Judge 6: No Fear of Flying

The voice of Judge Mental: “I’m giving it to you straight. There’s one simple thing you must understand. Never break up with a vengeful woman. That’s all. This one wanted to destroy me so badly that she turned insanely evil and tried to destroy the world. But we’ve all been there, right, fellas? Sure, I’ll tell you the story. You won’t be seeing it on The Hallmark Channel.” (Dramatic musical theme.)

Announcer: This…is Ricochet Silent Radio! Radio-style drama and suspense featuring larger-than-life characters, many of them based on actual Ricochet members! Every Monday in June, we’ll bring you another episode from the files of Judge Mental. Astronaut. Cybernaut. Adventurer. And arrow of vengeance.

Judge: Her name was Phoebe. Phoebe Latimer. She was the daughter of a woman I worked with on Wall Street. I met the girl when she was seventeen. A girl hot enough to stop traffic. Literally. I watched it happen. She came along with us after work sometimes for food and drinks, and she would leave with phone numbers from a half dozen brokers. Cute, but like I said, seventeen. I never went near her, never even thought of it. Her mother died when the Towers came down. North Tower; I was a block away when it happened.

Eight long years later, we met again, at a 9/11 commemorative event. She was 25 now, I was 35. Things were…different. I’d been to space by then, and had something of a public reputation, mostly for killing four orbiting pirates who tried to kill me. Phoebe was performing at the event, a folk singer with a guitar. Plaintive, beautiful voice. I told her so. One thing led to another. She moved in and we spent the summer of 2010 together.

We were both disillusioned. We once believed in the Global War on Terror. I was on the Right, she drifted more Left. But what broke us up was just ordinary stuff. Ms. No-Strings turned into Ms. I-want-commitment. Once she moved in, I wasn’t trying as hard. She didn’t like my friends. I didn’t like hers. She called me “intelligent but thoughtless.” When I came home from work one night, she was already gone.

A year later, when her first album hit the stores, I bought one. That voice had a harder edge now. For someone who craved independence, all of her songs were resentful, towards one unnamed man in particular. A title like “Spaceman Split” didn’t leave much doubt. It became a hit single. I shrugged. The next time she popped up in the news was her bitter, one-woman show, “Crash Landing,” which went to Broadway and won a Tony.

By now she was legit famous, backstage at the Pussycat Dolls with her pals Gwen Stefani and Katy Perry. She went from Greenpeace to Greta Thunberg to Julian Assange. Phoebe was everywhere—the Met Gala, the Grammys. But she was bored. And malicious.

A string of brazen, daylight burglaries on Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side were committed by women. After this sensation faded from the papers, the same masked group moved their criminal activities to moonless nights. These break-ins were nastier and often politically motivated. People were starting to get hurt. Time for me to step in.

Because I recognized something. The lead perp taunted police with her signature, “Melsa.” Back in the glory days, one of the movies we watched in bed was a crime comedy with Barbara Stanwyck. I looked it up: The Mad Miss Manton. Melsa Manton was a spoiled rich girl who led her friends in madcap pranks. But none of her pranks involved defacing statues, grand theft, or serious injury. So I slipped a timesaving word to a friend at NYPD that Phoebe was Melsa. I knew she wouldn’t like that. I didn’t care.

She struck back by announcing that hero-with-a-dark-edge John Mantle was known to law enforcement with the alias of Judge Mental, the vigilante suspected in a series of (utterly justified!) revenge killings. At the very least, this upping of the ante was rather indiscreet of Phoebe. She also announced that she was changing her public name to Psycho Logical. The New York Post had front-page artwork of a heart carved on a tree: “Psycho + Mental 4 Ever” (sarcastic laugh). Yeah, that did me a lot of good.

Now, even cab drivers and hotel doormen grinned as they touched the brim of their caps with respect. “Hey Judge, did you really kill all those guys?” “Judge! Did you have to kill those guys?” “Mental, mah man! Do ya ever regret meeting her?”

Yes, Yes, and Yes. But then she married a rich guy, moved to Europe, and all my Psycho Logical troubles seemed to go away. It was too good to be true.

(Local announcer) You’ve been listening to Judge 6: No Fear of Flying. We pause for station identification. This is KRCH 870 on the dial, Southern California’s home for the worldwide broadcast of Ricochet Silent Radio, also carried on the Armed Forces Radio Network.

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(Network announcer) You’re listening to Silent Radio over Ricochet’s family of affiliated stations. And now back to Judge 6: No Fear of Flying!

(Show Narrator) Judge Mental’s ex-girlfriend from long ago has adopted a daring midnight criminal persona that is becoming more and more deeply anti-American and above all, anti-Judge. A once innocent girl from Columbus, Ohio, Phoebe Latimer, turned to the dark side as Psycho Logical. She’s dedicating her crazier and crazier life to trying to ruin or end his.

(British voice) Something elevated the prospects of this angry, troubled young lady to a world-threatening level. Her wit, her beauty, and her fiery spirit awakened some flicker of admiration, even love, in the sour heart of British tycoon Sir Astor Lenox Tilden, descendant of a thousand years of landowners. Phoebe married the wicked old Lord, and cheerfully, too, for despite his great wealth, they shared some of the same prejudices against commerce, business, and power.

Judge Mental: I didn’t know any of that when I received an oddly shaped envelope of expensive-looking paper with a stark orange logotype, Cable Address CITRON as its only identification. It contained an invitation to appear on a celebrity panel at a charity fundraiser at Heston Aerodrome Air Show outside London. It was signed “A. Moulton.” There was also a first-class ticket on a charter flight, and an honorarium of $130,000. For a four-day appearance? Of course, I said yes. That’s usually my first mistake.

Two days later, I was in the international departure lounge of the private aviation terminal at JFK. I saw cryptic welcome signs for WM&M and GLLIC. I knew what those meant. Wisconsin Mining and Manufacturing is the financial octopus created by Old Dan Rhody’s family. Great Lakes Land Investment Corporation is the anonymous face of the Arahant business empire. Sure enough, Hank and Sam Rhody were at a nearby table and waved me over. We are friends, fellow members of the Ricochet Online Guild. They call us ROGs. Pronounced “rogues.” We don’t talk much about it.

We had a fast, smooth trip across the Atlantic. Boeing Business Jet; nice. An hour from landing, Hank Rhody, in his plush leather first-class seat, accepted a cup of coffee from the flight attendant: “It’s one thing to be the terror of Europe. It’s quite another to do so without even having a cup o’ the black to get you out of bed in the morning. Or is that how the whole mess got started?” he mused.

The Hankster was inclining to wax philosophic. “A boat full of sauna jockeys came down the Don, ran into the Turk, and discovered the joe. The resulting import trade no doubt made them fabulously wealthy, but it set off a centuries-long, caffeine-induced series of raids and conquests.”

Percival nods. “There was a 1950s TV ad campaign called Take Tea and See. There was probably some sense there.” He continued flipping through Armor Weekly.

Hank glances at the front page of the business section of London’s The Times: Moulton Said to be Expanding North American Interests (subhead:) Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Utah Likely Prospects.

“Is that what this trip is about? Get us all over there for a business deal?”

“Mmm…thought of that, makes no sense. Our pal the Judge (he courteously nodded to me) is no moneybags compared to the rest of us. So what’s the common element?”

(Hank sips coffee.) “No doubt, if someone had properly sat down Leif Erickson and explained that no, you don’t quaff espresso straight from the mead horn, he wouldn’t have then proceeded to row straight across the Atlantic.” He flips to The Daily Mail, and winces wryly at a headline: Cor, Blimey! LIMEY Moulton to Meet With ROWDY Brothers!

“'Rowdy.’ I hope Dad doesn’t see that. They keep bringing up that old thing about Sam and the showgirl. Well, that and the other showgirl. Will Fleet Street ever give it up?”

“'Limey?’ Even the English themselves call him that?”

“He’s the orange monger. Andrew Moulton’s the heir to a UK grocery fortune. Citrus fruit. The British call him 'The Gardener,' the kind billionaire who gave away his money.”

Arahant stirs in his seat uneasily. “Can’t say I’d like to see that catch on.”

“It’s true; he essentially gave it away. It’s why he’s quietly revered. The remainder is a 'rainy day' fund he can’t easily access. Yet, rather like Obi-Wan, who never wants for anything, everywhere he goes, everyone he contacts in what had been his family’s fiefdom is honored to tear up a bill.”

Following her instructions, the cabin attendant hit “play” and the seatbacks lit up. Elgar’s music played in the background as a one-minute countdown clock played over a montage of pictures. Early Victorian lettering with the silhouette of a telegraph key, titled “Moulton Greengrocer Bid Wire, 1867” dissolved to early 20^th century images of a stock ticker, “Imperial Jam and Preserves Commodities Worldwide Quotation Service, 1909.” With twenty seconds left, an image of blinking lights read “IJPC Data and Facsimile. Cable Address CITRON. 1970.” Finally, just before the clock reached 12, the title turned orange and simply read “CITRON. A System of Private Intelligence. 2006.”

A square-jawed, agreeable-looking Englishman in a garden shed patiently repotted a begonia. It took a moment to realize we were finally seeing the mysterious Andrew Moulton. When he became aware of the camera, he smiled, but it was a shyly reserved half smile. He spoke with the enviably effortless grace of the ol’ Sceptered Isles, not above dropping into an affectionate regional lilt, a gentle joke in the sounds of Cardiff or Bath or Plymouth.

“I am delighted that our American friends are shortly to honor us with your presence. We don’t know each other yet. But our ancestors knew each other very well indeed. Look into your family trees, remember the miracles we accomplished together.

“For example, Judge, it was your English great-great-grandfather Brunton’s inventions ‘wot’ mined the coal that was made into gas flames. Hank and Sam, your 1840s Rhody relatives discovered how to use channels of molten copper to float continuous sheets of glass. They had a secret mix of exotic ingredients for transparency, imported from the Seven Seas on my fellow Britisher Weatherford’s sailing ships, one of the earliest strands of the Arahant fortune.

“That miracle of relatively cheap glass made possible my family’s nationwide web of greenhouses for Imperial Jam and Preserves. Only a decade later, our profits allowed our families to donate London’s Crystal Palace to a gracious Queen and a grateful nation.” Now Moulton looks straight into the camera. “We helped make each other rich, just as our two nations have prospered ever since. I regard you all as long-lost friends. You have always been, and remain, centuries-old allies of we Moultons.

“What’s more, every one of you as individuals has played a role in technological progress. This week you will join me as I supervise a round of major contributions to some of my favorite history-related British charities, preserving and understanding the beneficial effects of the past 200 years of science and engineering. These bequests are my final corporate acts, my one command, before retiring to private life as an English gardener, the only role I’ve come to seek.

“Just as in our ancestors’ day, there are always a few knaves in the pack, ready to try their knavish tricks. Don’t worry about them. After landing, when you clear immigration, I’ll meet you all outside of customs. I’ve arranged a brace of shooting brakes.”

Andrew Moulton smiled and his image faded to black.

We all sat there in silence. Then Hank asked, “Shooting brakes? A ‘brace’ of them?” Arahant made the English-to-American translation, “He means a couple of station wagons to go hunting in.” Percival said, “What or who does he mean by knavish tricks?”

Arahant answered, “He means the blood feud. But that’s all over now.” He had our full attention. “Moulton, Brunton, Rhody, Weatherford”—he shrugged modestly—“The industrial revolution broke the power of the land barons. The worst of them, Lord Geoffrey Tilden, spoke for his family and his social class when he declared, unequivocally, 'This rubbish will not stand.' That was in 1857. Eighty years later, his demented grand-nephew burned the Crystal Palace to the ground.”

I had to ask Arahant, “Tilden, you say?” He nodded back at me gravely.

The pilot came on the loudspeaker. “Fasten your seat belts immediately. We are flying into severe turbulence.”

You’ve been listening to the first part of Judge 6: No Fear of Flying. The next act of our three-part story airs a week from tonight, Monday, June 23^rd, exclusively on these Ricochet stations. Tune in then for more adventure and suspense! Remember, three chimes mean good times on Ricochet Silent Radio!

(sound of chimes)