Flew home from OKC after a long day of listening the Joe Schreibvogel lie, and lie, and lie.  This is my opinion.

 

Oklahoma City:

8:30 a.m.  I step out into the bone chilling air to walk a few short blocks to our attorney’s office.  Since arriving the day before, I’ve stayed out of sight, having all of my meals sent to the room, so that I don’t accidentally tip off Joe Schreibvogel that I’m in town.  He’s threatened me for years and is absolutely obsessed with his hatred for me.  Howard is still recovering from open-heart surgery and can’t make this trip, so he’s worried sick, but knows one of us should be here for the Hearing on Assets.

 

Our attorneys are excellent and specialize in this sort of bankruptcy work, but Joe Schreibvogel is a compulsive liar, from what I’ve seen, and no one knows his back story better than Howie and I do.  Plus we know the industry, so we can catch him in a lie faster than anyone else.  Part of the strategy is just to throw him off center.  The mere fact that we exist seems to be enough to keep him raving like a loon all day, according to his staff who left from the abuse, but having to sit across the table from either of us just sends him into nose twitching, nail biting, knuckle chewing fits.  He reminds me of a trapped animal, who will chew off their own limbs to escape, as he feverishly gnaws at his own hands.

 

Knowing the hundreds of cubs he’s pimped out and all they have suffered at his hands, it gives me some pleasure to see him so frantic.  I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

 

But for now, I focused on getting from the hotel to the attorney’s office, without Joe Schreibvogel or one of his animal abusing minions interceding.  I must look paranoid as I slow or stop frequently to canvas parked cars, windows, check allies and the open bays of multi level parking garages for the glint of a gun, the red dot of a laser or a person acting suspiciously.  A black sedan has been in the parking lot and is now slowly pulling onto the sidewalk, blocking my path.

 

Fight or flight?

 

Yesterday it was 17 degrees and the most snow to ever fall in Oklahoma City in March.  The sidewalks are a treacherous mix of snow, slush and ice.  It’s not far, back to the hotel, but part of me is so mad that I’m frozen to the spot while debating, in milliseconds, if there’s anything in my bag that would suffice as a weapon to protect myself.

 

Mental checklist:  There’s an iPhone 6+.  It’s big, but the rubber case makes it an unlikely choice.  There is my Mac Air laptop, which has a thin, steel edge and just enough weight to be easy to swing and yet could have a pretty good impact.  There is the HDMI cable that I use to connect hotel T.V.s for more screen space, but it’s a flat edge and would fail as a garrote.  I peer hard through the dark, tinted windows, to see how many opponents I’m facing… Joe always has his entourage because he can’t seem to function if he isn’t the center of attention…

 

Turns out to be a young woman, so caught up in texting that she seems to be oblivious to the fact that she’s almost coasted out into traffic while looking at her phone.

 

One more block to go.

 

I said I was mad, and the more I learn about this clown, the madder I get.  He flew under my radar until about 2009 (although he will tell you that I was giving him a hard time since 2007) when I discovered that dozens of animal acts, that were traveling the U.S. pimping out cubs, were actually the work of one person.  While that would seem like a bad branding strategy, it was a great way to hide misdeeds.  For now, regardless of how angry it makes me to think of the abuse, I had to attend this hearing, to make sure we made the most of the opportunity to put a stop to it.

 

At Howie’s insistence, Heather has found an off duty officer to be my bodyguard for the rest of the day.  Tall, dark and fiercely protective, he looks like he could take on any trouble the skinny, loud mouthed, self proclaimed “Tiger King” and his