The Baboon Congress

Overheard Conversations

67 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Edith.

Earlier today I was waiting for a city bus at a bus stop in downtown Minneapolis after making a nice haul at the 25￠-a-book-sale. A few years ago, people would just wait for their buses in silence, but now there are a few people who, naturally, yack on their cell phones while they wait. I don’t try to listen to their conversations, because most of them are boring. I mean, how many times when I’m shopping at Target do I want to hear, “Yeah, I’m at Target right now, picking up paper towels” or at a bus stop, “I’m waiting for the #5 bus”? But today, I’m pretty sure I overheard the logistics of a crime-in-progress.

A ordinary-looking woman crossed the street to get to the bus stop. She had a suitcase and was talking on her cell phone. I heard the fairly normal cell phone line, “I just made the copies at the library and now I’m at the bus stop and I think I’ll make it there on time.” Yawn. Then I heard, “You’ll have to meet me at HCMC at 4:00 and I’ll pass off the suitcase and the money.” My ears pricked up. Whoa! What sort of shady deal was this?

Unfortunately, right at that moment, my bus pulled up and I got on. The woman must have been waiting for a different bus because she did not board the bus I was on. But I’m still wondering, “Why does she have to “pass off” both a suitcase and money at HCMC? Was she talking with a friend or was this some sort of undercover “business” dealing?

What suspicious activity do you think was being planned in that conversation I overheard?

67 thoughts on “Overheard Conversations”

  1. Morning all. Missed you the past few days.

    I’m absolutely sure that your mystery woman was going to trade the money for letters of transit so she could get out of Casablanca safely. Suitcase clearly held her pretty blue dress that she won’t wear again until Paris is liberated.

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  3. If they’re meeting at HCMC (Hennipen County Medical Center?) then clearly they’re involved in black market body parts…

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    OOOHHH, I love a mystery conversation like this. It will be in my head all day. I may not be able to answer the question until later after I have mulled over all the options. ****OT**** I will have a lot of mulling time. I SCORED 2, count ’em, 2 boxes of locally grown tomatoes from Marshall’s Market . They will supplement my now productive garden tomato and pepper plants for soup making and canning. So while I scald the skins off of those tomatoes I will be imagining those copies, that money, that suitcase.

    Years ago, while a Scott County Social Worker, I received a mistaken Voicemail message that went on for 10 minutes. Two guys, identities unknown, were plotting out a drug deal which for some reason got recorded on my work voice mail. I still think it was a client who left a message for me just prior to that conversation, but his phone/my voicemail never disconnected. I turned the recording over to the cops who enjoyed the entire thing a lot.

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  5. edith i think the premise of the story here is a bit shaky. you say you were downtown after scoring on a 25 cent a book sale.. but what were you really doing downtown??? i suspect that your mention of the books was sily to throw our attention fro what was really in the bag you were carrying and the fact that you say the bus you were on was not going to the hcmc makes me wonder if thats not exactly where you were headed in you plot to distribute what ever you had in the bag. the person you heard on the phone was in all actuality the person on the other end of your phone and you are feeling like you need to have a good story for your first guest blog on the trail baboon. well not so fast sister where were you on the afternoon of october 1st when the book sale was going on downtown. how clever to use this as a cover for you activities. you in fact were carrying swine flu vaccine vials heisted from an airport hanger in purerto rico which flew in low to the ground to avoid radar until well beyond the radar on the southeast coast where they would normally intercept it. after arranging a cab form the crystal airport to bring your booty to the downtown librar you and you henchpersons did in fact hand off copies of vaccine batch numbers and hospitals where the vaccines was expected to be distributed but no money was involved. instead you have been paid in bus tokens and swiffer replacement clothes for dusting your unsightly floors for years to come. many would have simply bought into your lies and deciet edith but we here on the trail are too wise for such simple see through untruths. you may be aware jim claims to be in maine this week? well it is an unspoken certainty that he is in fact in lonsdale cavorting with well known seed savers in the local motel under the alais of lawrence moriarity under the pretense of watching fall color. these things do not pass unnoticed girly so be careful when you try to pull one over in the baboon trail. we are on to you.

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    1. Wonderful imagination, dude. Wind is 25 M.P.H. from SE now. Many leaves blowing in the wind. But some trees, like the Emerald Lustre Maple in my front yard resist letting go of their leaves.

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    2. Oh, Edith. I never suspected any of this. On-line you seem so, baboonish? And we discover this plot that tim has uncovered.

      I can’t wait to meet you in person!

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      1. I guess I’m not as suspicious as the rest of the congress. It seems to me that with the rising price of medical care that a suitcase of cash would be necessary to pay the bill and get a patient sprung from HCMC. The challenge for me is the source of the money since it obviously isn’t Blue Cross. However, since both Karl Rove and Scott Walker are darkening the doors of our state today, they and the Koch brothers may be involved.

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      2. I’m with you Beth-Ann, I’m not suspicious of Edith either. The ordinary looking woman said she was going to “pass off the suitcase and the money,” two separate things. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the suitcase was full of money. I’m afraid we’re missing some important information here. What time did Edith hear this conversation? Was it reasonably close to 4 P.M. or was it earlier in the day? Was the appointment that she thought she’d make on time at HCMC or elsewhere? The HCMC is within walking distance of the library, so perhaps the bus she was waiting for was going someplace else? I’m guessing that copies she had made at the library were in the suitcase. More info please, Edith.

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    4. Well done, Watson (eerrr, I mean “tim”)…
      And Edith, feigning such a commonplace existence… mighty suspicious behavior if you ask this baboon!

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      1. That’s the beauty of online personality. Who knows what we are like in real life? I like to think the Baboons have brought out my true personality, but I now see – thanks to tim – that not only have I been deceiving myself but most of you.

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  6. I think the woman with the suitcase is a counterfitter who was making copies of hundred dollar bills. I bet the money is going to be used to buy the embarrassing protected medical information of some high profile Minnesota politician who may be running for president. I wonder what the medical records contain? Hmm. That could be really i8nteresting.

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  7. PJ is right, the suitcase might not be the receptacle for the money. The money could have been a roll of quarters to feed the parking meters.

    OT – this gave me a laugh, but it also brings to mind a quote by Cynthia Ozick – “The only thing that’s funny is what’s really, really true”:

    http://tinyurl.com/3k489ml

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    2. BTW, I misattributed that quote – it was actually Cynthia Heimel, not Cynthia Ozick, that said that.

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      1. Well, you were 50% right, the first names were the same. I’m sorry to have to admit I’m not familiar with either of them.

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  8. I have a friend who lives in the attic of a lovely old 3-floor walk-up right across from that park by HCMC. She’s seen a few shady looking tete-a-tetes in that park, and no doubt it seems safer to do drops and pick-ups right across the street in a busy building… Considering the approaching season, I suspect it’s a load hot toddy mix along with whatever illicit drugs are being peddled.

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  9. HCMC is clearly not the medical center – that is the cover acronym, making it sound like the speaker is referring to the more well-known HCMC. In fact, it stands for Halcyon Circulator and Matter Collider – a super-secret device housed in the basement of…I can’t tell you. If I told you I would have to kill you and disappear into the wilds of deepest, darkest Windom until everything blows over. But suffice it to say, you know if the days turn sunny and things start lining up well for you – the hand off happened. Oh, and clearly the 25 cent book sale was really a red herring – tim was right. Edith is not revealing her true connection to this intrigue.

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      1. There are secret codes for our society cleverly disguised as the ancient petroglyphs in Jeffers…if you can decode our messages, you can find our secret lair. 😉

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  10. Okay, you asked for more information and here it is:

    This all happened on Saturday, September 17, the first day of the 25 cents a book sale (previously the sale was half off the already low prices and a week later, the bag sale started – everything you can fit in a paper grocery bag for $2). The bookstore is located in what was formerly the Minneapolis Downtown Library and is now Hennepin County Library Central.

    I arrived at the sale at 10 am, so I was probably done and waiting for the bus around 11:00 or 11:30, hours before the “handoff.” Usually I catch the #14 bus on 6th Street, but 6th Street was closed due to roadwork that day, so I caught the bus on 4th Street right across from the library. Presumably the other buses that run on 6th Street, such as the 94 express to St. Paul and others, were also running on 4th street, along with the usual 4th street buses such as the #16, which goes by the U and along University Ave. to St. Paul.

    HCMC is Hennepin County Medical Center, several blocks from the library. The bus I took does go right by HCMC (as do several other buses).

    I will neither confess or deny any of tim’s many accusations. This is my story and I’m sticking to it!

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      2. why is she coming forwrd now.
        i think she protests too much
        call in the undercover agents and put a tail on her
        maybe we need to start doing a background check with the bloggers we allow here…. no wait, i would never pass if we did that. never mind

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    2. Anyone else remember “Richard Diamond, Private Eye”? Not the TV show with MT Moore, but the radio show in which he gave his expense account.
      Edith’s detailed monologue reminded me if it.

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  11. Greetings! I love a good mystery! The lady obviously had to make copies of all forms of identification, blood type, mother’s maiden name, family geneology and letters of good character. Then she was going to discreetly rob a bank of all available cash, go to the HCMC to beg and plead with the bean counters to please, pretty please perform the necessary, but horribly expensive surgery on her sick and dying child. She has no insurance (who can afford it?), but all the cash from the bank MIGHT serve as a down payment on this needed surgery. Not a mystery, but absolutely plausible (Dog Day Afternoon anyone?).

    My insurance just ended on 9/30 but I had an appointment yesterday with the orthopedic surgeon who did my knee arthroscopy. $100 smackeroos (last bit of credit) just to get past the gatekeepers and see him for 1 (one) minute. Then his assistant gave me the cortisone shot. Of course, I have no idea what I’ll get charged for the entire appointment and the cortisone shot. There’s not that much money in illicit drugs — the Mafia have moved into health care (aka sick management) and taking us all to the cleaners.

    But black market body parts is also an excellent possibility …

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    2. Having been to Target Pharmacy three times today to get five of my wife’s 22 prescriptions and one of mine, all of which we called in early yesterday, but none of which they had ready and not the hour later as promised nor the hour after that but finally got them and my wife’s medicare went into the donut hole last week so her five cost $1500. I assume this person too was picking up drugs and was fully prepared to wait and was also in the donut hole and needed lots of cash.

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      2. Then I will not tell you the whole whole; sorry I added that detail, should not have. Not a good day for me in a few ways. The harvest dust, which is actually right outside my window even here in town, the chemicals sprayed everywhere, the stuff the plant life is letting loose–the wind stirs it into an air-borne stew and blows it in my face.

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      3. sorry for your having to deal with the junk in the air, the wind must have it blowing through the cracks around the doors and windows today.
        so are you in the donut until the first of the year? be certain to only buy the quantity to get you through the time frame until the donut is over and you are in a new term. 22 meds is too many to believe. sorry she has to do that. i had a guy ii worked with who had vitamins specifically to replentish your body form the drain all the meds put on you while they are healing you up. it is amazing how depleated you can get.

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  12. My imagination is on sabbatical today. So I’ll just read and enjoy the fruit of yours.

    In my lifetime, I’ve overheard one scrap of conversation that was memorable. I was sitting down in a restaurant booth. The booth next door had middle aged man and a younger fellow, both looking serious if not downright grim. And the words I heard the older fellow say were: “You know, Mark, I never loved your mother.”

    I keep thinking about what the next words might have been :).

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    2. Over forty years ago I had a friend who with others cleaned out old homes in St. Paul for a fee, hauled away all the do-not-wants. What a wonderful job, except for the dirt and dust and mold. Their real profit was mostly in the ragstock they sold. They would separate old clothes and books and other things. He would give me old books that looked interesting but he knew had no value. Wonderful fun, but the best were the home cookbooks and diaries. Cookbooks that said “Lard the size of your fist.” Diaries that were a peak into a life or a family. One was a hand-written 70 year record of a family in two hands, one hand for 30 years and then the other. In the middle of all the births, marriages, deaths of a dull family with funny catty notes here and there it said for a date in 1932 “Edith went to jail.”

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  13. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember an eavesdropping experience – can only remember my folks arguing about religion. Thanks for a fun mystery, Edith.

    WOT: Anyone else ever put something on a burner for supper, leave for half a minute to run and check on email and the blog, and get pulled in by the last few posts until you smell something start to burn…

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    1. I’ve learned that anytime I have something on the stove I need to set the timer. Any number of things can make me lose track of time (TB tops the list).

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    2. i do that all the time filling 5 gallon jugs with filtered water from the setup in the basement. it takes 2-4 minutes to fill and the full jugs all go up 1 flight of stairs either to fish tanks or 5 gallon water dispencers but while i’m on route something always comes up and the 5 gallon jug overflows and soake the surrounding area. luckily the floor drain keeps me out of majotr trouble but it is about 50/50 as to whether i will screw it up.

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  14. Thanks, Barbara. It was fun writing it (and it really did happen just like I told it) and even more fun reading all the responses – despite finding out how many baboons suspect me of being a criminal baboon. I don’t remember when I last laughed so hard as I did when I read tim’s spiel…

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    1. Just got around to reading it–tim’s riff–very clever.
      And the “Edith went to jail” tale is true. For along time, which we had forgotten until today, we would use that line–Edith went to jail–as a tag line for anything interesting, mysterious, or off the wall.

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  15. W.O.T. Just back from the gathering (demonstration?) at the People’s Plaza in MInneapolis. Very positive energy in the crowd of mostly young people (mid-30ies and younger). Warm’s the cockles of this old heart to see younger people engaged and knowledgable about issues. Very stimulating to be a part of democracy in action.

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    1. With the light rail construction that’s going on, it would not surprise me if the #14 got detoured there.

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