The Old Turk's Load Read Online Free Page A

rabble rousing would end? Ever stopped to consider that there might be different
22 GREGORY GIBSON
    ways to introduce change into a hidebound system? And what was the system? Surely more than a bunch of white old farts— Johnson, McNamara, Hoover. What was its true nature? How had it ingrained itself so deeply?
    As an inevitable consequence of this line of inquiry, Gloria began also to question her relationship with Kevin Gallagher. She’d naively assumed that she’d seduced him into granting her access to a secret and exciting world. But now she was beginning to realize that the only thing Kevin ever really did was run head trips on the people in the foco about who was the most committed revolutionary. It was all about power with him, which was all that the sex was, too. He was as big a bully as any of her father’s thugs—worse, in fact. At least some of them supported families.
    She’d already run her personal finances to the limit, posting bail for protesters and helping Irene research the cases of the most important political prisoners, and had felt fine doing it—a part of something larger than herself. But Kevin kept insisting on the need for funds, which forced her to have to keep explaining, in front of the others, that her own access to family capital was years away. It was humiliating. That was when she began to feel the first tug of a strange sense that grew stronger over the months.
    There’d been many group discussions about money. Gallagher was all for stealing what they could from Mundi Enterprises. Gloria pointed out that the assets of her father’s company consisted primarily of slums in Newark, New Jersey, which would be difficult to steal. So he switched tacks and went on a toot about kidnapping for ransom, an approved revolutionary tactic in Latin America and one much discussed of late in radical circles. He kept pressing her, digging for information about her father as well as certain company employees. When she told him that Julius Roth was the one man the company couldn’t do without, Kevin got excited.They’d abduct Roth, he announced, and hold him at a remote spot. Maybe they’d kill him, maybe not. Gloria informed Gallagher that Julius Roth would be much more likely to kill him, and when Kevin actually got a look at the formidable Roth the idea quickly evaporated.
    However, in the course of doing groundwork for a possible heist at Mundi Enterprises, Gloria found out about Daddy’s windfall. This brought matters into focus.
    Roth had spoken of the old Turk’s load only generally, as an unanticipated situation over in Newark with huge potential and much risk. Her subsequent questioning of Seamster convinced her that Mundi Enterprises was holding something big. When he let it slip to her that the Mafia was posing a problem, Gloria figured it had to be drugs—what else would’ve belonged to the mob? Money or jewelry, maybe, but something that easy to convert would be gone already. Pot and acid weren’t valuable enough.That left heroin or pills or coke. The bummer was that, full of pride at her own brilliance, she’d bragged about the Newark score to Kevin.
    Now she was almost at the end of the long process of realizing how badly she’d been fooled by his square shoulders and intense eyes. He’d tricked her in some fundamental way. Used her, when all along she thought she was using him. Gloria was just beginning to understand how angry that made her. But it wasn’t until she remembered the lioness that she understood the feeling that had been building inside her all these months. It wasn’t anger. It was shame.
Kevin climbed off and went to lick himself. Gloria regarded him with intense distaste. Irene was getting inside her head.
The Situation with Kelly
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    orbert was a keen student of human nature. He knew it wasn’t enlightenment that made Kelly the way he was. Although he sometimes took on the amnesia of the habitual drunkard, Kelly’s condition, in fact, predated his alcohol