He found a bottle of water, washed out his mouth, and color came back into his face.
Gwen said, “We gotta problem. That was Richard. You’re never gonna believe this, but Paul and Stella and Anna have been kidnapped. Earlier tonight. Richard just got the ransom call, and he thinks it’s real.” She looked at each person, shaking her head.
Gale said, “Shit. No St. Barths today.”
“We going back, babe?” said Roger.
“Yes, we have to. Richard’s very worried, I could tell by his voice. We can’t take a chance that it’s some kind of prank or joke. Does everyone agree?”
Slev said, “What about the police? Why not tell them and let them handle it?”
Roger knew why they weren’t going to do that. Jinny recovered enough to be able to think again, and he also knew why, because he and the Junes lived on the same wavelength. Guignard, Gale, and Constantine half knew. They had an idea why Gwen was not going to go to the police. Slev knew too, but thought she had to ask the question.
Gwen took a moment to think, and then said, “It’s our responsibility. We’re the ones who got Paul here in the first place, for the ballet. And Anna’s one of us, so we gotta take care of her.”
Everyone knew that was only part of the reason Gwen was going to lead them into the fray. The real reason was that Gwenny June wasn’t like most women. She did things her way, and the others loved her for it, especially her husband. She was a self-reliant libertarian, took care of her business herself, and her friends were a big part of her business. There was one other reason, as well. Gwenny June liked excitement. What could be more exciting than going after kidnappers who were fucking with her friends?
Constantine charted a course for home, and as the boat heeled over under the force of the wind, Jinny crawled back up towards the bow.
Chapter 9 – The Three Men in Black Clothes
The three men who had braced Anna on King Street sat in a motel room just off the interstate outside Charleston. It was one of the nicer motels that advertised suites, so each guy had a living room, bedroom, and kitchenette. The one guy had taken off his white sneakers, almost like he had picked up on the psychological distain Stella had directed his way during their encounter, and felt ashamed of them. The other two guys wished he had waited until he returned to his own room to take them off. He was drinking a cold Samuel Adams, which said he had better taste in beer than in footwear. Contrary to its intended effect, the beers were fueling their feelings of dissatisfaction. Not only had they not accomplished their mission of kidnapping Anna, but each of them had had their gun taken away from them by a butler. A fucking butler. And them Nazis, or neo-nazies.
The boss NN sat on the sofa with a pad of paper on his lap, doodling swastikas. He wasn’t the rabid, tattooed, smelly kind of NN that periodically gets their photo splashed across the newspaper or TV for doing something stupid somewhere around the world. His involvement in the brotherhood was more historical and philosophical, though in his younger days he had been known to stomp some ass on occasion. Still, every once in a while he liked to touch base with the past, and sometimes he did this by doodling swastikas. They are a powerful symbol that captures just about everyone’s attention when you see one. The three guys weren’t talking much, just sitting and thinking about what to do next. Two of them were thinking, the third one, with the sneakers, still was humming Yellow Submarine, off and on. He was on his third beer while the other two were on their second.
The boss man had been very confident that his plan to snatch Anna would work. Grab her off the street, bring her back to the motel, contact her grandfather, and demand the five million dollar ransom. Knowing how wealthy her grandfather was, and how much he loves her, the boss figured five million was a reasonable amount, and his pals thought that amount sounded more than adequate. The one with the sneakers had calculated his one third share to be a cool two million, a figure he could live on for quite a while. You can see why he was not the boss.
On the pad under a couple of swastika symbols the guy had written 100 to 1. This was the odds that he and his pals would meet another group, intent on kidnapping Anna’s friends, at the exact same time and place they had intended to kidnap her. He scratched out the 100 to 1 figure and wrote 1,000 to 1, which amazed and infuriated him. 1,000 to 1, and it had happened. Now what? How was he going to get to Anna so he could accomplish his two part mission: 1. Cause as much pain to her grandfather as he could, and 2. Score five million dollars to fund his NN cause? Where the hell was she now, and who were the two foo foos who had snatched her as collateral to snatching Paul McCartney, the Beatle guy? The guy with the gun had an English accent and stood very straight, and the woman was really good looking and was wearing a nice suit of clothes. Both very foo foo. Who the hell were they? He scratched out 1,000 to 1 and wrote 10,000 to 1, which made him even madder.
He took another slug of Sam Adams and wished it would do more to calm him down. Anna. He thought back to King Street and how surprised he had been when she pulled a gun from under her jacket. Jesus, carrying a gun, and from the way she drew, he could tell she knew how to use it. He thought of how the English guy had tricked her into lowering it when she had it pointed at him, which made him a little happier. Still, Anna was a very interesting woman. A very interesting and beautiful woman. This little hint of sunshine in his thoughts was eclipsed when he thought of her grandfather, Pmirhs Stirg. Stirg, the man who had killed his grandfather in Argentina in 1975. Stirg the Nazi hunter. Stirg the billionaire Charlestonian. Stirg, the man he wanted to hurt. Kidnap Anna, and get a two-fer: ransom and revenge. He had been so close, and then the 10,000 to 1 thing had happened. The intense animosity he felt towards Stirg now was directed towards the well-dressed couple who had fucked up his kidnapping. He now had four targets: Stirg, Anna, the English guy, and the woman. So be it.
He looked over at his two buddies and said, “I got some thinking to do. See you tomorrow in the coffee shop at nine.”
Chapter 10 – Living in a Bunker
It was after 1am, but Jools still was consumed with performing his duties. He was like a pack mule, hauling stuff from the big house to the bunker, which was made more onerous because he had to keep up the front that he was a heavy dude, intimidating the three people he just had kidnapped. First he set whatever it was he was carrying on the ground outside the bunker door, then he unlocked it, carried the stuff inside, relocked the door, took the stuff down the hallway to one of the rooms, unloaded, went back to the main door and unlocked it, went outside and relocked it, etc. He made about twenty trips into the bunker, carrying everything he could think of to make his guests, er, victims, comfortable: food, books, magazines, clock radios, lamps, cushions, toothpaste, dish detergent, throw rugs, a wall calendar, an orchid that was in bloom, and a cutting board with a Swedish knife set. He could only carry one armload of stuff at a time because he had to carry his gun in one hand, and wave it around as part of his intimidation act. Anna realized she could take the gun away from him, just as she could have done back on King Street, but she was taking her cues from Paul, who seemed ok with what was happening. She figured he was serious about using this unexpected and forced opportunity to focus himself on writing music, and didn’t care that much about all the commitments he had around the world over the next few months, including the Queen’s birthday gig. Anna wasn’t too keen on this whole deal, being locked in a concrete bunker with no windows, but she decided she’d let this escapade go down the tracks for a while and see what happened. Being shacked up with Paul McCartney might prove interesting.
She said to Stella as they put the food away in the cupboards, “So what do you think? I can get us out of this, you know.”
“You can? How?”
“I think I can take his gun away from him. He’s not a dufus; he’s had some training with it. But I think I could take him.”
This gave Stella the opportunity to as
k Anna the question she’d been wanting to ask. She said, “What’s up with carrying a gun? Out to dinner? Since when do you do that?”
“I had a reason for carrying a gun here in Charleston before I went to France for the movie. When I got back here a couple weeks ago for the ballet, I didn’t really have that reason anymore, but I found myself wanting to get back in the swing of things, like before, so I’ve been packing now and then. Carrying a gun is not something to do lightly. It’s all about training and psychology. You have to condition your mind to gun safety and intelligence. So that’s what I’ve been doing; reconditioning myself. It’s a special skill, and you have to work at it.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “I guess I’m not really back with it yet. Jools tricked me out on the street, the little shit. Very sneaky. I owe him one.”
“You’ve been carrying that around with you since we got back here?”
Anna nodded.
“I guess you can’t tell a book by its cover.”
Anna repeated her question, “Do you want me to try to get us out of here?”
Stella sat down in a kitchen chair. She knew Jools would be back in a few minutes with the next load of stuff. “No, not yet. That is, if you can stand to be in here. You don’t have to do what my dad wants, you know. But I want to do what he wants, and he seems to want to stay. He seems serious about using this as an opportunity to write. His explanation was simple and I believe it. He can spend his time performing, partying he calls it, or spend it writing songs. He doesn’t have forever, and he knows that. He knows he has a few more good years, and he seems to like this idea of a rock opera. He loved writing the score for the ballet, and now these people have given him a new challenge. It’s a little odd that he doesn’t seem to care about his commitments, but when you’re seventy, you do what you feel like doing, not necessarily what you should do.” She put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. “Now me, I’m not worth half a billion dollars like him. I have commitments that mean money to me. But, I want to do what I can to help him. Scotilly said she wants me to do the costumes for this thing, and I assume she was serious. We’ll find out. It’s going to screw up some of my stuff back in London, but working on a project with my dad, that would be great. I can go with the flow of this for a while, I guess.”
Anna didn’t have any big projects in the works. She’d attended the last performances of the ballet, and was hanging out with Stella for a few days, but had planned on flying over to St. Barths and spending time with the Junes. Anyone who stars in a Spielberg movie gets other offers, and lots of them, but nothing had captured her attention yet. So she, too, could go with the flow of this thing for a while. And like Stella, the idea of hanging around Paul, maybe even working with him, was exciting. Working with Paul McCartney in a World War II bunker for the odd couple of Jools and Scotilly, how weird.
She heard the heavy steel door open and close, and Jools came into the living room with another orchid. He said, “Don’t over water this one, and it should bloom in a couple months. I see a little bloom stalk starting to grow.” Stella and Anna looked at each other: a couple of months? “That’s the last load for tonight. It’s almost 2am. I’ll bring more stuff tomorrow, and Scotilly will come visit. Tell you what she wants.”
“Is there internet connection?” asked Stella.
“Where’s the TV?” asked Anna.
“Where’s the piano?” asked Paul.
Jools was worn out with all this non-butlering stuff. Kidnapping three people off the street; fighting off other kidnappers in hand to hand combat; trying hard to make his guests, er, victims, comfortable in their new accommodations, er, cells. It had been a trying day, and his gun was getting heavy. “Look, I’m doing the best I can. I hadn’t planned on THREE people. I’ll get the other stuff you want tomorrow. If I can. The piano will take some doing. Can’t you start writing songs on a guitar?” he asked Paul.
“I don’t have a guitar. Normally I don’t take one out to dinner with me, even when I plan on getting kidnapped. No piano, no guitar. How do you expect me to write songs?”
Jools said, “Oh.”
Stella said, “You have a harmonica. You played it in the taxi with the Pakistani driver.”
He reached into the handkerchief pocket of his coat and pulled out the harmonica. “Oh, yeah, I do, don’t I. This’ll work until the other instruments arrive. I can work on the opera with this.” He sat down on the sofa and started writing a song.
Jools said, “You need anything, just ring. I’ll see you in the morning. How do you like your eggs?” And he walked down the long corridor with concrete walls and ceiling. After a minute they heard the steel door slam shut, the sound echoing back to them.
So there they were, kidnapped and locked in an old bunker on Sullivan’s Island, Paul playing harmonica and seemingly content, with the prospect of being served eggs to order the next morning by an English butler. And this was only the beginning.
Chapter 11 – The Other Kidnappers
The other kidnappers, the wantabee kidnappers, sat in the coffee shop the next morning. The boss man in black clothes (BMIBC) was eating scrambled eggs and bacon, the middling smart man in black clothes (MSMIBC) was eating fried eggs and potatoes, and the not so smart man in black clothes (NSSMIBC) was eating his second stack of pancakes. He asked the smarter guys, “What do we do now?”
The MSMIBC said, “We can’t let those fucks get away with this. Not when we were so close to snatching the bitch. She was right there. Right where we wanted her. Five million dollars.”
The BMIBC ate some more eggs. He was just as pissed as the others, but couldn’t let it show, because he was the leader of the team and had to maintain his composure. “Five million dollars is right. It was in our hands, and those fucks took it. The guy acted almost like a butler, with a rod up his ass. And the woman. A genteel priss. Jesus. The Stirg bitch was something, though, wasn’t she? Fucking carrying a gun. You see the way she pulled it? Smooth. Whadya know about that? And then the butler gets the draw on her with that trick. That was smooth, too. Fucking butler. I bet she’s pissed at him for that. Can you believe the prissy woman walked off with five guns in her purse. Our guns.” And he stuffed more eggs into his mouth. This was his idea of maintaining a cool leadership persona in front of his troops.
The NSSMIBC said again, “How you know the prissy woman isn’t a Jew? And what do we do now?”
The MSMIBC said, “Genteel, you idiot. Not gentile. Don’t you know the difference? He used it as a tautology.”
“No, I used it as a pleonasm. Don’t you know the difference?” said the boss.
“What?” said the NSSMIBC. “What?”
“Forget it. I just meant that the woman who walked off with all our guns is stuck up. Anyone who has a butler is stuck up.”
The MSMIBC said, “She may be stuck up, but one of the five guns she had in her purse when they left was hers. She brought it to the show. How many stuck up people pack heat. And, she’s a kidnapper. How many genteel women do that?”
The boss was sorry he'd constructed the tautology in the first place. Er, the pleonasm. “I don’t care about her, except I want my gun back. We know the Stirg bitch isn’t a gentile, and she’s the one we’re after. They got away from us last night, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gotten away for good. I bet they’re in town, and that they’re doing their kidnapping thing here. Kidnap Paul McCartney, though, that’s something to talk about. He’s worth some bucks. Lennon was the ballsy writer of the two. McCartney’s a priss. I mean, Strawberry Fields, gimme a break. That’s why she kidnapped him. He’s a prissy songwriter. Takes one to know one,” and he stuffed two strips of bacon in his mouth. With his mouth full he said, “Revolution. That’s what Lennon wrote about. Like us, revolution against the Zionists that run the Federal Reserve. And the World Bank. Run the country. Hollywood, especially. Fuckers. Maybe
we should have Lennon be our mascot.”
The NSSMIBC said, “You can have a person be your mascot? I thought mascots were animals, like dogs. Like pitbulls. We should have a pitbull be our mascot. What kind of dog did Hitler have?”
“What nationality was Hitler?” asked the MSMIBC. “What was he?”
“German, course.”
“And what kind of dogs come from Germany? Badass dogs?”
“Oh, yeah, ok. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a pitbull for a mascot.”
The boss had finished with his breakfast, finished with tautologies, and finished with mascots. He looked at his boys and said, “I want my gun back….I want Anna Stirg….and if we happen to run into the prissy songwriter who’s worth a bundle, I’ll take him, too. Five mill for the bitch, and another five for McCartney.”
The NSSMIBC attempted to figure out his one-third cut of ten million dollars, but being that ten is not divisible by three without dealing with fractions, he gave it up.
Chapter 12 – The Junes are Back
It was 5pm the day after the kidnapping when Slev brought the boat into the marina, kissed the dock with the port side of the boat, and cut the engine. Jinny jumped onto the dock and tied the bow line to a cleat, while Guignard did the same with the stern line. Jinny’d never felt better, until he remembered why he’d felt so bad out on the water, and that reminded him of the humiliation Gale the Mouth had heaped on him while he was puking over the side. But Jinny was not one to live in the past, nor one to carry grudges, so he helped Gale out of the cockpit and gave her a smile. She said, “You know I was teasing you, right, toughguy?” He knew, and leaned forward to give Gale a double kiss on the cheek, European style. She pushed him away, saying, “You still stink. Get cleaned up and try it again.”
Gwen and Roger left the boat duties to the others and walked up the long dock towards the marina restaurant. They sat down on a bench and dialed Richard’s number. “Richard, it’s Gwen. And Roger. What’s happening?”