Truth be told, he was tired of the life. He wasn’t a young man any more, and being an enforcer with the mob required a certain physicality that was better suited to a younger man. Still, at fifty years old, he was in good shape. He ate good, exercised regularly, and – combined with his impressive natural size and physique – he was able to keep up and do what was required. But how long could he keep it up? Another ten years? Maybe, if he didn’t get injured or killed because he was losing his touch or getting too slow to react in a fight.
Traditionally, former enforcers would transition into being a kind of glorified messenger boy or collecting money from various mob-owned business enterprises after they got too old for the rougher work, but that didn’t appeal to Jimmy. He’d been waiting for the right time to get out, and with everything that was going on with his sister, now was the right time.
“O.k.”
“You mean that, Jimmy? You’re not just sayin’ that because I’m dyin’?”
“Yeah, I mean it, sis. I’ll get out, like you want.”
“Is it something you want for you, Jimmy?”
He paused a moment before responding.
“I’ve been thinkin’ about it, and yeah, I think I want it for me, too. It’s no life to grow old in, not doin’ what I do. Besides, I got a lot to make up for so I can see you in heaven.”
Sarah smiled, and Jimmy smiled back at her.
“Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you.”
By the look on her face, it seemed like a great weight had lifted off of her shoulders. She seemed to be at peace, and it made Jimmy feel good.
* * * * *
He left the hospital and drove across the street to a strip-mall where there was a Chinese restaurant called, The Little Dragon. Settling down into one of the booths, he ordered a General Tso combo with egg-drop soup. Thinking about the conversation he’d just had with his sister, he mulled over the details of what he would need to do to get out of the life while he waited for his meal to arrive. When it finally came, he wasn’t very hungry.
He ate about half of the meal before giving up and signaling the waiter for the check. While the waiter was getting his change, Jimmy opened the fortune cookie and popped it into his mouth, and then he read the fortune. Suddenly, he stopped chewing. Staring up at him from the small piece of paper he had just extracted from the cookie were the words of the fortune:
Save the girl, and your sister will live.
Chapter Three
After staring at the words on the little strip of paper for several seconds, he looked up to see the waiter coming back to the table with his change.
“Did anyone tell you to give me this fortune cookie?”
“We give them to all of our customers; it comes with the meal,” the waiter replied, appearing somewhat confused by the question.
“No, I mean, did anyone tell you to give me this certain one, not just one from the box, or wherever it is that you keep’em?”
“No, sir.”
“I wanna buy ten more. Bring ‘em here, to the table.”
The waiter stared at him as if he didn’t understand.
“I want ten more fortune cookies. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for ‘em, just go and get ‘em.”
He made a shooing gesture with his hands and the waiter headed off to the kitchen to fulfill his request, returning moments later with a handful of fortune cookies which he put on the table in front of Jimmy.
“Thank you,” Jimmy replied as he began opening up each cookie and reading the fortunes. After he read the tenth fortune, he put the last piece of paper down. It wasn’t a fluke; his fortune was definitely unique. There were a few fortunes that read, “You will meet a special friend today,” a couple that read, “Being kind to a stranger will bring you great benefits,” and even one that read, “A gift will soon come your way,” but none of the fortunes were anything like the one he had been given with his meal.
He stood up and left the restaurant, clutching the original fortune in his hand as if it were made of gold, absentmindedly leaving a ten dollar tip instead of his usual twenty percent. He looked down and read the fortune again once he was outside, and then put it safely into his wallet. The momentary feeling of disorientation began to wear off as he walked down the sidewalk of the strip-mall.
Jimmy wasn’t a superstitious person. Sure, he believed in God, but he didn’t exactly go to church every Sunday. In fact, the last time he’d gone to a church had been about six months ago – for the funeral of one of his co-workers who’d died in a shoot-out with a rival family. Jimmy wasn’t what you would call a pillar of the religious community, and he certainly didn’t believe in all that ‘supernatural hocus-pocus garbage’ some people believed in. Jimmy O’Conner had both feet firmly planted on the earth, the here and now – what he could touch and feel. This little fortune cookie business seemed like it had to be a joke someone at the cookie factory had played, and the fact that he’d happened to get that particular cookie and happened to have a sister who was dying was coincidental... it had to be.
He looked up and saw a pharmacy two stores down, and remembered that he was out of gum, so he went in and bought a pack. He had quit smoking ten years before and had long since stopped craving the nicotine, but the thing he did continue to miss was the sensation of having something in his mouth. A psychologist would have had a field day with that one, but he didn’t bother himself with seeking an explanation. Gum was the substitute that fit the bill – so he chewed gum, pure and simple.
As he exited the store, he un-wrapped a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. He was about to throw the wrapper in the trash receptacle that was just outside the store when something caught his eye on the inside of the wrapper. He unfolded the wrapper fully and there, clearly printed on the inside, were the words:
Save the girl, and your sister will live. The girl likes hats.
He stopped in his tracks. Now somebody had his full attention. He looked around instinctively, to see if he could spot someone following him, even as his mind struggled to come up with a reasonable explanation for what had just happened. He looked down and read the words again, and then took the fortune out of his wallet and compared the two. He wasn’t seeing things; the words were actually there.
As he looked around once more to see if anyone was watching him, he saw the marque for a store farther down the strip-mall, Cherie’s Hats for Men and Women. He put both the wrapper and the fortune into his wallet, and started walking toward the hat shop.
* * * * *
Inside the hat shop there was a dizzying array of hats. There were hats on shelves, racks, and intricate displays – with stuffed animals, dresses, and a world of other creative items used to accentuate the merchandise. As he scanned the store’s patronage for a little girl, Jimmy thought that there were a surprising number of people inside for a store that only sold hats.
Then, he spotted her. A little girl with blond hair, towards the back of the store where the children’s hats were on display. She was trying on a cowgirl hat with a woman that Jimmy assumed was her mother. If he was supposed to find a girl in a hat shop, this was her. There wasn’t another person in the store under eighteen years of age as far as he could tell.
He stood by a display of men’s Stetson hats, pretending to browse the selection as he kept an eye on the little girl and her mother. He wasn’t convinced that the two messages he had received so far were anything more than strange coincidences, but he had found a girl in a hat shop, just like the gum wrapper had indicated. He had nothing else to do until he visited his sister tomorrow, so it certainly wouldn’t hurt to follow this little girl and her mother around for a few hours, just to satisfy his curiosity.
It wasn’t long before the woman purchased a cowgirl hat for the little girl and they both left the store. Jimmy exited the store immediately afterwards and quickly walked to his car while keeping an eye on the pair. He didn’t want to lose them before he even start
ed tailing them. Fortunately for him, they weren’t going directly to their car. They stopped a few stores down at an eatery called Burly Burgers.
Jimmy wasted no time in moving his car and parking it so that he could easily observe the entrance to the restaurant. This was right up his alley; he often followed people in his line of work, although not usually to protect them – he was more in the persuasion department. He only wished he had his binoculars. If he’d had any idea he would be tailing someone, he would have come better prepared.
As he waited for the little girl and her mother to finish their lunch, he pondered the strange set of messages he had received and whether or not any of this made any sense. Sure, he didn’t want his sister to die, but could there be any real possibility that the messages he had received had anything to do with his sister? Let alone the fact that saving one little girl’s life couldn’t result in his sister’s life being saved – could it? Jimmy’s brain hurt from thinking, so he focused on the entrance to the eatery... and waited.
Chapter Four
After twenty minutes of sitting in his car and staring at the front door of the restaurant, the woman and the little girl in the cowgirl hat finally came out. They proceeded to a green Oldsmobile and drove out of the parking lot. Jimmy pulled out of his own parking space and followed them.
Once they took a right out of the strip mall parking lot, they drove several blocks before taking another turn. As far as tailing someone went, it was a piece of cake. In Jimmy’s line of work, he often tailed people who were actually trying to avoid being followed. The monotony of having stared at the restaurant door and now following the green Oldsmobile gave his mind time to wonder about what he was actually doing. He wasn’t on a job – that was for sure. And right now, he was tailing complete strangers because he had read a Chinese fortune and a gum wrapper with eerie messages telling him that, if he saved some girl, his sister would live. Could he really be losing his mind here?
The Oldsmobile pulled into a parking space near a park with swings, slides, and all of the usual playground equipment. As anyone who was any good at tailing would do, Jimmy drove past the Olds and circled the park, looking for a space where he could observe his subjects without being spotted. He found the perfect spot on the far side of the small park, where he could see both the Oldsmobile and the little girl playing on the swings.
The little girl soon found a playmate who had a soccer ball and they began kicking the ball back and forth between them. The woman, whom Jimmy assumed had to be the mother, sat down on a nearby bench and watched. Five minutes passed, with the little girls becoming engrossed in their simple game of kicking the ball the way only little kids can. That was when Mom’s cell phone rang.
The mom began talking excitedly on the phone and soon lost focus on the kids. The newfound playmate kicked the ball too far to the left for Cowgirl to stop it and it went to the edge of the park, where Cowgirl finally managed to coral it before it went into the street. That was when Jimmy saw the white van in the alleyway just across the street from where the ball had stopped.
As far as vans go, white vans are the most common. Any number of businesses use white vans because, a) they’re cheaper than vans of other colors, and b) vans are ideal for hauling things around that you don’t want getting wet – like paint, carpet, flowers, telephone equipment, or a variety of other things.
In Jimmy’s line of work, these types of vans were particularly handy for kidnapping people whom his boss wanted taken care of. And by ‘taken care of’, his boss usually meant beat up, tortured for information, or killed. That was why it peeked his interest to see the van in question. What was even more interesting was the man sitting in the driver’s seat. He was staring straight ahead into the park with both hands on the steering wheel. He was looking the same way Jimmy looked when he was tailing someone. The hair on the back of Jimmy’s neck stood up. Maybe he was going crazy, because he would swear on a stack of Bibles right now that the guy in the van was watching those little girls.
“The other little girl is probably his own daughter,” Jimmy said out loud. But just in case, he wanted to take a closer look. He shut off his car and opened the door, the heat of the air outside hitting him like a wall. He wasn’t used to one hundred degree heat in September. He began working his way around the park, keeping an eye on Cowgirl as he did.
As he got closer to the van, he could tell that the driver was Caucasian. Cowgirl’s little friend was Hispanic. Unless she was his adopted daughter, he was most likely not her father. The man in the van continued to watch the girls, unmoving. Jimmy was about half a block away from the van now, having circled around the park on the sidewalk to make it appear he was simply out for a walk. Cowgirl’s friend kicked the ball wide and hard, and this time it went across the street and down the alleyway where the van was parked. Jimmy glanced at Cowgirl’s mom and saw she was completely distracted by her phone call.
“Don’t do it, kid,” Jimmy said under his breath as he began walking a little faster towards the van. Cowgirl looked both ways before she crossed the street and headed down the alleyway. Jimmy glanced back at the van to see that the driver was no longer in the driver’s seat. When the girl crossed the street and began heading towards the alleyway, Jimmy started running.
The park was long and narrow, and Jimmy was able to see down the alleyway the entire time, but when he got to the corner of the park, the building on the near side of the alleyway blocked his view of the van. That just happened to be at the exact same time that the girl entered the alleyway.
Jimmy reached the alleyway a few seconds after the girl. He saw the ball about twenty feet down the street behind the van, but the girl was nowhere in sight. He ran to the back of the van just in time to see the driver get out of the back. Jimmy’s fist was already moving through the air before the man’s foot hit the ground. He felt the familiar crunch of the cartilage separating from the bone as his fist connected with the man’s nose. Blood spurted out of his nose and his head bounced back, hitting the door of the van before he crumpled to the ground.
Adrenaline was pumping through Jimmy’s veins as he threw open the other door, ready to take on any accomplices that might be hiding in the van that he was sure contained the little girl. But all he saw was Cowgirl, unconscious and laying on a blanket with her hands tied together by a plastic cord. He took out his knife and cut the cord off of her hands, being careful not to nick her. Taking her up in his arms, he looked down at the driver, “I’ll be back to deal with you in a minute.”
As he reached the front of the van, he shifted Cowgirl to his left arm, and then reached in and took the keys out of the ignition. He pocketed the keys and was thinking about where he was going to hide the driver’s body once he was done as he crossed the street and re-entered the park. He saw Cowgirl’s mother, still sitting on the bench, engrossed in her conversation. The whole would-be abduction and rescue had taken less than two minutes.
“Hey, lady! You on the bench!”
Cowgirl’s mother stopped talking and looked up to see Jimmy walking towards her with her little girl in his arms, and she immediately stood up and rushed forward.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! What happened?”
“Some guy over there in that white van tried to take her. Must’ve used something to knock her out.”
Jimmy was expecting the woman to get hysterical and start balling her eyes out. To his surprise, the lady’s countenance shifted from one of shock and fear to a look of determination and focus. Instead of melting into a sobbing mess and clinging to her little girl’s unconscious body, she went into command mode and started giving him directions.
“O.k., put her down on the bench, gently.” The woman helped lower her head down so it wouldn’t hit the bench. “Chloroform. He used chloroform, I can smell it,” she said as she put her fingers on her daughter’s wrist, taking her pulse. “Her heartbeat is o.k., a bit sluggish from the drugs.” She sudden
ly had a pen light in her hand, which she seemed to have extracted from thin air. She lifted each of her daughter’s eyelids in turn, shining the light in each eye. “Dilation response is good, respiration is steady, so the dosage wasn’t too heavy.”
Jimmy had been so amazed that Cowgirl’s mom reacted in the way that she had, that he’d temporarily forgotten about the van driver. When he finally turned back around to head back to the alleyway and finish what he had started, the van was gone.
Dirt-bag must’ve had a spare key, he thought to himself.
“Sir!”
Jimmy turned back around as Cowgirl’s mom addressed him.
“Call 9-1-1 while I check for any other injuries.”
“Yeah, o.k., yeah.”
Jimmy took out his own cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 as he watched Cowgirl’s mom continue to examine her daughter.
Chapter Five
Within twenty minutes, an ambulance and two police squad cars were at their location. Cowgirl was awake and taking oxygen in the back of the ambulance, and Jimmy O’Conner, enforcer for the Chicago Mob, was about to talk to the cops. If the boys back home could only see him now.
Cowgirl’s mom came over to where Jimmy was standing and handed him a business card.
“I can’t begin to thank you enough for what you did. I have to go with the ambulance back to the hospital so they can run a few more tests on Angel, but my husband and I would like to take you out to dinner as a token of our thanks.”
“I hope your little girl will be o.k.”
“She’ll be fine, thanks to you. The tests are just a precaution, really. I checked her vitals myself and they’re fine. I have to go now, but come to our hotel at 7:00 p.m., and we’ll take you out to dinner, o.k.?” The words coming out of her mouth sounded more like a command than a request, and she apparently realized it, quickly adding, “Please?”
“O.k., I’ll do that,” he responded.
As she walked away, he looked at the card she had just given him. The words ‘June Carlson, M.D.’ were emblazoned in gold across the top of the white business card, along with her specialties, cell phone number, email address, and biopic website URL. He flipped it over and found the name of the hotel scrawled across the back, with ‘7:00 p.m.’ written after it. She was definitely thorough, no doubt about it.