No one would really take much notice of Tom Hardcastle as he
strode across the car park, carrying his weekly groceries. His blue jeans and red plaid shirt marked him
as a member of the working class – and his belly had grown to size that hinted that
he might have a fondness for beer. He
was not smiling. The recent set to at
City Hall rankled, and in the darker recesses of his heart, he yearned to meet
Mayor Drayton off duty, perhaps in a dark alley, while Tom was carrying his
favorite Ash baseball bat.
He hoisted the three bags of groceries in one hand as he
opened the trunk of his ancient Cadillac Deville with the other. He paused in mid swing. He dropped the bags. He stared in amazement at what now lay on
the floor of the trunk of his car. A dead
body.
The three plastic bags hit the ground more or less
simultaneously. Inside one of them,
eighteen Grade AA Organic Eggs, despite being in a clear plastic protective
container, did not survive the drop..
“Why is Fingers Falone in your trunk?” someone rasped a
quiet question close to his ear.
He half turned his head, dazed and bewildered, to take in
the sight of an ashen, pock-faced man with slicked-back black hair.
“Wha..aa?” he replied..
“Oo-er,” opined Mrs. Satinwood, clutching her hand-bag while
standing on tip toe to get a better view.
“He does look very dead.”
“Fingers Falone. He’s
with the Bomskie Gang. You with the
Down Town Pack?” asked ashen face.
“Down Town Pack?
Wha-aa? No, I repair hair dryers.” He
looked again at the man in the dark blue suit lying in his car, three neat
bullet holes spoiling an otherwise immaculate white silk shirt.
“How do you know he’s with this Bomskie Gang?” Tom faltered, trying to process far too much
information all in one go.
“’Cos I’m with the Bomskie Gang. You stay right here. I’ve gotta make a call. Move not one muscle. We’ll be back in the very near future. You still
be here. Or else.” The dark haired man slipped into the
background and vanished in its camouflage.
Tom slammed the lid shut and half ran, half walked to the
driver’s seat, leaving the groceries behind to be taken into possession by
whomever wished to make use of them.
He tumbled into place behind the wheel. Before he could slam the door shut, Mrs.
Satinwood used the opportunity to issue her grave warning. “He said move not one muscle. You’re going to get into right trouble.”
With a roar of engine and a squeal of tires, he sped as fast
as he could out of the Albertson’s parking lot; the overhead banners announcing
Navy Appreciation Week fluttering a blue and gold ‘Adios’…
---oo0oo---
Precinct Headquarters had seen better days. Blue-green paint peeled from the woodwork,
and the wood floors bore stains that looked as if they might very well be of a
most unsavory nature. By contrast, the
Desk Sergeant was a clean-cut, crew-cut officer as if straight from the
academy. His crisp shirt shimmered with
the effect of spray starch, and his tie was tied in a very fashionable
double-Windsor knot. His shoes shone
with a gleam that would match a drill sergeant’s beam of joy at such devotion
to spit and polish. Even his spectacle
lenses glistened.
He put down the phone, and pressed the intercom button.
“Cap’n, we just got a report from some woman that Falone has
turned up dead…. He was in the back of a car.
A white Cadillac Deville. She
gave us its plate and a good
description of the driver. Long black
hair and tubby – doesn’t sound typical…”
“Do we have an ID?”
“DMV says the owner is a Thomas Percival Hardcastle.
Records is checking him out as we speak.”
“Put out an APB– dead or alive – bring that driver in. And the body as well.”
“Dead or alive, Cap’n?
Really?”
“This is a serious matter.
We need to make an appropriate serious response.”
The desk sergeant nodded to himself thoughtfully and
released the intercom button. He stared
at the wall map on the wall behind him, considered the options, and then called
dispatch. He asked that four squad cars
be positioned, one each three miles to the North, East, South and West of the
Albertson car park, and make their way slowly inwards to rendezvous there. On the way, with luck, one would spot Mr.
Hardcastle in his white Cadillac Deville.
He pondered on what possible alibi could be presented … He then ordered check points to be set up on
all exit roads, five miles out.
---oo0oo---
Upstairs, in an office that had grimy glass windows on three sides, Captain Backstaff looked at his notes for a third time, as if just by reading them he would be blessed with insight as to who wanted
Frank “Fingers” Falone out the way the most … The Down Town Pack had to be favorites, but why had they picked on him, of all people? The criminal mind was sometimes just too baffling to penetrate.
He selected an outside line, and dialed the highly confidential number of a highly confidential contact.
He only acknowledgement that he was connected was a deep throated grunt.
“This is Captain Backstaff. I just heard your guy Falone has turned up dead in the back of some guy’s car … here is all we know at this time …” He read out the sparse contents of his note.
His only acknowledgement his message had been received and
understood was a second deep throated grunt.
---oo0oo---
Tom had turned right, on a red light, as was permitted in
the Traffic Code, but traversed the limit line without waiting three seconds as
required by that Code. Luckily for him,
no one with authority noticed him race up 17th Street with such
scant regard for the niceties of law.
Very low overhead, six Navy jets in tight formation screamed
across the sky, the noise so loud that it drained every sensation from his
body. Their public display was
scheduled for the following day, and only practice would bring the perfection
that High Command expected.
As he skidded into Maple Leaf Lane, to take stock, a white
police patrol car with two near pension age officers turned off Main Avenue
onto 17th Street. They both
seem very rattled by the sound of so many jet engines so close to their ears –
but even with crystal silence, their eyesight was now too weakened with age to
recognize the make of a car more than a hundred yards away.
---oo0oo---
By vivid contrast to Precinct Headquarters, the local FBI
offices were equal to the finest corporate Headquarters anywhere in the entire
State. The gentle air-conditioning
wafted hints of lavender floor polish from the overnight cleaning activity.
Special Agent Johnson did not look happy. His operation had stumbled. If it fell apart, not only might his boss be
unhappy – but his boss’s boss might take note.
That sort of scrutiny did not enhance career prospects. Time for a spot of damage control, he
decided, as he picked up the phone.
“Sir? This is
Special Agent Johnson. Sir, one of our
undercover agents has been assassinated.
He was taken out by a Thomas P. Hardcastle – no prior record – when our
man was en route to complete a sting operation.
Sir, I’m going to send three teams out to get him before those flat
footed morons completely ruin the whole thing.
Yes, sir, I’ll keep you updated’
A few moments later, three black SUV’s with heavily tinted
windscreens left the underground garage to conduct a basic area sweep. The anonymity provided by dark glass windows
was somewhat negated by the large Day-Glo yellow “FBI” letters painted on each
side door.
---oo0oo---
Tom’s initial shock and horror yielded to a burning anger as
he came to realize that there was only one possible way that a body could have
turned up in the trunk of his car. An
old fashioned dial telephone stood on a kitchen work surface, rigged to give a
modern bleep instead of the ancient pulse when connecting a call. He picked up the massive hand piece and
dialed his girlfriend’s office number.
“What the <bleep> did you do? For <bleeps> sake – a dead man in my
car?” Tom knew that attack was not only
the best form of defense, but the easiest way of pre-empting any chance of
denial.
“Hey Tom – calm down.
Just a simple joke. You got no
sense of humor?”
Tom punched the air – he had got it in one!
“Humor? I’ll spank all
the humor out of your blistered backside you <bleep>ing <bleep>
<bleep!!!”
“Hey calm down, Tom.
Just dump him.”
“Where the <bleep> did you find a <bleep>ing
dead body, for crying out loud?”
“Outside City Hall – just opposite the Albertson’s car park.
Me and Jane were gonna call the cops
when we saw your car. Seemed too good a
chance to miss.”
“He was shot! In
public! “
“The jets. They were
diving around all over the place. No
one could hear shots. We heard no
shots. Just saw a body lying there.”
“You morons! I’ll
swing for you two before this day is out!”
Tom slammed the phone down into its cradle and yelled at it
“You see if I don’t!”
He mused some more.
If City Hall was the scene of the crime, then City Hall was where he
should drop off his passenger. Only the
place would be crawling all over with people who would wish him harm, like
mobsters and the police and the mayor’s staff.
He grimaced. The
mayor’s staff - they who turned down his application for a contractor’s license
on some technical loop hole about not having a hairdryer repair category: just because Mayor Drayton hated him so
much. Mrs. Drayton’s drier was way past
its shelf life. It was not his fault it
exploded after he fixed it. And he had
offered a fifty percent refund. The
dark memory was put to one side so that he could concentrate on the urgency of
the immediate situation.
There were going to
be a lot of bad guys hanging out outside City Hall. It would be wise to avoid them.
It was time to reconnoiter. The house shook with the vibration of passing fighter jets as he took a set of ignition keys off the hook by the door mantle.
---oo0oo---
At the junction of 8th and Harvard, six black
limousines came to a halt, three on each side of the junction, facing squarely
head on.
On the North side of Harvard. the driver of the middle car,
Big Stu, observed “Dem is the Downtown Pack.
Dem is big trouble. Wha’ we gonna
do, boss?”
Meanwhile on the South side of Harvard, his opposite number
observed “Crikey boss, it’s the whole goddam Bomskie Boys!”
To a casual observer it would have appeared that a signal
was used to synchronize the simultaneous and very rapid, U-turns of all six
cars. But that was a sheer
coincidence. Even so, each produced the
same sized cloud of dust as they put as much haste into their departure as
decorum permitted.
---oo0oo---
The squad car spun out at Harvard and 5th.
One black limousine had narrowly missed a collision when it
swept past in front of it. At the same
time, a second one narrowly missed hitting its rear while sweeping past behind
it. How the central limousine had
avoiding hitting the police car amidships was beyond belief. That there was not a hint of a scratch of
paint was because of a secret that guardian angels are loathe to share.
Even so, the two front wheels of the squad car, still
technically attached to it, now splayed outwards, almost flat on the
ground. It made it look as though the
car was bowing in homage to City Hall.
At the time that the squad car had halted, a Black SUV
emblazoned with its FBI letters emerged from its hidey-hole in a side street
nearby, and then continued its area sweep.
---oo0oo---
“Captain Backstaff?
This is {rumble – mumble} at
FBI. You have some people out looking
for Hardcastle? …. Yes, so do we. Falone was supposed to meet Mayor
Drayton. Perhaps your boys and mine
should meet up at City Hall and have a chat with our Mayor? …
Because he might have seen something….
OK - you can have jurisdiction on this one – for now. OK – it is not a big deal… Right - I’ll tell my boys as well.”
---oo0oo---
The moped driver, wearing a too-small bright red helmet
tilted atop his head, waited for a traffic light to change. A lady’s helmet never sits right on a man’s
head. He seemed to be nervous in an
agitated way yet over- tense in in introverted one. He was trying to look in all four directions
at once, seeking sight of any speeding motorist charging at him with the sole
intent of unseating him. Or to do
something else to him, of an equally distressing nature.
His passenger, formally attired in a dark blue suit, sat
stiffly behind him: clutching around his
waist awkwardly, as if that passenger’s was tied by the arms to the driver.
On the green light, the moped lurched forward and with a sewing
machine buzz, sped rapidly in the general direction of City Hall.
Two blocks behind, a white patrol car edged forward, both
officers scanning from side to side in case a white Cadillac Deville was
crouching in the shadows.
Eight blocks ahead, an FBI agent cleared another segment of
the area search, starting to become convinced that the initial alert was some
sort of practical joke.
Overhead six jet fighters made a relatively quiet pass at
exactly 3,000 feet above the datum point of the apex of the roof of City Hall.
---oo0oo---
City Hall nestled in the warm afternoon glow of the five
o’clock sun. They day’s work was done,
and management was in the process of proceeding home. In half an hour supervisors would depart,
and five minutes later all the admin staff, even though they were supposed to
stay at their posts until 6 o’clock.
Way, way overhead, six black dots each with its own knife edge contrail, indicated the end of practice for the formation team
Mayor Drayton bounded down the white concrete steps, happy
that dinner was not far away - in time if not in distance. As he approached his limo he noticed idly
that its trunk was slightly ajar.
He lifted it, only in order to give a firm swing to close it
properly. And he then noticed with some
concern that a dead body was lying on the trunk floor.
The body of Fingers Falone! How the hell did anyone know that he had
shot the slime only an hour ago?
Imagine that cheap thug offering such a pitiful bribe. And then threatening to hold a press
conference! The world was a better place
without his sort. But who knew that he
had done it?
He planned quickly.
There was a construction site not two miles away – an easy and rapid
run. And then there would soon be no
evidence to link him to the crime. With a
steely-eyed smile, he started to shut the trunk.
Then he saw that one exit drive was now being blocked by the
arrival of three police cars. He
checked the second one. It was full of
FBI vehicles. FBI? What the hell? And the final avenue of escape was filled by
six black limousines. They jostled for
position, and swerved to avoid a moped rider who was in the act of leaving the
car park as rapidly as a moped would allow.
The moped, of course, no longer carried a passenger.
Overhead swarmed two news helicopters and three police
ones.
He looked down at Finger’s face, smiling back up at him, and
whispered quietly “Oh crap.”
---oo0oo---
That evening, in Tom’s kitchen, she lay across his knee not
offering any resistance. She had gone
the extra mile to earn this particular spanking and was taking it in good
grace. Reasonably good grace.
The lecture had been short and to the point. Practical jokes were rarely
appreciated. And ones involving dead
bodies - absolutely never. Never, ever,
again – did she hear?
Half a block away Jane was getting hers. They always seemed to get it at pretty much
the same time. Rough justice worked to pretty
much the same time table when it became the time for rough justice to be meted
out.
Tom’s blue jean clad knees made a comfy support for her slim
tummy. And he had thoughtfully placed
his left hand in the small of her slender back to help her to keep still. Skirt up and panties down was a bit much,
but, on balance, pretty fair. Also, it
wasn’t as if this was the first time her bare bottom had been on display for
him to whack away at – so she had no right to complain about it on those
grounds.
However, the wooden kitchen spoon was being whaled with
extra vigor – surely that was not really called for. On reflection though, it was not very
surprising when one considered everything.
Sooner or later would come the forgive-and-forget cuddle. To be followed by a session of a more
personal nature, to satisfy each other’s personal needs. But for heaven’s sake, just how many did it
take to pay for one simple little practical joke?
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