Fox’s Game Ch. 15: They Run Into a Dead End…Maybe an Economist Can Help?

Thompson Station

Kristoff emptied the contents of his beer glass and continued, “We’re looking for evidence of an organization that, at least to some degree, prided itself on being able to memorize absurdly large amounts of information.”

“Right.”

“Well, what if the Book of Shadows is the only text that we can track because the rest of their information would be transmitted orally?”

Robert took a deep breath, trying to follow his friend’s logic. “So you think that they would’ve resorted to simply telling each other what they wanted in person?”

“Yes, when they could. And when they couldn’t, they probably wrote letters in such coded terms, that to extrapolate meaning could take years. We’d have to find their letters, letters that were probably memorized then disposed of or we could search for evidence of their actions.”

A slow smile creeped across Robert’s face as he understood Kristoff’s point. “You’re saying we should see if the events of Harvel’s case is similar to other such cases?”

“Yes. It’s like physics. When you shine light on a subatomic particle, you change its position. This is frustrating because you can’t see without light. So what do you do?” Kristoff asked.

“I don’t know. Study how the particle moves and then use that as a starting point for guessing its structure and composition?” Robert said.

“Close. We study the movement, but we also study the effects of the movement. It works not just at the subatomic level. We look at black holes and see how matter reacts when close to them. That allows us to separate the unknown from the known.”

Robert appreciated his rationale, mostly because it would make looking for evidence easier. So far, all they could find was the information that Kristoff’s friend in Washington had sent them. It was like investigating the mob—the evidence somehow disappeared when examined.

The more Robert thought, the more Kristoff’s subatomic analogy fit because any lead vanished like a quark running from the light. They needed specific shadowy activity if they hoped to trace the organization’s movement.

This need to change tactics excited the two professors, it meant they were making some headway. Even a failed hypothesis brought them a step closer to the truth. But that also meant scrapping much of the work they’d done up until that point, which made them tired. Kristoff often admonished his physics students on the value of failed experiments with a quote from the legendary computer engineer John W. Backus, “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”

Kristoff kept that quote on the door of his office. But unlike a failed physics experiment, time seemed much more of the essence. Perhaps more lives than André Babineaux’s was at stake.

“What do you think we should do now, Robert?”

“I need a break. We’ve been at this for hours. We need to keep pushing, but I don’t know how effective I’d be.”

Kristoff laughed a laugh of exhaustion and relief, “Well, part of effective work is knowing your limitations. The mind needs breaks just like the body. What do you propose?”

“It’s late now. I’ll call Julian tomorrow to see if he’s made any headway with Dr. Morell. If she can devise some algorithms for us, that would allow us to use our energy more effectively.”

Kristoff agreed. “Yes, talk to Julian. And even if he hasn’t spoken to her, he could provide a different perspective.”

“I’ve worked with Julian on a couple of committees, he has a knack of approaching problems in an unorthodox but effective way.”

“Okay, so do you want to meet back here sometime tomorrow?” Kristoff asked.

“Yes, how does 1:30 sound? Right after lunch.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come over at noon, and I’ll make lunch. I sometimes do my best thinking while I’m cooking, and it’d be good to have someone there to bounce ideas off of.”

“Sounds good, Kristoff. See you then.”

********************

Tiffany and Julian agreed it best to arrive before Alyssa in order to lessen the chance that she’d catch on to their intentions. Tiffany was shocked when she called her and found that she had a young voice. For some reason, she expected her to sound older. And when she Googled her, Tiffany felt a twinge of envy at seeing her picture and reading her accomplishments. Although Tiffany had an accomplished resumé of her own, she found it hard not to compare herself to another woman in her city and her demographic.

As with most comparisons, she unknowingly downplayed her own strengths and overrated the other person’s. Knowing that she wasn’t doing herself any good, she logged out. In spite of herself, she felt a slight sense of jealousy at knowing she was going to help a guy that she’d just flirted with meet up with a girl who, irrational as it sounded, now seemed like competition, not even competition for Julian, just competition in that vague way in which young women sometimes found themselves.

 

Fox’s Game Ch. 13: A Lesson in Rhetoric

Vanderbilt Lecture Hall

Dr. Alyssa Morell eyed her class like a cop administering a breathalyzer. Her stare lasted a full six seconds before she continued, “If we could assign a number value to anything that could ever happen, every event would be contained in pi. The beauty of pi is that it shows up in equations that have nothing to do with circles. It could very well be the most important number in human history.” Morell’s students clicked at their laptops as she spoke.

Morell had not spoken to anyone from Benjamin Hoek’s cookout. In fact, she’d had little contact with anyone from the university besides her summer school students. The brief separation from colleagues had given her a chance to consider her career options without the distractions that arise during the fall and spring semesters.

A former college teammate informed her of a job opening for a Systems Analyst position at Google. She’d visited San Francisco last summer and loved it. The weather, the people, the culture—everything appealed to her sensibilities. She couldn’t justify moving unless a job at Stanford or some other major college became available. She hadn’t considered the business sector. A job at Google, with its flexible hours, generous benefits, and quirky work culture, could be what lured her away from Vanderbilt. She would also have the freedom to merge her interest in theoretical equations with practical application without it conflicting with other aspects of her job like grading tests and joining committees.

Although she enjoyed lecturing, she was disappointed to find that many—students, smart, talented students—lacked the focus she had as an undergrad. When she graded hastily done take home exams or asked a question based on the class readings and saw that half of them had not read, she felt a twinge of resentment at having to spend her time preparing to help them when she could be helping herself. Her ambivalence concerning the Google job wore on her. She had to decide soon whether or not to apply.

She glanced at her watch before concluding the lecture. “Keep in mind that numbers are not abstract images on a two-dimensional plane. They are living, moving entities that reflect themselves in our thoughts and actions. It’s all a matter of re-imagining them. Have a good weekend.” She gathered her stuff and walked down the hall towards her office. She’d already begun thinking of what she’d be cooking for dinner. Her planning was interrupted when she noticed Julian Daniels leaning on the wall next to her office door, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle.

Alyssa froze and looked at him as if she’d opened the door to her home and found a stranger comfortably watching tv.

“Dr. Alyssa Morell. Let me introduce myself, Dr. Julian Daniels.”

“Hello. Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, I need your help.”

Alyssa waited a beat. “Okay.” Although the word lilted upward on the last syllable, it was more statement than question.

“I need to know what our problem is. I don’t care if someone doesn’t like me. Most of the time, I’m not even interested in why. But in your case, I’m a little curious.”

Alyssa wanted to at least set down her briefcase, but she didn’t want to do it in the hallway, nor did she want to invite him into her office. She knew the conversation would not end if all she did was give one and two word answers. She sighed, unlocking her office door. “After you,” she said.

He sat in a brown, cushioned chair opposite of her desk. He looked around at the University of Maryland paraphernalia. He nodded approvingly at the meticulous decoration, the neatly lined oak book shelf, the evenly spaced framed awards lining the wall above her desk chair. Even the most casual observer would conclude that the owner of the room was precise and goal oriented.

“I didn’t know you were a college athlete.”

“Look, I’m busy. What do you want?”

“I just want to know why you and I have a problem. We don’t have to be friends or anything, but I do want to know since you’d never met me before the cookout at Ben’s.”

“Fair enough. I don’t like guys who cheat. And I don’t like guys who cheat on my friends.”

Julian turned his head as if to look at her with one eye. “Who’s your friend?”

Alyssa shook her head and smiled. “I imagine it’s hard to keep up with all your conquests. Christine Thompson. Remember her?”

He let out a breath and nodded. “I remember her. We dated for eight months. What about her?”

“What’s about her is that we’re pretty good friends. And I don’t appreciate my friends getting lied to and cheated on. I just don’t. Weird, I know.”

“We cheated on each other! I’m not saying what I did was right, but it’s a little different if we’re both doing it. And besides, she cheated first.”

Alyssa was caught off guard. “So you justify bad behavior by pointing at other bad behavior. Really Dr. Daniels, that type of reasoning is beneath you.”

“That’s not my argument. My argument is you can’t play the victim if you, too are a perpetrator. That’s like a car thief calling the cops after finding his car missing. Look, you’re her friend. You should take her side. But if you know me and interact with me, then I’m no longer some abstract ex-boyfriend. At that point, you must be willing to learn the whole story or else you’re being intellectually dishonest.”

Alyssa laughed sarcastically. “Oh wow! You’re good. You’re good. I see why you’re such a successful author. You know how to make even the most outlandish viewpoints work for you.”

“Look, there’s parts to the story that, if you knew, would alter your perception of me. And if you’re going to base your treatment of me on that story, you should be willing to learn as much as you can about it as possible. If not, then you can’t say you’re acting with integrity.”

Alyssa crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. Julian knew he was making her angry. But he knew this was better than her one-worded, stony dismissals. He had to play the situation carefully, applying the right amount of emotional pressure so that she would continue to engage him.

“Aly–Dr. Morell, I’m not implying that you don’t have integrity. I’m saying there’s more to know, and if you’re unwilling to take in new information that could change your position, you’re not being as honest as possible with yourself.” He made her integrity part of the conversation in order to get her attention, then redefined the term in hopes of clarifying his point. Now he needed an example to show that he could identify with her.

“Look at it this way: you’re an economist and an athlete. I know you remember the backlash in the baseball world when Moneyball came out. There’s a section in the afterword where one baseball exec criticized the book in one breath and then, in the next breath, proudly admitted that he’d never read it. There’s nothing wrong with not having read a book. But if he’s willing to make a value judgment on that book based on biased, incomplete information—information that is within his grasp but he refuses to at least look at—then that’s not completely honest.”

Alyssa chewed her lower lip. By referencing her economic background and then couching his argument in that way, Julian made an intellectual appeal. The fact that she was thinking about it meant he could engage her logic, which also meant that she would be more open to what he had to say. He knew that emotions were good, but when someone has her mind made up and refuses to change it, that is a result of emotional resolution rather than intellectual certainty.

“I have nothing against Christine. I saw her a few weeks ago at during a concert at the Ryman. She was with some guy and seemed to be happy. I know that her being civil to me doesn’t mean anything. But it’s evidence that whatever issues that we had have begun to dissipate.”

Alyssa knew that her friend was dating someone new. She knew that some wounds from some relationships never fully healed. But with the vast majority of break ups, time and changing perspectives tended to mollify past feelings. “That’s a good point,” she said.

Julian was careful to appear impassive. Her conceding that he had a point meant she was willing to change her mind. But if he showed that he was emotionally invested in her decision, it would hurt the intellectual appeal he was making.

“Anyway, I know you’re busy. So I don’t want to bog you down with unnecessary details about my relationship with Christine. But for about the last month of our relationship, we both started talking to other people. She’d met some guy named Terrence, I think. And I’d begun texting my ex again.”

“She said you spent the night with her,” Alyssa said, arms still crossed.

“Yes, I stayed the night at her house,” Julian subtly changed the connotation of her sentence, thinking ‘stayed the night’ sounded less sexual. “I slept in her bed, but we didn’t have sex. I don’t expect you or Christine to believe that. Either way, I know that staying at your ex’s is problematic no matter what you did or didn’t do. I told Christine the next day because I didn’t want it to come out later and seem worse than it really was.”

“But earlier you said, ‘she cheated, too,’ which implies that you did cheat on her at some point,” Alyssa said.

“Yes, a week after I stayed the night, I hooked up with my ex.” By that time the relationship with Christine was all but over. Here’s the thing, though—when she talks about me cheating, she’s referring to when I stayed the night. She doesn’t know about what happened that next week. By that time, I hadn’t spoken to Christine for days. She wouldn’t respond to my texts nor return my calls.”

Alyssa began chewing her lip again. “Now you said she cheated, too.”

“Yes, a friend of mine saw her on Broadway. He took a pic and texted it to me.” Julian took out his phone, scrolled to the picture, and handed it to Alyssa.

She studied it. No doubt the girl was Christine. She was at one of the Nashville honky tonks, sitting on a mystery guy’s lap.

Julian continued, “This doesn’t mean she cheated. It’s just a picture. But I texted her several times that night as well as the next morning and got no response. When I finally got ahold of her, she was unusually sweet. She even laughed off the things I do that would normally annoy her. I never told her about the picture. I figured it wouldn’t help anything, but it definitely colored how I approached our relationship. This was ten days before I stayed the night at my ex’s.”

Alyssa unfolded her arms and shifted in her seat. She had no reason to think Julian was lying, and the evidence he gave was circumstantial but plausible. The truthfulness of his version of events was secondary to the fact that she probably should drop whatever grudge she had. If Christine was no longer wasting energy on it, then she had no need to. In this instance, her adherence to the Girl Code had reached its statute of limitations.

Julian could tell by her body language that he’d convinced her to, at the very least, not dislike him. But he knew that convincing her to work with him, Robert, and Kristoff, would have to wait another day. Correctly orchestrated rhetoric was effective, but it also had its limits.

“Well Dr. Morell—Alyssa—I just wanted to clear that up. I’ll let you get back to work.” As he stood up, he extended his hand.

She shook it and said, “Thank you for taking the time to do that. I appreciate it.”

Alyssa waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps down the hallway before she gathered up her work material. She wanted to make sure he was gone because even though her thoughts about him had changed, her attitude had yet to catch up.

**********

Thompson’s Station,
Williamson County, TN

Robert and Kristoff sat in oak finished chairs in Kristoff’s living room. They faced his coffee table where dozens of books lay sprawled on top of each other, covering the wooden, rectangular space. Each created a make-shift desk with a tv food tray where they set their laptops. If either man couldn’t find a particular book in the make-shift study area, he could get up, walk to the dining room where another army of books rested neatly on top of each other.

Both scholars would’ve appreciated the dichotomy between the orderly kitchen and the messy living room—the visual metaphors of between work and rest—were they not absorbed in their research, clicking furiously on their keyboards, sketching in notebooks, and underlining book passages.

Two hours had passed since either man had spoken. They muttered thoughts but knew that the time to read came before the time to speak, thought before action.

Robert ran his red pen under each line of a book titled Medieval Semiotics, a dense, scholarly work written by a Harvard professor of symbols who used images of the past to decode meanings about how people of that time saw the universe and saw themselves. Semiotics, the study of symbols, is a field that for years fell under a litany of disciplines. What field in the humanities didn’t try to coax meaning out of pictures—whether psychologists understanding Freud and his cigar, art historians drawing insight out of spires, or linguists analyzing the changing shape of a letter? But semiotics took the process a step further. While studying symbols was part of those other fields, it was the essence of this one.

Robert enjoyed semiotics because he created meaning through pictures daily. The secret to his ability to recall large amounts of information came through his knack of creating memorable images and storing them in a specific place in his mind. From the memory masters of antiquity to modern educators, the secret to memorizing staggering amounts of information came from using designated spots at specific “memory palace” locations and then connecting them with information one wanted to remember through memorable actions. For example, if Robert wanted to begin a lecture on the influence of Hebraic thought on Western civilization with an anecdote from the Old Testament about Abraham and Isaac, he might picture Abraham Lincoln at his front door ramming his way through it using a giant apple.

The image was nonsensical, yet it possessed all the information he needed to recall his opening lines. The front door is where the entrance or beginning to his home, which served as one of many memory palaces, Abraham Lincoln is a memorable enough figure and the apple represents Isaac Newton, which for Robert’s purposes, would be Isaac in the biblical story. That picture may be nonsensical but it would be memorable enough to cue what he wanted to say.

The more vivid the picture, the more vivid the memory. The picture was simply a cue to jog the memory, a symbol of a given thought. By now, McDonough’s use of symbols to crystalize memories was second nature. And so his interest in studying them had a practical purpose–he used them every day to help him remember names, events, even numbers. But now, he was studying them in a way he was unfamiliar with, to piece together the story of one individual in hopes of solving a mystery. He usually worked inductively, taking the bits of information he gleaned and plastering them to a larger picture. However, he was doing the inverse: using what he knew about the larger picture in hopes of understanding the details.

Only now the information led to such little insight that it was akin to being farsighted and looking through binoculars. All he could do was continue to adjust the focus until the picture turned clear, except he had no idea how long he’d have to adjust or even what the image was, but he knew he’d instantly recognize the picture the moment it came into focus.

He flipped through Medieval Semiotics searching for words that would lead him to anything pertaining to memory cults or underground organizations. The more he searched, the more obscure the research became. Robert kept reminding himself that no secret involving more than three people was completely devoid of evidence. Harvel’s tattoo showed that the Shadow Knights had roots in ancient traditions, but how far back did they go? Perhaps they were a relatively new organization that simply adopted ancient symbols?

The problem was that unlike groups like the Masons or Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, this group seemed to work on the microlevel, with average people like Harvel who were less likely to have their lives recorded for posterity. If a politician joined a secret society, that secret will eventually come to light because he is a public figure—people will talk. But the Shadow Knights seemed to target extraordinary individuals living ordinary lives like a talented criminal who went to prison for embezzlement but in another life could’ve been a mathematician.

A man with a low profile would be hard to track and would leave behind a small historical footprint, especially several centuries ago. Someone like Harvel would have surely melted away into the annals of history, even if he’d killed someone because the details of his life would have been virtually non-existent beyond his military record. There’s no telling how many Harvels have existed throughout the course of human history.

Robert and Kristoff worked for hours, and even their considerable powers of concentration were beginning to wane. Robert was pondering the likelihood of finding evidence of men like Harvel throughout history when Kristoff interrupted his thought process. “Robert! We’ve been going about this all wrong!”

It took Robert a moment to shake out of the fog of thought he’d put himself in. “Wh-what do you mean? How is that?”

“We’re tracing people by looking at evidence of symbols, right? We don’t need to find Harvel or anyone else. We need to look for actions similar to the one he committed. If we study those, we’ll find the Knights of the Shadow. They may only be shadows, but shadow doesn’t equal non-existent.

Fox’s Game Ch. 12: The Chemist Changes His Mind and a Note on the Nature of Hindsight

Williamson County, Thompson Station

Williamson County is one of the ten richest counties in the nation, a haven for the homes of business people, athletes, musicians, and actors. Some of the homes are barely lived in, claimed as the primary residence for A-listers looking to get a break from California taxes. When most people, even Nashvillians, think of Williamson County, they think of Franklin, the historical Civil War town that houses expensive business and gated subdivisions.

But like New York city, Franklin is a small but loud part of a much bigger territory. Most of Williamson County is rural and quiet. And that peace—that remoteness—is what drew Kristoff Tulowitzki to the county. He is able to be isolated both physically and financially, which allows him to disappear amid the green trees of the county’s landscape and the green backs of the county’s economy.

His home looked the way one who has money but values privacy would look. The backyard led to several acres of wooded land, the front yard, nicely manicured, and the house itself a combination of rustic taste and modern style.

Robert and Julian sat at Kristoff’s dining room table waiting for their host to finish making crêpes. Robert flipped through a thick book on the coffee table titled Underground Organizations. His right hand moved rapidly left to right in a wide zig zag pattern. He spent only 10 seconds on a page before going to the next one. Julian stared at his cell phone, swiping his thumb upward, scrolling through his reading as quickly as Robert.

“Sorry to keep you waiting my good men, but no serious meeting can take place after dinner time without light snacks and a good drink.” Kristoff set his tray at the center of the table, the only spot not occupied by books and notebooks. “We are almost ready to start.”

Kristoff left the dining area and returned balancing three glasses between his palms and finger tips. He set a glass of water next to Robert and handed Julian one of the glasses of stout. He neatly stacked some of the books in order to clear room for his guests’ saucers. “There. Now we can properly talk. The right food and the right drink can comfort the body and stimulate the mind.”

He took a sip and continued. “First of all, I am glad to join your team.” Robert and Julian exchanged a look, unaware that they were any sort of team. “Second, you are free to borrow any books or materials of mine.”

“What changed your mind, Kristoff?” Julian asked.

“I realized that this was more than just a time-wasting game. Also, I concluded that I’ve spent my adult life studying these odd cases from the comfort of my home, and if I ever expected to turn my thought into action, I would have to do more than simply study. I was suspicious at the cookout, but I decided that suspicious was good. It meant that I may be involved in something real, something that could make a difference.”

“Well, we are glad to have your help,” Julian said.

Robert reached for a pastry. “So what’d you come up with regarding the tattoo?”

“The fact that I’d never seen the image distracted me. I finished my equations for the day. But I couldn’t quite shake the idea that I couldn’t recall coming across that figure. So once I got home, I called a friend in Washington, DC who could help me identify any meaning it might have. He said he’d call back. Two hours later he had a name: Knights of the Shadow. Apparently, they were an organization that formed during the late 16th century and were dedicated to the arts of memory, alchemy, and meditation.

“They believed they could train their memories to such an extent that they could pass knowledge between themselves without writing books and thus risk exposure to outsiders. Alchemy was emphasized, of course, so they could fund their plans, and meditation was so that they could utilize mind control.”

“Mind control?” Julian knew that the late Medieval period was a superstitious time. But studying to control people’s minds seemed outlandish even for that time.

Kristoff anticipated the objection. “It was to be a primitive form of hypnotism. You know how you can drive home and not really remember the drive? Well, driving is a dangerous and difficult activity. And they wanted to understand the mind state that could allow you to do dangerous and difficult activities without thinking. How could you get people to go on auto pilot and act without any conscious thought?”

Julian laughed, “Just come up with a pop dance song. People will stop what they’re doing and start doing the steps to the dance without thought of how to do the moves or how silly they look.”

“Dr. Daniels you joke, but that’s exactly what they were looking for. They were obsessed with harnessing the mind’s potential. They were aware of the subconscious centuries before Freud introduced it. They understood that if you could consciously control the subconscious of a person, then that person could be your slave and more importantly, they wouldn’t know it.”

Robert sat silently slowly sipping on his water. “So was Giordano Bruno the leader of this organization?”

“Yes. One of them,” Kristoff said. “He was the intellectual force behind it. But the leader was another man, Giuseppe Laurencio. He could more easily get others behind his causes, he was more of a natural leader whereas Bruno was more of an individual artist. He’s the one who chose the symbol and wrote many of the ideas. There were two other men involved, Francisco Costino and Raphael Renetti, minor players compared to Bruno and Laurencio but worth mentioning.”

“Fascinating but how does all this tie into Harvel?” Robert asked.

“Here’s how: the organization never really went anywhere. No one wants to join a start up that has a high chance of failure, especially one that’s essentially talking about undermining the Church. It’s one thing if you already have the tools, but if you’re talking about developing the tools over time, who wants to sign up for that?

“Anyway, the four men essentially wrote elaborate letters to each other using their books. But it never got out of the planning stages. Eventually, Bruno, like Jesus’s apostles, decided to write down his ideas after realizing that his plans might not materialize in his lifetime. That’s where we get The Book of Shadows. It’s a culmination of their research. And the memory wheel was a way to decode and learn their teachings.

“Over the centuries, the book pops up, going in and out of fashion. And like followers of a religious sect, some would take it as a life treatise meant to be followed literally, while others saw it as a helpful life guide, in this case a memory text. The more serious Knights of the Shadow would wear a wheel as a symbol of their loyalty.

“Anyway, the organization has changed over time. It’s less about memory, alchemy, and mind control. Yet it still possesses the initial spirit of wanting to control information, control minds, and control its funding. It’s possible Harvel was a member. Now, was he acting on his own or as part of the organization? That’s what we need to figure out.”

“If he acted alone, then the implications aren’t nearly as serious. What do you think it means if he’s part of a larger group?” Julian asked.

“It could mean that AquaCorp is some sort of target. Or maybe it’s a warm up for something larger like how terrorist cells will set off a car bomb almost as a practice run for a larger act. Or it could be a distraction from what they really want. Acts like this have several moving variables that can’t be understood until we’re studying them.”

Robert stroked his beard as Kristoff spoke. “You mean we can’t understand anything until we’re looking at it in hindsight?”

“Exactly.”

The three men sat in silence at the implications that their meeting tonight could, at the least prevent another death.

Robert sipped his water and cleared his throat. “So Kristoff, how can we learn more about these variables?”

“Well, we can develop an algorithm for several different scenarios. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a start. And by tracing the movement of the Knights of the Shadow, we can maybe find out where Harvel would have likely come into contact with them.”

Julian took one last gulp of his porter and set it down. “And the missing pieces start to fall into place.”

Kristoff finished his as well. “This is fun. Dr. Daniels, Dr. McDonough and I will research the Knights. If there’s evidence of their actions over the past few centuries, we can dig it up. It’s your job to get us the algorithms.”

“First off, if we’re gonna be a team, just call me Julian. Second, I know how to spell algorithm. That’s just about it.”

“I know. This means we need someone who knows math. Robert successfully recruited me. You’re a rhetorician. If I’m not mistaken, good rhetoric can influence the mind as much as anything the Knights of the Shadow or anyone else has thought up. Let’s see if you can persuade Dr. Morell to join our team. She understands algorithms as well as anyone we know.”

Julian picked up his glass hoping to get one last drop out of it. He knew it’d be difficult to convince her to hear him out for a conversation let alone join their team. He also knew that you don’t become part of the faculty at one of the country’s elite universities if you shied away from challenges. He smiled at his friends and said, “let’s see what I can do.”

Fox’s Game Ch. 11: A ‘Keep Out’ Sign is Not to Keep Us Out but to Remind Us that We Want In…and Other Obvious Facts

Vanderbilt University Research Facility

Kristoff Tulowitzki stood at the white board in his office, the symbols from his blue marker that covered the board would be comprehensible to only a handful of people in the world. He stood immobile, arms folded, mouth frowning. Not until the soft taps turned into sharp raps did he notice the knocking on his door, jumping slightly at the abrupt interruption.

“Come in,” he said.

Robert peeked his head in. “I hope I’m not disturbing you Kristoff.”

“Ah, Robert! I did not expect you. You are, in fact disturbing me, but it’s okay. I need to take a break. Our minds need periods of intense concentration followed by short rests. And social rests are the most healthy kind.”

“Good, good to hear. I was hoping you could settle something for me and Julian.”

Kristoff laughed. “I will try.”

“Well, it’s about Hoek’s record player riddle. What do you think? If a glass of water were on it, would it fall off or spill first?”

“Ah yes, I remember. It’s clearly an unsolvable equation.”

“That’s what I told Julian. I want to hear your rationale behind it, though.”

“It’s simple physical science. The centripetal force created by the circular movement is going to act differently on different glasses. A tall, thin glass will have a lower center of gravity and would thus get moved easier than a short wide one.” Robert tilted his head to the side. Tulowitzki continued, “and of course, the amount of water matters, too. A drop differs greatly from being filled to the rim. And how far away is the glass from the actual center of the circle, meaning the recorder?”

Robert smiled. “I agree with your answer. Although the rationale that led me there was remarkably different.”

“Oh, really?”“I took an historic approach. I focused on how the Romans viewed order and power, how they would’ve viewed the glass as something that needed to be controlled, but they would need to know the dimensions of that which they were controlling before they could exert any sort of power.”

“I love the way you see things, Robert. So…so…epistemologically.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“I meant it as a compliment. But tell me, you didn’t come all the way up here to ask me about a riddle. What do you really want?”

“I’m terrible at mind games.”

“Robert, I believe you are incapable of deception.”

“Well, my question is about Ben’s case. Julian and I have a question about secret societies. I figured you’d be able to put us on track.”

“I really don’t want to get into this, Robert.”

“I know, I just want to save dozens of hours of research by asking someone who might know. If you feel uneasy, I won’t pressure you.”

Kristoff knew he could trust Robert and that helping him in this matter would establish a stronger bond between them, which could be helpful in the future. “What’s the question? I’ll do my best.”

Robert unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Well, here’s a picture of one Harvel’s tattoos. It’s a Renaissance memory wheel. Seems like an odd thing to have. This particular wheel is interesting because it was the one used by Giordano Bruno, who wrote Book of Shadows. It’s a bit of a memory treatise, but it also has some information on the occult. He was also a known conspiracy theorist. He wanted to use his esoteric knowledge to control those in power. Let the Church and the State worry about controlling the masses. He’ll control the Church and the State. Have you heard anything about him?”

“That name is not completely unfamiliar. But I can’t place it. And I have never seen this image in relation to an organization.”

“That’s all I needed to know. Kristoff, I won’t take up anymore of your time. You’ve been very helpful.” Robert folded up the sheet and stuck out his hand.

“A bit of advice, Robert. Just because I don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That tattoo could very well mean something.”

“I know, it’s just that this is all I’ve got. There are some things about the situation that are odd, but I imagine that, if I studied similar instances, I would see the same abnormalities.”

“True. Anomalies are far more common than we think both in the natural world and in human behavior.”

“I’m meeting with Julian tonight. He spoke with Ben’s former student, the Channel 4 producer who came to him with the story. We’ll compare notes. Unless we receive a new flood of information, we’ll try to wrap up our research assignment in the next day or so.”

“That’s probably a good idea. You and I are puzzle solvers, and part of solving them is understanding which ones are worth our time.”

“Well said. I will let you return to yours. Thanks as always.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

Robert closed the door, and Kristoff returned to his statuesque pose in front of the white board.

**********

“Julian, I greatly appreciate the irony of discussing potential secrets in such a public place,” said Robert after ordering his Cherry Coke. They took their usual seats in a secluded corner.

“It’s ironic, but since no one knows we’re working on this, we don’t have to keep it secret,” said Julian.

“Strangely enough, acting secretive often brings secrets to light,” said Robert.

“Sherlock Holmes said it best, ‘there’s nothing so well hidden as an obvious fact.’ It’s like if you act as if there’s nothing to hide, you can hide almost anything,” said Julian.

“People are interesting. Some things are naturally sensitive and need to be hidden. But how much information becomes valuable for no other reason than someone decided it needed to be hidden?” Robert said.

“It’s known in advertising as the Appeal to Snobbery. If you want your product to seem more appealing, simply show that it’s something that only a precious few are privy to. Then, no matter how accessible it is, if you have it, you’re part of a select group.”

“Who was it that said that the fence and the keep out sign is not to actually keep us out but to remind us that we wanted in?”

“I dunno, Robert. But I’ll have to steal that line.”

“So what’d you find after talking with Tiffany Saunders?”

“Well, the tattoo was a dead end. I found out that Harvel’s really good at disappearing. He leaves a boarder patrol job in Arizona shortly after 9/11 and just falls off the radar. He then pops up in Texas in ’04. Six months later he’s gone, and we don’t see him again until ’08. What do you think?”

“It could be part of a pattern. It’s impossible to understand without knowing more about his background. If he has a habit of disappearing for long periods, it could be nothing. But he was in the military where, by all accounts, he was a disciplined and dependable soldier. So that doesn’t really fit.”

Julian sighed. “Unless we get new information, doesn’t seem like we could do much. We’d have to question a large number of people who’ve already been questioned by authorities in hopes of finding something they missed. And I hardly doubt that’s what Ben had in mind when he asked us to do this.”

“Let me ask you: do you think Tiffany Saunders fell into the trap we were just talking about?”

“What trap?” said Julian.

“You know, the fact that things were secretive caused her to take an inordinate amount of interest in the case. As good as I’m sure she is, it’s not like she’s immune. Think about it, you ask a bunch of questions and get stonewalled. That makes you ask more, as if they’re hiding something. But maybe there’s nothing to hide, maybe they’re just making it more secretive because they can. There’s no upside in opening up to the press. Or maybe they’re trying to hide something else completely unrelated. There’re several possibilities. And given what we know so far, the problem is unsolvable.”

“Agreed. I think we should wrap this up. We put in our work. Let’s tell Ben that we simply don’t have enough information to move forward.”

Robert gulped his Coke. “This reminds me. What’d you get for the answer to Ben’s riddle about the glass of water and the turntable?”

“I forgot about that. You know, I think it was incomplete. Look at it this way: the turntable, the glass, the water, they’re all characters in a play. How can we predict how they will act once they’re set in motion if we don’t know anything about them? We’d need to know some backstory before we could move forward. You can’t have a story without conflict. The conflict, of course, is the movement, but you can’t have a story with only movement. You must have characters that we know something about. Does that analogy make sense?”

“Perfect sense. Kristoff had a completely different answer, same conclusion but different answer. I guess I should say he had a different reasoning process. And it’s in the spirit of our current dilemma. Like this case, that riddle has a dearth of facts to make any real sense of. Guess that’s why I like it.”

“We should stop by Ben’s office tomorrow and let him know what we came up with. I’ll call Tiffany and let her know.”

“Well Julian, it was good working with you. We really should collaborate on a project together. Kristoff and I were talking about doing something together, too.”

“I would like that. I admit I’ve been looking forward to these discussions more than I thought. I’m so used to just typing on a blank page that I forget co-authoring has its benefits as well.”

The two finished their drinks and left the coffee shop. Robert settled into his white, ’04 Camry. He took out his phone so he could charge it while he drove. He saw that he had a three missed calls and two voicemails from a number he didn’t recognize.

“I hope there’s not some sort of emergency.” He went to his voicemail feature and turned up the volume.

“Robert, it’s me Kristoff. Benjamin Hoek gave me your number. I found something about that tattoo. You were right, it does belong to a secret organization. We need to talk. I know you were meeting with Dr. Daniels tonight. Maybe I can come, too? Call me back.”

Robert’s heart thumped against his chest like knuckles on a punching bag. He listened to the next message, “Robert, I see I’ve gotten your voicemail again. Call me back when you get a chance.” He set down his phone, closed his eyes, drew in his breath, counted slowly to four, held it for seven seconds, and exhaled for eight. He did this two more times before picking up his phone.

He texted Julian: Kristoff left me two voicemails. We just got some backstory on one of our characters.

Fox’s Game Ch. 10: The Journalist and the English Prof. Discuss Coffee & Conspiracies

Vanderbilt University
School of Journalism
8:30am

Debbie Hudson smiled as Robert walked into the office. She was glad to see someone who made her job easier. As secretary for the Dean of Liberal Arts, Hudson fielded a litany of phone calls and visits that could make her days as hectic and unpredictable.

An angry student looking for someone to blame because her 4.0 was ruined was likely to storm into her office and complain about an American Lit class before realizing that Hudson was merely the go-between. Situations like that made the day adventurous but exhausting. She enjoyed seeing faculty members like Robert who showed her respect. They knew that for every one emergency Dr. Ben Hoek had to solve, she stopped 10 from even going that far.

“He’s in his office, Robert. Just go in.”

“Thank you.”

Ben stood up. “Thanks for coming in. Did you and Julian find anything?”

“We think we have a lead, but we need more information. I want to know how you decided to put the folders together.”

“The folders from the cookout? Let’s see, I just printed off news articles that I found and typed up a brief page on what Tiffany had told me. Jonathan made copies of what the police had, so I added those. Why?”

“Well, we found a tattoo that could indicate Harvel was more than a mentally unstable loner. Again, it could mean nothing. I want more than a brief bio. Is there any way to find out his hobbies or what organizations he was in?”

Ben pressed the tips of his fingers. “There is a way to find out.” He paused for dramatic effect. Robert leaned forward.

“Kristoff.”

“You mean Kristoff Tulowitzki?”

“Of course.”

“I have no problem asking him, but what makes him so qualified?”

“He’s a conspiracy theorist, but he’s such an organized thinker, he can explain his theories without sounding like a crackpot. I’ve heard he can make you think that Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA, the Cubans, or the Russians assassinated Kennedy.”

“Interesting. Well, if this is his wheelhouse, he probably won’t mind sitting down answering a few questions.”

“I don’t think you have to settle for a few questions. I think you could get him all the way on board. Let me ask you, what answer did you come up with for my turntable question?”

“Turn–oh yeah. It’s unsolvable. You didn’t give us enough information.”

“Go on.” Now Ben was the one leaning forward.

“It’s a variation of a logic puzzle the Romans developed. How fast would a chariot wheel have to spin before it begins to break apart? It’s about order versus chaos. The Romans were obsessed with unification. They wondered how much unifying they could one do before things would unravel. The answer was…it depends. It depends on the size of the chariot wheel and the strength of the tools that forged it. That’s the point. How much order can you bring to the world? It depends on how big the world is that you want to conquer and how strong the tools are that you’re using?

“So back to your question, it depends on what kind of glass you want to use and how much water is in it.”

Ben made a mental note to use that example in the future. “Great answer, Robert. That question is your opening. I feel like each of you will come to the same conclusion but with different types of reasoning. That question was my way of giving you all something to think about even if you said no. Maybe it’d stick with you enough that my request wouldn’t quite leave your mind.

“Call Kristoff. Begin by asking him what answer he got. Then tell him your answer. He’ll appreciate it. From there, ask him about the case. The idea that a small piece of evidence could link to something bigger will more than likely draw him in. At the very least, he can give you a few leads.”

“Thanks, Ben. I’ll call him when I get to my office.”

“Don’t call him. Go see him like you came to see me. He’ll appreciate the effort. Plus the face-to-face contact will make your point more forceful. It’s Monday. He’ll probably be working in his office with the door closed. At first he’ll be grumpy that you interrupted him, but once you get talking, he’ll be fine.”

The two shook hands. “Thanks again, Ben. Talk to you soon.”

On his way out he waved to Debbie Hudson. She smiled, nodded and turned her back to her computer.

***********

 

Tiffany sat at the coffee table on her living room floor. A whole wheat turkey and cheese sandwich lay on a plate, half-eaten beside a bowl of Cheerios next to her computer, a bottle of water next to that.

She wanted to write an article about the need to understand Harvel without sounding too sympathetic. She knew what she wanted to say but not quite how. She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing while her fingers hovered aboard the keyboard. Her phone buzzed and she jumped nervously. She moved the papers that buried it and answered on the second ring.

“Hello, is this Tiffany Saunders?”

“Yes?”

“Hi Tiffany, I’m sure you’re busy, so I won’t take up your time. I’m Dr. Julian Daniels, associate English professor at Vanderbilt. I’m a good friend of Ben Hoek.”

“He’s doing well. I was calling because he asked me to look into the Christopher Harvel story you were working on.”

Julian looked phone to see if he hadn’t dropped the call. Tiffany’s silence meant something but he couldn’t tell what.

“Hello? Ms Saunders?”

“Sorry, yes I’m still here. What specifically did you need to know?”

“Well, long story short, a few professors here are very interested in the details of the case. I was wondering if it’d be possible to meet up with you to discuss it.”

“Sure. I’ve been trying to approach it from some fresh angle, but I can’t find anything worth pursuing.”

“Dr. McDonough from the Classics Department and I would like to meet with you because we may have something. Do you know where Fido’s on 21st is?”

“I do. Will Dr. Hoek be there?”

“No, but if you have any questions, feel free to call his office.”

“Should I bring anything?”

“Bring everything you can. What day and time works for you?”

“Well, since I’m suspended from work, I can meet whenever. How about this evening after dinner around 8:00?”

“If you get there before me, just know that Dr. McDonough has a large beard, and I guarantee you he’ll be wearing a white shirt. You’ll know him when you see him, even if there’re 10 guys who fit that description, you’ll just know. He looks like he spends his days in a library. I mean that in the best possible way.”

Tiffany laughed. Maybe meeting with two crusty professors wouldn’t be so bad. “Sounds good. See you then.” She hung up the phone and looked up the professors on the Vanderbilt website. Robert matched the description given to her, but she was surprised by how young Julian looked. She wondered if he was married but pushed the thought from her mind. She ignored the urge to do any further research, tied her shoes, and went for her run.

 

**********

Tiffany pulled her car into the cramped parking lot behind Fido’s. She stepped inside and scanned the area. She recognized Julian from his faculty picture and walked to where he sat.

“Dr. Daniels, nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise. And call me Julian.”

“Sounds good. Where’s Dr. McDonough?”

“He couldn’t make it, but he did give me a few questions to ask.”

Tiffany felt a twinge of excitement at the news that it’d just be them. She enjoyed being out with an attractive member of the opposite sex, even if it were strictly professional.

“Well, ask me whatever you want. I brought my laptop. It has my notes as well as everything I collected.” She sat it on the table. “Before we get started, I’m gonna get something. What are you drinking, Dr. Daniels?”

“The Simple Summer. It’s got cucumber syrup, milk, & espresso. Here, try some.”

“Thanks but no thanks. I think I’ll try something sweeter.”

He chuckled, “More for me. Choose wisely.”

She returned holding a mug.

“What’d you get?”

“The Local Latte.”

“Good choice. Honey & cinnamon in a latte, right?”

“Local honey. Makes all the difference.”

“Of course.”

The two laughed and a moment of silence passed as the mood shifted from casual to business. “So is there anything specific you need me to clarify?” she asked.

She glanced at his ringless left hand in spite of herself. She enjoyed meetings like this because she didn’t have to impress him, and everything was about the work. Any romantic energy they felt was muted by the work that they were here to discuss.

Julian set his phone on the table and pressed the record feature. “We’re really interested in Harvel. What’s his background?”

Tiffany pulled up her notes on him. “Let’s see, born 1970 in Muncie, Indiana. Graduated from Muncie High in ’88. Went to Purdue University, dropped out after three years and joins the Marines. While there, he was a sniper who fought in Operation Desert Storm. Spent some time in Kosovo in the mid 90s. Was honorably discharged in ’97. Awarded the Purple Heart.

After leaving the military, he worked in Arizona as a border patrol agent. He also took evening classes at Arizona State, got his degree but continued working his day job. He earned his Masters in History. Then all of a sudden, he just quits. Calls his boss says he’s not coming in.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“No. His boss just said that he called and matter-of-factly told him he was quitting. No yelling or any sort of emotion. This was in November. Apparently, after 9/11 he’d begun to behave erratically. Some of his co-workers believe he was experiencing some PTSD symptoms.”

“PTSD? Four years after being honorably discharged?”

“Yes, from what I gathered, we’re still learning about it. The illness affects people in different ways. Some control it better than others. Some experience it after certain events or hearing certain noises,” Tiffany said.

“Fair enough. So what next?”

“Well, he then showed up in Texas in ’04 where he leased an apartment for 6 months and paid some bills. He got a job adjuncting and working maintenance for Alamo Community College in San Antonio. No abrupt departures this time. He returned his apartment keys, he re-painted his apartment as stipulated by the lease, he even gave the college his 2 weeks notice…Does any of this help?”

Julian finished his drink and signaled to the barista that he wanted another. “Actually yes, we’d gotten some basic information about where he lived and what he did. But it’s sometimes hard to believe what you read online. Hearing it from you makes it much more credible. Also, you’ve been much more detailed about his behavior and the reaction by others to his behavior.”

“Okay good, I just don’t want to be repetitive.”

“No, you’re doing great,” he said.

Tiffany smiled, the two made eye contact.

“He left Texas and disappeared again. Showed up in Woodbury, Tennessee in ’08. He lived there until a week before Bissette got to town. That’s all the factual information I have on him.”

Julian nodded. He pauses a moment before speaking. “Debussy once said that music is in the silence between the notes. The same is true about stories. The brilliance is in what’s unsaid.”

“You’re interested in the years where he’s off the grid.”

“What do you think happened when he left in ’01?” he asked.

“I think he went to Mexico. I don’t think he went deep into the country, I think he traveled just far enough to disappear. If anyone were looking for him, they could’ve found him. You know what I mean?”

“I understand,” he said.

“I think he was following the War on Terror. He knew going back to the military wasn’t really an option, but he wanted to help. And so he stayed close, maybe doing some illegal things to make money but also observing and getting information.”

“Do you think he may’ve been working for our government?”

“I have that feeling. But if he was, the work he was doing wasn’t official.”

“So we have a smart, educated, dedicated, skillful guy possibly working off the grid in Mexico for the United States during a time of heightened suspicion about terrorism.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he echoed.

“So he resurfaced in Texas and took a reputable job in ‘04. Maybe he’s running from someone? If you’re on the grid, you’re easier to keep track of. But also, it’s harder for someone who’s after you to just run up and kill you.”

“I agree. He’s a veteran, so he has some credibility. He uses that to get another state job, one that allows him to lay low. But not too low because if he doesn’t show up for work one day, the police are going to look for him.”

“Okay, so he stays there until ’08. Then for the next three years he’s gone again, only to show up in Tennessee in 2011. You wanna hear my theory about ‘08 to ‘11?” she asked.

He sipped his drink. “Yes.”

“I think he was in Tennessee the whole time.” Tiffany waited the way you do when making a contrarian statement.

Julian took the bait. “Why?”

“I think he was on the run again. Maybe not for the same reasons or even from the same people. But he was definitely trying to keep himself safe. I think he saw that it’s better to get out of Texas but live somewhere rural enough to sustain himself.”

“So where in Tennessee was he at?”

“I think all over. The state’s not huge, but it’s big enough to hide in. I’m from Knoxville. That’s East Tennessee, all kinds of mountains there. And then West Tennessee is flat with plenty of farmland. And Middle Tennessee has a little bit of both. He could travel through the state for years and make no indelible marks and keep himself alive.”

“Fair enough. We’re filling in the gaps, the silent parts. But we have to make it fit with what we do know, the noisy parts. How do you think that works?”

The server returned to their table. As she removed their glasses, she casually asked, “we’re doing last call. Would you like anything else? Also, how do you want me to split the check?”

“Just one,” Julian said.

“It’s okay, make it two,” Tiffany said.

“You came out of your way to talk to me about the work you’ve done,” he said.

“No, it’s great to have someone listen to me about this stuff for once. I probably owe you. Let’s just call it even.” Tiffany wouldn’t have minded him paying had it not been for the eye contact earlier in their conversation. She wanted to avoid any sort of semblance of a date, especially since they clearly would have to meet again.

“One last thing,” Julian said. “Can you pull up a couple pictures of Harvel?”

She showed a headshot as well as the full body surveillance image of him getting into his car.

“That’s the one, the picture that was on the news,” he said. “What do you know about his tattoos?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few common military style tats, and a few that seemed weird but nothing that would draw red flags, no gang tats or anything like that.”

“Someone like him wouldn’t have gang tats, but could he have tats that could give clues to the unknown parts of his story?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Is there something specific you’re wondering about?”

“Yes, look here.” He angled her computer so she could see what he was pointing to. “Dr. McDonough identifies this as a Renaissance Era memory wheel.”

“Memory wheel?”

“A circular object where you would store images, mental images. These mental images acted as pegs upon which you could place things that you wanted to remember. It was a loci or location.”

She nodded. “I think I get it,” she said.

“Here’s what people did before post it notes and cell phone reminders. They thought of a place they were familiar with like their homes. And they attached what they wanted to remember to the furniture in their homes. For example, if they wanted to remember that Harvel was from Indiana, they’d picture their living room and place something associated with Indiana, a basketball or an Indian, something that would help them think of Indiana. And if they wanted to remember that he was in the military, maybe a gun on their favorite table, et cetera, et cetera until they had everything they wanted to know.

“Speakers would use this technique to remember the order of their speeches, which is where we get the term ‘in the first place.’ Well, as you can see, it’d be easy to run out of places. How many buildings could you really be familiar with?”

“Right, so they invented the memory wheel to give them more places,” she said.

“Yeah, you just place things that you’re familiar with on the wheel. You and I might make a wheel that had the 26 letters of the alphabet. That creates 26 extra spots.”

“So he has a Renaissance memory wheel tattooed on his forearm. And you think this is some sort of clue as to what he was doing in Mexico or wherever he was when we couldn’t track him?”

“Yeah, it’s just not something you get a tattoo of unless you’re really interested in that time period. Dr. McDonough said it’s rare and specific, not the type of picture to circulate in tattoo parlors. One’s not likely to see it on a poster, point to it and say, ‘that looks good. Give me that.’ And it’s not something you would just stumble across haphazardly.”

“So you think it’s something you’d get a tattoo of if you were really into studying that kind of stuff?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“I’ll look into it. I have some friends in Metro I could ask,” she said.

“Good. McDonough seems to think that if others have the tat, that it’s rare. It may not turn up in any initial searches.”

“If nothing comes up, I’ll see if they could call in a favor with the TBI or FBI.”

“Thanks, Tiffany.”

They signed their checks and left. As he drove home, Julian thought about how difficult it’d be for him to disappear in the 21st Century. If he wanted to leave tomorrow, how long before he would leave a trace of his whereabouts? And could he just reappear in another state and get a job without arousing questions about his past?

One thing he knew: despite the erratic behavior, Harvel was not crazy. The apparent chaos of his life was not because of an unstable mind. Julian wondered if Harvel’s actions were rooted more in logic than instinct. If so, then what he did—both on the day of the shooting and the years leading up to it—could be understood.

Fox’s Game Chapter 6

Foxes vs Hedgehogs 

Fido’s Coffee Shop
21^st Avenue

Julian Daniels sipped his coffee while studying what he just typed:

“The scope and manner of Jack White’s decision to parlay his music to that of international business mogul reflects his desire to not just entertain well but to exceed what society thought was possible. This thought process is reflected in detail through his lyrics.”

He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He knew the article he was writing for The Nashville Scene just needed to be informative. But that wasn’t enough. Once Daniels began looking at his writing as a craft, he couldn’t just “provide information.” He had to as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said put “the best words in the best order,” especially after writing a New York Times bestseller.

He was worried less about the article and more about his reputation. He had established high standards for himself. And he didn’t want to put his name on any writing that didn’t possess his clean, prose style. Words normally came easily, even the wrong ones. But today something didn’t feel right.

He sat in his usual spot at Fido’s Coffee Shop down the street from the Vanderbilt library. His routine was in place. But he was still out of sync. Daniels decided to work on a different writing project. He took out Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and The Fox, an 81page essay about intellectual history discussed through the prism of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Daniels used Berlin’s book as a basis for discussing martial rhetoric in fiction, which he’d present as a paper at a Military and Literature Conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

He wrote more comfortably after switching topics. He decided that Berlin’s book would also be the topic he’d discuss as small talk at Dr. Hoek’s get together whenever the conversation drifted towards academic work. Julian knew Dr. Hoek professionally, the two had worked together on faculty council during Julian’s first year at the university. He found Benjamin to be thoughtful, quiet, and amiable. But they only really interacted in small doses, so it was difficult to get a true gauge on his personality.

Daniels was eager to sample the homemade hot chicken Ben’s email had promised. And any opportunity to network with colleagues outside of school was as good as any to cancel his plans of watching the NBA playoffs in his Hillsboro Village condo. Besides, he’d be able to discuss the ideas for his conference paper with people from other disciplines. The fact that many of them may not have heard of Berlin’s book might help him see his topic from a unique angle.

Daniels liked that writing provided a means of classification, a way to draw order from the slippery nature of ideas. And Berlin’s essay provided an order of sorts. He divides intellectuals—indeed all people—into two groups: hedgehogs and foxes. Berlin states that thinkers can be put into two categories: hedgehogs and foxes. Just like the hedgehog that survives by doing one thing—burrowing—well, intellectual hedgehogs relate everything they experience into a central vision, an idea that allows them to find order in a seemingly chaotic universe. Hedgehogs often return to the same ideas, albeit in different ways.

Foxes, however, search for truth on many paths, sometimes even pursuing conflicting beliefs in hopes of making sense of the world. Figures like Plato, Nietzsche, and George Washington are Hedgehogs. Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Thomas Jefferson are Foxes. Julian found the taxonomy fascinating, even if it were a little incomplete. He thought of himself as a fox, not because he lacked any guiding principles but because he refused to think of himself as someone with just one way of seeing things.

Daniels was the youngest member of the Vanderbilt faculty. He was a Nashville native who attended Vanderbilt as an undergrad. He made a name for himself as a Yale PhD student when he expanded his dissertation into a New York Times bestseller. The dissertation, “Poetic Rhetoric: The Complexities of African American Language Through the Prism of Hip Hop,” became the book Poetic Rhetoric: Hip Hop’s Hold on Language. He became a minor celebrity in 2007, doing interviews with media outlets ranging from NPR to Newsweek. He even spoke briefly by phone to presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

His surprising success led him in a direction he hadn’t intended: the pop academic. He could be a scholar who gained fame outside of academia like Cornell West or Brian Cox. He could slide his way into mainstream culture through cable news interviews and intellectual books aimed not at other intellectuals but at the layman interested in learning more.

Here’s the rub: in academia as many other professions, there’s a tension between purists and popularists. In the field of English, it’s characterized as the philologists versus the dilettantes. The former work to further scholarship through detailed research and debate within the scholarly community, the latter wish to further the field by making it more accessible to the public through entertaining presentation and understandable yet incomplete analogies. Popularity is not always accepted at the highest levels where the most talented work. Just as musicians like Taylor Swift can gain fame while loosing respect if they aim more at producing ear candy than pushing artistic boundaries, professors could lose in respect what they gain in fame if they’re seen as doing the equivalent in their fields.

Academics, even if foxes, tended to be hedgehogs when it came to their careers. Professors could lose in respect what they gain in fame if they’re seen as doing the equivalent in their fields.

Academics, even if foxes, tended to be hedgehogs when it came to their careers. The nature of higher education led people to label themselves and label others with easily recognizable terms. This could be challenging. Daniels wanted to approach his life like a fox, not just his research. He wanted more than one avenue to success, more than one means of income, more than one way of defining himself.

         He checked his phone and saw that he’d been at Fido’s for just over 2 hours. He’d long surpassed his self-imposed daily 1,000 word minimum. As his mind eased out of the writer’s trance where the subconscious mind produces words and the conscious mind orders them, he began wondering who else would attend this off campus meeting.

There was an oddness to it. The location, the time of year, the formal invite, something that made him both anxious and expectant. Whatever it was, Daniels hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his writing.

Fox’s Game Chapter 5

An Economist Goes Discount Dress Shopping

Alyssa Morell drove slowly behind the young man walking in front of her. His crisp white shirt and black pinstripe pants indicated that he had money. He was too good looking and too confident not to be a player. The care-free way he spoke on his phone indicated He was neither worried about time nor aware of her presence. The lights in his white convertible BMW flashed as he shifted the bags in his hands. It was at this moment he noticed her. He looked into the windshield of her Camry and saw an attractive woman. He smiled and tried to wave, juggling the items in his hands. She smiled but did not wave. She wanted his parking spot, not his phone number.

As a woman in the field of Advanced Analytics, she was used to commanding attention with her confidence and intensity. She was also attractive, which helped, but she was well aware that relying on beauty when trying to gain respect hurt more than helped.

As an undergrad at the University of Maryland, she understood that if she wanted to compete in a field dominated by men that she would have to be as aggressive in the classroom as she was on the soccer field. Her tenacity earned her a scholarship. And she knew that the traits developed on the field were transferrable to her future career. She’d maintained the smooth movements and lithe frame of her sports days. But she knew her looks would only be an advantage if she could demonstrate her intelligence. One way she knew to do this was to infuse her writing and conversations with an apt quote, a relatable anecdote, or little known fact that could illustrate the point she was making.

Morell wanted to reflect technical expertise and polymathic learning. Her beauty and personality disarmed people, her intelligence kept them off balance. For instance, she would quote from King Lear “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws / My services are bound” during a discussion on the Bayesian worldview. She enjoyed even more watching a surprised colleague nod solemnly in hopes of seeming like he was aware of the Shakespearean line.

Her dark brown hair that went just below her shoulders and well-toned frame complimented her business casual fashion sense. Her pencil skirts, high heels, and well-pressed shirts drew the attention of males invested in their libidos. As one colleague said, “It’s not that we think we have a shot with her or even want to. It’s just good to have someone nice to look at.” Many female colleagues viewed her with a begrudging ambivalence. It seemed unfair that a woman could have good looks, social adaptability, and be able to achieve success in a man’s world. She represented that which was good about the 21st century woman. But it was too easy to think, “why her and not me.”

Morell enjoyed shopping because it was economics at its most obvious level. The mall added an extra level of interest because, unlike grocery shopping, you dealt exclusively with luxury items. Yes, shoes and clothes were necessary, but when you went to the mall to get things, you were shopping for more than just necessities. Even when you went for value, it was a value relative to your class standards, not the type of value that the truly poor must consider.

As she walked through Green Hills Mall—the mall centered in the area of Nashville that melded old money and new—she couldn’t help but think about how financial economics was an odd art that blended the certitude of numbers with the unpredictable psychology of humans. For example, she new that she didn’t need a new outfit for this faculty party she was invited to, but she felt compelled to get one. The confidence she would have wearing something she’d just bought was worth paying for. And if that confidence could help make a stronger impression, then what she bought was a valuable investment. But how much worth does that investment have?

After a quick walk through at Express, she decided that if she were buying something special for a specific event, she should invest more. She could get a new outfit there for $30. But she felt she needed to pay more. She walked past Juicy Couture without even glancing towards it because a new outfit would cost $300 on sale. That was too much. She knew she needed something between $30 and $300. The difference, that middle ground, reflected consumer surplus. Her goal was to get as close to $30 as possible while trying to find an outfit that they could have sold for $300. The clothing stores wanted the inverse, to get her as close as possible to $300 for something they could have sold for $30.

This type of cost-value analysis applied to many situations, from dating to drafting a football team. Most of her friends enjoyed the chess match of maximizing profits while minimizing labor. This is what frustrated her about her field of study. So many women found interest in the theoretical aspects of economics, especially when it came to spending money. But men overwhelmingly dominated the field. She knew this stemmed from an antiquated notion that women couldn’t do math. Obviously, some men also shied away from economics for the same reason. But the point was that the building blocks shouldn’t scare you away from the actual building. For instance, learning to read is hard, but once you learn, the work is worth it.

Morell shook those thoughts from her mind in order to focus on the economics at hand. She walked into Ann Taylor Loft not knowing what she was looking for but conscious she’d know it when she found it. She perused the sale items noting they reflected an excess of supply and that companies lowered the prices in order to avoid a complete profit loss. It was the closest a consumer could get to taking advantage of the companies.

Even with a sale Ann Taylor Loft made profits many times the cost of the clothing sold. Morell spotted a black skirt-white blouse out. She recognized it from the spring catalogue and noticed there was no price tag. She shrugged, walked to the changing rooms, and tried it on. Morell liked the color black because of its simplicity. The higher up you go, the less you needed to say. But she knew a powerful woman dresses her pay. A man could wear a Hawaiian shirt to a business meeting. A woman could not.

The girl working the register rang it up as $140. Morell blinked in disbelief, “Excuse me, there must be some sort of mistake. This item’s on sale, right?”

“No ma’am. It’s $140, full price. Now, will you be paying with cash or a card?”

Morell’s eyes narrowed. She examined the girl, a blonde close to her in size but whose frame, Morell figured, was due more from genetics than Division I college sports.

“What size do you wear?” Morell demanded.

“I’m sorry?” the worker said.

“Your size. Are you size 4 like me? About 115 pounds?”

“I…Yes…No…It depends. Why do you even care?”

“You said this outfit was full price. But all the other items I saw in the spring catalogue were in the front of the store on the sales rack. If this skirt and shirt combo were so popular that it were still full price, you would have more than one in this size. Your boss–I’d like his or her name by the way—would have them overstocked like the rest of the outfits in that area of the store.

Large, successful companies are in the business of overestimating demand, not underestimating it. The profit in selling the outfit is so much greater than the cost to make it, it only makes sense to order too much than not enough, especially for a place like. If it were popular enough to re-order, it’d be popular enough to over-order. My guess is that you wanted the outfit for yourself.

Maybe someone returned this earlier today. Anyway, you saw it on the sales rack, which means once you used your employee discount, you would be buying it for less than a quarter for what it was worth. Because of that, your manager–I’m still waiting for you to give me that name by the way—probably didn’t want you reserving it for yourself. If that outfit made it to the end of the day, it was yours. But you had a feeling it wouldn’t. So you decided to hide it and ‘punish’ anyone who bought it by making them pay full price. C’mon. Am I right or am I right?”

The girl stared at Morell as if the professor had just juggled fire.

“L-l-l-ook,” she stammered. “I…uh…am sorry. Let’s not make a big deal of this.”

Her hands shook as she scanned the tag and $70 appeared on the register. The girl typed for a few moments and then $45 appeared. “Wow…ha…bigger sale than you thought, right? Forty-five dollars.”

Morell saw the girl couldn’t be older than 20. And something about her nervousness and disappointment reminded the professor of her struggling undergrads, “Look, you don’t have to do that. I just–”

“I know. I want to. I don’t know who you are. But that was amazing. My name’s Jessie. How’d you do that?”

“I’ve got a PhD in Economics. That’s the study of how everything flows: money, information, ideas, everything. It’s a good field of study. Lots of jobs, lots of opportunities. There’s some math, but nothing you can’t handle if you work at it. You should think about it. We could use more women.”

“I don’t know…School…I don’t really…”

“My name’s Alyssa Morell. Here’s my card. Think about it. If you change your mind, we can talk.”

Jessie nodded slowly as she read it. Morell checked her watch. “Look, Jessie I gotta go. Thanks for the discount. Hopefully, I’ll see you later.”

Morell exited the store and got in her car. She sighed as she realized the irony of wanting to buy an outfit to increase her confidence when it was her confidence that saved her over $100.

Fox’s Game: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Email From an Old Friend

May 15^th

West End Apartments,

Hillsboro Rd

 

Tiffany woke up and glanced sleepily at her tear-stained pillow and shut her eyes. She somehow felt numb and angry. Her iPhone began playing a fast-paced Tink Tinks song, which she skipped, preferring a slow moving Civil Wars ballad.

She lurched half awake to the kitchen and started the Keurig. She cleared away her roommate’s dirty plates off the coffee table and set her laptop in their place. She began her day the way she began most days: devouring the news. She watched the local news on tv while reading about world and national events online. She would begin by scanning Huffington Post then Politico and finally NPR, clicking on and reading articles whose titles seemed interesting, except this time, she couldn’t do it. Less than a minute passed before she shut off the tv and closed her computer. Nashville was teeming with reporters from all over the world, and she was stuck at home unable to do anything but watch others do well what she could do better. She fought the tears that built up, but on this day, they were like everything else that was beyond her control.

Vanderbilt University

Dr. Benjamin Hoek sat in his office at Vanderbilt’s Business College reading as much as he could about the shooting that occurred less than five miles from where he sat. As a well-traveled journalist, he knew every news story had an information ceiling. If he read enough articles and watched enough television, he would know as much as was possible to know short of having an inside source. He believed he’d reached that point.

He called a few of his friends from the local media, but they had yet to return his messages. After working as chief editor at The Tennessean, he also knew that any Metro police officer who had real information would be too busy to talk. He had no reason to contact anyone other than to satisfy his own curiosity. And that wasn’t a good enough reason for him to interrupt someone from doing her job. In his decade as a college professor, he rarely missed the grind of journalist life. He could still write and travel, but he didn’t have to worry about the deadlines, conflict, and general headaches that came from having to produce a new news story. Today was an exception. He felt like a former athlete whose competitive juices coursed through his veins on game day but who could only sit and watch since the sport had passed him by.

Nowadays, the columnist-turned scholar received his journalistic excitement vicariously through his students—smart, idealistic, hopefuls ready to change the world with their words. He loved watching them with their iPads and Twitter pages. Their everyday tools would have been sci-fi inventions when he was their age. Yet the basics of good journalism had not changed. The best of his students could have covered Vietnam with him in the ‘60s using only a notepad and a pencil. And the worst will have left journalism in less than five years no matter what technology they had access to.

He glanced at his watch and headed to class when his office phone rang. He hesitated. He hated being late to class. Timing is more important in some careers than others, but in media, it’s as important as any. He wanted to set the example. But he also taught that every rule has its exceptions. And today he’d be invoking the time honored college rule that the professor can’t be late; class didn’t start until the teacher arrived.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Hoek?”

“Umm…Yes?”

“Tiffany Saunders. Remember me?”

“Ah! Tiffany! How are you, ma’am?”

“Uh…not so good. Do you have a moment?”

He glanced at his watch again. He knew what that type of question meant. He placed the receiver on his shoulder and thought. All Tiffany heard was three seconds of quiet. But those three seconds will tell you all you need to know about teaching.

Hoek turned his head towards the door. “Debbie, I need you to cancel my class for the day. Tell them I will post a write up online of what we were going to discuss in class. And remind them to read that as well as the next chapter in the textbook.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Hoek asked.

“Yes, I…I think I’m going to get fired. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Just relax and tell me what happened.”

Dr. Hoek listened quietly.

“I’m not sure what advice to give, but while I think on that, let me offer some words of comfort: you’re gonna be fine. If they really wanted to fire you, they would’ve done it. Like most things in life, it’s a test. They don’t know they’re testing you, but they are. If you respond well, you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean by respond well?”

“Find something no one else has found. If not, admit you were wrong and offer another story that’s different from but related to this Harvel situation, something that reminds them of it.”

“Like a peace offering?”

“Tiffany, you have a way of phrasing things that I do not. Yes, like a peace offering. That way, you show them you’ve been working hard and even though you don’t have what they were looking for, you have something to show for it.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Of course you can. And if you can’t…well plenty of fine journalist have been fired. You’ll be neither the first nor the last.”

“Thank you,” she said. “When do you think I should stop working on the primary story and begin doing the peace offering?”

“That, Ms. Saunders, I can’t tell you.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, and it made her smile. “Okay Dr. Hoek, I’ll get to work. Thanks for everything.”

“Just pay it forward to someone else.”

Dr. Hoek hung up the phone. He knew these situations were often dead ends. The more media pursuing a story, the less likely one would break through with an original angle. It required investigative reporting that would take more than the two weeks allotted her. Hoek knew that Tiffany understood this; the key would be how she would go about solving a seemingly unsolvable problem. The experience she’d gain from this would come from the way she went about finding the answer—not the answer itself.

Tiffany re-opened her laptop and went to her notes. She double-checked the sources she’d used to write her original production piece. She found nothing that would led her to alter her original approach. She then spent the next two hours online reading anything she could find on the story. She turned on her tv, but it was the same as what she’d just read. Given the repetitiveness of the CNN crawl and the unoriginal words of the pundits, she began to doubt the usefulness of her career. Maybe she’d be more effective in a field less inundated with information. It’s like if you weren’t there to break the story, you’re relegated to regurgitating the words of those who broke the story.

She occasionally wrote a featured blog for Channel 4’s website, but that was only when a contrarian thought struck her. Most of the time, she focused on making the shows she produced run so smoothly that she could navigate the studio blindfolded and know where everyone would be and when.

She enjoyed writing, but her words were used to sell already known information, not make something new. She walked to her bookshelf, hoping the wood of the shelf held knowledge inside the wood of the pages. She kept Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for technical writing advice. But what about creative? She decided to start with Stephen King’s On Writing.

She read about how when completing The Stand King overcame the one and only time he had writer’s block by simply going for a walk, she saw the implications of his words. It wasn’t about the walk, it was about getting away from his routine so that his mind could get out of whatever track it’d been trapped in. But how could she do this? She had to laugh at the irony of brainstorming about how she should brainstorm.

Tiffany often went for runs to reset her mind, but this was something different. The idea of calling Dr. Hoek again wasn’t a real possibility. The man had things to do. And besides, one of her strengths was her ability to work independently. She couldn’t simply go back to him, at least not yet.

Or could she? What if she called because she was wondering how best to take a different approach to the problem? Maybe he could put her in touch with a writing professor who could provide her a different narrative angle. It was worth trying.

She decided to email instead:

Dr. Hoek,

Sorry to bother you again. But what do you think of this: I get with a literary professor and attack the story from a non-journalistic perspective while, of course, following journalism law and etiquette. Maybe I can tell the same story in a different way. A new perspective can be the same as new information, right?

Just curious,

Tiffany

With the uncharacteristic free time from his canceled class, Hoek decided to grab a leisurely lunch down the street at Nöshville, his favorite deli where he could enjoy what he boasted was the best sandwich in the city: the open-faced brisket with gravy. The New York style deli had much in common with the Midtown section of town where it was located. Midtown Nashville is the section between Broadway and Music Row where local Nashvillians go for an evening out. Like much of the music industry that drives its parent city, Nöshville has out-of-town roots but is a fixture in the Music City.

On a given day, one could find music execs networking at a table beside Vandy students discussing feminist theory while young adults ate heartily in anticipation of a long night of drinking. The eclectic mix belied the homogenous country stereotype associated with Nashville, or any city known primarily for one thing.

While standing in line, Ben noticed Dr. Robert McDonough, professor of the classics. The two exchanged a friendly nod because they’d seen one another around campus. But they weren’t friends. In fact, Ben only remembered his name because when he saw Robert’s name and picture on the faculty website, he couldn’t help but think that the man looked like a Robert. Though they’d never spoken, their reputations garnered mutual respect. One student even remarked that Robert reminded her of a younger, taller, hairier version of Hoek. He assumed it was a compliment, but you could never be sure with students.

He returned to his office and was surprised to find a message from Tiffany so soon after speaking with her. He clicked on it and unwrapped his sandwich while reading.

He finished his sandwich, rubbed his hands with sanitizer, and responded:

Tiffany,

I think a different direction sounds great. But what’s your end game? Are you changing angles with the Harvel story, or are you going with the “peace offering?” If you’re looking for someone to give you writing ideas like some sort of talisman, you could be heading in the wrong direction. But if you’re looking for a new way to see the story, then I think you’re walking down the right path. I have someone I could contact, although I don’t know him too well. But you want to make sure that you have a clear direction first.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Hoek

He pressed send and listened to a podcast about the 50^th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. Ben thought about that day in school. Some of his teachers were crying, some were actually smiling. He remembered how distrusted and even hated Kennedy was during his life. Now it seemed as if he were universally beloved. Surely, some of those who were glad he was dead are still alive?

He thought of how Kennedy’s assassination changed the way Americans viewed conspiracies in general and government trust specifically. Ben believed that the seeds of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate investigation on Nixon could not have been possible without the incessant coverage of Kennedy’s death. It seemed as if the more time that passed, the more layered the narrative, making the information of the actual events less clear.

Ben couldn’t help but think about how we know the Zapruder Film was edited before getting released to the public. Ben chuckled at the thought of something like that happening today. Camera phones and websites have made controlling something like Babineaux’s death virtually impossible. Any 2013 official version would have even less teeth than any “official” Kennedy Report. He rethought his advice to Tiffany. Perhaps a clear direction wasn’t the best direction. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re going to see a conspiracy. If you’re rightwing you’ll see it as an attack on American safety, if you’re leftwing you’ll see it as an attack on progressive America. Either way, you will see what you want and report from there.

Perhaps what Tiffany needed was help developing a narrative direction. But she would need a non-conventional way of seeing the ordinary.

She needed someone to help her understand it in a new way. But to do that effectively in this blogosphere world, she would need more than “someone.” She’d need multiple someones so that she could create a pastiche of viewpoints threaded together by a consistent narrative.

Fox’s Game: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bridgestone Arena sits in the center of downtown Nashville on the corner of 5^th and Broadway Street. Home of Nashville Predators hockey, the building also serves as a concert venue and locale for large assemblies. The arena is merely the latest and largest hub of an historical strip that is to Nashville what Beale Street is to Memphis. If East Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry helped birth country music, then downtown Nashville helped raise it.

It was here the Meredith Corporation helped disseminate country music from a regional bluegrass compliment to a national branch of pop culture. Names like Pat Sayjack and Robin Roberts came from WSMV

“I spoke to my bosses. Nashville is growing. It’s a major US city. But nationally, it’s still seen as a really big small town. There’s just too much negativity here in the South. A word like ‘assassination’ just brings to mind too much of the recent past.

“Let me start by saying I love your energy and your penchant for making a story out of information. But there’s a balance. Just like we’re not just information givers, we’re not just storytellers, we’re mouthpieces, we’re liaisons, and sometimes PR firms. Until you learn that, you’re going to keep bumping heads with your bosses.

Today, Nashville needed us to not just tell what happened but to also provide a measure of comfort and stability, a voice to say that even though this terrible thing happened, it’ll be okay. But if the terrible thing is too terrible, then they won’t believe us when we offer comfort.”

Tiffany listened intently. “Taylor, I—I understand. I don’t know if it’s the day’s sobering events or if it’s because I’ve already flown too close to the sun, but I see what you’re saying. I do feel as if I focus too much on the story and not enough on the implications of the story.”

“But?”

“But I do feel my word choice was correct.”

“Is that right?” He pulled out a dictionary from his bookshelf. Let me read to you the definition of assassination. Assassination, noun. The murder of a prominent or political figure by surprise attack.

“Andre Babineux is neither a prominent nor a political figure. He’s no minor figure to be sure, but his death was not an assassination. Had Harvel shot former Vice President Gore, then that would be an assassination.”

“I know it’s debatable.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“Hear me out. You definitely have a point. But dictionary definitions can be incomplete. Babineux might not be a prominent or political figure to the average Nashvillian. But his death is significant. I think we’re also teachers. People need to know that the death of AquaCorp’s CFO has meaning whether it happened in Nashville or Paris. Think about it: AquaCorp has about as much political influence as any French politician—that includes their president. How could their second-in-command not warrant that definition?”

“But wouldn’t you agree that some words have more emotional connotations than others? Couldn’t you have just said ‘murder’ and the same meaning would’ve gotten across?”

“Could I have used murder? Yes. Would it have been the most accurate word possible? No. I don’t want to be sensationalist. You know that. And if I could do it over again, I would probably compromise and use a different word. But I still think it’s an assassination. And I think time will bear that out.”

“I admire your conviction. In the next few weeks, a lot of information is going to get reported. For some, it may be an assassination. The only thing worse than reporting a murder as an assassination is firing the person who reports an actual assassination. It would seem like censorship, which is worse PR. Look, if they come back with evidence that says it’s not an assassination, then you keep your job. If not, then I’m sorry. If I have to get in trouble with my bosses, you have to get in trouble right along with me. I know you don’t want to sit on your hands, so do your best to see what you can find. If nothing concrete comes up over the next two weeks, then you’re fired.”

“When’s the drop dead date?”

“May 28^th. Two weeks from today.”

“Give me three weeks.”

“Two. Final answer.”

Tiffany breathed deeply and stood up. She walked out of Taylor’s office exhausted, wounded. As the door closed behind her, Taylor shut the dictionary and said to himself, “Good luck, Tiffany.”

She walked down the hall as if in a trance. She saw Anthony and knew she could talk to him. “Anthony.”

“Hey Tiff, you okay? How’d the meeting go?”

“I’m gonna get fired unless someone can provide evidence that it was an actual assassination.”

“Woah.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I—can we just talk after you get off?”

“Ummm…I’m not sure. Can I call you later?”

“Sure.” She knew what that meant. He would not call. Any hope of him being her boyfriend ended at that moment. She walked to her car. Before shifting into drive she started giggling. The giggles turned to laughter, the laughter turned to coughing. There was something overwhelmingly humorous about losing her job without actually losing it and losing her boyfriend ever actually having him. How could she not laugh. “I’ll cry later,” she thought.

Fox’s Game Introduction & Ch. 1

Introduction

Christopher Harvel, an 8 year military vet and professor of European history at Western Kentucky University lay next to the divider on I-40 bleeding to death. This news didn’t seem to hurt the feelings of the paramedics who lifted his body from the asphalt to the ambulance. They would do their jobs, they would try to keep him alive for the 10 mile drive to Baptist Hospital.

Harvel had just ruined Nashville’s most significant business and political moment of the year. He’d shot and killed André Babineaux, the Chief Financial Officer of AquaCorp Water Purifier and Distributers, just missing AquaCorp’s CEO Michelle Bissette and former Vice President Al Gore.

While Harvel lay dying in a speeding, blaring ambulance, the rest of the city was in a panic at the brazen act of violence or maybe it was terrorism? It was simply too soon to tell. Either way, safety was the word of the hour–safety for the foreign investors, safety for the political environmentalists, safety for the people of Nashville who attended the fundraisers, safety for those who didn’t.

Law enforcement acted swiftly and efficiently. Nashville metro police, volunteer security, and Vice President Gore’s Secret Service worked together to calm fears and maintain order. The panic was real. The shooting sudden. And the only thing more surprising than Harvel standing on the second floor balcony of the now ironically titled restaurant Big Bang and shooting the CFO of a growing foreign business in the light of day with hundreds of eye witnesses was that he was, at age 43, nimble enough to escape to his ’04 Camry before being chased into a guardrail on the interstate.

Harvel was pronounced Dead On Arrival, taking with him his motives and the reasoning that informed those motives. His motionless body lay on a hospital bed in Baptist Hospital’s 3^rd floor ICU ward, the blood from his wounds clean but still visible.

With two people dead and many more scarred, the only thing left was to ask why and evaluate the answers. Investigators, casual observers, reporters, and pundits began forming opinions like clams who make half-formed pearls in hopes that their idea, their ability to make sense of the mayhem could bring closure and understanding to a family, to a company, to a city.

Part 1:

Chapter 1

WSMV Studios, Nashville

“Good evening Nashville. Our top story continues to concern the tragic events that occurred this afternoon right in the heart of downtown. We’re still gathering information about what happened and why.”

The anchor read from the teleprompter in a polished, professional tone. Tiffany mouthed the words, hoping that nothing would get ad libbed, nor misstated. She glanced into the cameraman’s monitor as André Babineaux’s picture appeared on the screen.

The anchor continued, “Here’s the victim, a 38 year old French businessman and integral cog in the growing machine that is the AquaCorp Water Purification Company. He is believed to have been assassinated by this man.” Christopher Harvel’s face appeared next to Babineaux’s.

The two men couldn’t look more different: Babineaux had dark skin characteristic of his Nigerian heritage. The picture Tiffany chose was the standard one that all the news outlines used: an image of him from 5 years ago. It looked like a Hollywood headshot. He stared at you with eyes that radiated intensity and smiled at you with a playful smirk that suggested mischievousness. The image reflected his charisma and confidence. In contrast, Harvel looked as if someone woke him up just to take that picture and that he hadn’t exactly agreed to it when the photographer snapped the image. Harvel’s balding, disheveled hair complimented his wild, wide eyes, and his sarcastic smirk suggested an all-knowing cynicism. The image reflected an odd combination of chaos and confidence.

The anchor continued, “As expected, authorities are saying very little. Metro Police, FBI, TBI, and Secret Service for the former Vice President are investigating the assassination. You will know more as soon as we do.”

That word “assassination” made Tiffany nervous while she wrote it, and hearing it said aloud caused her heart to speed up. One could argue that it was incendiary language that could cause undo panic, but she felt that the word worked because AquaCorp was growing so quickly and in such a unique way that it was no longer a grassroots organization started in Versailles to fight poverty by providing clean water to third world villages while they worked to pay back their microloans.

What began as a local business became a mid-sized company, which then became a large corporation. Its meteoric growth made it a political symbol for environmentalists who used it to exemplify the belief that capitalism and saving the planet were not mutually exclusive ideals.

Started in 1992 by Michelle Bissette and three of her friends, the organization joined with groups that helped with Muhammad Yunas’ mission to end poverty by giving poor villages start-up money for their own businesses. The idea won him a Nobel Peace Prize. Bissette saw that if the people had to worry less about disease and lack of nutrition, they could do even more than what they were doing. And the low cost, high value, easily supported concept of clean drinking water made AquaCorp a favorite recipient of celebrities and philanthropists’ donations. Eventually, AquaCorp had to grow or risk losing its market to more aggressive, less charitable companies. In 2004, they hired an economics consultant to help them stay relevant. That consultant, André Babineaux, became one of the top people in the organization, becoming a Vice President in just 15 months of work.

Since the company was now a political emblem, its leaders were now political figures. Tiffany felt she could defend her decision on this basis if her boss Caleb Reid had a problem with it. She enjoyed blurring that line between news and drama, not to manipulate events or mislead the public but because she believed that people cared about what happened around them only if they were led to care. Caleb believed that the information should be laid out simply and with as little adornment as possible so as not to taint the public’s interpretation. And though Tiffany could see the merits of this approach, she believed that the emotional element of storytelling was a useful device that should not be ignored but used delicately like a pair of flashy shoes on an otherwise conservative outfit.

For the whole first segment, the anchor stuck verbatim to Tiffany’s script, “We have reporters on the scene whom we will check in with after this commercial break.” Much of Tiffany’s anxiety had by now subsided. She was confident the professionals she worked with knew what to do. And she was confident that she’d prepped everyone well. “Just remember, all you can do is prepare like crazy and then go out there and do your best,” she breathed to herself.

She knew Harvel would be the only story aside from very brief updates on weather and sports. Still, she did something she rarely does: she stood less than a foot behind the cameraman making sure the segments she put together went exactly as she’d planned. What else could she do? She couldn’t go back to the control room and monitor the show from there. Not today. Like a football coach who leaves the booth at the top of the stadium to join his players on the sidelines, she wanted to be right there. She felt her presence would be more effective in person on a day like today.

The rest of the 6:00 show went as planned. Ironically, it was the smoothest show she’d ever produced. Tiffany sat at her desk eating pizza and gulping down what was easily her sixth cup of coffee for the day. To an observer, it could seem as if she chewed greedily and gulped frantically. But this was just a habit many in the news business cultivated because you grabbed food when possible; you never knew what breaking story could take you away from your desk for an indefinite amount of time. She ate with some satisfaction as she mentally replayed the way she took control of the newsroom. The tragedy on the outside brought about a crisis for them, which, in turn, brought out the best in her and her staff.

She glanced at her watch and decided that any personal reflection would have to wait. While she chewed her last slice, she planned the intro for the 10:00 show. Because of the circumstances, she knew a production change would be difficult, which meant an early start would buoy her team during the last hour of their shift when everyone from interns to anchors would be fatigued from doing two days’ worth of work on such short notice.

Tiffany checked her iPhone, waiting for some sort of communication from her supervisor Anthony. She knew he was on site with their boss, but she expected some sort of contact since he knew she’d be working tonight. Never mind that the two of them had been unofficially dating for the past two months, it was his job to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to. She didn’t have time to think about that now, so she didn’t, at least not consciously. But her repeated cell phone glances indicated that some part of her brain was focused on it.

She felt ambivalent about having to answer to him because any rank he had over her was in name more than practice. Anthony was a decent writer, and with his athletic build and fashion-conscious wardrobe, he looked the part of a supervisor. But he didn’t necessarily fit it. Tiffany would never vocalize this, but it seemed as if the Peter Principle had gotten to him, the concept that people rise to the level of their inefficiency, that they continue to get promoted out of jobs they’re qualified for until they reach a position that they cannot do well. And then they just stay there until they quit, retire, or get fired.

And though Anthony could write headlines and was creative with pre-commercial teasers, he wasn’t fit to be in charge of other producers and other writers. He simply didn’t have the personality. He enjoyed being on good terms with everyone, so he often relied on others to confront an uncomfortable issue or to break bad news. He would then come by and play good cop and smooth over a troublesome situation. The problem was, new workers like Rachel took longer to train because they lacked real direction. And for some reason, it seemed like the one who ended up playing bad cop to Anthony’s good cop was Tiffany.

But that was work politics. Although she felt she could perform Anthony’s job better than he, that didn’t bother her. She didn’t want his job anyway. What bothered her was that for the past two months the two of them would meet up for dates on their days off. They worked together, and since he was technically her superior, it was wrong.

She just couldn’t get past the opaqueness of their relationship. They weren’t exactly together, but they certainly weren’t just friends either. They inhabited a weird dating purgatory that she noticed a lot of her friends were also in. This set up almost always worked in the guy’s favor: he got an automatic date to functions around the city, someone to hang out with, even someone to have sex with, and yet he was free of the commitments that come with being a legit boyfriend. He didn’t have to stay at her house and watch her tv shows, nor did he have to sacrifice his Saturday mornings to help her run errands. And most significantly, he was free to date other women.

She was always bothered that whenever they went out, he placed his phone face down, always took it to the bathroom with him, and always turned off the ringer quickly if it made any kind of noise. The summer before her senior year, she did an internship in DC where she noticed that the guys there simply didn’t date. They were too busy pursuing their legal, political, or business careers to even think about the opposite sex. It was as if the young men in DC collectively decided to focus on their work and when it was time to find a wife, one of them would throw a party where they could serendipitously meet a woman who coincided with their pre-planned life and marry her quickly without too much interruption to their goals.

In Nashville, she found a different phenomenon: guys dated you without actually dating you. If friends with benefits were a 21st century hybrid where platonic friends occasionally meet up for sex, then young men in Nashville found a way to evolve that concept so they could be in a relationship with a woman without being committed to her. It was like having a girlfriend on lease. A guy could take a girl out on Saturday nights, even expensive trips, but not call her his girlfriend, a loophole that allowed him to stay available for another girl.

And that’s what Tiffany and Anthony had. And what they had–whatever it was called—was the most poorly kept work secret. No one said anything but whenever the two of them spoke, she could see cameramen, editors, even the anchors sneaking furtive glances then whispering among themselves. Since Anthony had no power to bestow favors on her, no one cared in any professional sense, only in a workplace gossip sense. What troubled Tiffany the most was that he seemed to enjoy pretending they weren’t together. Tiffany was not exactly sentimental, but he could at least give her the occasional flirty smile. The only time she noticed him behaving as if he liked her is when he saw her talking to another guy. It could be the 55 year old maintenance man, he would walk over to them and insert himself into their conversation until it ended.

She glanced at her phone right as it started to ring. “Finally,” she thought.
“Hey Anthony,” she said. “How are things downtown?”
“It was good. Not good but you know what I mean. Crazy, for sure.”
“Yeah, I imagine. Look, tell Caleb I’m prepping things for the 10:00 show as we speak.”
“That’s what I’m calling about. I’m headed back to the station. I’m gonna be doing the 10pm. He’s sending you home.”
“Wait! What?”
“I dunno. He was pretty pissed. Something about your melodramatic writing.”
“What were his exact words?”
“Look Tiffany, I don’t remember. He just told me to get down there and relieve you or I’d be in trouble, too.”
“How am I in trouble?”
“He wants you to call him.”
“I plan on it.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you in a minute.”

She could feel her neck turning red as she marched to her office and slammed the door. She turned up the music on her computer. It was “Gold on the Ceiling” by the Black Keys. She hoped it would be just loud enough to drown out any yelling that might ensue.

Caleb answered after four rings. She knew he was making her wait, a subtle tactic designed to remind her that he was in control. She’d already received her punishment, so she wasn’t scared. She felt some confusion but mostly anger. And each ring of the phone heightened it.

“Hello?”

Tiffany clinched her teeth. He knew it was her, he knew she’d be calling. Yet he was going to give her standard greeting as if he didn’t expect her. The two clashed over their view of how news should be presented, which Tiffany didn’t mind. Professional conflict was fine as long as it was about the work and not personal. But she felt that the mind games Taylor played went beyond differing views on story production.

They were his way of keeping his employees off balance. Tiffany felt like he didn’t do this for any philosophical reason but for an egotistical one: he had power, and he wanted to exercise it as often as possible even with insignificant matters.

“Yeah? Anthony told me you had a few questions?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Something like that.” If he wanted to play games, she would play them right back.
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“He said you wanted to talk. There’s no need to brief me on my decisions for the 10:00 show. I’ve been thinking about it since lunch.”
“Tiffany, I know Anthony told you I was going with him for the 10:00 show. I also know that you know why.”

Tiffany knew this wasn’t the time to point out that if he knew what Anthony said, then he shouldn’t have asked. Instead, she felt it better to focus on the second part of his statement. “I honestly don’t know why.”

Caleb paused longer than necessary. “Assassination? You really think the city of Nashville witnessed an assassination today?”

“Well what would you have said?”

“Tiffany, I give you the most leeway of all my producers. And for some reason, that’s still not enough for you. And I put up with it because there’s not much downside beyond my own exasperation and the occasional misunderstanding. But this time, there’s a big downside. That ‘assassination’ comment has taken a life of its own. It’s being replayed around the country. It’s being retweeted and syndicated by anyone with a computer. Even Demetria’s in a little trouble. You’re in a lot.”

Tiffany’s blood pressure spiked. Demetria Kaladimos has been a stalwart of Nashville news for two decades. The idea that she could get in trouble, even a little bit made Tiffany nervous. Normally, she and Taylor fought over abstract turf the way a teenagers and parents do. But this seemed like something else, more than the typical back-and-forth she was used to.

“Sorry, Caleb.”
“So am I.”
“Wait, are you firing me? Because I–”

“No, at least not yet.” She didn’t answer, so he continued. “I don’t want to do this, but when the people with the money get angry, someone has to pay. I stood up for you, which is why for now you’re only suspended for two weeks with pay. Maybe when the news cycle changes, they’ll cool off. Maybe then, I’ll be able to keep you on. But as for this moment, you’d be wise to update your résumé.” Taylor surprised himself at how bad he felt meting out the punishment. Regardless of Tiffany’s defiance, she cared about doing her job right, and that forced her coworkers to do theirs or else they would be exposed, which made his job easier.

She spoke but the words seemed to move on their own as if she were a ventriloquist dummy. “Look, fire me if you have to. I understand. But this story, this event is the type of thing that can change a career.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll be at the station in a little over an hour. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t do anything. Play games on your phone, read a book, I don’t care. But you’re not allowed to help with the news. At all.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.”

Tiffany thought of taking a nap but the coffee she’d consumed made it impossible. She took off her shoes, cut off the lights in her office, sat on the floor, crossed her legs in a yoga pose, and took slow, deep breaths.