The Ransom Note

 

The note read: “If you want your beloved Mike back, put an envelope containing $20 under your garbage trolley before midnight tonight.”

I was confused at reading this note, even a second time. Mostly I couldn’t understand why someone would do such a thing. The absurdity of it all: twenty dollars isn’t much of ransom, and who the heck is Mike?

The message was printed, large, childish-printing, mixing upper and lower case, in blue crayon, on one of those many cards you get around Christmas time assorted charities. This one was of the ubiquitous snowy scene and Northern Cardinal. The kidnapper needed two cards.

My neighbor on one side is named David. David Something. My neighbor on the other side is Donna Evans and her husband Caleb. Across the street is Ms. Walton. I don’t know that I know all their kids or all their pets but Mike doesn’t ring a bell. He must appear important to someone, the kidnapper, obviously, who only wanted, who could only think, twenty dollars was a lot of money. Which is interesting since none of us had millions or even thousands we could get our hands on easily in a day or without other notice. I had to ask myself if the kidnapper hadn’t lowballed his ransom because he knew any better. Smarter than all the TV-ransom shows.

On top of that if I put money under trolley would I only have to wait and watch until midnight to catch the varmint? What happens if I don’t leave the money? I didn’t know who Mike was but I got this strange sensation he’s not very large or important or necessarily missing. Somebody’s cat, that had wandered in and now wanders out so the owner writes him off? The kidnapper would have to know the cat was named Mike. Maybe from social media? Maybe by luck of being around at feeding time? We have one older woman, real nice, very cordial, who walks the neighborhood and seems to know everyone’s business. I think she is disarming and not a threat so we, I know I do, talk to her very easily. She might have heard of a Mike and our kidnapper overhead it.

One other conclusion I could come to was “they,” the kidnapper, had the wrong address. And then had the nerve, or lack of brains, to stick this note in my door in broad daylight. Someone was either awfully brave or awfully stupid to walk to my side door and stuff this note in it risking being seen. I have some very nosy neighbors. We watch out for each other.

It took a moment to register that the neat ploy on my part, I’m so smart, would be to go on-line and show a copy of this note on the neighborhood Facebook group and ask if the person who knows “Mike” would kindly contact me. Or, better yet, I could tell the world somebody sent this note to the wrong person. That might make an interesting story for “Twilight Zone.” Ought to liven up Facebook, if nothing else.

Ms. Walton might have a cat. Or had a cat. I can’t say that I paid any attention. Mr. Walton had been a lawn-mowing obsessive. A “LMO” is what I called him. And still his yard was never much better than mine. She liked her flowers and is terribly polite. Ideal cat person. Should I walk over and ask?

If Mike was a person, I didn’t know him. Not any of my relation. My neighbor David didn’t have kids, as far as I could tell. He was about my age, kept to himself probably on the Internet learning how to build bombs, or something.

Who is Mike? Who was Mike? How’d I get chosen to fork over a twenty? I didn’t want to cause harm. I also disliked having to run to the ATM to get money just because I don’t carry any. And then what, leave it under my garbage trolley? With a hope that the kidnapper will take it, in return leaving Mike with, instead of the wind carrying it away, or someone else notices the envelope and helps themselves, out of devious curiosity? What am I, chopped liver? If anything I ought to get to negotiate, face to face, masked and distanced, of course.

I took a post-it note, and the ransom note, put them in one of those envelopes you get in the mail from the charities, and stuffed it under the wheel of my dumpster. On the post-it I wrote, “No!”

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Donahue and the Ninja

 

The house at the corner of Eldon and Wright was old. A hundred years old. The paint was new. The garage was new-ish. The property was bordered on two sides with a knee-high concrete wall topped with box elder. The porch, a wrap around with a low railing, needed paint--the whole place could use some care--was the height that Donahue used to try to jump over when he was a kid. Sometimes he cleared it and sometimes he landed on his head. Or, in the forsythia. Which his mother disliked immensely. Her dislike had nothing to with his landing on his head, either. But, the big stairway provided a makeshift stage for all the the kids to play act on. The porch rail seemed taller then.

The front door was open and he knew William Cobb Abernathy aka "B.C." aka "Sweet" (although no one seemed to know why he was called that and the last guy who did call him "Sweet," at the Riverside Tap and Dance, lost two teeth for his unauthorized familiarity) might be in the house this time. Sweet Abernathy was wanted for assault with a deadly weapon on the person of Jill Smithson. Ms. Smithson had no beef with Sweet Abernathy and he none with her but she said something inappropriate, apparently, and he went after her with the heavy end of a pool cue and a beer bottle. She was pretty well bloodied by the time the barkeep got there with his genuine Louisville Slugger. Abernathy lashed back and the crowd ducked long enough for him to get away.

Mr. Smithson was one to think the cops wouldn't find Sweet Abernathy so he hired Donahue to find him instead and sooner, perhaps for personal reasons. He didn’t say. The cops had already searched the Eldon Street address, Sweet's mother's home. She was in the nursing home and Sweet would stay at the Eldon Street house sometimes but not that day and not several other days until Donahue figured Sweet just couldn't be anywhere else. Sweet didn't have a girlfriend, that Donahue knew of, and a call at the residents of Sweet's two best pals from an earlier run-in with the long arm of the law proved fruitless.

The house was cold. It was late October and the heat ought to be on but it wasn't and the lights were off except for one in the kitchen. Donahue gravitated to the kitchen but mostly it was only stale aired. The 'fridge hummed and there were dishes still in the drainer from the last time he was here, and a few pots stacked on the corner of the oven. The linoleum-topped table in the middle was just a tad dustier than last time, too. Donahue, .45 at his side, circled the table and then started down the hall towards the front of the house, nearly spooked by his image in the hall mirror next to the front door.

Donahue had watched enough scary movies to know he should never turn his back on a closet or to back his way through a hallway but he also had his .45 out and cocked and nerves of steel (not so much I-beam steel as maybe chicken-wire steel.)

Not looking ahead but instead looking down, he sensed something behind him, in the kitchen. He spun to his right, .45 coming up to eye-level, as the hatchet whistled by his ear. He saw Sweet Abernathy, crouched on the table, in some convoluted pose, outfitted somewhere between Superman and Kato and Bruce Lee. The hatchet sailed on non-stop directly to the mirror, the crash of breaking glass ignored if even anyone heard. The .45 exploded in a deafening roar, the kick wrenching Donahue's half-bent elbow.

 Sweet Abernathy took the slow, heavy, lead round just below his Batman utility belt, folding him in half down to a four-point stance on the table. He didn't move for what seemed like an hour, as if he were getting his breath back, then his head, hooded in red, trimmed in lightning bolts, dipped to the table top.

Donahue froze, too, in awe, his fight and flight instincts in check. He didn't swallow. He didn't breath. He didn't blink. He knew what happened in the movies if he did.

Sweet Abernathy dropped a shoulder, and ever so slowly, tipped over, off the table, almost landing on his back, his foot flailed out and caught the stack of pans on the corner of the oven, and they followed him down to the floor with a crash that broke through the ear-ringing thunder of the .45.

Donahue got up his nerve to approach Sweet Abernathy’s body, wedged between the table and the oven, a pan laying flat on his chest. Donahue had seen too many movies where the warrior-wannabe leapt up from certain death to decapitate his victim in one motion with time enough leftover to smoke a cigarette.

But not Sweet Abernathy. He was completely dead.

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