Jingling coins, squeals and cranking machines could be heard all the way at the smaller cottage outhouse a couple hundred yards away from the Frontier Casino, hidden squarely behind a tall black, high-security iron gate. Isi pressed the button on the intercom device to the effect of a static inquiry,

"Your name and purpose of visit." A female voice with a pedantic air.

"Isi's my name, I'm here to see the Shepherd."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, but you can tell him Isi's here. If Stony is there put him on and we can cut this interrogation."

A slumbering male voice replaces the previous one,

"Yeah?"

"Isi here damn it, beam me in, commander cock."

"Damn, too early in the day for you."

The iron gate slid open as Isi made his way to the front door of the ivy infested cottage which sprawled around the left in a crocodile repose. The terracotta tiled roof looked serene behind passing mist. A short native Indian in a copper colored parka made long strides across the visitor's lounge in his pointed leather boots. Isi held out a hand that the man received in one hand as he pulled Isi by the shoulder towards him with the other. In a quick springy move, the Indian's hands embraced Isi's back and sides while their chests bumped.

"Easy, Stony. I ain't carrying. Besides, Shep is gonna be mad if you squished his gift."

The receptionist, her head down, continued with her paper work. Isi looked around and focused on the winding corridor to the left.

"Sit down. Shep is with some suits. Could be long."

"I'm going in after ten minutes." Isi remained standing.

"We'll see." Stony receded back towards the far wall.

After five minutes, voices, laughter and footsteps echoed through the corridor. Two white business men in pressed slacks, suit and country club tans reeled in their laughter and released their hands from the grip of a heavy-set native Indian male in his fifties. As the white men turned and exited the building, Stony reached up to the other man's ear. The heavy-set man dressed in a purple silk robe, thick gem-studded sunglasses, and Hawaiian slippers, turned his gray pony-tailed head around to gaze at Isi.

"Isi, join me at the spa?"

"Let's go to the tea room, Shep."

"I just came from there."

"Go back."

"Stony, get the steam going. I'll need to sweat it out today. Rough when friends come to talk business."

Shep and Isi briskly moved down the corridor to a corner door that opened to a low and narrow room. Several deep cushioned wicker chairs waited around a plush redwood table running nearly the length of the fifteen feet room. Bowls of sliced papayas, pomegranates, shredded coconut, raisins, and crushed brown sugar assumed the center of the table. The men sat facing each other around the table.

"You ever just eat eggs for breakfast?" Isi snickered, drumming his fingers on the table.

"You forget I'm a diabetic, this is just for guests. I'm building resistance with these around me. Anyway, I'm long on chores and short on patience, so save me your wit and get on with it pronto, Kapish?"

"Pronto? Kapish? You sound more and more like those East Coast lawyers you work with."

"Isi, you best be done by the time my pipe is through." Shep brought a sandalwood pipe out of a pouch from his robe pocket and lay out the cleaning devices before him.

"Oh, almost forgot." Isi handed a hand-sized humidor to Shep who opened it and pulled out an olive-green cigar that spread an exotic aroma around the room.

"At least you still have a few graces. Cuban?" Shep wet his lips with a swipe of the tongue.

"None of that overrated shit. This is from the Dominican Republic. Light up, you'd like it."

As Shep carved a hole on the cigar's butt with a steel clip, Isi brought out three photos from his jacket and shoved them across the table. Shep eyed the pictures and took in a good cloud of smoke from the freshly lit cigar.

"You think I haven't seen peasants living in shacks before, Isi?"

Isi looked around and focused on the sprawling map of America mounted behind Shep's seat. Several tiny triangular flag-pins with the word, "Frontier" on them were placed on pivot points across the map: Arizona, South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington D.C., Colorado, Kansas, and Boston.

"Boston, hmm, that's new. When did that happen?" Isi leaned back on his chair.

"Why am I staring at some third-world peasants, Isi?"

"Come on, Shep. You put 'em there. What happened? Sudden cold feet with the immigrant laundering? Those two slickers shaking hands with you suggest that you lay low and bide time? Tell me." Isi arched back his arms and rested his head on the joint palms.

Shep moved forward in his chair and pressed a button under the table.

"Question is, why do you have so many questions?"

The door opened and three Indians looking like wrestler-prototypes, ambled in, all wearing tight t-shirts or tank tops over track suit pants.

"Pickle him." Shep ordered, getting up from his chair.

The three acted in unison and picked Isi off his chair. They ran out of the room carrying Isi over their heads like a victorious coach hoisted above his team after the Super Bowl, only Isi wasn't waving or sitting up. Smoking his cigar with one hand and inhaling a cut papaya in another, Shep strolled behind the Isi parade. Shep reached the pools towards the end of the cottage. A sunroof right over the clear green swimming pool and the adjacent jacuzzi, spread a yellow-green luminescence around the Square corridor's walls. The three men had stripped Isi bare and had him immersed in the bubbling jacuzzi, revealing just his face above water. Isi didn't bat an eye. He strained his eyes sideways to digest the mammoth figure of Shep standing on the edge of the corridor, smoking and squeezing the papaya slice.

"Anything on him?" Shep's voice echoed in the hollow corridors.

"Not a pin. Lefty even probed his ass with a finger." The middle guy said as all three chuckled.

"Finger lickin good, that's what I'm told." Isi, in a shaky voice.

"You're deadmeat." Lefty shoved Isi's face down under water and held him there.

"That's enough. Take him out, dry him." Shep threw the papaya slice at lefty. He then bent down to the jacuzzi to wash his hand.

Shep ground out the cigar in a stone ashtray next to the pool and proceeded to the backyard. The unpaved mud of the backyard rose up to a sudden draft that shook some dew off the bougainvillea dangling in the west corner of the yard. Shep sat on one of the picnic tables and looked at the carefully guided vine growth through steel wires overhead. He walked east towards an anthill, about two feet high, flourishing against the fence wall. Reaching inside his robe he pulled out his penis and began to urinate on the edge of the anthill. He took a deep breath of the morning air.

"Aliento del dios, even the gods have bad breath some days. Hmm, what a day." He announced loudly over Isi's noisy footsteps behind him.

"If you stopped pissing back here, it could help a bit. At least dig a hole in the ground like a civilized person." Isi looked no different than when he arrived, except for a tired look in his eyes and reddened ears.

"I was feeding my babies, Isi. Look, the ants love the sugar in my urine. How do you feel?" Shep asked with concern in his eyes. A few seconds passed.

"What, you're asking me? I thought it was a rhetorical question."

"You should stick to rhetorical questions. That way you can keep your clothes on."

"You work with someone for awhile, you think some things like trust are granted. Next time, I'll come packing." Isi sat down on a picnic table and put his feet up.

"If I could remember every guy who went down because he got careless with someone he knew, I'll overload my memory."

"I guess that sums up everything. I don't know what I hoped to find, coming here. When I was with you, you needed to establish your name. It made sense you got into every money making scheme. But you're still peddling illegal immigrants with all this money flowing in with your casinos? You're just like any other. . ." Isi planted his elbows on the table and placed his chin on the nest of his palms.

"Is that what you think I want? This is not about money. Hell, I lose money doing this. I just get back and give back."

"Get back at who?"

"See that anthill. That is unique. You know why? Only ants live in it. Historically what happens is ants build a hill with so much effort and toil only to have a snake takeover and live in it. I drove out the snake and gave it back to the ants. They were afraid to reclaim it but slowly they came back, now it's a flourishing colony. Look at all the life there." Shep pointed at the anthill with pride.

"Nice mission, only, you charge the immigrant ants who come to you."

"I do it to buy time with them. To prepare them for life in America. I set them free after they work for me to pay off their debts. If I did it for free they wouldn't appreciate it and will get in way over their heads in America. I worked it all out. I make them stay in a wing of the casino hotel. They get free room and board while they work for the casino, doing dishes, waiting, cooking, handing change, whatever they're suitable for. They only work one shift, morning or night. When they don't work they learn English, learn to read signs, bus/train schedules, get fake driver's license and learn to use a checking account, ATMs. Everything that can get them to stand on their two feet. I particularly make sure, women know these things so they can keep a leash on their husbands. Their first jobs in the outside world, I coordinate so they get direct deposit pay, this way the men don't go and drink all their money on payday like they did in Mexico, Central America or Vietnam. I even arrange for vasectomies for men who have two kids. I convinced father Murphy from St. Genesius to talk to the immigrants about birth control operations and contraceptives. Father Murphy, bless him, disagrees with the Pope on birth control issues thankfully."

"So how does all this explain the shacks behind the Harvest marshes? How come they're not living in your casino wing?"

"Unfortunately, word gets around about what I do. People who move on from here and make it out in the world, send for their friends and sweethearts. When my scouts go to the docks in border towns, thousands are waiting to be selected. They offer their bodies, even their kidneys and livers in return for a ticket here. What can I do, Isi? I offer them protection, but I can't let them out either. Anyone who trespasses will be severely warned so others won't try. If more people try then I'll have to warn them permanently. I can only move two hundred a week. Any more will arouse too much suspicion. But these people have left worse situations. The swamp living seems unfair to your Ashram student who took those pictures, but these people would rather stay there and wait to get into my program, then look forward to nothing back home."

"I'm starting to see some new faces in the Jinx quarter strip joints. Somehow, some of your refugees-in-waiting get caught up in the sleaze too."

"Greed is universal. I promise hope and I deliver, but I can't shackle them before they get their chance. If they know what's good for them, they'll go through me. Or else, they turn a trick at Jinx or get mixed up with Shoh and them guys at Grace for something extra. I can't prevent all bad things, nor do I have an ego that big."

"To think I gave you the idea to launder immigrants in the trucks meant for slot machine rotation. What have I done?"

"A world of good, Isi. A world of good. Your idea was a stroke of genius, richly rewarded by the 5 acre land where the Ashram stands."

"I know, I know. You don't have to keep reminding me."

"It's a trait I learned from Americans. They are never shy of reminding you of a favor they did for you."

"Is that what this morning's meeting was, with those two white men?"

"No, that's a dog with a different kind of fleece. I'm thinking of some steam boat, ocean liner ventures. Those two this morning, they're tight with a high ranking official in the Coastal Guard."

"What kind of ventures? No, maybe that's a question that'll get me wet again."

"Now, can we go to the spa?" Shep proceeded indoors.

"Your boys already gave me a first class bath."

"The tea room meetings end up in the pool a lot. But if we go to the backyard or the spa, we are all friends, kapish?"

"Shep, the thing about guarded rituals is that they make you predictable. When you're predictable, you're vulnerable and ready for the take." Isi looked at Shep, square in the eye.

Shep paused for a few moments and then broke into a thundering laugh.

"See, that's what I miss. A round the clock philosopher. Why don't you come back to work for me? Hell, no one could turn a profit at the poker lounge since you left. We got taken big there several times this year."

"No more tricks for me. I'm going to pay Carmen a visit. Is she here today?"

"Yeah, she is. No more tricks, huh? Trick is Carmen's maiden name. Go get your massage and meet me for lunch and a game of chess. I haven't competed in a while."

"That's where we differ. You compete, I play." Isi muttered without looking back. He opened a glass door along the winding corridor marked, PARLOR.