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Excerpt from Book:
INTRODUCTION
to the
New “Big Reveal” Edition of Secret Agent Gals
You know the kind of long lost documents Dan
Brown and Daniel Silva are always finding,
usually after gunfights, stabbings, beatings,
torture, getting dropped out of plans, tossed
into a snake pit (I think that was Indiana
Jones), the inconveniences Robert Langdon and
Gabriel Allon have come to expect before the Big
Reveal? Where they come up with the long lost
(but now recovered) document that proves
everything we thought we knew about Jesus, the
Catholic Church, the Founding Fathers, Pearl
Harbor, and the Kennedy assassination was just
180 degrees from the truth. Have I forgot
anyone? Elvis?
Everything we believed (and that Mom taught us)
about everything and everybody was just a crock.
So now we’ve got the true gen, as Hemingway
would say, kind of a bargain for 30 bucks and a
few hours of reading.
This new edition
of Secret Agent Gals is something like
that, with a twist. The first edition – the
first nineteen chapters of this version – was a
best seller in 1950, the story of how two
celebrity art collectors and museum founders,
Peggy Guggenheim
and Baroness Hilla Rebay, were recruited by J.
Edgar Hoover to expose the Nazi spies who
infiltrated the painters they helped escape
from the Nazis.
Everyone who read that book knows how the Secret
Agent Gals won the “Good War” against Hitler and
his Nazi ratbastards, not to mention the sneaky
Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor. Also how
they kept the Stalin’s Commie ratbastards from
getting the A-Bomb until the heroes of the
Strategic Air Command were good and ready to
stop the Red Hitler’s plans to kill us all.
(What I’m trying to say in that last sentence,
which got a little confusing, is that Stalin aka
‘The Red Hitler” planned to dump A-Bombs on
America, and the G-Girls stopped him. Sorry.)
And everyone knows how Baroness Hilla Rebay
built the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in
New York, and how she and Peggy Guggenheim put
together the Museum’s great collection of
modern painting and sculpture, you know, the
kind of art that doesn’t look like anything you
or I or any sane person would buy and in fact
looks like something your five-year-old or a
chimp named J. Fred Muggs cudda done. You and I
can both see through that kind of crap, but
let’s not go there. Some people like it and pay
big bucks for it, but there’s a sucker born,
etc, etc.
We thought we knew all that. But...
Now, because of the declassification of
supersecret FBI files in response to Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) requests (really demands)
by Crusading Truth-Collector and Lie-Detector
Richard “Gid” Powers (Me), we learn everything
we believed about XXXXX and XXXXX and especially
XXXXX (no spoilers here, sorry) was just a load
of bullshit, and that’s putting it mildly.
As I prepared this “Big Reveal” Chapter Twenty
for publication, I had to figure out how
exactly to drop this bombshell on you all. I
decided that readers should share my (that is,
Truth Collector and Lie Detector Richard “Gid”
Powers’s) own excitement as he (I) discovered
the truth.
And so what you now have is (first) the original
first edition, word for word as it appeared in
1950, followed by the author’s own suppressed
account of how and why the G-Gals embargoed
Chapter Twenty, and then . . . the earthshaking
revelations of Chapter Twenty itself. And the
FBI’s desperate attempts to intimidate me (Truth
Collector and Lie Detector Richard “Gid” Powers)
from publishing the TRUTH, the truth that will
shatter what is left of the Bureau’s reputation
already in tatters from its Hillary E-mail and
Russian Collusion fiascoes. So now the truth can
finally be told. But again, no spoilers here! Ya
gotta read to the end to get to the good stuff.
As you probably have gathered, we (meaning you)
have gotten a little more sensitive to
“offensive” reading material over the past
seventy years since the first edition. A sp*de
is no longer a sp*de but a manually operated
digging implement. What you are going to read is
not suitable for children under five or some of
you snowflakes due to filthy language (the
s-word, the f-word, and the c-word all over the
place) and if you know what those words mean you
should stop right now and wash your mouth out
with brown soap with pieces of Brillo® pad stuck
into it.
There are also scenes in which cigarettes are
smoked (which can cause, according to the
Attorney of General of Something or Other,
serious harm to pregnant women and operators of
machinery like snow blowers, chain saws, or
electric toothbrushes), so if you find yourself
reaching for a pack of unfiltered Camels® or
Kools® after reading this book, don’t say I
didn’t warn ya.
There is also one scene in which our heroes
“black” up with burnt cork, and if your tender
little woke hearts can’t take that kind of shock
you better skip that section (but it was for a
good cause, sneaking up on murderous Nazi and
Commie ratbastards with flashlights just like
John “Duck” Wayne in The Green Berets or
Leonardo “Leo” DiCaprio in Inglourious
Basterds), and if you’re so goddam
sensitive, and you don’t think trying to stop
the Holocaust is worth bending a few rules, I
wanna know right now if you’re willing to admit
or deny that the Holocaust did or didn’t happen,
and that calls for a simple “yes” or “no”
answer, you equivocating phony fuck. I nailed
ya.
There
is also a scene where a Secret Agent guy dresses
up like a Secret Agent girl, and if you’re not
willing to grant “trans” Americans equal rights
under the law and equal employment
opportunities (and equal pay) you’re not the
kind of reader I want.
Okay, I think I’ve covered all the “trigger”
stuff that might give Me-too-ers and “Cancel
Everything” vigilantes heart attacks, so you can
start reading.
Part 1
CHAPTER 1
The Baroness Hilla Rebay rang the bell and the
door of the split-level ranch in Washington
Northeast opened. She found herself staring into
the business end of a .45 caliber Police
Special. She raised her eyes to the bulldog
features of the man holding the gun, J. Edgar
Hoover, a face familiar to the millions of kids
who belonged to his Post Toasties® Junior
G-man Club and their parents who believed
anything whipped up by Hoover’s crack publicity
wizards in the FBI’s Crime Records Division.
“You must be the Baroness,” Hoover said,
greeting her with a grin as phony as the smiley
face on the welcome mat at Sing-Sing.
“And you must be the gentleman who’s gonna get
his fucking arm broken if he doesn’t put down
that gun.”
J. Edgar Hoover, reflexes crippled from decades
of breathing lead dust while trying
(unsuccessfully) to pass his proficiency test at
the Bureau’s gun range and slowed even more from
years of pounding down martinis with Walter
Winchell (his #1 informant) at New York’s Club
21, failed to lower his pistol quickly
enough to suit the Baroness. She sidestepped,
grabbed his gun arm and twisted hard, sending
the hapless hero’s sidearm clattering to the
parquet floor, and sending the man himself up in
the air for a full-gainer with a twist.
The Baroness scooped up the revolver as Hoover
almost landed on his feet but lost style points
as he slipped on the first banana peel of the
slippery yellow trail the Baroness spotted
leading to the living room. The Ol’
Trail-of-Banana-Peels Burglar-Baffler, the
Baroness thought, pretty primitive for the
head of a modern scientific law enforcement
outfit.
“That’s no way to treat Public Hero Number One,”
the director blubbered as he struggled to his
feet, only to slip and fall on the second banana
peel as he bent to retrieve the fedora lost
during that first tumble.
The Baroness toyed with the pistol. “This thing
loaded?” she wondered and answered her question
by shooting out six bulbs from the foyer
chandelier. I guess it was.
As Hoover once again struggled to his feet, the
Baroness counted the remaining banana peels and
calculated eight more pratfalls, summersaults,
and other aerial acrobatics, for a total of ten
– Study arithmetic, kids, comes in handy
– before the Crimestopper Commander in Chief
would make it to the living room couch. So she
stepped over the once-again supine (Supine
means flat on his ass, kids. Study your
vocabulary) crimefighter to score a drink on her
own.
“Gimme back my gun,” Hoover whined.
“You forgot the magic word.” “Magic word? What’s
that? Oh! How about ‘Hocus-pocus’? – No? –
‘Alakazam’? – ‘Booga-Booga’? – ‘Mother May I’?”
“Getting close.”
“Aw, come on. Gimme a hint.”
“Sorta rhymes with ‘police.’”
The Sage of Scientific Sleuthing couldn’t think
of the Magic Word as he slipped and fell on the
third banana peel.
In the living room a well-dressed lady was
doubled over in laughter and a tall handsome
gent wearing what the Baroness recognized as
the G-Man de rigeur of three-piece navy
blue pin-striped suit, wing-tipped shoes, and a
snap-brim fedora was trying unsuccessfully to
hide his hilarity by covering his mouth with
both hands. He finally gave up and slapped his
hands on this thighs and yelled, “You look like
such a moron, Boss. I tol’ ya that ol’ banana
skin trick wasn’t going to fool any burglar who
wasn’t already brain dead.”
“Like him,” the lady added, pointing at the
Galumphing Gumshoe, who had just gone down for
the fourth time.
The Baroness stuck out her hand to the tall dark
stranger, and said, “I’m Hilla Rebay.”
“Clyde Tolson, Public Hero Number Two, and best
buddy of the boy on his back over there,” as
Hoover went down for what the Baroness
calculated was the fifth time.
“And you I’d know anywhere: Peggy, you slut,”
she said to the finely-coutured female, as the
Director hit the deck for the sixth time.
“Won’t somebody help me?” the Nation’s Top Cop
wailed.
“Why, Hilla, you gold-digger, such an unwelcome
surprise. I don’t know why we’re both here, but
I haven’t had a drink yet either. Clyde?”
The much-disheveled Law-Enforcement Legend
finally crawled into the living room after three
more slip-and-falls. “I think that was the last
of them,” he told them cheerfully as he tried to
stand up. “Whoops!” he went down again. “Forgot
about that one. I think that was the last of
‘em, supposed to finish off the burglar. The
grand finale. Oh well. I could use one too,
Clyde.”
“One-two, quite a way with words,” the Baroness
laughed. “And by the way, XYZ.”
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