“How’s that going to help us?” asked the BMIBC.
“Because then we’re part of the crime. And being victims, the cops will tell us about their investigation, and we will know who the butler and the prissy woman are, and then we can go and kidnap the bitch from them. And maybe the Beatle guy.”
“You want us to go to the cops, tell them who we are? Have you forgotten the little gig we did up in Boise? The smashup. You think THOSE cops have forgotten about that? Have stopped looking for the smashers? Us?”
“Well, maybe. It wasn’t that big of a smashup. Coupla heads. How long do they keep looking for people?”
Two College of Charleston students walked by, smelling like pot. The MSMIBC said, “We’ve been here a week and I haven’t seen a single student with pierced body parts. What’s with these kids? Every place else we’ve been to where they got a college, there’s kids with nice piercings. Artistic. But not here.”
“Charleston and Boise are different. Lots of us up in Idaho. Not so many here. In fact, we may be the only NNs in Charleston. This here’s a woosey town. They put mint in their whiskey here. Mint and sugar. Listen, we’re gonna get our money, get our revenge, and head back up to the northwest. Back to the bars. Back to where the girls got real tats, black ones, not little roses on their butts, like here. Yellow roses.”
The MSMIBC said, “How bout we go to Stirg. Tell him his granddaughter got snatched. He knows this town, knows the people. Maybe he can get her back; then we snatch her from him. Get our money, and you get revenge.”
The boss looked at his right hand man and said, “You don’t think the butler and the priss are going to contact Stirg? Tell him they got his grandkid? If they want ransom for McCartney, you think they’re not going to demand ransom from Stirg too?” The MSMIBC turned his attention from the problem to his lunch. What kind of burger to have? The boss said, “Let’s take a walk. I gotta figure this out.”
Chapter 16 – Everyone’s Thinking
It was 8am on the second day after the kidnapping and the entire team sat in the kitchen of the June’s house on Church Street. It was a three story brick house built in 1831, and a remodel had resulted in a big kitchen. The Junes and the Gromstovs sat around the kitchen table, while Jinny, Guignard, Gale, and Richard sat around the island. Jinny was the only one eating. He had offered to cook everyone breakfast, but the others were satisfied with coffee for the time being. He had arrived at the Junes about 7am and let himself in the back door, picking the deadbolt just to keep in practice. In no time he had a pot of shrimp and grits on the stove, and the smell got Roger and Gwen out of bed. They had known Jinny for longer than Slev, Constantine, and Guignard, long enough to know that he probably would eat three different versions of breakfast before noon. Then he would start in on lunch. The shrimp and grits was the first dose of nutrition Jinny would consume over the course of the day required to sustain his five foot four inch, two hundred and five pound body that resembled one of the anti-terrorist concrete bollards surrounding the White House, just outside the ornamental iron fence. Those are the things meant to stop a tank from rumbling across the lawn.
One time he had walked up to one of the horse-drawn carriages that take tourists around the historic district, thinking it would be nice to pet the horse, an animal he had no experience with growing up near the docks in Saint Petersburg. He didn’t know that some horses don’t like to be approached unexpectedly from behind. The carriage driver was talking with a customer in front of the horse, and didn’t notice Jinny do just that, sticking out his hand and touching the horse’s butt. THUD came the sound of the horse’s hoof making direct contact with Jinny’s chest, dead center. Remember, he’s only five foot four, which puts his chest right in the strike zone for a surprised horse delivering an instinctive kick. Guignard watched him land on his back ten feet away from the horse, lay there for a count of eight, place both hands on his chest and feel around, then jump up and run around to the front of the horse, where he cocked his right arm back in preparation for throwing a right cross to the horse’s jawbone. Just as the horse had kicked instinctively, the driver instinctively stepped between Jinny and his horse to protect his livelihood, which is the only thing that kept the horse from getting knocked out there on Market Street. This would have been the real life version of the scene in the comedy movie Blazing Saddles, in which the director had staged a scene with a huge ex-football guy playing a cowboy, who gets ticked off at a horse, and knocks it out with a punch to the head. Anyway, it takes a lot of shrimp and grits to keep Jinny’s bod in fighting trim, so he worked on his second bowl while Gwen led the discussion.
“Let’s go over what we know. Paul, Stella, and Anna left the hotel and went out for dinner. They were supposed to come back to the hotel around 9pm and meet Richard. Right, Richard?” He nodded. “The next thing we know for sure is that Richard has three phone calls, starting about 11pm, with a polite guy that has an English accent, and a woman that sounds crazy and threatens to chop off our friend’s heads. Is that right?” He nodded again. “The next afternoon he gets a call, with the English guy being polite, and the woman sounding crazy, and Paul sounding businesslike. Paul gives Richard the demands, which are money and,” Gwen shook her head, “that Paul write a rock opera, and we produce it here in Charleston. Do I have that right?” Everyone nodded except Jinny who was serving himself a third bowl from the pot on the stove. “Ok, so that was yesterday afternoon, and then we got back to the marina and went to Anna’s place, and that’s where we are now, in terms of information. And no one’s called the cops, so we’re the only ones who know about the kidnapping. The question is, what do we do now?”
Slev said, “We’re the only ones now, but that’s not going to last long. Anna didn’t have any big plans, she was going to hang out with us in St. Barths. But Stella and Paul are famous, and they both were heading back to London, or someplace, right away. Somebody is going to notice them missing, and soon. Like tomorrow. And they’re going to call the cops. Right?”
Roger said, “Right, but, we have the advantage over the cops, because we got the ransom demand, not them. As long as we keep that to ourselves, we’ll keep that advantage during the hunt, which is what we start today. We hunt the kidnappers.”
Gale said, “How do we do that? All we know is that one is polite and has an English accent, and one is a crazy women who wants to chop off their heads, like the Taliban do. And Paul seems to be ok. That’s all we know.”
The team sat around thinking and drinking coffee. And they weren’t the only ones. Scotilly was eating oatmeal with blueberries on it, staring across the breakfast table at Jools, and wondering when the FBI was going to get on their trail. Jools was thinking about five million dollars, or fifteen million, whichever it was going to be, and wondering what life without Scotilly might be like. The three guys in black were back in the motel coffee shop, also trying to figure out where to look for their wealthy victims. Paul was thinking of the main themes of the opera, while his daughter and her friend thought about being cooped up in a bunker, sans boyfriends, for two months. Working on music with Paul seemed very cool, but extended celibacy did not. The Pakistani cab driver sat across the table from his wife, sipping green tea, and thinking about who the guy was in his cab the day before, playing his harmonica like a dream.
Something interrupted Jools thoughts of money. Lots of money, and retirement in the Bahamas. The negative thought that interrupted such lovely positive thoughts was the mental picture that had formed in his mind of the turban covered head of the driver and principle owner of The Green Taxi Company, whose motto is The Environment is Our Business, Too. Was he going to be a problem? Would the kidnapping be kept in house, meaning just with this Richard the boyfriend guy, or would the FBI get involved, and blab about the kidnapping to the news media, which would be seen by the cab driver. If that happened, would he be a problem? He looked across the table at
his master, who was just finishing up the last blueberry.
Chapter 17 – Stirg the Grandfather
Pmirsh Stirg picked up the phone and dialed Anna’s number. She didn’t answer, just like yesterday when he called. He knew she wasn’t happy with him, but she never had avoided his calls. She’d answer, and he’d try to be friendly, invite her over for dinner, and either she would be polite but distant, or she’d tell him she had plans. But she always answered. He hoped she’d let go her animosity and come back to being his granddaughter, like it was before. His only family.
Before meant before he had gotten crossways with the Junes, which had happened twice in the last couple of years. The first time was over some historical artifacts they had stolen from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, which he considered part of Russia’s heritage, and secondly during the production of the Stravinsky ballet in Charleston. At some point in all that activity Anna had switched sides, from being close to him to being close to the Junes. He knew she liked them better than him, but she was all he had in the way of family, and he needed her.
He didn’t know it yet, but now he had lots bigger problems than the disaffection of Anna and his gripes with the Junes. Now he had three NNs in town who were looking to stick it to him. Most kidnappings are about one thing: money. But Scotilly wanted two things out of her kidnapping, and so did the guys in black clothes. The three of them wanted money, but the BMIBC also wanted something else. He wanted revenge against Stirg for killing his grandfather in Argentina many years ago. They say things often skip a generation, and in this case, the BMIBC had a greater affinity for his grandfather than for his father. He had lived with this grandfather for a few of his formative years, had bonded with him, and had grown to love him. After his father had taken him from Argentina to Idaho, he had maintained a strong affection for his grandfather, which was why his father’s accounts of the assassination had had such a profound effect on him. He had decided that now, at age fifty-five, was the time for revenge. Revenge against the Stirg, the Nazi hunter. Stirg, the killer of his grandfather.
The BMIBC’s motives weren’t so very different than those that influenced Stirg a generation earlier. Stirg had grown up as a Jew in Saint Petersburg just after World War II. He had grown up alone because his parents were killed by the Germans during the war. He kicked around jobs for a while, but had a chance to go to Israel, where he joined the army, and then the security agencies. By his late twenties he was working for one of the agencies whose mission was finding and monitoring ex-Nazis. Soon he transferred to another agency which had a different mission: bring certain ex-Nazis to justice. The definition of justice oscillated depending on which political party was in power, and the type of person running the agency. Basically there were three different definitions: 1. capture the Nazi and take him to the international court at The Hague. 2. capture the Nazi and take him to Israel, where a variety of fates awaited him, again depending on who was running things at the time, but none of them pleasant. 3. kill him, then and there.
Stirg became very skilled at his job, and was the one who found the infamous colony of high level expatriate Nazis in Argentina, one of whom was the BMIBC’s grandfather. Stirg’s team found the tomato grower, and they assassinated him. None of the BMIBC’s father’s accounts of the assassination were entirely accurate. The assassins did shoot him, but they didn’t stand and eat tomatoes off the vine while they watched the guy’s blood flow into the dirt. What they did do after shooting him was to prop him in a sitting position on the ground of the garden, take a wooden stake that was one inch wide by one inch thick by four feet long from one of the tomato plants, with a point on the end that went into the soil, tilt the Nazi’s head back, put the pointed end in his mouth, and drive the stake down his throat, through his stomach and intestinal track, out his asshole, and into the grass on which he sat. This sent a message to other members of the colony. Stirg wasn’t present, but he certainly was involved.
At the end of a long tenure with that security agency, he was rewarded with business opportunities that he pursued with equal vigor and success. He parlayed them into many millions of dollars, got a law degree, and ended his active working life as a lawyer representing wealthy clients from around the world in the arena of international business law. His millions grew into a billion. His son died young, and he took responsibility for his young granddaughter, who he came to love dearly. When she told him she wanted to play tennis on the College of Charleston tennis team, he visited Charleston, and decided it was just the kind of quaint historical backwater that he wanted to retire to. Which he did. And now he faced a blast from the past in the form of the BMIBC and his commitment to revenge. Funny how things work out.
He stood looking at the phone, wondering about Anna.
Chapter 18 – Setting Up the Music
Jools had not anticipated McCartney’s demand for a Steinway grand piano. The fact that Paul had said it didn’t have to be a nine footer, that it could be a seven footer, hadn’t made the challenge much easier. Jools had figured he would buy a cheap guitar at Wal-Mart for McCartney to compose his songs on, and that would be good enough. What more do you need for Yellow Submarine? But no. Mr. Sophisticate, Mr. Serious Composer, Mr. Oceans Kingdom, had to have a Steinway grand to write his ditties on. How was he supposed to get one of those into the bunker? The first thing he did was call up a rental place and ask what kind of pianos they had. The guy said he had a very nice seven foot Yamaha that he could rent to Jools for $400 a month. Jools went out to the bunker with the news, whereupon Paul told him you get what you pay for. If Scotilly wanted more Yellow Submarine level stuff, then by all means bring in the Yamaha.
Jools was pretty sure that’s not what his boss wanted, so he got a rental place in Atlanta on the phone, which said they had a Bosendorfer six footer they could rent out at $1000 a month, plus transport to Charleston and back. Into the bunker he went with this proposal, and out he came after Paul explained to him that a Bosendorfer would get him a very nice little musical collage on the order of some of the Wings portfolio. Jools was equally sure that this level of composition was not what Scotilly had in mind, so he called the Steinway factory in Queens, NY, which said they had lots of seven footers available, at a rate of $3000 a month, plus transport. He told them to get one on the road to Charleston, pronto. He was pretty sure a concert grand would fit through the huge steel doors of the bunker, and he was equally sure the delivery guys would think the bunker was weirdest place they ever had delivered a piano to. It was not exactly Carnegie Hall.
After that he worked on the recording equipment, which was not as much of a problem because there were versions of that stuff that were made to go on tour. A local entertainment company said they could put a package together and delivery it in two days. Then at a local guitar shop he asked if they had a Hofner bass guitar for sale or rent. The owner, a guy in his sixties, joked, “Who would that be for? Paul McCartney?” Jools got a Rickenbacker 4003 bass for $1700 and got out of there. When he opened the case back in the bunker and showed the beautiful scarlet red instrument to Paul, Paul said, “Black, my man, black. We’re doing serious music here.” So back to the shop, and then back to the bunker, where Paul said, “Nice. Nice. Ready to go now.” As Jools got ready to leave the bunker he said, “The piano will be here in two days. Coming all the way from New York, right from the factory.” Paul nodded and began to tune the bass, so Jools headed towards the big doors.
“Yo, Joolsee, what about us?” said Stella. “What about our stuff, our needs? What am I supposed to make costumes out of?”
Then Anna said, “What about my piano? How am I supposed to work with Paul on the music? On my ballet score? I’m not Paul McCartney. I don’t play ten different instruments. I’m not a musical genius. I just play piano.”
“What ballet? Since when are you working on a ballet score? You’re here to work on the opera. What ballet?”
r /> Anna had let the cat out of the bag. “Paul offered to work on my ballet score if I helped him with the opera. Said we’d come out of this with two complete compositions.”
“Does Scotilly know this? About the ballet? And what choice do you have, anyway? Since when are you and Paul deciding what goes on around here? You’ve been kidnapped. By us, the kidnappers. You do what we say. You don’t make up the rules.”
Anna stared down the long concrete corridor to where Jools was standing near the steel doors. “Jools, remember. When this is over.”
Jools sniffed a butlerian sniff and left. Up in the house Scotilly asked him, “When do I get my sofa cushions back?”
Jools, ever the calm and collected manservant said, “When the beds come, which should be tomorrow. Then I’ll bring the cushions back. The beds and the piano and the recording equipment all are coming in the next two days. That should be most of the stuff they want.”
“Great. Is he composing yet? How many songs does he have in the can?”
“I doubt very many considering he’s just tuning his bass right now. Don’t be so demanding.”
She looked at the travel magazine in her hands for a minute, then said, “You know, we have another task we need to start pretty quick. The production. I want the production scheduled for right after he finishes writing the songs. Boom, boom, boom, three performances, and then we’re out of here. For good. We’re gone, and we let them go. So, we gotta get in touch with these June people, and cut our deal with them. They have to start now, even though the music isn’t going yet. Capisce?”
“How are we going to pull that off? Have these three work with the Junes, and at the same time keep them as captives? Kidnappees.”