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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Twenty

Going for Broke

Chapter 20 – Going for Broke

The stretch Limo exited the highway with the stealth of a busload of Yankee baseball fans at a Boston Red Sox game.  Big vehicles like this were common on the highways and wealthier towns around Fairfield County, but not in Bridgeport.  Bridgeport had seen its glory days and it’s wealthy, but now it was mostly an ugly place.  It was a typical city with some beautiful neighborhoods where the last holdouts enjoyed a pretty good life, and tree lined streets with huge mansions that now housed three or four families that had difficulty paying the rent while trying to keep the junkies and drug dealers off their steps, and their kids out of jail or the morgue.

Bridgeport had been a steel and brass town earlier in the century, and a textile and manufacturing center prior to that.  The three and four story brick industrial buildings had once been state of the art for machine shops and sewing machines, but now these buildings were mostly vacant.  Their old windows and antiquated heating systems too expensive to replace.  The lead paint on the walls and the numerous chemicals that had stained the floors and groundwater around them made them too expensive to repair.  These buildings were the dinosaurs of an earlier age.  Obsolete for current uses, but in too good of shape to fall down on their own, and too expensive to tear down.  The buildings that were once the tools of a thriving economy were now what made this city ugly and dangerous.

The killer and four angry commandos said nothing as the big black car slowed at the bottom of the ramp, and took a left turn under a railroad bridge.  At this point, there was no changing the plan.  The dirty broken concrete of the bridge resembled a filthy tunnel more than a bridge, with none of the sunlight of the day shining through, and nothing but potholed streets and abandoned brick buildings ahead.  At this point, it was hard to believe Ashley was still alive.  It was hard to believe any of them would be alive fifteen minutes from now.

Ten year old Ashley Knapp sat nearly motionless in the old gray swivel chair, at the old gray metal desk, next to windows so filthy, the sunlight from the brilliant mid day sun barely filtered in.  Normally she would be swaying back and forth in the seat, with an occasional three hundred and sixty degree spin.  She was ten years old, and rarely sat this still.  She wasn’t still because the two goons watching her made her sit still, she sat still because she was concentrating.  She was smart, and she was thinking.

She wondered how could two humans that could actually walk and talk at the same time be so ?  These two were morons.  She was sure they could neither read nor write, and she was certain they had never made it out of middle school. 

Ashley had woken up in a van in this warehouse.  She wasn’t really sure how she had gotten to this spot or what had really happened.  As she lay on a blanket that protected her from the cold rusting steel floor of the back of the old cargo van, she remained motionless recounting how she had been grabbed at she stood in the front yard.  How her captor had never spoken to her but only sprayed something in her face, and she remembered being thrown into the back seat.  She remembered nothing else, but that hadn’t mattered too much.  Her head had hurt, and she wasn’t sure if she would ever recover from this headache.  She wondered if this is what her mom’s friend had felt like the day after she drank too much.

Ashley remained motionless for some time after she had awoken.  She laid there while her headache gradually faded, and she laid their while she listened to the morons speak.

Neither of these guys were the one that had originally taken her.  She could tell by their voices.  The man who had taken her was a large heavy older man with a round face and he was balding.  She thought he would have been very quiet had she actually been awake to hear him.  He scared her.

These two dopes were just plain stupid.  They argued constantly, with the most dim-witted of the two relentlessly deriding the other with a barrage of insults about how stupid he was and how he would get them both killed.  The bigger moron claimed he was the only one with enough brains to get into the organization, while the man with the four year old intelligence level wasted his breath deflecting the moron’s assaults and claiming he would do just fine without him.

In a period of ten minutes, Ashley heard enough about each of them that she could have identified them to the police with descriptions of where they lived and who they bought their beer from.  She knew the four year olds sister's name as well as her husband.  She knew the meanest one’s dog’s name, his car, and the street he lived on.  For kidnappers these guys were really stupid.  Once she was returned, these guys would definitely be busted.

The lesser moron had been the first to suggest they wake her up or carry her while she slept, and the mean one seemed unable to make an alternate suggestion.  The moron brothers were quiet as they carried her, and she was unsure who it was that gently lifted her to their shoulder and carried her across the concrete floor, up many stairways to what she believed was the third floor.

Ashley remained quiet for several hours.  She was good at faking being asleep.  She often did this at home when the family returned from car rides and she was too tired to get herself out of the car and up the stairs.  Dad almost always came to get her, carry her upstairs, and lie her down in her bed, taking off her shoes and covering her.

The morons weren’t so kind about it as they carried her over the shoulder, which made her aching head want to explode.  They laid her on the cold gray desk without thinking to bring the blanket from the van.  She laid there uncomfortably before letting out a moan and rolling over in a fetal position with her eyes pointing away so they couldn’t see her face.  They were morons.  The roll was unnatural, and dad definitely would have noticed she was faking, and made her walk.  But, these guys, they had no idea she was wide awake and listening to everything they said.

Sitting in this room for two days was painful.  She pretty quickly figured out how to get McDonalds or Burger King depending on her mood.  She almost got the four year old moron to go to Pizza Hut in West Haven more than thirty minutes away.   He would have been gone so long Ashley might have had a chance to get away from the angry three year old.  She was surprised the three year old didn’t let him go.

The first day was the worst.  She had awoken from the drugs at nighttime, and she could tell the goons didn’t seem to know what was going on.  They were really tense waiting for a phone call that would give them further instructions.  They actually hadn’t been planning on staying long, and were totally unprepared for their three day ordeal.

Ashley hadn’t been awake for two hours when the three year old was going crazy for a cigarette.  He seemed to have consumed an entire carton in the past two hours, and was getting crazy for another.  After another two hours, Ashley was afraid he might kill her just so he could get a cigarette.  Her fear might have come true if the four year old hadn’t suggested he go for cigarettes and a bite to eat.  They hadn’t gotten the phone call yet and appeared a bit concerned about leaving before they did, but the four year old went for the cigarettes.  Ashley watched them argue over cigarettes and commented to herself that they were so dumb they wouldn’t live long enough to die of lung cancer.

When the phone call came, they obviously hadn’t gotten the call they expected.  It was the middle of the next day when the call came, and they were tired and cranky.  Ashley had slept just fine and her headache was gone.  The moron twins were obviously up all night and responded poorly to the call.  Ashley watched and laughed to herself as they argued that others didn’t understand what it was like to be up all night without cigarettes and food.  They wanted more money and they would tell him so….next time he came back.

As the day wore on, Ashley was bored and began to play with them. Their simple little minds were so easy to play with and torment.  Initially she had felt bad for them being so stupid, but eventually she saw them as something less than human, and not even worth the sympathy she had for and ant or a worm.  She was sure even an ant had a sense of right and wrong, or would at least feel a little sympathy for a ten year old girl taken from her home.
 
Little Ashley raised questions in their minds as to how they would be paid, if they’d ever get another phone call, if one would try to kill the other for her share of the money.  What she really wanted was a Game-Boy or a computer to play with.  Instead she had slugs who were without the simplest thoughts of right or wrong and no intellect to even ponder the issue.  She would never kill a defenseless slug, but she plotted ways to make these two disappear. 

Her constant plotting and questioning had them so confused, they now seemed to take minutes rather than seconds to answer the simplest questions.  She continued this strategy with good cause to believe that in a few more days she might have them in such a state, she could walk right past them and have five minutes to run by the time they figured out where she had gone.  It seemed like a plan, but she wasn’t sure she would get two more days.

The limo crossed neath the third story window where  Ashley sat.  Tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber never saw the limo, but Ashley did.  The black car scared her.  She knew it wasn’t her dad, and the creeps were talking pretty nasty since they received a call an hour ago.  Before the call she had thought they might actually let her go, as they kept yelling about how sick they were of sitting, and this wasn’t part of the deal.  But now they seemed nervous.  They were scared.  And they started talking mean to her, kind of like they did when she first woke up.
 
Ashley was a smart kid.  She had been devising a plan to get out of here.  It wasn’t any steal a gun and blast her way out kind of plan, it was more of a work on their simple minds, get them to like her kind of plan.  It looked like it had been working until the call, and now the black limo.  She was scared, and wasn’t feeling all that smart any more.  She curled up on the old desk, looking out through the dirty window.  Looking where the car went by and now where there was nothing but dirty tar and old buildings.

David was lost again.  He had seen Ashley dead on a concrete floor.  He had seen himself and his current companions gunned down before they even got out of the car.  He had imaged his wife and remaining daughters on their own.  He had seen a hundred different scenarios of how this would play out, not one of them ending well.

David turned from the window to the eyes of his female companion.  “Do you know where my wife and kids are?”

She looked back in a questioning manor, but answered in a stern monotone voice.  “No I don’t.”

David looked at her expressionless for a moment and then smiled a bit.  The woman he named Commando Karen looked at him for a moment with a combination of concern and question.  She seemed to have problem getting the words out, but she finally asked as a woman would ask a question, with sympathy and compassion. “Do you?”

David looked her in the eyes with every intensity to see if he could read anything in her eyes when he responded.  He had suddenly become desperate to know what she knew.  He still had no idea who these folks were, and he hoped and prayed what remained of his family was safe.

“I have no idea of where they are.”

Karen looked at him a bit puzzled at first, and then a small smile came to her face.  For a moment she almost looked human.  She looked like someone’s mother.  Like a wife.  Like someone who laughed and cried.  For a moment David wondered about his pending assent into the next life.  He wondered if Ashley would like her, and if the three of them could hang out together until mom got there.  It was kind of a creepy thought, but somehow comforting.

There was something very lonely in Commando Karen’s eyes.  Something sad and yet angry. A determination beyond anything he normally saw.  In the blackness of her eyes there was no void as saw in so many eyes.  There was all kind of information available right beneath the surface.  A huge story full of history, good times, bad times, and a tremendous amount of pain.  Her eyes were not a void like the barrel of a gun.  Her eyes were the blackness of a barrel, and evoked the same fear, but her eyes were not hollow and her essence was just sitting there on the surface.  She was ready for a change.  Life or death, it didn’t seem to matter.  She would be changing very soon.

The black car slid down the abandoned open roadway like the occupants owned the kingdom they had entered.  A big fancy car traveling though the land where the lowest levels of peasants lived.  The heavy car rumbled over the potholes in the roadway with only minor discomfort to its occupants who sat on leather seats in fine suits, and enjoyed climate controlled air conditioning in a feeble attempt at comfort and contentment.

In fact the occupants of this vehicle were far from comfy or content.  They were nervous and about as discontent as a human being can be.  One of the occupants was here to reclaim the body of his daughter who has probably been dead for days. The others were here to kill or possibly to die.  David wondered if the others had a preference for life over death, or quite possibly, the other way around.  Karen looked so tired, that David wondered if she had any will to live.  She appeared to have been fighting so long that she would welcomed death.
 
The other three males had not said a word to David since he met them.  He initially thought this was because Commando Karen was in charge, but now he began to realize nobody was in charge.  They appeared to govern by consensus, and Karen happened to have the roll of communicator.  These three guys had the same look in their eyes as Karen.  They look tired, sad, angry, worn, weary, battered, scared, and a thousand other adjectives for what a human doesn’t want to feel.  All that, yet the blackness of their eyes was too intense to reveal any humanity beneath.

David didn’t devise names for these guys.  They deserved names and good ones, but David hadn’t given them names and really couldn’t tell them apart. They looked different physically, but their eyes were all the same.  They were angry men with a purpose.  Angry but not too angry. This was controlled rage, waiting to be unleashed. It was obvious these guys were capable of significant damage, but they were not at all out of control.  These were well trained, logical, intelligent machines.  The fact that they were machines is probably why David hadn’t named them. 

These guys had all the physical attributes that make a person human, yet their humanity lay hidden behind deep, deep cold black eyes, like the void at the end of a gun barrel.  Their eyes were actually blue and brown and gray, but revealed only that black void filled with calculated anger, and a passion for a mission that was becoming more obvious to David.  They were like soldiers with a higher purpose.  The Gods had pitted them against total evil.  One in which there was a distinct line between the good guys and the bad guys.  One where David’s recently discovered buddy Joe, who had enjoyed one drunken night in a bar watching a ball game, was fortunate enough to have never encountered.

The car turned many street corners, deeper into the warehouse manufacturing complex in accordance with the directions given to David by Marcel’s henchman.  The same henchman who was now either in jail or dead, depending on who got to him first.  The feds might be interrogating him brutally.  It wasn’t a bad thought, but David thought further, doubting he or Marcel would have that benefit if he was discovered by some of his current associates.  For all David knew, Scary Dude had a conversation with him, and David couldn’t imagine Marcel or his henchman surviving that.

David’s team was made up of five people.  David sat in the back, facing forward with a light haired, blue eyed man of thirty next to him.  David had only seen him for a few moments when he was first abducted, but he remembered the eyes that looked like they had cried for months before turning to steel.  Cold black steel. David had never heard this man say a word. 

Across from David sat Commando Karen and a dark haired man of fifty.  The dark haired man had a mustache that looked as hard as his face and body.  He was a powerful man and David guessed he had been a Marine or Navy Seal or something.  This man was hard bodied, and his spirit seemed just as hard.  He looked as though he had been trained to handle rage and had perfected that skill.  He was probably as dangerous a man as anyone could meet, yet David had no fear of him, and to David, he seemed more like an uncle, here to care for him.  David sensed a kindness in this man and would have difficulty understanding this contrast except that this man was here with David for the sole purpose of retrieving David’s daughter.  At least that is what he said he was doing.  The fifth man was driving, and David was glad he couldn’t see another set of cold, scary, vacant eyes.  He imagined these eyes to be the scariest of them all.

As the car lumbered through the brick buildings, David sensed something was wrong.  Of coarse nearly everything was wrong.  His daughter was a prisoner, he was a killer, he was sitting in a car with four people he didn’t know who seemed to make a living out of being killers and might even be his killers, he had a gun in his belt, he was being chased by God knows how many different creeps and a slew of federal agencies, and he was about to walk into a situation where sicko killers and child molesters were after him.

His blood pressure was rising, and David felt himself drawing nearer the electrical wires that would fry him.  He couldn’t stop his eyes from darting to each of his companions.  They were all looking at their shoes, but David knew they saw him looking at them, and they sensed his panic.

David was stunned.  He had been alone all this time, and suddenly he had companions.  They claimed to be there to help him, but now he wondered.  Perhaps Marcel was not dead, and perhaps the last call he had made was to this group, that was now going to take him out and dispose of him and his daughter.  In each of the ugly encounters over the past days, he had been alone.  He had acted on the element of surprise and he had survived.  Now he was in a car traveling into the heart of nowhere with five creepy heavily armed black eyed killers.  He was a fool.  He had not stepped into the car willingly, but he continued with this crew under his direction, without intimidation.  It seems the powerful ones had overestimated David’s ability, and had sent four to do the job that only needed one. David wished Scary Dude were here.  Though these black eyed fiends returned his weapon, he still didn’t trust them, and he now feared them.

The car was about to follow plans and make a left turn into the final drive that led to the building where David’s daughter was held, when David demanded the driver stop the car. 

If these were his killers, they had a plan and he was going to screw them up right now.  If they were on his side, they would understand.

“I’m going the rest of the way on foot.”

No complaints, no protests, no confirmation.  The stares were blank, but not an unknowing or unintelligent blank, just an accepting blank stare.  No comment.   This was his deal and he could do as he wished.

The car stopped.

Before reaching for the door handle, Davis stated in a clear calm voice. “If you want, you can go to the original meeting place.  I’ll get there.”

With that, David exited the black car, and ran back toward the direction they had come from.  A moment later he heard the car door close and the sound of the car moving.  As he rounded the corner or the three story manufacturing building, he looked over his shoulder, and saw no one following.