When I thought about Chaucer’s last visitation, the more I grew afraid about having done nothing to cause Wolverine trouble.  My fear of both of them transfixed me.  Did I have an escape?  
As I thought the problem through, I recalled Colonel Law, a Wolverine alias at Fort Leonard Wood doing work with sappers and CBRNE.  The cover was that Colonel Law was TDY (temporary duty) at Fort Leonard Wood.  Since Wolverine had blackmailed his way into a TS SCI clearance that was ticketed up the wazoo, he had access to countless lore about bombs, radiation, chemicals, biologics, radiation, nuclear, and explosives.  Given his status and Uncle Cornpone’s lack of any obvious jurisdiction, I could insinuate Colonel Law’s possession of knowledge about Wolverine’s criminal doings.  And it wasn’t a lie.  What Law new, Wolverine knew too.  

Tattling on Law may seem suicidal, especially if Cornpone met Colonel Law in uniform, but I foresaw the risks.  After making an anonymous call to Cornpone, I rang Wolverine, warning him that an unknown source in Pulaski County had left a message that the gumshoe Cornpone had been making discrete inquiries about Colonel Law.

Once he had digested my news, Wolverine began to howl.  Then he pressed for names of possible snitches.  I protested that I had no idea.    Perhaps a friend of a source, but it didn’t even sound like anybody I knew.

Wolverine had to move into high gear to clean up the mess.  He began by creating the impression at NGA that somebody named Cornpone in Pulaski County was on the Chinese payroll.  He recommended banning Cornpone from Fort Leonard Wood as a prophylaxis against him harassing and interfering with the work of Colonel Law.  According to Wolverine, Colonel Law was no longer at Fort Leonard Wood.  His command needed him for a dark op.  The mere mention of Colonel Law’s name by the likes of Cornpone could imperil the good colonel. 

When Cornpone tried to enter Fort Leonard Wood, he was pulled aside by the MPs, frisked, had his sidearm confiscated, and told he was persona non grata at Fort Leonard Wood.  Baffled, Cornpone kept repeating, “I am a Pulaski County Sheriff doing my duty.  I must see the base commander on a matter of urgency.”  A master sergeant sent to the gate to resolve the situation rejected Cornpone’s appeals to see a General.  Instead, he told Cornpone, “I don’t care who you say you are or what badge you hide behind.  From what I hear, you’re a stinking chunk of crap.  Be glad I’m not arresting you for assault.  Now get the F out of here.” 

Cornpone demanded the return of his sidearm.  The Master Sergeant sneered, “Have your boss send down an honest deputy to get it.”  

Cornpone wanted to cry.  Instead, he drove home.  He told his Captain that the Army had taken his Glock 19 and would only return it to a deputy.   Efforts to reassure his Captain that he had done nothing wrong got him nowhere.  In fact, the captain wondered why Cornpone was at Fort Leonard Wood anyway.  “It’s not in our jurisdiction.”

Even worse, this humiliating tale made its way into the Pulaski newspaper.  Based on the content of the story only Cornpone or the Captain could have been its source.  When I read the story, I felt I could eliminate Cornpone as the source.  

The captain I later learnt was a nice gay guy with a taste for thin, handsome coppers and detectives.  Alas, Cornpone was not that.  Once the story was out, it was easy to imagine Cornpone drinking glass after glass of Early Times to heat his mangled ego. If I had to guess, I’d bet that Cornpone cried in his whisky. 

With all the work Cornpone was making for him, I don’t think he would have sympathy for humiliated coppers.  When he came home from a hard day fixing things, Wolverine was aghast when he looked into his estate’s salon and saw his mum, Constance Lawless accepting a Beefeater martini with three large Spanish olives.  He pecked her on the cheek and asked for a class of chilled Evian. 

Booze had made Constance blunt.  She commented, “When in London, Lord Caligula told me what a naughty boy you’ve been. Perhaps you’re playing outside your league snookums?”  She went on to lecture him on the risks of big-boy games with the likes of Putin and Xi.

“It’s easier to imagine yourself to be their match than to be their match.”  To control himself he lit a Sherman cigarillo.  He felt pain when Constance swatted the Sherman out of his lips as he began to take his first draw. 

“Don’t be impertinent.  How dare you smoke in front of your own mother.”

As Wolverine gave me the history of Constance’s visit, he confessed he thought of mauling her when she slapped him but limited himself to naming men he knew smoked in front of her.  Nonplussed, Constance replied, “They’re men, darling, they’re men.”

Within an hour, Wolverine was on Zoom raving to me.  As I started at him on my monitor, Wolverine was pounding on his desk.  “The cheek of her.  This is how she addresses me?  Before she started running her mouth, my butler mentioned that before that huge martini, she had drank vodka from the freezer whilst eating schmaltz herring.  The cow made her whoring fanny at home she did, then spent an hour insulting me.  The C word is too kind for the likes of her.” 

I have to admit. There are mysteries beyond me.  The trinity, the creation of the universe, and sons and their mothers.