17 February 2011
Mongo
(Alex Karras decks the pony in Mel Brook’s classic film “Blazing Saddles.” Vic needs his help.)
“A very wise woman once said, marriage is like a deck of cards.
You need a heart to love him,
A diamond to marry him,
A club to smash his fucking head in,
And a spade to bury the bastard.”
- Lady Hedoniste
After lunch at Moe’s Southwestern Grill, my son and I drove back over to the Expo Center. His application had been processed in just over an hour, and He produced a credit card and took possession of his Sig-Sauer SP-2022.
“I think you are going to like that gun,” I said, as Mike the vendor scowled at me and shook his head that nothing had changed on the status of my application.
My son looked at the literature. “This says the SP-2022 features a durable, lightweight and wear-resistant polymer frame with the added tactical versatility of an integrated accessory rail.”
“You definitely want that,” I said, thinking that was something the Mosquito .22 Rimfire shared, and that the National Data base said I could not have. “It looks good with that black Nitron finish,” I said, “Really tactical.”
We stopped at the long table devoted to crates of ammunition. “You will need the .40 S&W. I recommend the hollow points for additional stopping power.”
A normal-looking man in a sweater and gold-rimmed glasses nodded, pointing to a crate of Smith & Wesson in the right caliber. “Does the hollow point cause jamming on the ramp?” I asked. He shook his head. “Nothing jams on the Sigs. It is a great gun. Discount for cash on two boxes- I can give them to you for $50.”
I peeled off some bills from my wallet and handed hem over. “That is why I want the .22- even the hot rounds are less than $5 a box.”
We left the hall, passing the knot of eager Second Amendment supporters at the door. My son had a smile on his face, and I had a tightening in my belly, wondering what the issue was in database-land. Was there someone out there in Colorado pretending to be me, opening up credit cad accounts and putting me on the nightmare road to ruin?
My son put the gun and ammo in the backseat where we would not be tempted to open the case and look at the pistol as we drove in the police cruiser. He dropped me at the back door to Big Pink and roared off, thoroughly empowered in his constitutional rights.
I was not feeling so good about mine.
I took the freight elevator up to the fourth floor and trudged down the hall to the unit.
I fired up the computer and logged onto my bank account. Everything looked jake there, and I logged off the bank site and onto the credit monitoring service. I reviewed the file from Experian, which comes with the basic service. The people who compromised my personal information bought themselves off from blame by providing complementary credit monitoring, and I scrolled down through the digital account of my life.
It all looked fine, but I wondered if I had the whole story, and if I should request a flag be put on my accounts. Getting information from all three credit reporting services costs premium prices, and I suddenly wondered if it was worth it.
Slightly relieved, I wondered what my next step should be.
Mongo, of course.
No, I am not talking about the fictional planet form the Flash Gordon serials that have become so relevant again with the rise of China, and the usurper Ming the Merciless. Nor legendary Detroit Lions tackle Alex Karras, who parlayed his fame from the game to a modest success as a screen actor.
It was connected, though, since his minor but memorable role in Mel Brook’s classic western “Blazing Saddles.” As the dim-witted thug Mongo, Karras famously punched out a horse, dropping the steed in its tracks, and responded to Sheriff Bart with the classic line "Don't know..." (turning to gaze straight into the camera) "...Mongo only pawn in game of life."
Me too, I sighed. Then I started tapping out a note to my Mongo.
Mongo played guard at the same Big-10 school that Alex did, and that is how he got tagged with the callsign. He retains the rugged upper body of an offensive lineman, and he is one of our Spook legends. He was on the ground in Vietnam, and in the course of managing a network of agents and unattended seismic sensors saw a full year of combat.
After his active career was done in thirty years, he joined Law Enforcement, and works at one of the regional fusion centers. If the Virginia Patrol would not tell me what the report was in the triple-eye LE database, maybe he could. I started to type the note:
“Mongo,
I hope this is nothing, but maybe not. I was out at the gun show at Dulles Expo Center yesterday to look for a Sig-Sauer SP-2022 for my son and a Sig Mosquito for me to plink with economically down at the farm.
The background checks always take too long, so I left my application and license with the dealer overnight, since we had to go back anyway with my son's orders, since he had an Illinois driver's license and needed to prove residency.
He got his in about an hour and a half, and I got a "research" response. I called Richmond and talked to the supervisor and gave her my full name, DOB and SSN, thinking it was the clearance thing that was taking longer.
She said, no, there is something pending in (presumably) a law enforcement database on a VICTOR HAIL SOCOTRA XXX-XX-6723 DOB 01/01/1951 on Havana Street in Aurora, Colorado.
I said that is impossible; I have not been to Aurora since intel school thirty-two years ago. I did lose my license last year (here) and had to get a replacement, but I have no idea how they could have got my social, although I was officially informed that a Clinton-era data disc with financial disclosure information, including mine, had gone missing from the National Archives a while back. So anything is possible.
My concern is that someone is using my identity. I identified myself as a retired naval officer, and asked Richmond to contact me with any information since I was concerned with identity theft.
Maybe it is no big deal and maybe it is a big deal. If I need to get to the bottom of what the information is, do you have access to the MCIS or III data bases?
My thanks in advance. My son got the .40 Sig; I got nothing except heartburn.
Cheers,
Vic”
Then I sat and looked at the screen for a while, and then went out on the balcony and looked down at the parking lot for a while, wondering. Even the Gun Show loophole would not help me out of this one if some joker was running around the West pretending to be me.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
vicsocotra.com | Subscribe to the RSS feed!