The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology

  The Devlin Deception

  Introducing the Mimosa Twins

  Sunday, May 6, 2012

  9:17 a.m.

  Bonita Beach, Florida

  The Mimosa twins began their day strolling north and south from their usual spot on the beach, near the boardwalk from the Collier County parking lot, Jill going south, Carie north. Jill glanced into the gazebo with the AA meeting and saw that all seemed to be going normally there. She walked on down to the southernmost gazebo and turned back north, scanning the slowly growing crowd, ignoring the men ogling her young, lush body. As she neared the boardwalk, her sister's voice came over the earbuds of her modified MP3 player.

  "Jillybean, got a possible situation up here near Pop's, by the volleyball net. A young couple just set a beach bag down and turned back north, where they came from. It may be nothing, but they're acting a little hinky, so I'm gonna follow them. Got your tool kit with you?"

  "Rodger Dodger, Carie Berry. Want me to check out the bag?"

  "Yup. It's the yellow one right by the post."

  "I see you. Ah, got it. Be there in a sec."

  "Okay. Keep me posted."

  "Will do." Jill meandered up to the bag, opened it, lifted up a corner of a folded beach towel and looked inside.

  "Oh, geez, CB, it's a bomb, all right; C4 and ball bearings, with a timer set for noon and a backup cell phone detonator."

  "Can you defuse it?"

  Praise for “The Devlin Deception”

  “I loved the book! The two stories in one was done well, not confusing as some books are. It was entertaining as well as fascinating.......bring on Donne for real!!” - MC, on Amazon

  “... colorful characters, along with dialog and scenes that are often humorous, often adventure-filled, and always engaging. Even though this is a work of fiction, its focus upon the political, economic and legislative issues of contemporary America, set in one of its small towns, Bonita Springs, FL, is razor-sharp and intelligent. I highly recommend this read! - MLH, on Amazon

  “I think it is one of the most intelligent books of fiction I read in the last decade. Cleverly written, witty, funny - written for the smart side of all of us readers ...” - Marina, on Goodreads

  “You need to read between the lines to catch some of the intentions, but I was on my seat, nodding my head, agreeing with what was said, and I also found myself in bouts of laughter. A great read, and highly recommended.“ - AB, on Amazon

  “What a joy to read. I laughed out loud and thought what a unique way of fixing these United States. Also tried to figure out the ending and didn't guess it. “ - TSR, on Amazon

  “... plenty of action, adventure and romance along the way. “ - JMG, on Amazon

  “This book is a great read on so many levels. First, it is a political thriller, fictional of course, but including some policy suggestions, particularly fiscal ones, that deserve to be taken quite seriously. There are multiple subplots, including assassination plots and espionage, and involving colorful characters involved in personal relationships that are hilarious at times, titillating at others, and at all times interesting. From its first page to its epilogue (alternate ones included), this book will amuse, bemuse, entertain, and stimulate the intellect of its readers.” Marti Hanson, on Amazon

  “Political satire and hilarious musings on the human condition are rampant in The Devlin Deception. There is also a touch of erotica as well, so this novel is definitely for adults. Littered through the satire … some practical solutions for fixing the ailing country. Cleverness is about throughout the novel.” TheBookBrothers.com

  The Devlin

  Deception

  Formerly titled “The Donne Deal:

  How One Man Bought and Fixed the USA”

  With an Homage to Bonita Springs, Florida

  Book One of the Devlin Quatrology

  By

  Jake Devlin

  with Bonnie Springs

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales, including

  public figures, is entirely coincidental or intentional.

  This material has not been reviewed by the CIA, FBI,

  Secret Service or any other US government agency to

  prevent the disclosure of classified information.

  Any similarity of fictional classified information in this

  novel to actual classified information is purely coincidental.

  Nothing herein should be construed as asserting or

  implying US government endorsement of the contents.

  (Put simply, IT'S ALL FICTION, readers!!)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used

  or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without

  written permission, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and/or reviews.

  Copyright © 2012 by R.J. Hezzelwood

  www.JakeDevlin.com

  JakeDevlin@JakeDevlin.com

  First Edition: September 2012

  This is a work of fiction

  ... unfortunately.

  Dedicated to those who are

  desperately seeking complacency.

  - PREFACE -

  This novel began purely as the story about Gordon Donne buying and fixing the country, but as it evolved, the events occurring in Bonita Springs, Florida, took on a life of their own, as you, readers, will discover as you wend your way through this work, especially when you meet Pamela93 in Chapter 4.

  For those of you who are familiar with Bonita, don't be dismayed at seeing new names for familiar locations. I've fictionalized those throughout, except for the few whose permission I sought to use their real names. (If you do know Bonita, you might start a list of the fictional and actual names; that may come in handy near the end of the book. Word to the wise, okay?)

  As for the scenes where I'm involved, those are as close as I can get to what actually happened, but my memory is not always running at a hundred percent; a friend of mine named that condition Quarterheimer's, but sometimes it feels like Thirdheimer's, even Halfheimer's on occasion. I did check the local newspapers' archives and some transcripts, so I believe those scenes are fairly close to the actual events.

  And for those of you who expected to find your name somewhere in here but can't find it, I offer a sincere mea culpa. I've tried to put in as many as possible, but I may have left some of you out, and the fault for that is purely mine. Perhaps if I write another, I can find a place for each of the rest of you, if and when I can find and/or get my notes organized. In any event, I enjoyed chatting with each and every one of you along this journey … or just on the beach in Bonita.

  Jake

  WARNING!!!

  Some chapters in this novel contain obligatory but gratuitous erotic content and may be inappropriate for the young, the prudish, the anal-retentive (more fiber should help with that, BTW) or the humorless (like a woman named Kathi I dated back in the seventies, who did not appreciate my suggesting that her name should be pronounced “Kath-eye” if she insisted on spelling it that way; I think we dated for a total of a week, maybe two. But I digress.)

  I have marked the chapters where that is the primary content with an upper case “R” after the chapter number for your convenience (and because I don't want to hear a lot of complaints about that stuff). Use your own discretion. Word to the wise, okay?

  - PROLOGUE -

  Friday, December 9, 2011

  10:17 a.m.

  The Oval Of
fice

  Washington, DC

  Immediately after President Obama signed the sixth Save The Economy Act in a videotaped ceremony, the United States was sold, thanks to three clauses that had been covertly inserted into the bill, which no one in the Congress read before voting it into law.

  The price was a grand total of 82.7 cents ... about eighty-three pennies, and that was significantly above market value.

  The buyer was a reclusive billionaire named Gordon Olin Donne, who was present at the ceremony.

  He handed the Treasury Secretary a one-dollar bill and said, "Keep the change, Tim."

  He then handed the Attorney General his termination papers and replaced him with his own personal attorney, who, immediately after being sworn in, signed an opinion declaring the sale absolutely legal and immune from being contested.

  He then turned to the President, said, "You're fired," and handed him his termination papers.

  The Vice President and Majority and Minority Leaders from both the House and Senate, all of whom were in attendance for the signing, were surrounded by the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Donne told them they were all fired, handed them their termination papers and told them to surrender their cell phones and all their electronic devices and ordered them to sit quietly in the couches and chairs in the center of the room. Spluttering, but intimidated by the military presence, they all complied.

  Donne then sat in the chair just vacated by the flabbergasted now ex-president, glanced around the Oval Office and began a lengthy, exhaustive restructuring of the federal government.

  He issued orders firing the entire Congress and the Supreme Court and declaring his own absolute sovereignty. By noon, he had signed 257 pre-prepared directives, by six p.m. he had met face-to-face with the directors of the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, IRS and the US Mint, with the Secretaries of the Treasury, State and Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and with the entire White House staff, and at eight p.m. sharp, preceded by intense media speculation, Gordon Olin Donne held his first live broadcast to the nation.

  But all day long, he kept reminding himself that only the first step on his long road to vengeance was now behind him.

  -1-

  Six Months Earlier

  Sunday, June 12, 2011

  4:17 a.m.

  Bonita Springs, Florida

  In total darkness, a silent, black, amphibious helicopter landed briefly at the shoreline of Bonita Beach. Six men and one woman slid wraith-like onto the sand with their equipment, and within ten seconds the helo disappeared into the night in near-total silence.

  An hour later, still in darkness, a small red skiff, piloted by an acne-scarred teenager wearing a Master Bait & Tackle T-shirt ("You Can't Beat Our Bait"), stopped about thirty feet offshore from the helo's landing spot, only long enough for the teenager to quickly and carefully slide a beige box perhaps eight feet long, two feet wide and one foot tall into the water, parallel to the beach, where it sank to the bottom, about ten feet below the surface. The skiff motored off, only to return as the sun rose, landing perhaps a hundred yards south of where the box had been dropped. The teen pulled a tackle box and a fishing rod from the skiff, set the box on the shore and began casting into the quiet surf, giggling to himself.

  In North Naples, also at dawn, a few miles south of the fishing teen, a heavyset middle-aged man clad in brand-name running shorts (size XXXXL) and an Overeaters Unanimous T-shirt waddled from a luxury beachfront hotel and along the beach, scattering exactly a thousand small objects from his fanny pack into the near-shore waters for a few hundred yards north and south of the hotel. He returned to his room, called room service to order a huge and outrageously over-priced breakfast, picked up his cell phone and texted a three-word message: "Vanderbilt Beach completed."

  An hour or so later, a frail elderly woman wearing a T-shirt that read “Proud Member of the Batteries for Life Club” walked with some difficulty onto Bonita Beach and opened a bag of popcorn, which she scattered on the sand. Perhaps twenty seagulls immediately flew in and started fighting, squalling and swarming to get at the treat. When all of it had been devoured, the woman went slowly back to the parking lot and drove herself to a senior citizens center in her gated community, where she spent the morning peeing, playing mahjong and gossiping with her fellow seniors.

  -2-

  Friday, December 9, 2011

  10:37 a.m.

  The Capitol

  Washington, DC

  A fat, gay Representative from Massachusetts was enjoying his daily massage in the House gym in the basement of the Capitol with his favorite masseur, Eric, when he found that he was no longer a Congressman, but not due to his recent announcement of his retirement. Twenty minutes after Donne bought the country, two armed Marines in battle fatigues appeared in the doorway of the massage room and handed him a paper informing him that he had been fired. They escorted him to the House chamber, where he, along with all the other Members of Congress still in town, was held incommunicado until eight p.m. (They let him get dressed first.)

  The Justices of the Supreme Court were also escorted to the House chamber and held incommunicado. Congressmen and women who were not in DC were located and also sequestered.

  Just before eight p.m. EST, after catered lunches and dinners had been served to all, the Members who were in the Oval Office when the bill was signed and had been sequestered separately were brought into the chambers and joined their colleagues. Televisions were turned on and tuned to Donne's address.

  -3-

  52.6 Years Earlier

  Sunday, May 10, 1959 (Mothers Day)

  5:27 a.m.

  Houston, Texas

  In the pre-dawn dark, a small female figure left a cardboard box on the front steps of the Prescrott Street Children's Home, then disappeared into the morning fog.

  A few minutes later, when the weekend custodian arrived for his regular shift, he looked into the box, saw a pale, sickly newborn infant wrapped in a ragged old blanket, coughing weakly, and carried it into the building. He called for the charge nurse and gave the box and the little boy to her; he then changed into his coveralls and began the day's work. At 3:30, finished for the day, he clocked out and headed home, giving no further thought to the baby or the box.

  A year and a half later, after PSCH had nursed the baby back to health, the little boy was adopted by a local graduate student and his infertile wife. After a night of heavy drinking and pot-smoking, they had decided on a name for the boy, and that name, Gordon Olin Donne, appeared on the official substitute birth certificate prepared by the PSCH and filed with the State of Texas along with all the adoption paperwork. The boy's date of birth was estimated to be May 6th.

  When the little boy was four, his father finally received his PhD in Religious Studies, specializing in comparative religion, and began what would become a relatively undistinguished career in academia, teaching and doing research at multiple different colleges, ending up in the education department of a small university in southern New Hampshire. The couple had no other children, natural or adopted, and generally lived a lower-middle-class life, occasionally needing to borrow money from their families to pay bills.

  Gordon's mother and father divorced in 1974, and she obtained full custody of the boy, now age fourteen. She received her BA in art history a year later and went on to become an assistant curator at an art museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, when it opened in 1976. She suffered a fatal fall while re-hanging "The Martyrdom of St. Kevin" after its annual cleaning in 1978; a corner of the frame fractured her skull, but the painting itself suffered no damage, and the frame was cleaned quickly and easily.

  Gordon's father died of hypothermia in 1977 when he and six other customers in a Manchester supermarket were locked in a walk-in freezer with nineteen clerks and managers during an armed robbery that turned into a 37-hour standoff. The autopsy showed that he also had a terminal case of cirrhosis of the liver and would have been dead within a year in any event.


  The boy earned the nickname "Scrappy" in first grade, after some third-grade bullies teased him because of his name and stole his lunch money. His adopted mother's father, a former Texas Ranger, taught him to stand up for and defend himself, in spite of his diminutive size. He never again lost his lunch money or a schoolyard fight, and he also stood up for other kids who were being bullied for whatever reasons. No kids at any of the seven grade schools he attended ever lost their lunch money ... or if they did, they got it back, doubled ... and sometimes tripled.

  When he was in the third grade, using a kick his grandfather had taught him, he shattered the left knee of a particularly large sixth-grade bully who was and had been tormenting many smaller first- and second-graders. Unfortunately, the sixth grader was the son of a wealthy friend of the school principal, so it was Gordon who was expelled. His parents scolded him at length, but his grandfather quietly yet clearly supported him, reminding him many times in future years that that bully would always walk with a painful and awkward limp and would remember his humiliation at the hands -- actually, foot -- of a boy half his size.