Tadek Korecki’s Cylinder

PART 1.

Tadek Korecki was a gangly, hook-nosed beanpole with bad teeth and even worse breath. He must have been around fifty-five, although the real number was anybody’s guess. People like Korecki seem to be born old. His baby pictures must’ve been horrific. He wore some polyester getup that was part Nehru jacket and stained leisure suit. The color? Don’t ask. And that smell. Sufffice to say that if you’d eaten anything before meeting him your meal would be in your lap. He smelled like a well-ridden horse, emitting wafts of dried and refried sweat from days earlier. I literally had to air out the waiting room after he left. That November day was cold – I remember cursing about all the heat I was losing out the windows. But the odor wouldn’t leave – it clinged to the walls and furniture like a putrid cooking grease. Clients wise-cracked about the barf smell for weeks later. No doubt about it – Korecki stunk.

My name is Jon Vlchek. I’m a lawyer in Linden, NJ. Korecki’s English was a bad as my Polish – which I took for granted was his native tongue. Actually, he was Ukrainian, born in Poland. Polish and Ukrainian are extremely close in the language department, hence our communication was a polyglot affair of pidgeon Polish and tortured American phrases Korecki obviously picked up watching Kojak and Magnum, PI reruns on European television stations.

New Jersey had recently experienced a resurgence of Eastern European immigration and cities like Linden were actually advertising for police candidates conversant in Slavic languages. Oddly enough, youth gangs were a problem amoung these recent arrivals.

Gone were the days when Holy Mother the Church and Dad’s iron fist kept miscreant kids at bay – today’s toughs were into the get-rich-any-way-you-can school of philosophy. Drugs and Rap music were their passions. It was almost surreal seeing adolescent kids with broad slavic cheekbones and blonde hair in baggy jeans hanging out blasting quintessentially american rap artists on their car radios.

Their “slammed” (mostly) Japanese cars had speaker systems installed in the trunks and were capable of obscene volume and boosted bass spectrums you could hear blocks away. In a confined, congested and overpopulated town like Linden, noise was a problem – and these kids made it worse. Rap music taught immigrant kids all the language skills they needed in their world. Violence and crime taught them everything else.

I’d defend at least one assigned “Pro Bono” (ie. no fee) case per month in Linden Municipal Court as a “pool” defense attorney, usually involving some greenhorn kid gone bad. Mostly penny-ante stuff like shoplifting, vandalism, terroristic threats. Once in a while, however, a real bad apple would pop up – that unique combination of attitude, physcial presence and ice cold distance in the eyes that made a lawyer’s flesh crawl. Josef Korecki was that kid. Born Bad. I’m talking “no damn good” here. There was no rehabilitating Josef. He was on a one-way crazy train to “East State” – NJ’s obsolete and foreboding maximum security lockup in Rahway.

I was assigned to defend Josef Korecki. This time he stood accused of beating his high school sweetheart, Danuta, to within an inch of her life. Why? For no reason he would share with me – his lawyer – or anyone else.

As Josef told me: “….Hey, Man!…..Yo!..…..Men beat their bitches all the time….thas’ the way it is!” It brought to mind an old Polish saying – very loosely interpreted – “Fail to beat your wife and her liver will rot”.

So I was Josef’s assigned mouthpiece, yet again trekking to Linden Municipal Court to defend the defenseless. Literally. This kid was unrepentant, foul-mouthed and generally scummy. His lack of remorse made me hate the very sight of him. His father, Tadek, posted his bail and, accordingly, was very interested in Josef appearing at his first hearing. This is why, I thought, Tadek Korecki showed up unannounced at my office and stenched the place up.

“I ‘vant discuss-edd my son – Josef – legal case” He explained that morning at 7:00AM. Now – granted – my law office (for the time being) is in my home. I just didn’t plan on being at my desk so early in the morning discussing much of anything with anybody, let alone a man whose smell was peeling the paint off my walls. As I opened the waiting room door in response to the doorbell, I could see by the guy’s looks I was in for a doozey.

Tadek brought with him a small, coffin-shaped box. He shuffled through the door, past the vacant receptionist’s desk and clear into my office like he owned the place.

I got right to the point.

“Mr. Korecki, I can’t discuss your son’s case with you unless he gives written permission. Josef just turned eighteen. He’s not a minor any longer even though he may live under your roof”.

Tadek Korecki was indignant. “An’ vaat’ kind country dis’ is!!! My son got troubles! Big troubles! An’ vee not allowed to talk ’bout dees troubles??” You – Pan Vlchek – you be Advocat!! You lawyer!!! I must say to you things!!!!

Most parents in Korecki’s situation probably would’ve had problems wrapping their minds around the fact that their eighteen year old son’s lawyer was prohibited from discussing their offspring’s legal problems with them. But those are the rules. I respectfully but firmly declined to go anywhere near breaching my attorney-client privileged communications with Josef – and asked his father to leave.

Tadek Korecki looked puzzled – as far as I could actually make out. My eyes were tearing from being exposed to these early morning odors and my stomach was starting to turn. This guy was sure ripe.

“Look – I vant pay you! I – I – I have not yet much moneys – but soon! Advocat Vlchek!! I – Tadek Stanislaus Korecki – vill be famous engineer – famous like Einshtein!!!

As he spoke these last words of triumph his face beamed and he cradled the mini-coffin-like box in his arms like an infant. I then realized I had difficulty focusing on his face because the neon lights overhead were flickering slightly, causing a gentle strobe effect. The lighting effect seemed to become more pronounced as Korecki moved his little box around in his arms.

That’s when I noticed the hum. It was barely audible at first, then persistent enough to grab my interest. It wasn’t a neon light-type hum. It was something more earthy with an almost palpable auditory texture. I could have sworn it was making the desk I was sitting behind vibrate. Forgetting the smelly man sitting in front of me for a moment I placed my spread-out fingertips on my mahogany desk top surface and felt a strange pulsating sound meandering through its solidity. It was just that: I was feeling the sound. Not Richter-scale sound wave assaults of a rock concert but a more subtle, almost visceral emanation from within the wood’s molecules. A disconcerting, abstract sensation. But real.

Whatever it was, it apparently had everything to do with the little coffin Korecki was holding like a holy icon. So here I am, tired and disheveled, sitting in my office at 7:00AM with a bad-smelling man hiolding a weird resonating box. Life is bizarre. You can’t make this stuff up.

Digging deep into my very limited lexicon of conversational Polish I gestured towards Korecki’s box and hazarded a question: what is it?

“Tsoe tow yest, Pan Korecki?

I addressed him as “Pan” – pronounced “paahn”. It was a Polish honorific signalling the man you’re speaking to is worthy of respect. There was something about that small box ……I simply had to know what it was.

Visibly heartened by my linguistic efforts to make him feel at home, he held out the object like an Olympic Gold Metal. “Tsoe tow yest!!! Tsoe tow yest!!!” He repeated over and over. His eyes rolled and his lids fluttered. Old Tadek looked like he was being raptured.

He jumped to his feet, still holding out the box, proclaiming as if in ecstasy, “…….Es Schisko!!!!! Es Schisko!!! Schisko, Pan Vlcheck!!!! Tak-Tak-Tak- Pravda!!!”

Unless my Polish was worse than I imagined, he was in the throes of a religious testimony – preaching to me that his little coffin-box was “Schisko” – everything!!!! The answer to everything! “Yes – Yes – Yes – Truth!!!”

A very excited Tadek Korecki lapsed back into English.

“Diss here – diss maashinn – dis maashinn – yes! Maasheen, like you say! Dis maasheen iss allvays moovink!! All-vayss moovink!!”

I tried to slow him down a bit.

“Pan Korecki – you say your machine is always moving? That it is some kind of perpetual motion machine?”

“Tak, tak!! Pravda!!! Pan Advocat Vlcheck – Yes! Yes! I speak truth!!!

Dis maasheen allvays move! Allvays making elektiric!!! Allvays making elektricity power!!! Can’t stop!!! Elektric power…it comes from power rays all around us!!!”

Tadek Korecki was waving his arms around his head, box in hand, emphasizing his point – that his machine was somehow channeling electrical power from the void of space…..the great beyond.

“Advocat Vlchek!!! Elektric come from my secret maasheen – allvays moovink – allvays making elektric – from Ether!!!! Ether in universe!!! Ether everywhere!! Like Great Man TESLA say!!!!

My head hurt from all this. But I was intrigued.

A few years ago, I’d drafted a Last Will and Testament for a Serbian woman – Charlotte Muzar – who identified herself as Nicola Teslas’ great grand-niece and author of his official biography. Although she’d never met the great man she was devoted to his memory. She’d ramble non-stop about his theories and a steamer trunk full of Tesla’s leather bound notebooks she kept in her Elizabeth, NJ, basement – and even gave me a copy of her book, Nicola Tesla – Serbian Genius.

Her Will contained very specific instructions about who was to receive her basement treasure trove following her death: the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.

Ms. Muzar’s book educated me about the secret experiments of Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he allegedly tapped into an unlimited source of power from the universe, something he called “Zero Point Energy”. It radiated throughout creation – through the “void” of space, which really wasn’t a “void” at all but a vast ocean of something called “Aether”.

Aether was alive with power and behaved as a fluid to solid bodies and as a solid to light and heat. The Aether could be harnessed by “torsion fields” and had properties of electrical “viscosity” that allowed for electromagnetic propulsion systems in aircraft that required no wings or propellers. All these claims were loudly and publicly rejected by Albert Einstein, who worked as a consultant for the US Office of Naval Research on loan from Princeton University during World War II.

Although Tesla’s Colorado Springs experiments are still classified by the US Government – why experiments from the late 1890s are still a threat to the USA boggles the mind… Any hint or suggestion of the scientists’ accomplishments there are officially relegated to the “fringe science” and lunatic dustbin by the US Navy. They sided with their boy, Einstein.

Right or wrong, Einstein’s “Relativistic” physics and a defined, rational universe won out, leading generations of conspiracy theorists to believe that there is a “public consumption” physics and an esoteric, hidden physics that carries with it potentially devastating power, greater than atomic fission or fusion. Power to destroy the very universe itself. A power the US Government will do anything to keep secret.

These Tesla fanatics assert that Einstein’s “E=MC squared” paradigm is merely window-dressing to hide the real “Black Budget” and Tesla-based US Government science it utilizes at Area 51 to reverse engineer UFOs that crash in the Southwest.

They even maintain that the US Navy pressured Einstein to “withdraw” his ground-breaking 1928 “Unified Field Theory” Paper at a well-orchestrated press conference where the browbeaten old man announced that his grand idea, his Magnum Opus, was “premature”.

Tesla devotees still believe that the last thing the US Government wants is to let the real, Aether-based (ie. Tesla), Physics Genie out of its bottle. Even a “Unified Field” variation of Einstein’s “Special Relativity” Theory might somehow re-ignite interest in Tesla’s Colorado Springs Aether experiments and lead to dangerous consequences.

The US Government believes “public physics” must stop at E=MC squared. The US Atomic energy Brahmins want to rein-in and control this beast completely – in all its sacred and profane iterations.

“Pan Korecki” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. “Tesla’s theories about Zero Point Energy were conclusively disproven by the US Navy, working with Dr. Einstein himself back in the 1940s. I don’t know what makes your little box vibrate like it does – or why my neon lights are so flummoxed by it – but I’m sure it isn’t what you think it is….”

“Nooo! No!! Pan Vlchek! You Advocat!!! You must get me Paytent!!” Korecki was now sweating profusely – and generating even more aromas – as he gestured with his arms, head and upper torso, writhing in his chair like he was in pain.

I tried to explain with as much patience I could muster.

“Pan Korecki, I am a Trial lawyer – not a Patent lawyer! I will get you the name of a friend of mine in Westfield, NJ – a Patent lawyer a few miles away – to review your invention claims…” I tried to calmly talk him out of his tree, but he was inconsolable.

“Advocat Vlchek!! Be my lawyer!!!! Dis here – dis maashin – I make it!! I make it myself!!! Tadek Stanislaus Korecki!! It allvays moovink!!! It allvays make elektric power!!! Just like Nicola Tesla – I figure out what he discover!!!! I know how to make dis maashin for everybody!! No more elektric bills!!! No more gasoline bills!!! Perpetual moovink!!! Perpetual elektric!!! No needing oil!!! Arabians gonna’ be mad!!!! I neeed-it Paytent!!!”

I’m looking at the clock. It’s now 745AM. I’ve got to be in court at 9:00AM. I’ve got to get him out of here. He filled his lungs and started all over again…

“You see, Pan Advocat Vlchek? Dis here maashin, dis maashin mean no gasoline, no oil worry – just elektric power!! Power for everybody!!!! War, no!! Power, Yes!!!!”

I finally realized that ther only way I was going to get this guy out of my office was to humor him. If I could get him, his smell and his little magic box outside I could at least convince him I had other business to take care of today.

“That kind of power in a box makes me nervous, Pan Korecki” I said in a reassuring voice. “How about we go out into the parking lot and you show me how it works?”

Bingo. Korecki jumped at the invitation, shambling out the door with his little prize coffin box – but not before he almost tripped and broke his neck on a plastic, shoebox-sized scale model ’32 Ford “Deuce Coupe” hot rod that my seven year old son had left on the waiting room floor. I’d promised to buy him four “D” cell batteries for it but I kept forgetting.

“Bring-it toy car!” Korecki commanded as we headed outside. I grabbed the car – I’d have picked up a sack of dog shit if it meant getting him out of my office – and followed him to the parking lot. I started my pitch the second the office door closed behind us.

“Pan Korecki, I really have to get the court” I said with authentic audible frustration. “I’ve alot of cases I’ve got to take care of….”

Korecki turned, snatched the shoebox-sized ’32 Ford Deuce Coupe toy out of my hands and knelt down. For a moment I thought he was going to start praying to the little coffin-like box he’d gently placed on the pavement next to it.

He fiddled with the yellow plastic body of the toy car until it came off its base, revealing a gray frame platform and small electric motor to which axles and wheels were attached. There were no batteries in it. He then reached into his little coffin-box and withdrew a smooth black cylinder. This cylinder was unremarkable in every way; it had no discernable seams or joint welds, had no markings and definately had no observable moving parts. What kept me staring at it was its hum. The hum was getting louder – no, not louder as such, but more vibrant. I could actually feel its pulsating rhythms in my chest. Like the vibrations of a dentist’s drill.

Korecki wedged his small black cylinder between the car’s rear wheels, equidistant between the wheels width-wise but contacting the empty battery guides. He stepped back from the toy. Aside from the hum, nothing happened. I was about to bid him a hasty farewell when the toy shot down the driveway and smacked itself to smithereens against a curb about twenty-five feet away.

“Coorvah!!” Korecki swore out loud in Polish. Why he would call the surprisingly sucessful experiment a “Whore” in his native language was anybody’s guess. He hurried out to the splintered wreck to retrieve his beloved cylinder, muttering as he made haste.

“Shpeed controlled not so good….” He turned over his strange object in his left hand and scratched his head with the fingers of his right, looking genuinely puzzled. He then haranged me again.

“See! See, Advocat Doktor Vlchek!!! Maashin’ work!! Maashin’ es success!!!

I took this opportunity to tell him that I’d find him a patent lawyer for his new invention and waved goodbye. Looking dejected, he loped towards his car mumbling to himself and cradling his precious coffin-shaped, cylinder-containing box in the small of his left arm. While he fumbled with his keys to open the driver’s door on his late model Buick, I noticed a General Motors employee parking sticker showing a number for an assigned space.

Curious, I thought – did Korecki work for General Motors in Linden? If he had a dedicated parking space, he must’ve had a fairly upper-tier job. Maybe an engineering title or some United Auto Workers Union management position. That means he’d have access to GM soup-to-nuts job benefits: medical, dental, eyeglasses and legal representation insurance.

Why would his dependent kid take a “Pro Bono” assigned lawyer like me when he could get a big ticket law firm through his father’s GM plan?

Tadek Korecki’s GM benefits would cover his kids who still resided at home even though they were over eighteen years of age. And why would Tadek Korecki be asking me for patent advice on his invention if he had access to Ivy League guys through his legal plan, gratis?

I made a mental note to ask my Pro Bono client, Josef Korecki, about this the next time I saw him.

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A couple weeks passed.

Josef’s Preliminary Hearing before the Court came up quicker than I’d anticipated. I still hadn’t received “Discovery” from the Police – the arrest reports, investigation records and witness statements they were supposed to share with me as Defense Counsel.

These items were the very blueprints of their case against Josef Korecki – and I wasn’t going to roll over and plead him guilty on the basis of hearsay or Cop bias.

I had a good working relationship with the Municipal Judge – his name was Wojchanski (some called him “Judge No Chance-ski” because he was a hard-ass like the legendary Judge Roy Bean) – and I made it clear that I wanted to see hard evidence against my client before he’d enter a Plea. Just because I was “Assigned” and wasn’t getting paid, my “Pro Bono” status didn’t mean I’d be cutting any corners.

Judge Wojchanski agreed and ordered the Police files turned over to me within the next two weeks. Another Preliminary Hearing date was scheduled a week after that, at which time I would be expected to enter a formal Guilty or Not Guilty Plea to the charges on behalf of my client. I walked out of the Court with Josef.

It was as good a time as any to bring up his Dad’s unannounced (and unsuccessful) visit to my office. After all, I wanted him to be assured his Attorney-Client confidences were safe with me. I eased into it with a matter of fact tone in my voice so as not to get him defensive or ramp up his attitude.

“You know, Josef, your Dad visited me a couple weeks back…..” I said.

His expression didn’t change as he walked towards his battered Chevy Cavalier in silence. I tried once more.

“Josef…I don’t discuss my clients’ legal problems with anyone but them – just so we’re clear.” I was already veering off to my right in the public parking garage towards my Volkswagen, but I stopped walking as I caught him shaking his head and laughing. He, too, stopped dead in his tracks and addressed me, emphasizing his speech with stylized and over the top gang banger hand gestures like he was in some Rap video.

“Yo, Yo, Lawyer Man! Dis is how it is….!”

The young man refused to address me as anything but “Lawyer” or “Counsellor”. You could see he relished having a mouthpiece do his talking for him. He felt important. A pathetic “Bad Ass” in his own tiny mind.

“I know all ’bout my Dad goin’ to see you”. My client said. “I told him to, Man!”

It was time to clear the air. I didn’t understand what was going on. I laid it all out.

“If your Dad works at General Motors, then why doesn’t he get some high-powered law firm to represent you – and get himself the patent advice he needs……Josef, you’re facing Jail time here! You guys could get the best lawyers for nothing – and free me up to represent some other hard luck case who really has no other alternative but an Assigned lawyer from the Pro Bono pool….”

I felt strongly about that last point. There simply weren’t enough Public Defenders and Pro Bono “Pool” lawyers to go around – and some of the ones that were available were train wrecks. I’m no bleeding heart liberal but what’s right is right. Poor people need lawyers. Making sure Justice is done raises everybody’s boat in the ocean of life. Call it social repsonsibility. Call it decency. The US Constitution requires nothing less.

I was’nt surprised to see a smirk on Josef’s face. But his eyes were intense – momentarily flashing (I must admit) an interesting glint of hardcore savvy. The gestalt of this moment I didn’t expect.

“Yo – he showed you da’ thing, right?”

Josef paused for a moment, then slowly headed towards his car, shaking his head from side to side and raising his voice. His parting words stung.

“You may be smart with the books, Man….but you don’t know shit….”

I stood there in the parking garage mute, like somebody just hit me with a brick. By the time I came around enough to respond, Josef’s Cavalier was already rattling pass me by, dragging its tailpipe in a trail of sparks on the pavement. Josef Korecki’s blaze of glory. Cocky little sheit.

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When I got back to my office I dug out Charlotte Muzar’s Will file and dialed her number. Something she’d told me about her “great grand uncle” Nicola Tesla was knocking around inside my brain. Some story about a Pierce Arrow car….

Much to my surprise, she picked up after three rings – and obviously had caller ID.

“Why Mr. Vlchek, how nice….”

I kept the small talk to a minimum and got right to business.

“Charlotte, do recall that story you told me about your great-grand Uncle Nicola Tesla – about when he was challenged by somebody in Ohio, or someplace. about his Zero-Point-energy-from-Aether theories and he performed a public demonstration on a Pierce Arrow car? Can you run that by me again?”

“Why yes!” She responded, tickled pink that I called her to discuss her favorite topic – Nicola Tesla.

“My Great Grand-Uncle Nick (she always called him Nick – like ole’ Saint Nick – or simply Tesla) asked a skeptical car dealer in Columbus, Ohio to loan him a car that had an electric motor in it instead of a gasoline engine. But no batteries. Tesla said he would make it run using power from the Aether – from the void of space. They agreed to hold a public demonstration on July 4, 1921.

The car dealer smelled a great publicity event and at the annual Columbus, Ohio, July the Fourth celebration delivered to Nick a brand new Pierce Arrow car with its gasoline engine removed and a large electric motor connected to its driveline instead. It was delivered at the County fairgrounds in Columbus with hundreds of Ohio farmers, newspapermen, photographers and spectators looking on. There was even a brass band playing John Philip Souza marches in a Gazebo.

Tesla arrived to great fanfare and applause – and quickly disappeared under a tent they had erected over the front of the Pierce Arrow vehicle to allow him privacy to perform his miracle. People observed him carry a milk-crate sized black box and some vacuum tubes into the tent. Twenty minutes later, Tesla emerged and asked for a volunteer from the crowd to drive the vehicle – because he didn’t have a driver’s license! A young man stepped forward and the tent was pulled back so he could get behind the wheel. Tesla spoke a few instructions to the young man and stepped back.

The brass band stopped playing and the crowd went silent. All the newspapers later documented that a deep humming noise was heard and also a strange vibration was felt in everyone’s chest. Three women fainted and two others became hysterical. The Pierce Arrow car lurched forward and circled the fairgrounds three times at twenty miles per hour – the top speed Tesla had pre-set for the vehicle out of concern for public safety.

After the demonstration, Tesla had his assistants reposition the tent over the front of the Pierce Arrow and he removed his special equipment. He left the fairgrounds carrying his black milk-crate and vacuum tubes, serenaded by the brass band playing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!”

I asked her one last question.

“Charlotte, do you know a fella’ by the name of Tadek Korecki – from Linden?”

She repeated the name out loud a few times and mulled it over.

“No” She finally replied. “I don’t know of anyone by that name……but I seem to recall seeing the name Korecki – or something like it – somewhere….I just can’t place it. I’ll have to get back to you.”

“Yes, definately.” I said. “Please let me know if you come across any leads on it, will you?”

I thanked Charlotte and wished her well.

After hanging up the phone I stared off into space, trying to imagine what that day – July 4, 1921, Tesla’s triumph in Columbus, Ohio – would have been like. Whatever Tesla installed in that Pierce Arrow car drew power from somewhere to make its (heavy-duty) electric motor turn. My son’s little ’32 Ford Deuce Coupe toy had no batteries in it – but it took off like a bat out of Hell.

Maybe Tesla just put in some kind of super battery in that Pierce Arrow car – and maybe Korecki just slipped four “D” cell batteries into my son’s toy when I wasn’t looking. You know, a magician’s deception. Make me watch his left hand fidgeting with his cylinder while his right hand slipped in the toy four “D”cells he just so happened to have in his pocket.

And why would he have four “D” cell batteries in his pocket? Maybe he’s a Boy Scout. Maybe he’s always prepared. But that hum. That weird hum. Batteries don’t hum. You can’t feel them in your chest. They don’t make your overhead neon lights flutter. I kept hearing Korecki’s parting remarks in my head…

“Arabians gonna’ be mad…..”

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END OF PART 1.

Copyright, 2020. Jon Croft.