01.1 Selenelion

Dan woke up to find a letter slid under the door. A letter from the bank. It read that the bank decided to close his account. Only last night, Dan Nielsen received a remittance to bring his account to neutral. His bank was waiting for the moment and took that chance coldly. He was broke.

Dan Nielsen ran his restaurant business in San Francisco borrowing money on ODs; overdrafts. With this he was unable to pay rent and overhead bills. Then came a foreclosure when the landlord demanded the property. He eventually began to pack.

There came this new party that the landlord was negotiating with to lease his property. They were Chinese with pinched faces. Indeed, they paid spot cash and took over the business.

With the new economic recovery plans, so-called ‘Kemp-Roth Tax Cuts’ or Reaganomics, it cut taxes to the wealthy, including estate owners like his landlord. Still, his business paid 28% tax. Investors with big money took the opportunity taking over bankrupt small businesses. They came from all over the world. In San Francisco, they were the Chinese.

A couple of years later, back at home in Solana Beach City, Dan Nielsen sat reading a paper and listening to an old song, ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window!’ by Patti Page who happened to be in town gigging around in San Diego.

Dan filled a job as a temporary tennis coach at a local school. He was a good tennis player.

And spent his spare time working as a lifeguard on the beach.

Going through the yellow pages, he came across an advertisement of a storage unit auction in San Diego. He enlisted.

First day, it went very well. He grabbed a bin with restaurant furniture. With the right connections, he sold them to a customer in San Francisco to earn a profit. Next day, he wasn’t able to find a bin. The light fading and Dan desperately bid for one of the last three bins.

The auctioneer said, “This bin holds items from a circus in Corpus Christi.” The red lock was cut and the door rolled up. They were staring at their own awkward images reflected on a row of distorting mirrors. Dan took a step closer and it appeared as if he kicked his face with his foot. They could not see much of the inside since the mirrors blocked a view. It looked pretty empty though.

Having faced with a couple of rivalries, he didn’t let it go. Dan bid hard and claimed it at 450 dollars. “Way too high!” cried the bidders.

Dan got no cash left to bid for the rest that day. Again, another bin blocked by a screen in the middle. One of the regulars claimed it at 1900 dollars defeating Dan’s two rivalries. That made him happy.

Last bin of the day was full of cardboard boxes. Nobody could tell what was inside. Dan’s two rivalries bid for them and won. All those boxes were empty. They were kicking them out of the door. Angered and lost. Dan felt overjoyed.

Just then the other buyer rolled out a brand-new Lamborghini with its headlights on. How on earth did he miss it! Dan’s two rivalries sat their stunned. Dan could not help it without expressing his excitement. He mocked at the two.

However, it was a replica of a white Countach LP-400 built in Brazil with a V12 engine. It gave the perfect ‘vroom’ he felt under the skin.

Dan arrived home with his items. He could find nothing worth but a pile of junk gathered in his backyard. Mardi Gras costumes, some musical instruments in good condition, pom-poms and props, mirrors and ropes. He’d need a buyer.

Then he dug out a hard camera case from one of the boxes. Dan opened it to find a Canon AE-1 camera, an FD mount 200 mm zoom lens, a normal lens, a wide-angle lens and some accessories. The padding was gone. There were piles of sheets holding negative strips in the sleeves, a few fashion magazines, some kraft paper envelopes full of photographs, a handful of undeveloped Kodachrome, some highly embroidered and transparent purple lingerie and a black masquerade mask with purple feathers.

Dan glanced at a stack of photographs. In one of the packs, it displayed a façade of a building and a man passing under the door. Another picture showed a signboard for a ‘Hulsen & Quinn Attorneys at Law’.

State Capitol of Wisconsin caught in some of the snaps told him that all came from Madison.

Another stack of pictures portrayed this large man with grey hair, reddish cheeks and blue eyes. And his car; a deep emerald green Lincoln Mark VII with North Carolina’s ‘First in Flight’ license plate reading CYC-495. His car had been covertly followed by the photographer that he could tell obviously. There appeared no dates or notes on the prints.

Another collection exhibited an elegant mansion with stucco walls standing by a scenic street with trees in the sidewalks. A premise that contained a garden covered of camellia bushes and a swimming pool. Interior of the house was not in the photos. Two digits ‘69’ hang by the door and the placard read; ‘Anton Cyril House – Private Residence’. The Lincoln was pulled back into a side path between this mansion and another.

Amongst other things in the case, he knocked a 10 ml bottle containing 99% nicotine and a hypodermic syringe. There were newspaper cuttings and photographs in B&W large prints of two women. Dan felt an inner voice telling him everything about this case was crap.