! Looks good,” Connie chuckled. “So where do we stand?”
CHAPTER
24
Connie’s producer, “Windy Mindy,” slammed the phone down on her desk and yelled instructions to three assistants.
“We’re going national with this! That judge is the best character I’ve seen in a while, and it’s Arizona, no less. They’re picking us up at seven. Get me George Malcolm on the phone— No. You call George,” she said to one assistant, “and you,” she pointed to another one, “clear the morning set for this! Put in some chairs—” She looked at Connie, who looked at Hila.
“Two,” said Hila.
Connie nodded.
“Two chairs!” Mindy said, “And a table, and some little flowers—not avocado green!”
“You mean over there?” the production assistant pointed. “It’s the evening news.”
“Then build us another set!” Mindy said, sarcastically. “We’re doing it as a segment in the news, and it’s going wide. We’ll lead in with the story, cut to some pictures and a few seconds of video—Tawny, get me two video clips we can use! One from the assault, and one from the court. Then we’ll cut to these two here and give them—” Mindy turned to Connie again, who looked to Hila.
“Five minutes?” Hila asked.
“Two. What you think this is, ’60 Minutes’?” Mindy asked.
“Four?” Hila asked.
“Three minutes is a long time for a new program,” Mindy said.
“But not for a ‘segment’ that goes national.” Hila smiled.
Mindy smiled back at her. “You’re pushy. Okay, four minutes.”
Mindy leaned in to Hila. “Her I know about,” Mindy said in reference to Connie. “But you, I don’t know. You gonna ball up on me when you get on camera?”
* * *
“That professor over in L.A. makes a lot of sense, and she has more degrees than you got testicles,” Judge
Back said with finality.
“Judge, you can’t!” Jed said in horror.
“I can do whatever I want, Jed! If I wanted to raise Darth Vader’s corpse from the dead and make him the Tooth Fairie, I could do it with a twitch of my nose—even after he’s been cremated!”
Jed reeled from the Judge’s hostile tone, and Frank followed suit.
Jed didn’t mean to speak. It was an impulse. “What the f—”
Boiling over, red-faced, the judge stood up behind the bench and looked over it with the fury of Odin to cowering Jed and Frank below.
“I’ll have you drawn and quartered if you so much as THINK about messing with me! You got me, son? I’ll tear you to shreds in a million pieces and rain you down all over hell and back if you so much as crap your pants in my courtroom! You got me? I’ll piss on you so hard you’ll wish to God you’d merely started a war—which you may have done, anyway! You’ll do what I said—and like it, son— or so help me I’ll slam the weight of this bench down on you so hard it’ll take a team of archaeologists with a flashlight to find what’s left of your dried-up, skinny behind! We don’t like people like you here, because we got kids in this town! YOU GOT ME?”
Jed recoiled and held his hands up, index fingers instinctively crossing each other to ward off evil.
Frank jumped behind their lawyer and hid.
Both were shaking.
“You think I’ll do it, Bailiff?” The judge asked.
“You bet your ass, Judge!” the bailiff said.
“You think I’m pissed off yet, Bailiff?”
“Not yet, Judge.”
“And I mean you do this anywhere!” the judge screamed at Jed and Frank. “Behind my back! In front of my back! Over my head or under my ass! Alone in a cow pasture, drunk in a bar, swapping lies at a ballgame! Masturbating in the shower! Whether I’m lookin’ or not. Whether you’re alone or not. You’ll do it! You got it? From now on!” Little balls of spit formed at the judge’s mouth.
Mason was snapping pictures and real-timing them to Connie.
“From this very minute on! You will do as I said. From this very minute on! From NOW!
No one moved.
“FROM RIGHT NOW, DICKHEAD!” The judge screamed.
Jed and Frank both cringed at the judge’s anger.
Mason, Derie, Oceanna—even Roy—began to smile and laugh a little.
“Why you suppose he’s got his panties in such a wad,” Oceanna asked Derie, quietly.
Derie shrugged and continued to hold her phone so Connie could hear.
“Well?!” The judge looked at the two convicts, who hadn’t moved. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!”
Jed and Frank both jumped like they’d been shot at and fought their way through the crowd to exit.
The judge sat back down and laughed. “Ah,” he said to his bailiff.
“Good one,” the bailiff said.
* * *
People bustled around the T.V. studio in San Francisco.
The assistant director listened into his headphones and turned his attention to the set.
“Lights on,” he said.
The lights on the main set came on.
The two Anchors prettied themselves.
“Test the lights in the morning set,” he said.
The lights came on in the morning set.
“Somebody get over there, please,” he said.
Someone went to the set, walked around in it and sat down in Connie’s chair.
The assistant director on set listened to his headphones, absent-mindedly touched them with his finger tips.
“And leave them on. We’ll be there shortly. Okay people, everybody ready?” He looked around, then held up his fingers to show with his count: “Main set first. And in five, four, three, two.” He didn’t speak “one” but silently held up one finger for it, then pointed to the lead anchor.”
Hila and Connie sat in their seats on the “morning” set.
Hila picked up a cup of coffee off the little table and began to sip it but put it back down again.
“Nervous?” Connie asked.
“Me? No— Yes,” Hila said. “Not about being on T.V. Just organizing what I should say. I want to squeeze some ideas in.”
“You’ll be fine,” Connie said. She looked over at the main set and glanced at the assistant director. There was a clear earpiece in her right ear, the off-camera side. She reached up to touch it.
“You about ready?” she asked Hila?”
Hila nodded.
Connie nodded to the director in the booth.
The monitor off to the side showed the feed. The anchors on the first set were talking, CUT TO video of Oceanna getting the pie smushed into her face, thrown on the ground, CUT TO video of the angry mob in the court room, CUT TO stills of fearful Jed and Frank, CUT TO the judge blowing up with the judge’s audio, CUT TO the anchors.
“Get ready,” Connie said to Hila.
The assistant director moved in-between two of the cameras pointed at Connie and Hila, and began his same hand motions.
Connie was very serious. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m Connie Lauder, and I’m here with Hila Mohammad: friend to Oceanna Winkler, and also to others involved both here in San Francisco and there in Kingman, Arizona.
“Hila,” Connie said, turning to face Hila. “This situation is about how people treat people who are different. You know something about that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Tell us about it,” Connie said.
“I’m a crossdresser, by my definition—not on hormones, just male who lives crossdressed, female name. And I’m from Afghanistan—”
“Difficult to do there?” Connie asked.
“Not easy in most of the U.S., either. Still, this is what I need to address, if I may, as it’s about what’s going on with Osh in Kingman, and in most places.
“Two things are popular in the world these days. One is to say we’re all the same, and the other is to fight with people who are different.
“Unity is great where it draws people together, and minorities—like Oceanna—do need a lot of support. Yet most people still feel the need to conflict with people who are different.
“We can’t have a world that way. Everyone on the planet really is different. Should we all live by one narrow ideology, so that everyone is forced to be the same, somehow? Would it ever be possible, anyway? The world could never agree, and bottling people up like that—fascism—creates heat through friction that explodes in war and death.
“Let me ask: Would it be possible— Oceanna is Jewish; I am Muslim. Could a Muslim and a Jew be friends? And if they are, could a Muslim sit with his Jewish friends and share a kosher meal? Could the Jew share part of Eid Al-Fitr with his Muslim friend? Breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan. Could a Catholic stand with Wiccan friends while they dance around a bonfire at a Beltaine festival? May Day. Could a Frenchman love a German friend? Could an Afghan love an American friend? A black a white? A straight a trans?
“If we can’t do these kinds of things, we can never get along in this world, and we must, or else we’re hurting each other, killing each others friends and children.”
Hila shook her head gravely. “How can war and murder, oppression and hate be considered moral? Where did that come from? These are the actions of an immature species, given mostly to demands of an evolving, scared, primitive amygdala. Deep in the brain.”
“If you’re friends with someone who is different, does that reflect back on you in a negative way? Does it make you suspect as one of them? Does it suggest you condone the other lifestyle? It shouldn’t. It should be a positive thing, a sign of character, to accept people with their difference.
“What is needed, these days, I think, is not ‘I can accept you as a friend if you’re like I say you should be,’ but ‘I can accept you as a friend, different or not.’
“It’s the only way,” Hila said earnestly into the camera, “for all peop
le, who must be different—who are in fact individuals—to live together on this earth.”
With her eyes teared, Hila grew a painful smile. “My friend, Oceanna. There in Kingman. My lover.” Hila tried to capture her thoughts. “Such a good person, who helps others. The richness she brings to conversations and to the quality of other people’s lives— She recently helped a war vet to find herself: a P.O.W., shot down in Afghanistan. A helicopter pilot, transsexual.”
Hila looked at her own lap, to Connie, then back to the camera. She touched her dress with one hand while she spoke. “Sadly, that’s not the norm, but it could be. We LGBT need to improve as much as anyone else, to follow Oceanna’s example in living our life.
“Come find out,” Hila said, leaning forward into the camera. “Everyone. This Friday evening, the 4th of July, in Kingman, Arizona. Journey, the famous pop/rock band, is playing—standing room in a large park, minimal fee at the gate, I’m told. Huge festival, carnival, fireworks. Come by car or air, bike or bus. Bring a tent, as I hope we overfill available motels. Make it a trans-Woodstock, if you will. No need to tailgate; just come on in.
“I want everyone in the world to come—crossdressed or transgender, or transsexual, or gay or bi or straight or yourself or nothing or whatever. We’re all human beings. We’re all people who should be valued equally as well. Lets find the courage to stand with friends who are different.
“Remember: That’s Kingman, Arizona, this Friday. Contact Mason Winchester, in Kingman, if you have any questions.”
CHAPTER
25
“Gig’s up,” Derie said to Mason. “The whole world knows you’re a nice guy.”
Derie slapped off the T.V. with one hand and handed Oceanna a drink with the other.
* * *
New York called San Francisco. Chicago called Los Angeles. Austin called Seattle, called the mayor of Kingman. Reno called Vegas, and Vegas laid bets on it.
“This thing has gone viral!” St. Louis said to Atlanta.
“Delta Airlines?” a transgender said in Miami. “Can I get a booking to Las Vegas?”