Chapter 11. The Daniel Dilemma.
Life and work were going well for me in Tangier. You know I feel really happy here. Morocco is not without its problems. Freedom is always in question, so is the freedom to speak. But I am not a citizen, I don't get to vote. I am a visitor here representing another country, a country some people consider to be a corrupt bully, Los Estados Unidos.
The good part is I provide a service to visiting Americans when the crap hits the fan during their trips abroad. I help them get home safely, where they immediately forget what State did for them. I guess to most people State is kind of like the guy that empties the trash cans lined up on Monday morning down the block. I could go on. Let me finish by saying I get paid well and I like government service. The bad part is after a federal election sometimes they come through the embassies and fire everyone just because they can, all 308 of them.
My good friend Jen tells me she is taking evening classes in Spanish for Gringos y Gringas. Her classes are at a high school near her apartment in Austin. She works at a large business software company in Austin with offices around the world. Their software is sold in nine languages around the globe. She has a degree in psychology and another in Math, and she works to keep their user interface code as user friendly as possible in all those different languages.
Sometimes she tells me about how they discover that their use of a word in their programs is confusing (or perhaps even offensive) because in some countries the meaning of a particular word may change and not mean at all what they intended. Her job is to investigate language issues and recommend changes. She contacts local people and listens and learns the truth about language. She also has the final word on some design features, and in a three billion dollar company, that is a lot of responsibility. Her authority is over the wording in all user manuals, online training, and in the software itself. For example, on a PC running in Saudi Arabia the screen button to finalize a retail transaction must be named, her job is to research those words.
Language is a funny thing. I'm still learning English and I'm in my middle 30s now. There's a ton of changes I'd love to make to English, and maybe a few letters could be eliminated. I'd also love to see the USA switch to Metric measuring instead of Imperial (Inch, pound, ounce, mile, etc.). Metrics is so much easier and quicker. Here in Tangier everything is metric. Yay!
My mom told me long ago that when she was a kid in school they told all the students that metrics are coming soon, but it never happened.
Back to Jen, so she is in school three nights a week and it gives her something to do other than entertaining her cat. She is meeting new people, like people her age that have to adapt to the influx of thousands of people from Central America. We grew up in a town that was 60% Hispanic, so neither of us really noticed the influx of migrants in our town; they skip right past Texas and keep heading north. Can you imagine those poor folks that were born and raised in some place like Costa Rica that suddenly find themselves in Rochester, Minnesota and all the leaves die and fall off the trees in the fall and the temperatures drop to colder than a commercial freezer back home and now it's what they have to face going to work, school, or the store every day for 4-5 months a year! Holy cow, what a change! I'd never live in Minnesota! Jen said she only likes the teachers who spoke Spanish from birth. That's just her opinion, but I kind of agree. My high school teacher, Mr. Martinez was from Cuba. For some reason I still find Cubans about the easiest to understand but I have no clue why.
The Ambassador to Morocco (Steven R. Sravan) and I have become sort of like friends. I am sort of his personal pilot once in a while. He is part of a group that meets every three months in Accra, Ghana. We rent a business jet because it's faster and cheaper than flying commercial. I'm just the pilot and take him where he wants to go as long as he's paying, and as long as they have jets to rent. It's actually the only rental jet in the entire country of Morocco.
The place I live is a ten story apartment building on the beach a mile east of the old city in Tangier. They have a vast beautiful public beach that nobody uses. Sharks, ice cold water, and the modesty police keep locals off the beach. I've tried to get people I know to start calling them the Mod Squad instead of Modesty Police but everyone is afraid.
I had no idea until I came here that people get attacked and killed by sharks in water that is only 14 inches (36cm) deep, especially children. Yes, a shark can sneak up on you in water slightly less than knee deep, and grab your leg and drag out to deeper water. And they know there are juicy little meals in shallow water and they go looking. They grab kids because everyone thinks they are safe from sharks in the water is less than waist deep. Watching out my living room window I've seen groups of sharks patrolling near the shore for unsuspecting legs walking in shallow water.
The splashing and innocent fun of children in the sea water at the beach is like a dinner bell for sharks. To them it sounds like a potential meal struggling and vulnerable in shallow water, all that innocent play and splashing at the beach can be heard underwater for miles. To a shark they interpret splashing and commotion in the water to be a sign that an animal is struggling and vulnerable, an easier/safer meal for them.
The hotel we go to in Ghana is on the ocean, they get shark attacks there too, in shallow water too. But it's not just sharks, it's also barracuda and orca that snatch humans off the beach. They also have Lionfish with their long stingers.
Once in a while I see guys fishing on the beach near my apartment. I've sat by the window to watch them cast and cast as far out as they could throw the bait. Sometimes they chum the water too. Two weeks ago I saw some guy catch some kind of shark, it was about five feet long, probably weighed 60 pounds at least. He got cut trying to reel it in. I saw blood dripping down his arm when he dragged it out of the water. By the time they carried it to the back of someone's truck it was dead, I think it died of exhaustion or maybe it suffocated in shallow water, either way it gradually lost the fight and became limp, but those teeth were still razor sharp. It looked like he left the hook in its throat and cut the line instead. Not too many restaurants serve shark fillets but nobody says why. Full of bones? Tastes like recycled rubber? I have no idea. Some restaurants here serve shark kabobs but those are small chunks of white meat. I figure there must be a reason why they are so unpopular.
A group of guys showed up on the sand to encourage him and help carry it to his truck. It took four men to carry it. One of them shouted that the skin felt like fine sandpaper. Even some of the modesty police helped carry it. They sort of had to wait for it to die before anyone would touch it. The first dead test was a poke on the snout with the fishing pole to see when it stopped reacting by rolling and thrashing around in inch deep water. That fish put up one helluva struggle. I think from the time he set the hook until it was in the bed of his truck was almost an hour!
I doubt he'll be back fishing for shark any time soon. It did not look like a fun time. I walked downstairs as they carried it across the beach and set it in the truck bed. He had the head sort of hanging off the tailgate so he could pose with his trophy. It was quite a festive occasion. I've never eaten shark, I guess it just tastes like more fish meat, right? They're all pretty similar.
The guy who caught it would lift the snout to open wide its mouth. His jaws opened wide enough to swallow a human skull whole.
When I first saw his truck a big crowd had gathered around. I walked over and took some shots with my cell, which was funny. Since everyone was distracted I got about ten face shots of modesty police dudes. I want to try to identify some of them to learn their story, why they do it. Some of the citizens see them as a huge threat to freedom and privacy. For various reasons I suspect most of them are unemployable. The locals see them as being something like thought police. I'd love to interview a couple of them someday.
They don't carry pistols but they work in groups, which is nearly as good, safety in numbers. I've heard most of them here are not religious fanatics, just unemployed idealistic young men trying to put food on the table and protect their women in public. Their religion teaches that women are much safer in public when they wear scarves around their heads and a certain type of dress designed to hide the curves of their bodies. I can testify to that one, I'm not sure why but on average your typical Arabic woman is very good looking in the face and probably even better under the sheets. I think the way their law has women dress makes them even more alluring.
I heard again from Daniel in Houston. He's out of the slammer and living at a halfway house and trying to get his life back in order. He has a crappy job prepping turkeys in a slaughter house. He gets $12 an hour and wears heavy rain gear because he is constantly sprayed with blood and detergents. He said his Spanish is improved after nearly two years in prison and three months at the turkey factory.
He says his suit against the care facility where his mother died is back in action and his lawyer expects they will settle out of court for about 2 mil, which would give him about 1.4 mil cash and a way back to life. With his arrest and conviction for DUI, hit and run, he can never get a job with the government but he can start his own company, which I expect he might do. I just hope all that money doesn't turn into something like a drug problem or huge weight gain. He told me he put on 20 pounds in the slammer because he couldn't exercise. He sounds better on the phone lately now that he is working and getting a paycheck. I've never offered to fly him here; I don't really trust him yet. Dan is not the only one who needs some kind of closure on all his troubles. He's been through an entire life's worth of troubles in a very short amount of time, I cannot imagine what it must have done to his personality and his soul. When he was convicted his passport was revoked so he cannot travel here yet, even if he had a mountain of cash at home.
I think the only reason why he calls me is because he's ashamed and wants to convince me he isn't a deadbeat loser. If we ever meet face to face again it will only take a few moments of looking in his eyes while he talks and I'll know immediately if he's legit or scamming people.
He explained to me recently that parole is like being on probation. You are still part of the prison system and you have to follow their rules and call your parole officer weekly. He cannot leave Texas without permission so even if he got his 1.3 mil he can't travel regardless. I think his driver's license was suspended for ten years as part of his punishment.
Every once in a while I have dreams about the times I blew him. He was pretending to be drunk and passed out on his back on the sofa. I got up and opened his jeans, wiggled them down, pushed his shirt up to his arm pits and stroked him by hand. He went from limp to fully erect in seconds. Then I worked him carefully with my hand, gently teasing the head of his dick, which made him squirm and moan but he kept his eyes shut. His boner was beautiful so I spent a bit of time with it in my mouth just enjoying the feeling and flavor. He stayed hard the entire time too, which was amazing and perhaps evidence that he was pretending to be passed out.
When his nuts were fully pulled up I held his head between my lips and teased it with my tongue until he came. To this day he maintains he was unconscious, but I'm convinced he's lying. At least he was kind enough to tell me it was great, yet somehow he knows that while he was passed out. I don't care really, we were drunk young men, and everyone does stupid shit. He seems to need to protect some Christian white male honor code at all costs, so he'll lie to his best friend regardless of how ridiculous it sounds. It's insulting when he says that shit but I realize he's obligated to, but he feels compelled to defend the hetero white guy sex codes. You never let another man touch your dick, even at the risk of death, but he violated the code for the sake of getting a fantastic blow job.
I think in his Man's Handbook of Sex Rules it says something like: if you're drunk and alone with a gay guy and he wants to suck your dick, and there is absolutely no chance of anyone else finding out, no cameras recording in the vicinity, the door is locked, and you're drunk then pretend to pass out and hopefully the gay will service your dick, that will become a lifelong guilt-free big secret. The truth is the only people that really suck dick well are ones that were also born with dicks and know how it feels. Some girls come close, but it's rare.
Dan has a really nice boner. I'd probably do him again if he offered it to me. He does have a nice body, some chest and arm muscles, but he's slim. He has a nice inny belly button but it's over grown with black hairs now. If he ever came here I'd offer to trim all that away and clean it for him. One thing I always had fantasies about Dan was he'd tell me I could do anything I wanted to his body, so I used my tongue, mouth, and hands all over from his tits to his balls, and it went on for hours. Sometimes when I jerk off alone that's my fantasy: he walks up to me in my apartment naked and fully erect and points it at my face and tells me to help myself. I think it's a line from a movie: Pretend we're in Ethiopia and I'm a free buffet. I think he's nearly 6.5" long and cut. It looks like a flagpole pointing off into space.
The INR sent me a new/better camera for outside. Installation was easy, they just screw into the mount. It does all the adjustments itself. The new one added IR and UV spectrum so it can even see ships at night. They also added an RF sniffer because they wanted to study the RF patterns in Tangier, mostly on the higher parts of the radio spectrum. I think they also wanted to scan the Strait for stealthy radio signals. I just plugged it in and suction cupped it to the window glass.
A problem listening to radio signals near an apartment complex is apartment buildings tend to concentrate radio noise and make it hard to hear the signals you want to hear. FM radio here in Tangier and across in southern Spain sucks. It's almost worse than in the States. So I started listening to streaming services on my cell phone. I really like the paid service called Music Choice.
Speaking of broadcast radio allow me to editorialize briefly. What I do periodically is I use my stop watch and on the stations I listen to in the car, I time the commercial breaks. For example... the song ends and the DJ talks. I start the stop watch. Then they play 30 second commercials, maybe 3-4 minutes worth, sometimes double that. Then maybe a station promo or two, each might be thirty seconds. Then the DJ talks and a song begins. You click the stop watch and check how long you've been listening to crap. If it's really bad they might run 7-12 minutes of non-stop non-entertaining bullshit. They might only do that once an hour, then the rest of the breaks are maybe 4 minutes of promos and commercials then back to music.
When the station goes over a 6 minute set of commercials I delete that station from memory and find something else to listen to. When they play over 10 minutes of ads they're basically flipping the middle finger at you, its total disrespect of the listener. People need to stop listening to those stations and they need to go away. They get bad here in Tangier too, but not as bad as I heard in Washington DC.
If there are no stations near you with short commercial breaks then you need to use your cell phone as a radio station and build up a small collection of MP3s and program your own music service and link it to your car radio, it's easy to do.
I do the same thing with NFL football too, I record it and watch the recording so I can fast forward over the commercials breaks. American football has really gotten bad lately, it's rapidly turning into Wrestling. Too many choreographed plays and pre-determined outcomes. It happens so fast it's hard to see, that's one advantage of recording it instead of watching live. When you watch some plays in slo-mo it's amazing the things you see. It really surprises me that people gamble on NFL games when the fakery is easy to see. It's always with certain teams that the fake plays occur.
This story reminds me, I recently purchased a small wood stool with no backrest. I got it as a kit I had to screw and glue together. But I got it to stand by my living room window since I spend so much time at the window. I don't have a TV so I watch outside with my binoculars and maybe someday a telescope.
A few days ago I actually saw a couple on the beach, they looked like a young married couple from India or Pakistan. They had two small kids, mom was carrying one in her arms, and the other one looked to be around 5-6 years old. I was sitting on the stool watching them walk across the long curved beach. They were dressed like Muslims, perfectly normal people, probably tourists visiting the city, maybe visiting relatives here.
They were the first people I actually saw use the beach as intended. Dad had his slacks rolled up past his knees and was wading in the cold salt water splashing his son on the sand, I started laughing watching their antics. It made me anxious watching the dad walk further into the cold sea water even though it was crystal clear.
Suddenly the dad fell backwards with a big splash and spun around and started struggling with something. I assumed he stepped on something that cut his foot, maybe a sea urchin. Then I saw commotion in the water near him and saw a fish tail and the water around him turned blood red as the guy struggled to escape but he was being slowly pulled toward deeper water. Something I couldn't see was holding on to his lower leg or maybe his foot.
At first his wife didn't catch onto what was happening, maybe she thought he was acting or playing. The children watched the commotion and all the splashes in the water. Then it seemed to click in her brain and she turned toward the street and started to scream and shout. I was too far away to help but I knew if anyone in the DOD or INR was watching my video feed they could watch the show on the bottom of the video frame. If I'd had a rifle with a scope I would have opened fire on the water beyond the unfortunate man.
Two men ran out toward them and just then the man broke free and struggled toward shore but tripped and fell a few times and then frantically crawled toward his wife. The area of bloody water increased and I started cheering for the guy to make it to shore.
More people started running onto the beach and met the man in about shin deep water and got him to his feet and helped him limp to shore. I saw huge red lacerations all across the back of his right leg, he was bleeding badly, I was sure someone by the apartments must have called for an ambulance. In Morocco you dial 15 to request an ambulance. There's different numbers for fire or police.
They got the guy out of the water and collapsed on the sand and then a cop ran down to the edge of the water. I saw a fin from the shark it looked like it was searching for him in shallow water and people were standing in ankle deep water sand pointing at the shark. The cop actually drew his pistol, it looked like a Glock-45 and he waded out into the water followed by several young men (Modesty Police?) and when the shark swam at him he opened fire. POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP! He emptied an entire magazine and each time I saw the shark's fin twitch and finally it rolled on its side and floated in a bloody red pool. Some guys grabbed its fins and dragged it up onto the sand.
Three men ran onto the sand and loaded the man onto a stretcher, lifted it, and ran with him toward the street. His arms hung lifelessly off the sides but I imagine he actually fainted. I know I would have crapped my pants first then fainted. Moments later I heard the siren and saw an ambulance van take off toward the city. Over here on the bay we're sort of not inside the city limits. Out here it takes longer to get emergency services.
I could see a lot of large red spots on the shark even from 400 feet away in my apartment window. That cop hit it with almost every shot, mostly to the head and face area, the entire top-front of the shark had red holes that were still seeping blood.
The pristine beach was a bloody mess, that poor guy lost a lot of blood. His wife and kids ran behind the stretcher after they tied a tourniquet around his leg and took off with him running toward the ambulance. And just like that the entire show was over, except the bloody trail from the water to the beach parking lot. If they were American I'll know the outcome in a day or two. Maybe the city should invest a few dollars on a warning sign? I'd offer to pay for signs if money was an issue. All they need to show is the silhouette of a shark on a yellow background and everyone would understand.
The silence and moments of terror were interrupted by a call on my satellite phone. It was 8am there and 2pm here when Jen called. She said she was doing her brisk morning walk on the Austin Riverwalk, which is near downtown. She starts her day with exercise; she thinks it clears her brain.
She confided in me that this was the first time she went walking in public with an athletic suit that made her lower tummy visible to strangers. I told her to be careful, don't stop, just keep moving. She said it was a little scary but she had pepper spray in her hand and was dressed to sprint back to the car. I told her I missed her and wished she was here so I could join her. She knows I am belly button obsessed. It depends on the belly button and what kind of person it's on. For Jen, it's always sexual. Daniel's hole is about as big around as a cigar; it doesn't feed my obsession (fetish). I'm sure my obsession is related to autism.
We briefly discussed Daniel, she said she's uncomfortable talking to him now, but that could change if she spent time with him to see for herself what kind of a person he was now. I confessed I was not answering about 75% of his calls for the exact same reason. Jen said she might agree to meet him in a public place.
We only talked for about six minutes then I had to go. I looked out at the beach one more time and saw some kind of marks that someone used a shovel to scrape up the bloody sand and toss it into the water so most of the red was gone. That beach was always so uniformly flat and untouched it almost looked man-made, like a sand trap at a golf course. It came to me that if the guy died from blood loss they might not put that in the paper so it didn't harm the tourist business.
I never figured out why people never swim here but they do over on Merkala Beach. Maybe the water is warmer on the Atlantic side, maybe fewer sharks over there too. We saw groups of men with long spears guarding the beach last year during Jazzfest. Some were in the water with face masks, snorkels, and harpoons. If any large fish approached the beach it got a bump on the nose, if it persisted it got stabbed in the gills which is fatal. I read somewhere they killed three white sharks during Jazzfest. They chased away a couple dozen stingrays and some barracuda, dozens of lionfish (all those were killed), and two blue sharks.
They don't get shark lovers protesting here because our sharks are small, rarely do they see one here that is over 6 ft long, the big ones usually stay in deeper water.
On a public beach like Merkala the biggest cause of injury to tourists is from Red Lionfish spines. Morocco like many countries in the world has organized volunteer groups that catch and kill Lionfish, an invasive species. You can get paid about half a Euro for each Lionfish you surrender to authorities, dead or alive.
It's a hobby some people with scuba gear use, it gives them another reason to use their expensive gear: hunting and killing Lionfish with spear guns. People around the world are trying to invent the best homemade Lionfish catcher out of PVC pipe. Using a spear gun to kill fish is expensive overkill, there has to be a cheaper way to catch them. Some people are building traps, some are building fish suckers out of cheap pipe.
You used to see underwater corals had hundreds if not thousands of small colorful tropical fish, then the Lionfish move in and eat all the colorful fish until they are the only species left. You can eat Lionfish but they require special handling which makes them complicated to sell at restaurants so people prefer to kill them for the reward. Of course swimming along the coast catching Lionfish puts you at risk of becoming shark or orca food yourself. Killing Lionfish is sort of like killing rats in New York City.
Weeks later I got an email from Jen she said she met Daniel at Denny's for dinner, he wanted a booth in back she grabbed a table near the center of the dining room with lots of other tables in use nearby. She said she expected to be on the way back home in 40 minutes but it turned into two hours and she said she is no longer afraid of him. She said he cried three times.
They ordered and got coffee and talked. She said at first she was terribly uncomfortable. While I was reading her email I wrote her a two sentence text that I was slowly reading it. I asked her if she ever had sex of any kind with Daniel. She emailed back after several minutes, it simply said: 'No, nothing, never.' I thought she'd ask me the same question but she didn't.
She said he described working at a Tyson Turkey factory and how the place was as clean as an operating room but the people he worked with, very few of them spoke English and he understood enough Spanish to follow along with conversations and understood orders from the boss. With his recent time in prison it was one of the few places that would give him a chance, so kudos to Tyson. He said the job was offered to him by his parole officer. He felt humiliated working there with two college degrees and his criminal record was the result of two days of bad situations and poor choices, but he never had a prior criminal history. He said he rarely talks to anyone in the factory.
Dan told Jen that the night of the accident he never saw the guy he supposedly hit and was pretty sure he never hit anyone. He was drunk but driving okay, it was raining hard and with all the street lights visibility was poor and the next thing he knew a cop pulled him over and took him to jail for hit and run, felony DUI. His car was towed and he never saw it but pictures were presented at trial but he never saw them but he said the car had minor body damage on the front right corner when he bought it but that was not allowed to be mentioned during the trial.
And he spoke about being in the county jail before and during trial, he was there for almost a year until sentencing then went to a minimum security state prison in Cuero, Texas. It's about halfway between San Antonio and Galveston. The Stevenson Unit has a huge problem with corrupt guards that robbed and tormented the inmates. He said he was blackmailed by two guards but they eventually dropped the case but he would like to see justice done some day, he kept a list of the guards involved in theft of inmate property.
Long story short, she said he was bitter but glad to be out of prison and wants to recover from living in fear for his life from the inmates and guards 24 hours a day. He said it changed the way he thinks about everything. That was when he started to softly sob at the table while holding his fork and trying to eat his pork tenderloin. She said he dropped his fork and put both hands over his face and wept, people at nearby tables were staring and it was pretty awkward. Then she wished they had taken a booth back in the corner like Daniel wanted.
Jen said she wanted to hold his hand but he never made a gesture toward her for comfort. She handed him more napkins from the dispenser. They sat there talking about the parole board and his interviews and about his plans for the future. He said his Texas driver's license is suspended for 8 more years, but he can drive a scooter or a battery two wheeler on the sidewalk. He needs to live close to work or find a job he can do from home.
"What do you need most of all?" Jen asked Dan.
"I need time to stop, just give me a year or two to fix my head and get over what happened and try to get my old thinking back like when I was working for State. It would be nice if I could find a small island in the South Pacific and just go fishing every day and read some books and stay away from people for a while."
Jen said she saw real grief and sadness in his eyes and believed he was being honest. Then to change the subject she asked how his lawsuit was going and he said his lawyer was negotiating with their lawyer and he expected they (his lawsuit against the psych hospital where his mother died) would settle out of court in a couple more months, then maybe he would have enough cash to go somewhere and unfuck his brain.
"Why don't you do that?" She asked.
"I can't. Parole lasts for three years, it's like part of my prison sentence is suspended so I cannot leave Texas. After parole I get two years of supervised probation. So this shit is going on for the next five years. Weekly drug testing and monthly supervision visits. They can knock on my door any time and search my entire apartment without a warrant or my permission. If I refuse or break any law I go back to prison for the rest of my original sentence, it ends in 2029."
"Where do you live?"
"For now I'm living in a halfway house for parolees. It's an old motel and I share a room with some guy I hate, he's destined to go back to prison because breaking the law is all he knows." He looked Jen in the eyes and began to sob again and told her he's not sure he can make it. He cited his roommate as an example: "He could work at Tyson and earn maybe $350 a week, or sell drugs and make $2000 a week."
Jen said she told him when he gets his cash to hire a private-eye to review his case, possibly file for an appeal if he finds big problems, like no evidence. He said he already spoke to one but has to come up with $30k first. He said he wants to sue two guards and the Warden too and has a long list of witnesses and some photos and video of them shaking down prisoners for cash.
She asked what his plans were for the next six months and he said he wanted to keep a low profile, remain sober (he recently celebrated 2 years of sobriety) and continue going to meetings, and then when the hospital pays the first thing to do is pay the private investigator, if for no other reason than to clear his conscience. Dan said he honestly believed they busted the wrong driver for killing the guy on the bike. Dan insists he never hit anyone or anything, never saw anyone on a bike. Dan also said he's in AA because it's required to stay out of prison, but he likes the 12-step program and the stuff he's learned about himself.
Dan explained that when you're arrested for DUI, hitting a pedestrian causing the death of someone on a bicycle the assumption is you're an alcoholic, even if it was the only beer you drank in your life.
By the time they both drank five cups of Denny's coffee he had a mountain of damp napkins on his plate from blowing his nose and wiping his tears, but it was a good conversation. When they left she paid the bill and they hugged outside for nearly two minutes which made him cry again, then he unlocked and got on his bicycle and rode off. Jen said when he rode off she saw the ankle monitor he wore on his leg, just above the shoe. She sat in her car in the Denny's parking lot thinking what we could do for Dan but got no ideas. She said all his basic needs are met, he's eating, he's in good health, but he has a hole in his heart, he has no family for support, and he is lonely and probably depressed and needs love and friends and people to trust and love him again. Her email was three pages long.
I wrote her back and asked if there was anything I could do from here and she wrote back and said, 'talk to him and listen closely. Lots of patience and hugs. She said she might look into if he can get a temporary passport and maybe make one trip to Morocco to visit his almost brother. She reminded me we were his only family now, since his asshole sister disowned him.
The next time I spent time with Ambassador Sravan was three weeks later when I flew him to Accra Ghana for his visit for the African-American Summit series of conferences about trade and import taxes.
On the flight back home I got him to put on the headphones and told him all about Daniel. If it wasn't for the bizarre death of his father probably none of the rest of it would have happened, he lost his entire family in the span of a few weeks and got screwed out of his inheritance by his sister. She got their financial assets which was about 1.2 million. If they had allowed him to get half their estate the state of Texas would have confiscated it forever, so the only choice they had was for her to get all of it.
I asked the ambassador to enquire in Washington about letting Daniel post a bond and fly here for a couple weeks to help him recover, save the life of a former State Department employee and model FCA. The ambassador reminded me State and the government would never hire him again, he couldn't even join the Army now unless he got his conviction overturned. I was fine with his restrictions and he said he'd ask on his next trip to the Motherland.
I didn't hear much about Daniel again for nearly three months but Jen told me she was having meals at Denny's about once a month and she was convinced Dan was not a danger to anyone and he was being honest, but she also frankly told me she sort of expected he would end up killing himself in the next year because the hole he was in was very deep with jagged sides. He still pines for Liz but she won't respond to his emails.
That month I also had an American die in Tangier, the person died without a will but had an emergency contact in the states. It took three calls to establish comms with that guy, he was a nephew of the deceased, and they were close until she moved to Morocco.
It took a lot of talking and we got things worked out, he overnighted me a cashier's check to cover embalming and a proper casket. Then I got her a flight home to Detroit. It amazes me how much it costs to fly a casket on the airlines, but there really isn't any other way to handle it. It made me wonder why someone like UPS doesn't get into the business for the dead. They got all the right machinery already.
Two months later I heard that Daniel got his settlement check and immediately hired a private investigator. He received a settlement from the psych nursing home for the death of his mother for $1,400,040.00. He said he deposited it and started withdrawing it in weekly cash withdrawals of $20k which is how much most small banks keep on hand in cash and coin. He is now renting a small house in town and pre-paid the rest of this year's probation supervision bill.
He also purchased a Honda Metropolitan scooter, in Texas you don't need a license to operate them on the street and no license plate or insurance is required. On the down side they only go 37mph, on the plus side they get nearly 120mpg. Since he had benefits and health insurance he kept his job at the turkey processor. He also said his Spanish has improved a lot.
The next month he had a meeting with the private investigator. The PI photographed his car which was still in the county impound lot as evidence and he found no evidence the car ever hit someone on a bicycle. He obtained photos of the car from the dealer where Dan purchased it and it had minor damage on the right front side before Dan came along, exactly the same way it appears today.
So they hired a medical examiner that specializes in accident re-creations and said the man on the bicycle was intoxicated, his front bicycle wheel got stuck in a sewer cover and the rider went over the handlebars and landed on a hard concrete curb and broke his neck and skull and died moments later, but there was no evidence of any contact with a moving vehicle. Dan hired a lawyer and they met with the judge and prosecutor. They also contacted the Governor's office.
We talked on the phone and had a small party, Dan celebrated with a large can of Hawaiian Punch and a box of Susie-Qs with candles! The lawyer he hired told Dan after their conference the state would probably drop the charges and release him without any further action. But his conviction for DUI was still intact.
Two months after he hired the lawyer Dan received a certified letter (signed by a judge) informing him that the charges against him were dropped, his conviction was overturned, and he was released from any further probation/parole action and was free to travel and may re-apply for a US Passport. When Dan asked about suing over false prosecution the lawyer said no-way, not worth the cost. We learned the guy who suppressed the evidence was a lawyer for the state prosecutor's office named Cyril Hammersly. I used the State database to look up his passport and got his home address and phone number, next of kin, and other federal records.
I also found information about the worst of the worst guards at the prison in Cuero, Texas, about 90 miles southeast of San Antonio.
As soon as the paperwork went through (It took twelve days to finalize) he had his last meeting with probation and got his formal release papers and they removed the tracking device from his ankle and Dan returned the home monitor in its original box. He paid his outstanding balance at the window and got his invoice stamped PAID IN FULL, and got a receipt for the ankle bracelet box too. He walked out of the prison into the bright sunlight, he said it felt fantastic, but it was also scary because the world had changed a lot during his absence.
That evening Dan met with his AA sponsor (and his wife) and they went out for dinner together. He said that was the finest part of the entire day, proving to those people that he wasn't the schlub everyone thought he was because so many of those people lie about their history, just like how everyone in prison claims they're innocent. Now his story had judge's signature. They asked if he was going to remain sober and Dan reminded them he wasn't an alcoholic, perhaps he was a binge drinker sometimes but his time in AA was required by the parole board, not because he needed/wanted help. At the AA meetings when each one introduced himself he usually said, "Hi, my name is Dan. I'm here under court order."
I decided to take time off and flew back to Texas to visit Dan and Jen, the first time I've been home since Quantico.
Contact the author: borischenaz at mailfence