Once I grasped that the Russians had swiped a stealth bomb from terrorists in Goma, and killed them to boot, I wondered how that bomb would discover itself to the world.  With Putin, you always had to doubt any benign goals.  At the same time, I knew from Melania that Putin loved and was loved by Donald.  Melania once exclaimed while scratching my tummy “If only I was loved so much!”  

As soon as I heard that and noticed the Medea look in her eyes, I did what I could to soothe her.  She adored it when I made biscuits on her torso.  After ten or so exhausting minutes of massaging her, she regained her sanity.  When you see a woman with a Medea gaze, you should wet yourself before leaving her to her own devices. 

I never thought she would kill Barron, but Ivanka and Don junior killings seemed fair game.  For a few minutes, I thought of touting a Mr Clean bot. Let Mr Clean make clean kills.  Instead, I kept my mouth shut.  Telling her about what a Mr Clean could do would, as the Great Nixon once said, “be wrong.”  

Perhaps I was too cautious.  Melania has never to date killed any of Donald’s dubious children.  Of course, with Trumps, you never know how many bastards they have sired.  Who knows if Melania has rid us of any of them?

If I had to guess, Uncle Cornpone would have had better luck tracing Melania’s possible murders than trying to pin anything on Mr Wolverine Lawless.  Cornpone was spending far too much time at the Huddle House for his health.  He’d go early for orders of chicken-fried steak with eggs sunny-side up and hash browns.  As often as not, he’d order fried pickles to go.  Unlike svelte, aristocratic Wolverine, Cornpone started putting pounds on pounds.  A spare tire blew up around his middle that spilled over his ever-tighter waistband.  His face got redder too.  You couldn’t, to be fair, blame the red, bloated, mottled face on the Huddle House.  Cornpone liked sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner with a jug of Early Times.  To put all his physical deterioration on the Huddle House ignores other causes.

Cornpone would sit in his recliner, simmering in Early Times, and ponder how to link guilty Wolverine to the death of the two G-men. Sometimes, when very drunk, Cornpone would practice conjuring a tale that put Wolverine in the Huddle House when the skeezer OD’d on the toilet.   When sobriety arrived with the dawn, that idea died with the dawn. 

Cornpone did begin to think that the drop in Pulaski County’s population of bums and tramps had something to do with Wolverine.  Where were these malodorous losers disappearing to?  It was as if, like the G-men, like mike’s published papers, the G-men vanished into the universe without a trace. So, the Lost Hobo, reasons Cornpone, must be my beacon.

While Cornpone had such thoughts, he had no idea Wolverine Lawless was not even in Pulaski County.  Laden with intelligence for Fort Leonard Wood and NGA, Wolverine lounged in a suite at Claridge’s, chatted with various CEOs, diplomats, intelligence operatives, munitions engineers, cyberneticists, and Oxonian classicists at Claridge’s teas.  

I would never have learned about Cornpone’s thoughts if he was not a compulsive diarist and a compulsive bullshitter.  All you had to do as a journalist if you wished to know Cornpone’s thinking, all I had to do, was to get to know the waitresses at the Hub Lounge or Bulgogi House in Saint Robert.  Beware, though. You can get fatter than an Army wife if you take to eating Hunter Schnitzel at the Hub or Beef Bulgogi with Yaki Mandu as an opener.  You could learn even more about Cornpone if you headed into downtown Waynesville to Hoppers Pub.  You again risk your boyish figure if you order the Rings and Things or, for humans with a sweet tooth, fried cheesecake.

None of this resembles what Wolverine was eating. He might sit in the Fumoir at Claridge’s having a Grosvenor (Christian Douan, Macino Rosso, Raspberry eau de vie, with an absinthe finish).  He liked to have Dorset crab and radish to open.  He enjoyed a beef tartar with red chicory, sunflower seeds, and shallot crumble. For his main course, he liked the roasted Cauliflower with parsley tahini and pistachio.  The peas with mint worked well as a side and the dark chocolate fondant with coffee ice cream was irresistible as a pudding.  

Wolverine and Cornpone, you see, lived in different culinary worlds.  In truth, Wolverine pitied the lower classes and blamed their parents for begetting children that grow up to be Cornpones.  Wolverine did understand, being smart, the necessity of having poor people about to serve him.  It was the contumely of a middling man like Cornpone that offended Wolverine.  

Whenever Wolverine called, he bragged about how our work for Putin in African had exceeded even great expectations.  He did say he had to hit some European cities before he headed back to “grunt” work in Missouri.  He told me he had already made a reservation at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski. He had meetings with the mighty to make big decisions.  One thing I was sure of, at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski, “there ain’t no angels livin’ there.”