Chapter Eighty Two:     The Senator


Chrome Squatch Concert Tour USA

Friday, June 19 -- Washington DC
ADAM narrating

Eight o'clock Friday morning I rang to Agent Dawson to report that I had been warned of a potential attack intended for this evening during our concert, apparently instigated by Senator Carver, whom we had arrested yesterday.

The FBI had him in a holding cell, pending a hearing later in the day. But there was a question as to how long they could hold him there; him being a Senator, after all.

Agent Dawson had interrogated Carver late last evening, who had strenuously denied having anything to do with the swat-attack on my folks at the Hacienda. He did not expect the Senator to be more forthcoming about an alleged lethal strike aimed at me during tonight's concert. "What are you idiots talking about? You've got the wrong man, you blundering fools, I demand to be..." you know the litany.

At the moment there were several governmental agencies who had been waiting to get a bite of Senator Carver, so he was probably not being released today. But he did have powerful connections, so one never knows if a politically expedient telephone call will suddenly spring him free. Dawson was on his way to question the Senator again before that happened, so I asked if I could come along.

"You want to smell if he's lying?"

"Actually, I can smell the whole spectrum of emotions: attitude, anxiety, hate, fear. Plus I've had all the basic psych courses the University of Washington has to offer. The lies one tells are clues in themselves, often revealing exactly what the liar does not wish to admit."

"So you swap everything around and focus on the opposite of what he says?"

"That's the simplified version, but yeah, more or less."


We arranged to meet at FBI Headquarters. WDC is pretty compact, so it was an easy little ten-minute trot from our bus camp to the J Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, although I had to wait another ten minutes for Dawson to arrive, since he had to negotiate downtown traffic with his car. Once accompanied by Dawson, I was loaned a visitor's pass for the holding area and we went in together.

Senator Carver was being held in an interrogation locale with one-way glass, seated and handcuffed to a metal table like any common criminal. As we entered he was in the middle of protesting loudly about "these preposterous charges", and how heads would roll once his "powerful friends" became aware of this "travesty of justice".. He went on to insist that "apologies would be demanded" as well as careers destroyed. The Senator was a very important, very rich man and was very displeased, acerbic and deeply offended by such cavalier handling.

He went suddenly silent when I came into the chamber behind Agent Dawson. I could smell his fear from across the room. But then he swallowed once and continued to bluster: "What is that creature doing here? He has sworn false witness against me, get it out of here!"

"No," Dawson insisted, "Mr Forest is here at the invitation of the FBI."

"That's not a mister, it's a Bigfoot, a wild animal and I demand that the FBI protects me against that thing!"

"Oh, calm down, I won't bite you," I said, but couldn't resist also saying, "I'd be more inclined to squash your head just like your goons were about to do to my parents." I demonstrated the size and finger-spread of my right hand and closed it around an imaginary melon-shaped object, then pantomined it becoming a disgusting mess that had splattered everywhere.

The Senator's fear-stink augmented, but so did his bluster: "You're a fucking moron for starting all this mess."

"Actually, I'd say that you started it by arranging for the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel to kidnap me in Mexico, risking the lives of me and my friends. We survived, but several innocent people did not."

"Have you got any proof of that?"

"Some witnesses. And I notice you don't deny it."

"I deny everything, of course. I'm not a criminal; I'm a United States Senator!"

"Yes, and that makes me wonder: why kidnap ME? It can't be for money, you're already a millionaire and I'm probably not worth so much cash now that I'm not the only Bigfoot around any more."

"Well, you're worth nothing to me!"

"Well, gee," putting on my clueless-naive-guy act, "are you saying that you're actually innocent of these charges?"

"Yes, absolutely!"

I looked over to Agent Dawson, nodded, winked, and surruptitiously pinched my nose to let him know that Carver's lie had been a real stinker. He smiled and signalled for me to continue.

"Well, if so... guess I owe you an apology?"

"You do indeed, young m..." I could hear that he was balking over the word "man", another racist enemy. But he was encouraged by my tone becoming polite instead of accusatory. Although his own demeanor did not become less arrogant, he would play out his role as indignant lord of the manor.

I continued with the easily-fooled approach, after all, I wanted him to talk so that I could analyze his lies. "So actually then, you had nothing to do with my kidnapping? Nor with the attack on my parents?"

"No, you idiot! I don't know how you got that preposterous idea."

"Mainly because arrested ex-General Camilo Luiz Sanchez named you specifically."

"Never heard of him, and besides, all Mexicans are terrible liars!"

I tried to sound really gullible, but just as I cannot tell lies, it's always uncomfortable for me to deliberately deceive anyone. But it helped a lot that this corrupt politician was so unsympathetic that I could enjoy misleading him. He was physically afraid of me so he desperately needed me to swallow his story.

Therefore I politely asked him questions as if I just might possibly believe whatever he'd tell me. He began to seem mollified, certain he could explain why we should drop all charges and go our separate ways. I kept my voice low and soothing, cozy, confiding.

I hypnotized him, of course. So the questions he was answering were those he hadn't really heard. Why did you arrange for me to be kidnapped in Mexico? Why attack my parents and try to make it look as if Nokhons did it? Why would you want to start a war with Nokhons? What are your connections with Salvador deVega's drug cartel?

The story I got back was a complete surprise.


Melly had helped me Google Senator Carver (she can read and I can't), so I knew his public story. Grew up in Tacoma, Washington, with a widowed father and two brothers who owned a family lumber yard that they all worked in. In his early twenties Colin Carver moved to New Jersey to study law, got a job with a lobbyist firm in Wash DC, was almost drafted to Viet Nam, but was exempted from miliaty service due to optic neuritis. Moved back to Washington State and got into politics as a Senator's intern, became himself a senator at the age of 37, shifted from a conservative Republican to become a right-wing partisan obstructionist and frequent filibuster. Accused of corruption several times over the years but never indicted. No criminal record.

But it was quite another story I managed to assemble under hypnosis, and by smelling what was true or false. Senator Carver is a habitual liar, but he doesn't even know it and thinks of himself as a ruthlessly honest realist.

Now in his late sixties, he has money coming in from every direction; from political deals, both legal and illegal, from lobbyists and oligarchs, from his connections in the lumber mafia and several drug cartels, he controls a number of paramilitary groups, he can easily get troublesome people killed. He traffics beautiful young women and takes his share of them. But he is not a big boss, he's a middleman.

In their teens the three Carver brothers peddled a little dope: Marijuana. LSD, cocaine. The lumber business was their cover story. They had a contact in LA and a hollowed-out log that rode back and forth hidden between the real tree trunks on their big truck,sometimes making good money. But Colin Carver had bigger plans and went off to study law and his two younger brothers continued pushing dope. None of them were ever busted, it's still a secret that they had ever been involved, which would be bad PR for a career in politics.

The Carvers were avid campers, usually in the Cascade Mountains. The two brothers went missing one day when they were in their middle twenties. Taking leave from his senatorial internship, Colin Carver came looking for them, knowing where they had usually camped. He found their camp, apparently abandoned, their pickup truck parked in the woods, still loaded with bricks of cocaine vacuum-packed in plastic.

Carver was aware that his brothers had been dealing with some very heavy gangsters, but was certain that if they had been liquidated by them all that cocaine would be gone. His first move was to hide the cocaine, burying it to be picked up later. He was not interested in pushing dope but reasoned that he might need it to buy his brothers back. Then he went looking for them, following the forest trails he already knew. He carried a rifle, just in case. Found no sign of them.

He spent three weeks looking, on and off. Not just in the wilderness, also looking in cities; Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, San Franciosco, LA. Anywhere his brothers did business, asking old contacts what they knew, which was nothing. Then back into the wilderness.

He returned to the campsite to look for any sign that they had passed by again. Nothing. He was ready to give up, but it was late and he decided to spend one last night there. He bundled himself into a sleeping bag.

Carver was uneasy about the cocaine stash: it was worth a lot of money, but he was more interested in political power than a finite clump of cash. Drugs were risky to transport and risky to sell and being caught by a random police check would be the end of his political career. He considered leaving it buried, as a secret bank account he could recover if he needed to. But mostly he was hoping his brothers could use it to buy their way out of whatever mess they were in.

Colin Carver was only 32 years old at that time; he still felt loyalty to someone, still strived to be politically useful to society, but that all changed in the next few minutes. You know how I can remember words; so I'll recite what he said to me under hypnosis:

"It was a dry warm September night, but a stormy wind began to rise. The tent was slapping and surging too violently to sleep in, so I 'd have a better chance of getting some sleep outside. We'd camped at that site many times, so I had a favorite rock shelf that blocked the wind nicely and offered a view of the little creek running through the woods. There was a big moon, not full but very bright. I could see quite clearly.

"I just happened to still be awake when two somethings came out of the woods, big, misshapen, top-heavy figures. At first I thought: bears, which was scary enough, but they moved more like people, so I got even more scared that they were cocaine gangsters. But they still moved wrong and there were all these extra arms and legs, until I could finally see that people were being carried by the other creatures. One person each, over the shoulder.

"They stopped in a spotlight of bright moon glow and I could clearly see that they had to be what folk called Bigfoot, a male and a female. Back then nobody believed in them but everybody knew the myths. The female was silvery-furred, well over seven feet tall, her face looked almost human, or maybe Neanderthal. The male was obviously a runt, smaller than her, but still bigger than me, with a brutally ugly face made even more grotesque by lots of warts and weird tufts of facial hair.

"I also saw that the two naked bodies they had slung over their shoulders were young men. And finally recognized that they were my brothers. Both looked dead.

"I was shocked and horrified, frozen in place. I had left the rifle in the tent, but wasn't about to make a move for it, too afraid of those monsters. I kept perfectly still, even though nothing else did. The storming wind was making enough noise to cover the beat of my heart and the heaviness of my breath, which sounded loud to me, but trees were thrashing, bushes flapping and I was such a tiny part of all that.

"I saw them sniffing the air before going into the tent, maybe to make sure it was deserted. I understood that it was only because I was upwind in a storm that they didn't sense my nearness. I was also in deep shadow, or they would definitely have seen me, since I was looking directly into their eyes. Afraid to blink.

"They went inside the tent, where they dropped off the bodies of my brothers for some reason. Maybe it was a form of burial, although they didn't seem to be offering any actual respect for the dead. No ritual, just dumping garbage.

"The female came out of the tent right away, obviously trying to avoid touching it, but the male rummaged around inside, maybe looking for something to steal. Sure enough, he came out with what looked like a book of matches and tucked it into a shoulder bag he was wearing. Then they left, out into the stormy night again.

"I waited to be sure they were gone, then ran into the tent to see if my brothers were still alive, although I didn't have much hope.

"But they'd been dead for weeks, looking like they'd starved to death, although also covered with dark bruises and infected sores and scratches. They had died gruesomely. I cried for them. Then I took the rifle and went looking for the Bigfoot murderers, me boiling over with hate, but never found them."

He went on to describe how he dug up the cocaine early next morning, put it in his car and drove to the family lumber yard in Tacoma, which he would later inherit. He knew the same pushers his brothers had worked with and had them peddle the cocaine. Their same old hollow log was still making the rounds to LA almost on autopilot, Carver was surprised to see how much money was rolling in.

He'd been planning to drive back and take his brother's bodies to the police, which he hadn't dared to do in a car full of cocaine. Which he had taken first because if the cops decided to investigate the campsite, he did not want a forensic team noticing the freshly-dug soil near the camp while the drugs were still there.

But Carver had a life-changing conversation with one of the pushers: a Chicano smuggler who had an "Uncle Camillo" in the Mexican Army and could connect him to a major drug cartel and guarantee their dope safe passage over the Mexican border and into USA.

Understand that Colin Carver had turned his back on that illegal industry because he wanted to be a clean-cut politician, even though he'd learned how corrupt the whole "war on drugs" and the DEA was. But when his brothers died, so did that idea. He was now dedicated to killing some Bigfoot and this was how he'd finance that project.

He decided to distance himself from the deaths of his brothers, because that cocaine had to come from somewhere. He sent an anonymous letter reporting two dead bodies found in a tent, with a hand-drawn map of the site. He did not mention Bigfoot, let the police find footprints, or whatever, and write the whole thing down as a mystery. A few weeks later he received a sympathetic notice informing him that his brothers had been found dead by a local Sheriff's deputy.

He has never before told this story to anyone, not wanting to be considered crazy, having his political career to consider. His story was that his brothers had gone missing and that he'd tried to look for them, but had found nothing. There was no investigation, nor was he ever questioned about it.

Back then most people didn't believe Bigfoot was real and therfore hardly a threat to humans. Carver knew otherwise, but had to guard his intentions from official supervision. He had decided to use his political platform to organize an Anti-Bigfoot Corps and use drug money to finance what he couldn't siphon from obscure government budgets.

He wanted to strike back at Bigfoot, but since they vanish in the woods there was nowhere to strike. So instead of hunting Bigfoot he ended up in control of several groups of privatized paramilitary mercenaries, operating in Iraq and Afghanistan and turning a good profit. Assassinations paid well too. Carver found himself running his own private wars, his agents doubling as either soldiers or drug smugglers.

"I was glad when you came along," he said to me, "the Baby Bigfoot of Monroe, because then people finally knew that your folk had to exist. Personally, I had nothing against you as a baby sasquatch, but when you grew up and began inviting other Bigfoot to claim their land-- MY land --then that made you my enemy and I had to do something."

MY ANALYSIS OF ALL THIS

According to Carver's description it seems obvious that his brothers had been taken by Ma-ralla and Dastardat, later to be known as Da-starda-hat, our same-old worst enemy. Even after his death, his malignance is still causing tragedy and catastrophy. The time-frame corresponded to when Dastardat had also kidnapped Felix Sinsley in his efforts to syssk-infect a human hit-man to take out the Negotiator (me).

Other human victims of that project had also died, due to neglect and starvation, rather than deliberate murder. Dastardat and Ma-ralla were very clumsy in their methods and Dastardat was frustrated by language; it's impossible to command a slave who doesn't understand anything you say.

As for why they would bother to return the bodies to camp: Nohons are not allowed to kill humans: it can cause repercussions, like a monster-hunt, dogs and guns, not good. But return the bodies to their tent, death unexplained but in a typical human environment, hardly a Bigfoot problem.

Also interesting that young Colin Carver started working with a Mexican smuggler's "Uncle Camilo", who eventually became General Camilo Luiz Sanchez, who worked with Salvador deVega's Guerreros Unidos

Another entertaining revelation: the Carver lumber yard eventually became the Holtz Lumber Conglomerate due to generous government subsidies engineered by a certain Senator, so the levels of enmity spread out in endless ripples.

The two Carver brother's abandoned cocaine shipment is still an unsolved mystery: had the brothers stolen it or were they dealing it? For young Colin Carver it seems to have been an instrument of Fate, transforming him from an honest young man into the wicked old Senator he is today.

As for just how wicked, I determined that he had indeed arranged an attack on our concert this evening, made evident by his emphatic denials again and again, lie upon lie, which stank and stank. Him smiling all the while, looking forward to having me killed. Finally there was no more I wished to hear from him. The guy makes me feel sick, very unsettling.

I had considered informing him that the very same Bigfoot who had killed his brothers had also been hated enemy to me and everyone I knew, and in fact, all technological civilization, essentially everyone on Earth. But I just couldn't bring myself to chum up to him.

So we had a confirmation that a paramilitary group would attack me in the middle of the concert, but without useful details like names and addresses of participants, transport license numbers, or TOA. Carver was counting on his Anti-Bigfoot Swat Team to do their own planning and execution. The attack was set on autopilot, so not even the Senator could defuse it. Nor did he offer to.

Dawson and I discussed canceling the show, but I really need to get those guys so that they don't just come after us later on. We needed to spring a trap. But without risking lives and limbs of innocent people in the audience: either inside or outside the theater, with or without the FBI; a shoot-out on the street was unacceptable.

So we made a plan.







Chapter 83

Adam Into Babylon