Monkeyshines
chapter fourteen

Chris and I flew to Chicago, and down to Bloomington where we stayed at the house of a woman with whom Chris had taught Montessori school. Chris was a certified Montessori directress, but she took a job as a check-out clerk in an IGA supermarket. I watched the Senate Watergate investigation unfold on TV. I felt the electricity when Butterfield admitted calmly during otherwise lackluster testimony, that he was aware of tape recordings made of White House conversations. The room crackled and the senators perked up.
I also juggled appointments and communications with Clelland Hanner, the Parke County, Indiana, prosecutor, and our own lawyers who were helping us deal with the problems Johnson kept tossing in our way.
In order to get Johnson to stop calling Hanner and complaining about us, Bruce Krell, one of our lawyers, said we had to get the mortgage out of our name. Krell started to put together the papers to accomplish this.
Hunter, another legal beagle, said Lawson had ‘given away the store’ by not getting our deal in writing, and by accepting a lot of evidence without negotiation or reciprocal concessions. Hunter also told us that John Dowd, the son of the local judge, Earl Dowd, was the assistant prosecutor actually handling the case, and that Hanner, the senior prosecutor, had been the judge's law partner for thirty years. This sounded too cozy to us, and Hunter said young Dowd had told him, "Parke County has a lot more money than your clients; they haven't got a chance."
I went to Parke County with Duke and Hunter for a meeting with Hanner. It was a short meeting. Hanner basically refused to predict an outcome, saying things had to run their course. Duke was partly neutralized as it became clear that Chris wasn't going to jail. If Duke defended me too vigorously, he might risk the outcome for her.
Hunter confirmed that our best strategy was to stay out of the minds of the Parke County authorities, avoid contact with police, settle quietly some place, and let him negotiate. Our position was that, if the authorities felt they had to prosecute further, we wouldn't contest the matter as long as the court agreed to sentence us to do community-related work. Hunter said Parke County wasn't eager to try the case, because trials cost money, but that they'd still put a bench warrant on file that the State of Indiana would act on automatically if anyone pressed the issue.
Then I got a call from Peter. They’d reached New Zealand on the 9th of July, and although there were some charming interludes at Washington Island and in Samoa, mostly the voyage was a nightmare. Peter's foot got infected from a scratch he got in Samoa, and it nearly had to be amputated. Also, on the trip south toward New Zealand, the Nam Sang was beaten by mountainous seas and six days of gale force winds. On the 4th of July, 1973, the mast crashed to the deck and rolled over the side. The crew worked frantically to cut it away before the 3/4" stainless steel halyards and mainstays ripped out the side of the boat.
Seriously damaged, Nam Sang motored the final 500 miles to New Zealand. The last days of the voyage had the crew eating raw fish, soaked rice and coconut pulp. They sailed through frigid southerlies blowing from Antarctica to reach Auckland with less than five gallons of fuel left.
When they arrived, Maggie was hospitalized for a tubal pregnancy. Financially embarrassed, Peter gravitated into association with a wealthy, apparently well-intentioned family named Raakes. Peter was offered and accepted money to pay hospital bills and mooring expenses. Peter and Maggie were invited to stay at the Raakes' home while Maggie recuperated. A joint venture company was formed that was supposed to accept the mortgage on Nam Sang, foreclose on it, and repair the yacht. Peter became suspicious when the promised contracts did not appear and the repairs were not initiated. Having accepted money that he couldn't repay, Peter felt obliged to continue to cooperate with the Raakes, but he felt he might have simply acquired another Johnson.
Chris and I lived on a fence. We bought trunks, filled them with trade goods and personal effects, took them to California and shipped them to New Zealand. We went back to Bloomington and got jobs. Some force protected us during many of these transactions. When we needed to take trunks to the west coast, we found a want-ad in the paper for a truck to be driven to San Francisco. After we dropped off the trunks and delivered this truck, we needed to get to L.A. Another want-ad in the newspaper, this time for a pick-up truck to be delivered in L.A. This was during the gas shortage days, and few gas stations were open at night on Interstate 5 south through the San Joachin valley. But the pick-up just happened to have two extra fuel tanks, so we could drive straight through.
On the way back, we drove through Albuquerque to see James. We told him to stand by, that we were going to send the mortgage transfer papers to Peter and hope for the best.
In October, we got another call from Peter. He needed us in New Zealand to ‘resolve entanglements.’ In late October, Chris and I flew to Auckland. A week later James and his fiance’ Dee Ann followed.
The Raakes, Harry and his younger brother, Barry, seemed to be well-bred, English public school kids who had been a bit spoiled by the circumstances of family wealth and social status. They were Rhodesian ex-patriots. It began to look like their business activities included smuggling, grave-robbing, drug trafficking, and the illicit transfer of art and antiquities. They seemed to have political connections and no fear of police. And they seemed to have a knack for manipulating the lives of their associates. I pushed to get our contractual matters resolved, and repairs started on the Nam Sang, while the Raakes dragged their feet.
On my first trip from Auckland to Nam Sang's mooring at Tutakaka harbor, at which time I met with Bob and Barry, and arranged for the boat to be hauled out of the water, our party was stopped by a police roadblock and taken to a police station for questioning. Peter, Barry, Barry's assistant and I were all separated. The police said they were looking for some bank robbers, but it seemed to me there must be some other explanation for this official detour. They were either ‘fishing’ for information or trying to intimidate someone.
Shortly after this incident, Peter was pressured by Harry Raakes to accompany him on an artifact buying trip to southeast Asia. Harry was involved with a local museum curator and his father, Wilfred, operated an international antiquities trading company based on Norfolk Island, a haven for the rich that lay between New Zealand and Australia. Peter's report on the trip convinced us we were intolerably close to a host of illicit operations. In the Philippines, Peter witnessed negotiations over mummies which were said to be hundreds of years old. In his report, he wrote, "The two mummies, 'Nu Nu' and 'Anu Apo', bore striking similarities in tatoo and posture. They differed in condition, 'Nu Nu' being significantly less dehydrated or damaged. The age and rarity of the specimens became questionable when a fully tatooed mountain woman was observed entering Miss Chan's shop begging food and assistance." When I asked him what he meant, Peter said, "That 'mummy' looked like a recently smoked human being to me."
After Peter and Harry returned, I stepped up pressure to get the corporate paper work completed. That would get the mortgage on the Nam Sang out of our name. The Raakes had promised to accept the Nam Sang as an asset in their holding company, and in return, Peter and I would be made officers in the corporation. That would hopefully eliminate Johnson's incentive for attacking us personally. I pressed the Raakes hard to perform. We got their performance at a meeting in the Old Spaghetti Factory Restaurant in Auckland. It was the 21st of February, 1974, a Thursday. The following night, Peter, Bob, Maggie, Chris, James, Dee and I all met to discuss it.
Me: "Peter called them at home and Barry answered the phone."
Peter: "Barry said, 'Paid you guys all that money, and I ain't got nothin'. Where you at?'
'We're at the Spaghetti Factory, meet us.'"
Me: "Ten minutes later, they stomped up to our table, just stomped up, cut the waitress off in mid-sentence and started reading us the riot act. They were going to have us locked up, charged with theft and fraud, thrown out of the country, etc."
Peter: "And then I interrupted to say, 'Do you want to have something to eat?' They were steaming, but they sat down. Then Harry started in on Michael, 'You disgust me. I loathe you. You make me sick. People like you shouldn't be let in the country. If it weren't for you, none of this would be going on. We wouldn't be having any problems at all. He went on like this for ten minutes, in a real mean voice, and all the time he was fingering a knife, you know, sticking it into a cutting board in an obvious attempt to be intimidating."
Me: "Meanwhile he told Peter, in a real nice tone, that he had no dispute with Peter; Peter was all right."
Peter: "I think Harry was asking to get the shit knocked out of him, which would put up a nice assault charge."
Me: "Yeah, I was I was pissed, I don't know how I restrained myself; Harry's sitting right next to me; he was looking straight at me saying, 'don't you wonder sometimes why people think you're so disgusting and terrible?'"
Peter: "Oh, yeah. One of the first things they said when they came in was, 'How could you do it? How could you take advantage of a poor woman and her baby?' meaning Allison."
Me: "Like we didn't pay her enough rent, right; and Harry said I was the sleazy character responsible for that."
Bob: "Well, that's absurd, because I was right there when you paid her the money, asked her if she wanted any more, she said another five or so would do, and you gave her ten more."
Me: "Then Barry started explaining how we had to communicate, couldn't leave town, had to stay in direct contact at all times, couldn't go running off. He said we should be able to understand their concern and trust them. And I said, 'How can we trust you with you threatening to put us in jail for fraud? And you just said we stole your car.’"
Peter: “You wouldn't believe it. It was almost funny."
Bob: "I can believe it after that crazy telephone call."
Peter: "When Harry said, 'You've got nothing to do with it, Bob?'"
Bob: "Yeah, he trying to isolate me."
Me: "Of course, because you're not being blackmailed."
Chris: "Did they say anything about Maggie and me?"
Peter: "No, you're just the womenfolk to them."
Chris: "Did you get the VW title from them?"
Me: "No. At this point, they're holding out the title, pending some re-negotiations of future events, and maybe some past events. They wanted us to come over to the house, but I declined, because, as I told Barry, I knew my limits, and my temper could not have stood much more abuse that evening. I could not have sat still..."
Peter: "We sat still because we were wasted. We'd driven all day, we just got there, got out of the car, sat down to enjoy a meal..."
Me: "And they put me right off my spaghetti."
Bob: "How was the spaghetti?'
Peter: "Bad, really bad."
Me: "Lousy."
Peter: "So we hadn't eaten all day..."
Me: "Listen to this set-up. Barry got Harry to promise that they wouldn't throw us out of the house if we came back with them. And I said, 'Well, I'm sorry, but I'm sure it would be unwise for me to go over to your house. I can't do it. But I'll be happy to walk around in the street with you and talk this out, if there is something to talk about.' Then they got real indignant again and said a friend..."
Peter: "Barry said, 'My friend, Wayne Fry, will arrest you.'"
Me: "Oh, yeah, 'My friend, Wayne Fry will arrest you the moment I give him the word.'"
Bob: "Who's Wayne Fry?"
Me: "He's a detective sergeant with the Auckland police and seems to be handling the Nam Sang, and Barry had some words with him, I don't know..."
Bob: "Does the blackmail revolve solely around Nam Sang, or were there other issues?"
Peter: "They want the whole ball of wax is what they want. They want everything we’ve got, and they want us to sign notes on top of that."
Me: "They want us to sign an unsecured $10,000 loan and give them unlimited power of attorney..."
Peter: "They even told their attorney what they were trying to get."
Me: "And even he winced. We were accepting being blackmailed, if we could pay it, but they made the price too high..."
Peter: "Well, we weren't thinking in terms of blackmail."
Me: "Yeah, we were just thinking in terms of how we could keep them from blowing the whistle on us to their police connection, which is blackmail, but the word blackmail didn't occur to us until later."
Peter: "We were measuring what the cost was going to be. But they're going to fuck us up if they don't get the Nam Sang."
Chris: "So you went to see their lawyer?"
Me: "Yeah, we told him the whole story of what happened the night before at the restaurant..."
Peter: "He got right on the phone to Harry."
Me: "Harry said he didn't know anything about it."
Peter: "He said he knew nothing about it, and put Barry on the phone."
Me: "And the lawyer looked at us and just made a grimace, and Barry got on the phone, and I think that that lawyer realized that things were pretty serious, and he told Barry, 'Barry, what the hell is going on? Things are ready to blow, why the..."
Peter: "We still hadn't realized clearly what was going on."
Me: "Yeah, we still didn't see it, but Blandon, the lawyer, seemed to sense, I mean, we're in there..."
Peter: "Trying to protect..."
Me: "Trying to make some kind of deal, any kind of deal, right? What kind of deal you want to make? A ten thousand dollar unsecured loan? Sure. You want a power of attorney? Sure. You want some fingers and toes? And the lawyer's thinking why the hell are these guys willing to give up so much? And Barry's telling him we're being unreasonable. So, over the phone, Blandon says, 'Well they're being quite reasonable here.' And, 'Well that doesn't quite follow,' and, 'That doesn't make any sense, Barry; you're going to have to prove it. What are all these threats you're making? You're going to have to keep a low profile, Barry. They are cooperating.' 'Barry, we need them to cooperate at least as much as they need you to cooperate.'
You know, this is insane. Peter and I, we're still trying to play the game of 'OK, this is just a deal between a couple of, you know, our group and their group, we're having this business deal, but it's becoming very clear that we're going to take it in the neck, and we're still trying to say, 'Yeah, that's a good deal, we want to do that.'
I asked Blandon, 'Do you think we had anything to do with any kind of fraud here?' And he said, 'Well, I haven't seen any evidence of that.' Then he tells Barry, 'Well, Barry, they drove 400 miles up here to see you; now that's hardly an indication that they're trying to run away.'
Peter: "Ben Hoskins was their lawyer, but he can't be all bad; he unloaded them."
Me: "He backed away from them, because, as an objective observer, he..."
Peter: "Blandon sent us to Hoskins."
Me: "To discuss the American part of the transaction. As we came out of Blandon's office, the Raakes were waiting. They'd raced down from their house, right? And as we get into our car, they come running up and rip the door open, and say, 'OK, goddamit, you guys, I told you not to go see him. Here are four points that we have drawn up, and to which you are going to agree. If you don't, you can start packing for jail.' And I said, 'Go talk to your lawyer,' and Peter said, 'Go talk to your lawyer, asshole.' And Barry started saying, 'You..., I told you...' All the same threats again, and I started to drive away, and he gave the door a good slam, and Harry was standing back there by the sidewalk looking like death, he just, just, watched his empire crumble as a couple of his serfs ran away."
James: "I'm surprised you guys didn't give them a bash."
Chris: "I feel like bashing them."
Peter: "We couldn't do that, that blows our case. Any kind of violence in New Zealand would bring a police charge and prejudice everything else we had to say. Which probably is exactly what they wanted."
Me: "It was really hard, because there were a couple of times when I could taste the bile, I could taste the bile, and I was going to snatch them up..."
Peter: "I remember it. I said, 'Harry,' I said, 'look, you asshole, we're not in southeast Asia now. You're not going to talk to me like that. Go talk to your lawyer, and I'll talk to my lawyer, but don't talk to me like that.'"
Me: "Yeah, you're through, that's it."
Peter: "And when I called him an asshole, his face just dropped, he couldn't believe that happened."
Me: "Like, 'I'm Harry Raakes, one of the smartest guys in town, and I've got you over a barrel, don't you recognize that?'"
Chris: "OK, let's get back to Ben Hoskins."
Me: "When we went over to see him, he had a pretty heavy veneer of, you know, friendly, affable banker-lawyer, and he wasn't showing a crack of who he was, but that's OK, that's the way he comes on."
Peter: "He asked, 'What did the Raakes give you?' Right? He said, 'What have you been paid in this transaction?' We told him, this check, that check, the hospital bill, 500 dollars cash, two airline tickets, a VW van, etc."
Me: "A VW van without papers, so they can report it as ours, theirs, stolen or any way they want."
Peter: "It added up to almost the ten thousand they say they paid us."
Me: "Basically, we told him that under no circumstances did we want to negotiate directly with the Raakes. He was to set a deal, and we'd make it with him. By now he must have been wondering why the hell we were dealing at all, you know, why are we willing to sell for such a small piece. So Hoskins made an appointment with us for later and gave us the keys to his apartment, which he said he didn't use much anyway. He said we could go over there and relax if we wanted. Instead, we went to the American consulate, got a list of attorneys, checked the mail..."
Peter: "Changed the oil, saw Lance..."
Me: "Yeah, saw Lance, Nigel, and a few of the other Raakes' serfs. Then we met Hoskins again. He'd presented the Raakes' four demands which were, one, that we give another assignation to whoever the Raakes chose..."
Chris: "Another what?"
Me: "Assignation. We were to assign the mortgage again to an American citizen. Two was that we sign a $10,000 unsecured loan, a promissory note. Third, we'd give them power of attorney to operate in our behalf, and fourth, we’d sign a back-out clause, so if they failed to secure the Nam Sang, we'd buy it back. Good deal, right?"
Peter: "The boat's ours now, right? But if we sign all that stuff, we might as well kiss it good-bye."
Me: "Now, what Hoskins must have seen is that Peter and I were struggling to find a way to accept this deal. We were going, 'Well, uh, it's a good deal. There are a couple of problems with it, but we can adjust a bit.' And Hoskins is saying, 'Why bother, it's your boat.' And we rapped and rapped and rapped with him about the situation until he finally backed away from it."
Peter: "We didn't tell him what it was that was..."
Me: "We didn't tell him what it was, but he smelled it. He said, 'You and the Raakes are going to have to work out your problem. There's obviously some problem here, and I'm not interested in getting into that, but you guys are smart enough to know that you're making a much better deal than you've got to make.' Then he said, 'If you get rid of the Raakes, I'd like to talk to you, just that; I'm not making any plans, but I'd like to talk to you.'"
Peter: "Yeah, around that time, we figured out what was going on between us and the Raakes."
Me: "Yeah, we snapped to the fact it was blackmail."
Peter: "Pure and simple. I mean, for everything, it wasn't just the deal on the boat, but everything, the personal thing between us was phony, it meant nothing."
Me: "Yeah, it explained an awful lot in terms of why they were asking me if these were all our assets, if we had anything else, and..."
Peter: "It explains all kinds of things."
Me: "For the last two days, we've been mentally rushing over the history, going over to the..."
Peter: "And the lawyers, especially Blandon, must see the danger in the situation."
Me: "Their lawyer, Blandon, when we were leaving, he seemed to be hoping for a miracle. He told Barry over the phone, that if he didn't agree with him, he was certainly free to discharge him from the case, and he shouldn't expect that this would cause him, Blandon, any great grief. So Blandon threw it to Hoskins and Hoskins threw it back to Blandon. Neither of them wants to handle it because it stinks. And that's what blackmail does, and sometimes a blackmailer sets a price that can't be met."
Peter: "We've been working for those fuckers since we got here."
Me: "We've been working for them, and we finally decided..."
Peter: "And they've been doing this, they've been setting this thing up..."
Me: "We finally decided that the only thing to do, the only reasonable thing is not to tell them anything. We're going to a lawyer. We're going to lay it all on a lawyer. We've got to pick the right one. So far, nearly everyone we've confided in has..."
Peter: "Hoskins is smart, and he suggested a guy that we ought to consider. Hoskins said there was some New Zealand law that, as an American Lawyer, he wouldn't want to mess with."
Me: "So we go to the right lawyer, give him the entire story, he'll contact Blandon and tell him we've been skinned, called blackmail, and we want our skin back. If we can't get ours, we'll take theirs. By our skin, I mean that our work and time for the last six months has to be properly accounted for in the company books, our boat has to be returned, and Johnson, or his lawyer if he has one, will be warned about Johnson's attempts to blackmail us, and that every one of his letters are going to come into court, right; let him come up with some way to explain them so they don't look like blackmail."
Peter: "How come you've got a no interest loan? That's one of the things..."
Me: "Yeah, that's another thing, they charge 25% for..."
Everybody gushed half sentences all at once and over the top of each other for a while, then Chris said, "So after you guys left Hoskins, did you come back here?"
Me: "No, we went, oh yeah, we did. It's just been one extra long day."
Peter: "We've been getting blackmailed ever since we left Indiana. The court essentially started it when they put us in a position where we had to leave."
Me: "They said they would charge everyone, including you women, if we didn't plead guilty."
Peter: "That's fuckin' blackmail again. But we can't do anything about that one."
Bob: "That's not really blackmail; it's intimidation, denial of due process, and possibly official extortion, since they demanded you give up your property."
Me: "Johnson blackmailed us by threatening to make trouble for us with the Indiana authorities if we tried to assert our rights under the mortgage..."
Peter: "And he took the shot, he called them."
Me: "Yeah, he called them, at least once, but he chickened at the end of that shot. Hanner said Johnson just claimed to be looking for us. But he was writing us letters at the time, giving specific instructions on what to do with the boat, instructions that nullified the bare boat charter contract and the joint-venture agreement. The meaning of his references to Indiana would be clear to a court. We've got to get to a lawyer quickly, get the case written up, and go after the Raakes and Johnson. We're probably screwed either way, but it'd be better for us to go down with some integrity than scurrying around looking for ways to appease them."
Peter: "The Raakes, you know, they're fucked, too. There are too many people that know about them, I'm sure. I remember transactions with people, you know, their whole attitude toward the Raakes, they're on a hook, too. The Raakes have a number of people on the hook, and their lawyer knows it. There are liabilities for the Raakes, even if they don't know it yet."
Me: "They're vultures."
Peter: "We've been on this hook so long... Well, we're going to ask them to send us their deal in writing."
Me: "That's what Hoskins said is the appropriate thing to do. Have them send the deal in writing."
Peter: "We're prepared to take the deal. Let's see what kind of deal. When we have that deal, we'll ask a judge to consider why we're taking it. They're going to expose us, period, so we might as well expose them."
Me: "We've been operating under the weight of intimidation for so long, we hardly remember another way to act."
Peter: "I managed to get Harry to accept a copy of the whole transaction in Asia, but he didn't want it, he wanted ME. He wants to be able to ring up on the phone and have me jump."
Me: "They were indignant that we were away for two days, and not in direct contact with them. We're supposed to be five minutes away at all times."
Peter: "They made us their niggers."
Me: "I think they've gone berserk. They seem to feel that the knowledge they have about us gives them absolute power over us."
Peter: "They're going to fuck us; all right, they're going to have us thrown out of the country. Well, that's the threat we've been under the whole time; that's why we've been dealing amicably; that's why we've been taking it in the neck. We let them have it all because it was too dangerous to hassle over it. Well, now they get the whole fuckin' routine; we've got nothing left to lose."
Me: "They're totally ignoring our work on the boat and the rest. They'll say they paid us all this money, but a lot of it's just..., and they're demanding we sign notes. And we didn't even get it all, and we aren't allowed to spend what we did get, and at the same time they want us to stick around. All we're trying to do is keep the family together, and find a place to settle down, and we can't go."
Peter: "They took the ball from Johnson and started running with it."
Me: "Yeah. Boy are we stupid! Now we're in a Denver sandwich. We got the court, we got Johnson, we got the Raakes, and they're all blackmailing the shit out of us. I figure by now we’re world class experts on the subject."
Peter: "For over a year, and we never even noticed it. Finally one guy calls for a payoff we can't make, and our eyes open."
Me: "But they said you're not involved, Bob. What have you been doing, just working for them?"
Bob: "Yeah, for ten dollars a week."
Peter: "Do you think a college professor is worth more than ten dollars a week nowadays?"
Me: "We fed their egomania, because we didn't have our eyes on the ball. We had our eyes on getting a safe place where we could live."
Peter: "Their whole line about helping us find a farm was a load of shit. They were spinning webs and wheels and tales, our tails, so the Nam Sang would fall into their hands."
Bob: "I think that's clear from my records from way back."
Peter: "You know, I never knew what 'damages' were in law suits. Now I know what they are, they're what the Raakes owe us."
Me: "For eight months of incredible abuse, incredible scheming."
Chris: "And especially with Maggie pregnant, it's for Maggie's health, too.
Peter: "We're hanging around for months, I'm by his side all the time... ."
I began to feel like a pig in Stalingrad. (circa WW II)
We moved from the Happy Valley farm we had near Auckland to a big house in Wellington. We hired a New Zealand lawyer who'd studied at Harvard, Robert Andrew McGechan. We advised the American embassy we were enmeshed in a highly complicated situation, and we settled in for a siege. From March through August, McGechan debriefed Peter and me and guided our suit through the New Zealand court. Hunter negotiated with Indiana.
Chris and I took jobs at the Mary Poppins Agency as substitute parents, Peter did commercial art work and tutored dyslexic children, Maggie was a secretary at a hospital, James was a salesman for a building and loan, and Dee worked as a clerk in a fabric store.
Peter and I also consulted on the Ohu project with the office of New Zealand's Minister of Lands. The Ohu project was envisioned to be a sort of ‘kibbutz’ system for settling alternative communities on marginal ‘back block’ land. The groups wishing to create residential settings where they could practice their alternative concepts for social organization were often short on hard skills, like plumbing, electrical, etc. Our group was accepted as a likely ‘resource team’ that could be situated among the other groups to provide them with tools and expertise. If we had to walk away from Nam Sang, working in support of the Ohu project looked like an attractive alternative.
We lived in Old St. John's Priory, once the home of the Vicar of Wellington. It was a three story Victorian building with lots of cut glass, varnished wood, curved banisters and fireplaces. It sat on a hillside at the edge of the campus of Victoria University and afforded a panoramic view of Wellington and its port.
I signed up for a foreign affairs class at Victoria University. It was titled, "Should New Zealand Have an Independent Foreign Policy?" I managed to appear for two classes. The second was a lecture given by the teacher, a middle-aged Englishman, in which he described how important it was for a government to keep its foreign affairs decisions secret from the citizenry. To illustrate, he cited America's involvement in Viet Nam, seeming to suggest that America's problems in Viet Nam were due simply to the high degree of public involvement in complicated foreign affairs matters. I was infuriated, objected vigorously, and resigned from the class.
I didn't think I knew more than the teacher, or feel I was personally more worthy than he, but I did carry an emotion about the killing and destruction in Viet Nam and in America. I felt the class trivialized ugly life and death realities by reducing them to clap-trap. Implicit in this suggestion about secrecy was that the White men could work things out for the world, if only everybody would back off and give them room to establish proper chains of authority and inter-agency accounting techniques, and reporting practices, etc. Bullshit, I thought.
Richard Nixon resigned on TV in the Victoria University student lounge, live via satellite. I watched. Later he took a pardon for himself and left the rest of America pointing fingers at each other. More Bullshit. Even staunch Republican Duke gnashed his teeth on the Nixon pardon, calling it a cheap shot. Duke never used words like ‘catharsis’ when he talked to me, but I thought he understood that America needed one.
Bob Moyer held his post guarding the boat, but the situation got complicated and bizarre, and he eventually came to Wellington to stay at our house and get his head clear. We talked for days sorting out details. In the middle of the third day, Peter and I intercepted Bob as he ran through the house, naked, heading for the front door. His pupils dilated from tension, and he shouted, "I've got it, I've got the answer! I've got it!"
He'd been alone too much, and carried too much weight for too long. Bob had been in the military and helped develop voice printing. He was a very smart guy. Months of frustrated intellectual analysis had squeezed his head. When the boat was first moored in Tutukaka, and the Department of Agriculture killed Nemo, our ship’s cat, it had started. Bob confronted many baroque developments, frequently on his own, ever since. He got a Mickey Finn from a woman in a massage parlor when he investigated apparent links between this massage parlour, the Raakes, a security company and Interpol. And on and on.
But it was temporary, and Bob got over it. We’d just plugged into something beyond our understanding and it was electrocuting our nervous systems. It may have been harder for Bob, because he was a volunteer. He’d left Oregon to come with us and collect data for a program he was working on, and to help us cope. When we were confused about who we were, and what we were doing, Bob would say, "We're the eyes, the ears and the conscience of the creator of the universe." It seemed to help to hear that.
Chris and I became members of the New Zealand family life council and, at one of their meetings, we met Wellington's Chief of Police, John Stevenson. In the course of the group's discussion, Mr. Stevenson said, "Even when I have to arrest someone, I do it with love."
I was impressed by his sincerity. Chris and I were generally impressed by New Zealanders. They seemed far less bitter or defensive than Americans. When Chris asked me how I accounted for this, I said, "The New Zealanders long ago stopped the serious abuse of the Maoris, New Zealand was the first country in the world to include women in the electorate, the people haven't slaughtered each other in civil war or stamped out dissident groups for as long as anyone can remember, they also haven't imprisoned large numbers of their young, poisoned their ecosystem or crushed any neighboring societies in recent history. They don't hold atom bombs over the world's head as a hedge against inflation, but otherwise, they're pretty much the same as us."
At dawn, on the morning of July 25th, 1974, a Thursday, the doorbell rang. It was a group of Wellington policemen. They and their German shepherd dog wanted urgently to inspect our house and take us all to the police station. Peter called our solicitors, while the police were still downstairs entering the house. The police came upstairs to our bedrooms, and told us all to dress and go out to waiting vans. As we did this, they searched house. We were told we'd be out of the country before the day ended. That day would last for weeks.
The court granted us bail, and set the matter for hearing. Lots of press and TV covered the event. Later, I called Police Chief Stevenson. He sounded only slightly wary as he assured me that he'd arrested us with love in his heart, and that the information requiring our arrest came from an official American source. We went to see the American Ambassador, Mr. Seldon. Reporters followed us watching for drama.
The ambassador had a report that I was convicted for marijuana possession and had served a jail sentence for it. There was no mention of the reversal, and he was reluctant to accept that his computer information was incomplete. He insisted that he wasn't a source of negative information about us, and agreed there was no federal fugitive warrant for our arrest. He seemed to assume that we'd fled Indiana. (Through the Freedom of Information Act, we later learned the ambassador was exchanging telegrams about us with Messrs. Kissinger and Cisco at the State Department in Washington which wrote us off as criminals.
In a second meeting with the ambassador, a fellow I took to be an agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and another fellow I took to be a CIA agent joined the meeting. The drug agent asked about the 800 pounds of hashish found on our farm in Indiana. I never learned if he said that merely to see what my reaction would be, or if he'd been told that story and actually believed it. I asked him how I could prove that 800 pounds of hashish that didn't exist, didn't exist. He said, "What?!" I repeated myself; he seemed to get annoyed, and didn't talk to me anymore.
In a telephone conversation on 24 August, 1974, Hunter said, "Stay put, it's a bad time to make a deal with Indiana, because they see your case as a sleeping dog, and they're content that you're gone. The bailbondsman hasn't been pressed by the court, and hasn't contacted Interpol. The Interpol information must have originated in New Zealand, probably from Johnson telling them you ‘stole’ his boat. Indiana has not requested that you be treated as fugitives, so the only way Indiana can be a problem is if you get stopped by a policeman with time on his hands or through a complaint from Johnson or your friends down there. Also, I'll save you a copy of this Rockford Republican newspaper article I found that appeared around election time in 1972. It features positive stories about Nixon and the KKK on the front page."
I told Hunter, "It's a critical time down here. The embassy is getting phony FBI calls referring to us, and the Minister of Immigration doesn't want to be further involved. McGechan says we embarrassed some people, particularly the guys who raided our house. They stole our files, but missed the hidden third copies of our immigration applications, so when the police charged that we'd overstayed our visas, and immigration backed them up by saying we hadn't re-applied, we immediately produced copies of the applications and, well, you know how that goes."
"Yeah, well, hang on as best you can; these things get complicated; you can never be sure how they'll go." Tom said.
"OK. It looks like a compromise is still possible. The judge sees how hard it will be for us to deal with the litigation over the Nam Sang if we're out of New Zealand, and our friends are pretty solid. And with all the publicity, there are a lot of sailing people in New Zealand saying the government should be careful they don't end up helping some swindlers take our boat. There's hope, I guess, but Maggie's terrified of being separated from the baby. I told you she had the baby, didn't I? Anyway, we're under awful pressure to find a reliable course to take."
"Yeah, well, congratulations to Maggie, hang in there, good-bye."
"Talk to ya later."
Parliament scheduled hearings on our case. The day before the whole crazy story would become public on the floor of Parliament, Prime Minister Kirk fell dead. It hit our legal and political position like a bolt of lightning, and I felt a personal sense of loss for Mr. Kirk. He was a left wing Cap who seemed a most human sort for a politician. He literally walked among the New Zealand people without fear, and I'd heard him on a radio talk-back show answering questions posed by ordinary people. Upon his death, Parliament dissolved into paroxysms of power realignment. Right wing ‘Piggy’ Muldoon rushed to fill that vacuum. New Zealand jerked sharply to the right. We auctioned our possessions once again, and prepared to leave New Zealand.
Our first attempt was thwarted. An officer at the Australian consulate told us that he couldn't allow us to transit through Australia, because we were being referred to as terrorists in a telex message he said was based on information originating either from Interpol or the U.S. State Department. He was very apologetic, but he said he couldn't write down what he was telling us, and there was nothing he could do. I spoke to the American Embassy about this, but, as usual, their responses lacked sincerity.
We arranged for a flight to Fiji, where we could get a boat to Mexico. This was the cheapest way to North America, it allowed us to carry the most gear, and we could get a rest along the way. We landed in Fiji, but weren't allowed to transit. We protested, but a bunch of Fijians wearing colorful sarongs on their lower halves and British-looking soldier coats on their upper halves carried us onto a plane that flew us back to New Zealand. They didn't seem to enjoy doing it, but we didn't like it much either.
Somehow Air New Zealand got into the act, and, as they'd flown us back into New Zealand, they were obliged to put us up at a hotel until they could fly us out again. We went to court where the judge ordered we be allowed to leave New Zealand on travel plans of our own design, but there were new authorities at work who weren't willing to abide that order. We flew to Tahiti the next week only to find we wouldn't be allowed to change planes. The officials in Tahiti wouldn't even speak to us. Guards menaced us with rifles and insisted we re-board the Air New Zealand flight leaving for Los Angeles. One French soldier took me aside and sheepishly explained that his officer was gone and no one would admit they spoke English, because the situation was political; there were no proper documents authorizing them to do what they were doing, that they didn't like it, but they wouldn't give their names or take official responsibility. We boarded the plane for Los Angeles at gunpoint.
There we were arrested. The only discussion I had with any of these new guns-with-neckties was with a young man in a sharkskin suit who sat across a desk from me, identified himself as a Treasury Agent, and asked if I knew where Patty Hearst was. I said no, and asked him if he could release Christine and Maggie and the baby. He said no. Dee took Maggie's baby back to Chicago to the grandparents. Alex and Ilsa had experience with situations like this. Ilsa had escaped the Nazis during WWII, while most of her family was trapped in Germany, and Alex had been a French Legionnaire during that period.
Maggie and Chris were held in the women's section of Los Angeles County Jail, and Peter, James and I were held in the men's section. There was a telephone handy, so I reached through the bars and made a call to Dick Johnson. It was some comic relief to hear the tension spike in his voice as I calmly told him we’d just returned to L.A, and would see him for lunch the next day. Johnson left the country shortly afterward, and went to Saudi Arabia where he took a job as a flight instructor.
We were beyond tension, ourselves. Later we talked about this, and learned that we each simultaneously experienced a moment, during the flight to L.A., when we were so exhausted and confused, we’d hoped the plane would crash. This fatigue caused me to miss a last minute opportunity to dodge the feds and make it back to Indiana on our own. Real terrorists had bombed the international arrivals section of the L.A. airport the day before we got there. Arrivals were temporarily routed through another building. We could have easily walked around that building and out of the airport. Oh well.
We stayed a week in L.A. jails, waived extradition, and were taken back to Indiana by Lloyd Heck and Gary Cooper. They didn't seem to know much about what had happened in New Zealand, and were happy for the free trip to California for them and their wives. And it was good press for the sheriff before his re-election bid in Parke County.
So, pretty soon after that, there we were, standing in front of Judge Dowd, swearing to God that we were voluntarily pleading guilty. Hunter said the prosecutor promised the women would go free, and Maggie could immediately rejoin her infant, if only we'd swear to God that we were voluntarily pleading guilty. Otherwise, the authorities would see to it everybody did ten years, and Maggie could send pictures of herself to the baby as it grew up.
Peter, James and I were taken to the Indiana State Penitentiary for a ten year sentence. We could be paroled after six months if we were good and stayed alive. We were actually in a better position than most inmates entering a state prison. We weren't personally isolated. There were three of us healthy brothers with an Italian surname, college educations, and military training. No problem.