Flavio’s Excellent Adventure with “Anonymous”: Part II
“I met a waitress in Washington, she was with the Russians, too.” (Apologies to Warren Zevon)
The Confession
Flavio and I met at Noula’s Coffee Shop in historic La Fonda Hotel on Historic Taos Plaza. We discussed his adventures over cups of steaming Joe.
“Ay caramba, she fooled me,” Flavio said. “There’s no Pendejo like a Viejo.” Like the sign man in Taos, Flavio admitted he occasionally fell for the pretty woman, walking down the street, especially in the big city. “Pretty woman, the kind you loved to meet, he hummed. “I knew I’d seen her before, La Machina. She was no pole dancer.”
“The night before after work, I stopped for a cocktail at the Trump Hotel in D.C. She
played me for a sap at the bar. My guard was down. Pinche puta. If I’d been in Taos, I’d have known I was in La Cucaracha. It was a honey trap, un raton.”
“I found a White House pass in the trash and was saving it for one of my grandchildren who was visiting from Taos, but she smiled at me. After two shots of Mezcal (Del Maguey), I gave it to her. Bueno. Blame Ron Cooper. I better stick to cerveza,” he said. “Can’t get drunk.”
The next day, Flavio says La Machina, visitor’s pass around her neck, falls out from the White House
tour for the public and stops off in the West Wing. Nobody notices the presence of another bimbo in Trumplandia. “I saw her slip a flash drive into the surveillance server and her image disappeared. It was replaced by a hologram, featuring a standard white male republican operative. “Maybe Porter, Pence, Kavanagh, WASPS all look alike to me,” said the peripatetic custodian.
Flavio described how Sarah Huckabee Sanders emerged from a press conference, headed for the powder room. La Machina, now a look-a-like hologram (see above) nodded at her and dropped a flash drive on the floor in front of a reporter from the Times. They both bent over to pick it up and Flavio saw the switch. Sanders, diverted by adjusting her eye-liner courtesy the historic Nancy Reagan oval mirror in the press room foyer, missed the action.
Flavio’s description of espionage reminded me of a Le Carre novel. Everything you want to know about Russian espionage, and the mole, called Gerald, now Trump, including the Steele Dossier, looks like plagiarism to Smiley’s People. Putin learned from Le Carre’s Karla at Moscow Centre how to produce a drama aided and abetted by the designer Gucifer 2.0. Robert Mueller is playing George Smiley for reals.
“To me, He? She? It? is anonymous,” said Flavio. “But it will drive Trump nuts.” He paused. “I think that local pole dancer is the leader of a sleeper cell aqui en Taos. Better warn the pinche sign man!” He licked his lips, dropped a sawbuck on the table, and slipped out the side door into the nether regions of Saki’s former Hotel.
In other news, I shared a bowl of red chile with Emma Gonzales last night at Las Pistoleras in El Prado. She’s the real deal. Arsenio, despite the ravages of chemo and radiation, got up and took a few steps after Emma said a few words and touched his shoulder. Ay, Milagro.