Last week, as we were discussing matters of great moment the subject turned to
innovative publishing policies, and from there to the New Yorker magazine.
 
For some years the New Yorker has on occasion published double issues in a single week. This simple idea (we presumed), freed them possibly to go about their homes doing such as putting up the storm windows, edging the lawn and others of the necessary.
 
Such a strategy (we reasoned) might fit our needs as well. After all (we asked), what's the New Yorker got that we don't?
 
After a few days the gloom occasioned by the answer to that question had lifted and we were restored to our former insouciant if unsung state. And by that time we had determined to adopt this snazzy practice on an occasional basis.
 
This week is such an occasion--herewith a two-part political metaphor featuring our favorite gumshoe. We'll return in two weeks, just before All Saint's Eve, with a big "boo!" for you.
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Fetlock and the Devil
Another case from the files of Calvin E. Fetlock, Political Investigator
 
PART ONE
 
It was Sunday and hot. Someone was knocking at my front door. A bad sign.
 
I had just finished reconciling my checkbook and was wiping the last of the red ink from my fingers when I heard the rapping at my chamber door.
 
I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. Since my chamber door--very like the chamber to which it is attached--is located in the third sub-basement of the Washington Monument, visitors-- especially Sunday visitors--are about as rare as a thank-you note from Don Rumsfeld.
 
The hairs at the back of my neck were standing upright and doing a gentle tarantella.
 
Making a little less noise than a mouse in a lion's cage, I crept across the room and quietly eased my S&W 500 from the holster hanging on the door knob. It's a big gun, and it takes a long time to ease it out, but I'm a patient man.
 
Then I pointed the little howitzer at the door and, in a register slightly higher than that of Tiny Tim croaked: "Who is it?"
 
The knocking redoubled, now accompanied by a deep baritone that seemed to come from the sub-basement below mine: "Open up, Fetlock, I know it's you," it boomed. Something in the voice said, "fed," so I quickly re-holstered the S&W.
 
Greeting a G-man with a loaded gun can lead to misunderstandings--if not irreparable harm. I opened the door.
 
At first I thought the hallway light had burned out, but then I realized it was only obscured by what I at first took to be Gentle Ben in a cheap suit. But once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I recognized it as Al Tennyson, our local Homeland security flatfoot.
 
With a little difficulty, Tennyson muscled into my tiny and disheveled quarters, knocking the doorframe a little out of line as he did. "Nice place you almost got here, Fetlock," he said pleasantly. He throttled a kitchen chair in his giant fist and pulled it into the center of the room, where he proceeded to sit with surprising grace. I was glad to see that the etiquette courses with Jane Goodall hadn't been a total waste.
 
"What brings you to Casa Fetlock, G-man? I said, then suddenly truculent, "Whataya want, Ashcroft Junior? Whatever you think you got on me it won't wash, see? I been keepin' my nose plenty clean, and no copper's gonna say different, see?
 
He looked a little annoyed. "I wish you wouldn't watch so much late night TV, Fetlock, it really isn't doin' you no good. Look, I got a little work to throw your way. It ain't a loud job--if you get my meanin', but there's ten Gs in it for you."
 
I did some rapid calculations. With ten large I could raise my standard of living to something approaching squalid. I could liberate some of my friends from the little brown bottles in which they had been cruelly confined at the corner liquor store. It could elevate me socially. It might even get rid of the church mice.
 
"You got the floor, Tennyson," I said, "but let's skip ahead to the part where the money doesn't get paid to my estate."
 
"Oh, it's safe enough, tough guy" he said, "But you'll need a suitcase."
 
I leaned against the refrigerator, put my fedora on my head and tilted it over my eyes for effect. "I only use suitcases when I'm traveling...which would be where?"
 
"Baghdad," he said.
 
"Baghdad?" I asked, straightening up "As in Iraq?"
 
"You must've been the star of the third grade," he said.
 
"What's the job," I asked, nervously.
 
"You'll have to talk to Bremer about that," he said.
 
"'Bremer,' I squeaked, "As in L. Paul Bremer, U.S. Civil Authority in Iraq?".
 
Tennyson cocked his head toward me a little, like the RCA dog. "You ever think a' doin' exposition for a livin'?" he asked.
 
"Suppose, just for the sake of argument, I didn't want to go?" I asked.
 
His eyes turned soft and doe-like. His basketball hands clasped together and wrung each other urgently. His brows knitted together in distress, as though all the sadness of the world had suddenly settled upon his shoulders. "Oh," he said, "I don't like to think about that."
 
 

PART TWO
 
The military transport touched down the next day at Baghdad International Airport, which until recently had been called "Saddam International Airport." The new name hanging over the terminal didn't look permanent. Maybe it wasn't. You never know.
 
The trip into the city took only fifteen minutes, but it seemed longer. The dust and the 120-degree heat, combined with my driver, a relentlessly cheerful and talkative Iraqi policeman who seemed altogether unfamiliar with the concept of commas and periods. His jaws came together faster than windup teeth.
 
It was only after he deposited me at the site of Bremer's office that I realized he had very carefully said nothing at all.
 
Bremer held sway in a former presidential palace--one of the residences in which the benevolent Saddam had selflessly pondered the plight of his people and worked far into the night ensuring their welfare.
 
My footsteps on the marble floors echoed off the similarly marbled walls with a sound reminiscent of an international Ping-Pong match. One of the Marine guards stationed in front of the newly anointed satrap's office opened the door, revealing a hushed and splendiferous wood-paneled inner sanctum.
 
Bremer sat--in that ghastly heat, in full coat and tie--at a huge desk in the huge room. The ornate trappings labored heroically to impress the visitor with the might and wisdom of the occupant, but with Bremer it backfired, because from where I stood he looked like a small man in a big chair.
 
Bremer rose and offered me his hand. His grip was insincere but firm. We sat and he began talking. And talking. And talking. When he'd finished, a couple of hours later, I had learned a little less than I had from my Iraqi driver.
 
But one thing he made sure was clear: that there were a lot of bad guys in Iraq, and every one of them was an ex-Baathist who couldn't admit he was licked fair and square.
 
But he neglected to explain why there seemed to be so many more Baathists now than there had been during Saddam's reign. Maybe they were breeding.
 
Mother Fetlock was a great one for giving people the courtesy of a fair hearing. She always said "You're not going to make an idiot any smarter by interrupting him." So I listened. And I heard. And I considered. And when he'd finished, my response was informed by his points and his reasoning, and was therefore both circumspect and diplomatic.
 
"I Don't know what you've just handed me, Mr. Bremer, but I don't think it'll fit in a five-pound bag."
 
His eyes expanded to the size of Mikasa tea saucers. I leaned forward so he could see the sincerity shining in my eyes. "Look, you want a tip? You guys really need to seek out the advice of a responsible adult. Face it, regime change is a washout--here, that is--keep going the way you are and you might see it work out just fine in the states next election.
 
"And here's something else: find some kind of weapons, for cry-yi, and do it fast. At first your failure to find even so much as a zip gun was funny, but now it's starting to get embarrassing. Even the comic strips are starting to make fun of you. When "Blondie" starts it'll be too late."
 
"Say," I said, suddenly, leaning back in my chair, "Any chance the masterminds in the White House'll panic and simply decide to manufacture some evidence?"
 
The pencil suddenly snapped in his hand. He muttered under his breath. "No," he said softly and fervently, "They wouldn't--they couldn't be that stupid." He wasn't looking at me when he said it, but that was okay, he wasn't talking to me.
 
I continued. "And by the way, Mr. Ambassador, The reason they hate us? It's because we've taken over their country, their livelihoods, and we keep shooting them. We keep shooting them, sometimes by accident, usually on purpose, even though they've several times asked us to stop doing it. You want to know how to make them love us? No, skip that, there isn't any way to do that--you know how to make them stop blowing us up? Close this office. Give them back their country. Stop--and this part is real important--stop shooting them, and admit it was nothing but a humbug war from the get, and send what's left of our kids--bagged or unbagged--back home.
 
Bremer seemed to receive my advice with stoic unconcern, but I thought there might have been a trace of an expression suggesting that he was mentally reviewing his career choices up to the present. He stared at me blankly for a long moment, then rose and again offered his hand. "I apologize, Mr. Fetlock," he said, "I'm afraid we've made you travel a long way for nothing."
 
"Yeah," I said, and turned around and walked out of the room back down the hall. As I neared the front entrance, a little man who looked like Peter Lorre scuttled out of an adjoining office and pressed an envelope into my hand. It was my fee.
 
Yeah.
 
My now utterly silent driver and I drove back to the airport. On the way an odd thing happened. We were overtaken by a sudden dust storm--no, "dust storm" isn't enough. It was more like a cloud of evil suddenly lighted upon the earth; a hot, yellow swirl of sand that blocked the sun and ripped the skin; a demon vortex in this ancient home to demons.
 
Gradually, I became aware of patterns in the swirl, shapes that began to resolve themselves into the elements of a face. At first I saw two eyes, then a nose, and finally a leering mouth.
 
This event apparently plumbed the limits of my driver's curiosity regarding the extramundane. Within seconds he had tumbled from the jeep and fallen prone upon the sands, screaming the name of the king of the Mesopotamian fiends: "Azazel! Azazel!"
 
Azazel? Perhaps. But I thought it resembled another face: one more familiar to me but no less disquieting. It was a good likeness, except the smirk was a little goofier, and the ears a bit bigger than I remembered.