A Sunny Day in Hamilton

Paulie discovers the joys of Bermuda

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

11/11/03

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Humor/asunnyday.htm

"Zepp, you were raised in London, were you not?"

"I was. Northwest 15."

Paulie Five Fingers poked at the menu. "This fish and chips. Is it the fish and chips that you remember from your childhood?"

Hmm. Icelandic cod, genuine beer batter, dripping with lard, leaving deep puddles on the London Times used for wrapping, with the newsprint adding its own frisson to the taste of the fish. A cardiovascular feast of doom. The chips, each one a meal in itself, also fried in lard...

This was California. Any restaurant owner serving that could be arrested for attempted murder. "Paulie, you can’t get that anywhere in America. I doubt you can get it in London any more." PC hadn’t overtaken England as badly as it had California, but between health standards and their own problems with obesity, I was pretty sure the Brits had toned down the batter and probably served the meal in bright recyclable boxes. Damn it.

"So this is not the fish and chips of our youth."

"Paulie, our youth isn’t the youth of our youth!"

"I don’t remember asking for philosophy. Still. You recommend this particular fish and chips?"

I wasn’t in the mood. I had already said it was good fish and chips. What did the guy need, anyway? An affidavit? I leaned forward. "Paulie, the fish and chips here is terrible. I was just amused by the idea that you would take a bite, discover how vile it is, and be too polite to say anything, and I would sit here, hiding a grin, while you choked down every mouthful." I leaned back, folded my arms, and waited for Paulie’s response.

He gave me a level stare for perhaps fifteen seconds and then signalled the waitress. "Laurie, two fish and chips. Five pieces each, please. Espresso for me, and French roast for my disrespectful friend here."

I wondered what my telltale was. Paulie was probably a demon at poker.

It was noon, Tuesday, and the sun was shining and the birds were singing. But this was Mt. Shasta, so of course the sun was shining and the birds were singing somewhere ELSE. Here, it was sleeting. However, it wasn’t sleeting hard, so we were having our lunch out on the patio.

"Zepp, what became of your friend, the one who found the bag of gold coins?"

"He’s in Tibet. Something about seeking a second Stonehenge."

"One isn’t enough?"

"Apparently not. As best I understand it, humanity would have graduated to a higher plane of consciousness long before now if it weren’t for the fact that the evil forces of the universe had hidden the other five Stonehenges..."

"Other FIVE Stonehenges?"

"Yeah, I know. According to my calculations, it ought to be six. Anyway, the other Stonehenges have been hidden, which is why we’re stuck here on this dull old third dimension, getting old, getting sick, dying..."

"Yes, but I bet you cannot get good fish and chips in the other dimensions."

"Paulie, why do I even try talking to you before you’ve eaten?"

Paulie smiled and the coffee arrived. We each blew on our cups to cool them, releasing great clouds of steam. Blowing on coffee to cool it in Mount Shasta is like installing air conditioning at the south pole. I don’t know why we do the things we do. I took a slug of mine while it was still in liquid form.

"So has your friend had any luck?"

I shook my head. "He said we would know instantly when he found it, because we would notice a great increase in our spiritual Self awareness." I made sure I pronounced "Self" with a capital S.

"And you, I take it, have not noticed such an increase."

"I wouldn’t even know what to look for."

Paulie chuckled and gazed along the Boulevard. He was a frequent visitor, and had long since lost what I thought of as "the tourist look" which is the look of a man keeping a wary eye peeled for wolves and polar bears. Wolves, we got. Polar bears? Well, I’ve never seen one.

"This is quite a change for me, Zepp. Just yesterday, I was five time zones east of here, in sunny, warm Bermuda."

I’d seen pictures. "It doesn’t snow there, right?"

"Not ever."

I frowned, considering. "What do people drink?"

"Rum and coke, mostly. Mai Tais." Paulie shrugged. "Me, I prefer vino."

I was about to ask him what he was doing in Bermuda when the food arrived. Paulie lifted his nose out over the plate and he moved his head left to right, inhaling deeply, the Italian version of a CAT scan. He glanced up at me, and his face crinkled up into a smile. Paulie’s sense of smell could tell him not only what part of the Atlantic the fish was caught in, but what size hook was used to reel him in.

I took a bite, enjoying the flavor. It really was good fish and chips. I swallowed, looked at Paulie. "So what were you doing in Bermuda?"

"Such a wonderful place. The warm salt air, the pastel-colored homes, the narrow streets. Did you know the police ride around in pink jeeps?"

"For the tourists they do. Get out of the tourist areas, and you’ll see cops who look more like the LAPD."

"Still, it is a marvelous place. Like the south of Italy, or Santa Barbara."

"So are you buying a retirement villa there or something?"

Paulie looked thoughtful. "That’s not a bad idea. Perhaps when you too, are rich and famous, we could buy adjoining property and we could while away our old age playing backgammon and sipping boat drinks."

Or maybe not. I decided to wait. If Paulie didn’t want me to know what he was doing in Bermuda, he wouldn’t have mentioned being there in the first place. The allusion to boat drinks surprised me, though. Paulie usually despised movie cliches that related to the mob in any way.

Paulie smiled and threw his hands out to his sides, a disarming gesture. "After all, I can’t be the head of the New Jersey Mafia the rest of my life, can I?

I nearly broke my neck trying not to shoot a glance over my shoulder at the blue sedan that I knew had to be parked somewhere within 125 feet of Paulie. Government plates, men in black, with a directional mike pointed at Paulie. They never bothered with subtlety. They wanted Paulie to know that they were watching his every public moment, waiting for him to make one mistake out loud. Paulie reciprocated by strolling over occasionally and giving the feds cards, marking their wedding anniversaries, birthdays and graduations of their children, and the like. Paulie once admitted to me in his car that he never made even the faintest hint of a threat, but if his generous attention to the men whose careers were devoted to Paulie made them feel a bit unnerved, well so be it. Paulie has a truly dangerous sense of humor.

But surely not this dangerous! He had just given the feds what they wanted on a silver platter!

Paulie was giving me a look of quizzical amusement. "Zepp, is the fish disagreeing with you? You look a bit green."

I was wondering if hearing that had just made me an accomplice. I didn’t feel like spending the next three years being "interviewed" by Homeland Security before being sent to one of the concentration camps.

A look of mock understanding alit on Paulie’s face. "Oh, you are doubtlessly concerning yourself with my federal friends parked behind you, and wondering if I committed a faux pas of some sort. Is that not so, Zepp?"

I swallowed and glanced about frantically, wondering what the hell I was supposed to say. I didn’t know what the game was, or what rules applied, but I suspected the penalties were high.

Paulie shook his head sorrowfully. "Zepp, surely you don’t think I would make any foolish brags of any illegal activity, do you? Surely you know I am a legitimate businessman with the highest standards of probity and integrity, right?"

That one seemed safe enough. "Yeah, sure. I’ve never thought anything else of you, Paulie. Why, I would be shocked, shocked! I say, if I were to hear of illegal activities on your part!"

I got the two finger wag. Paulie thought I was overdoing it, whatever the hell it was I was doing.

"That is why I was in Bermuda."

My expression must have mirrored my utter lack of comprehension, and Paulie leaned forward to explain. "I bought some property in Bermuda, a villa, and I named it "New Jersey" after my home state. Once title had cleared, I traveled to Bermuda in person, this past week, and drew up papers of incorporation as "The New Jersey Mafia," a limited liability corporation headquartered in Hamilton.

"Isn’t Bermuda part of the United Kingdom?"

"It’s a dependancy. They have a governor-general, appointed by the Crown, who is the administrative boss, and the criminal laws are modeled on the British ones. You will be interested to learn that there is no law in Bermuda against referring to oneself as "The Mafia," although doing so, if you are not, ah, in a pertinent position to do so, might arouse the wrath of some very powerful people. That is why I felt it prudent to acquire property, name it "New Jersey" and then legitimize the name, "New Jersey Mafia."

"I don’t understand."

"Well, it’s like this. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there is any truth to the fantasy the federal officers have that I am some sort of crime kingpin, with tentacles in drugs, extortion, prostitution, counterfeiting, and other similar distasteful and asocial ventures.

"Let us further stipulate that as this alleged kingpin, I am able to shield myself through a phalanx of lieutenants who in turn have squadrons of their own enforcement offices, all fiercely loyal and all facing certain death if any of their activities should happen to put me in a negative light." Paulie glanced over my shoulder at his tax-supported tail. "A sad and paranoid delusion on the part of some law enforcement officials who need a villain in order to convince the voters that they are essential to the safety of the citizenry, of course."

"Of course."

"As a legitimate businessman, I have, of course, come to grow a bit resentful of this undue attention." Paulie spread his fingers. "When it began, I was, of course, anxious to try and resolve this crisis of trust among our appointed officials, and devoted much time to reassuring them of my innocence, and suggesting that they might want to focus on the real mob bosses in Las Vegas and Denver, and allow an upright and honest paving materials contractor to go about his business." A sorrowful headshake. "But they persisted, and would not listen to reason."

I waited patiently. I didn’t know where Paulie was going with this, but I knew him well enough to know it was going to be a real headshaker, like the OJ verdict, or the 2000 election.

"As has been documented in the lore of crime fighting, the most effective way of capturing these master criminal heads of what is humorously known as organized crime has been through violations, both technical and real, of the tax code. This proud tradition and backbone of nearly every bad movie ever made about organized crime has been the principal ploy of the FBI and other agencies since the 1920s.

"As you know, the current administration has created an extremely friendly business climate."

I did know, and in fact had heard Paulie compare it to the type of government by corporation that Benito Mussolini had established in Italy in the 1930s. It was a terrifyingly accurate description.

Paulie continued, "One of the things that has come about is cheerful permission from the government, despite the already outrageously light tax burden that corporations share, to establish their headquarters in various locations overseas, where they would not have to pay taxes either to the local government, or to the United States. It amounts to permission to steal, and many corporations have availed themselves of it, and are using their savings to push hard for such things as ‘tort reform’ – stripping individuals of the right to sue corporations for malfeasance, fraud, or dangerous products – and deliberately preventing the enforcement of other laws and regulations, particularly those that relate to employee rights and safety, and, as you well know, the environment."

I nodded. The litany was one well-known to me.

"As a result, the mere fact of my incorporation in the Dependancy of Bermuda, as ‘New Jersey Mafia’, an LLC, means that I am, in effect, exempted completely from the entire United States tax code, and largely exempt, either officially or unofficially, from nearly all civil law and most criminal law. Not, of course, that I would do anything criminal."

"So when you sit here and talk about being the head of the New Jersey Mafia..."

"I am doing nothing more than talking about my position as CEO of a small firm I have established in the Crown Protectorate of Hamilton, Bermuda. Nothing more. All completely legal."

"And they can’t touch you."

"Not unless I did something really stupid, and of course, I would never do that. Or unless America came to its senses and elected a government that wasn’t as fascistic and criminal as this one." Paulie chewed his last piece of fish and dabbed at his lips with a napkin. "Really, Zepp, if I were some sort of criminal kingpin, the lowest of the low, a brutal and vicious man who exploited the weak and the poor without mercy, even then, I would be appalled by this regime."

"But you still incorporated in Hamilton to take advantage of it."

The moment I said it, I knew I had made a mistake. Paulie’s eyes went flat and cold. He glanced down at his empty plate with a smile that lacked warmth and sincerity. "Zepp, I will assume that your anger is directed at the Bush regime, and not at me. I am merely enjoying a little joke on our friends in the blue car, nothing more."

I shrugged. I was willing to play along only so far, and wondered if what lay behind the facade of "honest businessmen" running the country was even worse than Paulie.

"Now, if you will excuse me for a moment, this head of the New Jersey Mafia wants to go and wash his hands." Paulie smiled, his anger pushed back to where it normally lived. "Consider what you might like for dessert, and I shall be right back."

Paulie’s portly figure vanished into the restaurant, and despite my best judgement, I swiveled around in my chair to see how our discussion had gone over with the two federal officers. Creeping Jimmy, Paulie’s associate, was, as always, parked behind them. I wondered if he had a directional mike, too.

One of the officers was pulling back the dish-shaped instrument. The other, the driver, flipped a cigarette butt out on the snow, where it fizzed and went out, and gave me a disgusted look.

The car then noiselessly described a u-turn into the traffic, and glided off into the early-afternoon gloom.

I never saw the car again.