“What about her?” nodding at Anna.
“She can go.”
The butler said, “These guys came to kidnap her. What if they mess with her after we leave?”
The woman thought for a second, said, “We let her go first. Then they can go.”
Anna thought this was one interesting night. First she has dinner and wine with Paul McCartney, now she’s in the middle of, not one, but two attempted kidnappings, one of them her own. Again she looked around to see if the Junes were going to show up, because this was just like something they would be involved in. When she didn’t see them, she decided to deal with things. The inconsequential people were the three guys in black. If the man and the woman hadn’t gotten involved, she would have aborted her kidnapping, and possibly issued a penalty to the unsuccessful kidnappers in the form of shooting one or all of them in the legs. The consequential people were her two friends, and the two people who, evidently, were intent on procuring Paul’s and Stella’s professional services. There wasn’t much thinking to be done.
She said to the woman, “I’m not leaving. I’m going with you.”
The butler looked at the woman, who looked at Anna. The three guys also looked at Anna, who appeared to be volunteering to be kidnapped along with Paul and Stella. The woman said, “Honey, we don’t want you. We got two people here we do want. You run along home.”
The boss man in black said, “Wait a minute. We came to kidnap her. If you don’t want her, we do. She’s worth a lot of money to us, and other stuff too.”
The woman said to Anna, “If you want to be kidnapped tonight, there’s your chance. Go with them. Or, you can leave now and go home, and we’ll see these boys don’t follow you.”
Anna said, “Obviously, I’m not going with these idiots. And I am going with you. That’s the deal.”
The man with the gun pointed it at Anna, and said, “We don’t want you. Get lost.”
“Look, you said Paul is going to write music for you, and Stella is going to design costumes. I can help with that. I’m a pianist, and I’ve written half of a score for a ballet. If you’re doing a production, I can help.”
The woman said, derisively, “That’s like writing half a book. What good is it?”
“I got interrupted with the music thing. Got an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ll finish the score soon.”
The butler asked, “What was the offer?”
“Movie. Act in a Spielberg movie.”
“What movie?”
“Not out yet. We just finished filming, in France. That’s where I met her,” nodding at Stella.
He asked Stella, “What did you do?”
“What do you think? Costumes.”
He looked at the well dressed woman, who looked first at Paul, then Stella, then Anna, and then at the three thugs in black. She said, “What a night! We come to kidnap Paul McCartney, we interrupt another kidnapping, and now we’re going home with three people. When it rains, it pours.”
Chapter 3 – Getting Home
The three thugs were sent on their way down King Street, minus their intended victim, their guns, and a portion of their self-esteem. The other five walked up King in the other direction, the woman leaning to one side because that’s where she carried her Gucci purse, which now bulged with five handguns: her own, Anna’s, and the three guy’s in black. She was thankful for the quality of the purse materials and strong stitching of the seams. After a block of walking, everyone had decompressed a little. The man in the suit kept his gun down near his thigh, mostly out of sight. Anna said, “Well, that was fun. Now what?”
The woman said, “Now we go home. Have a drink. Get to know each other.”
“Why should we do that? You’re not real kidnappers. You’re not going to shoot us, here on the street, if we refuse to go with you. Who are you trying to kid?”
The woman, who’d had a blocks worth of walking to figure things out, said, “In a way, we got lucky tonight, because we have her,” pointing to Stella. “If you hadn’t been with Paul, and we hadn’t run into those idiots, we would have intimidated Paul into coming with us. Easy. He’s an artist. But, now we have her, too,” nodding at Stella, “and her, we can handle, right, Jools?” He nodded.
Anna said, “Why do you say you could intimidate Paul just because he’s an artist? What about, say, Micky Spillane?”
“He was a writer, not an artist.” Then she said, “You seem to be a tough cookie. Not a lot of beautiful women walk around packing heat. What’s up with that, anyway?” Anna shrugged. “So, you’re right, partially. We’re not going to shoot all three of you here if you refuse to come with us, but what Jools will do is to pick Stella up under his very strong arm. Anyone makes a noise, a fuss, and Jools will drop her on her pretty head. If that’s what you want, Paul, say so now. We’ll get on with the unpleasantries.”
Paul said, “That’s not what I want. I’ll come with you, no fuss.”
Anna said, “Ok.”
The group geared up again and continued down the street. Anna still was pissed at Jools for playing the trick on her, getting her to drop her guard and then getting the drop on her with his gun. She looked for payback as they walked, but didn’t want anything to happen to Stella, who still wasn’t sure what was going on. They turned right at the next corner and stopped halfway down the block at a dark blue BMW sedan. It was a slick looking car, and did nothing to make one doubt the veracity of the slogan the ultimate driving machine. But, it was on the small side, not being one of those behemoths that rule the Autobahn in Germany. All five people stood looking at it, basically thinking the same thing. Anna bent down and peered through the window at the back seat, which was big enough for two children. Even BMW had had to bow to the pressure of environmental political correctness. She didn’t say anything, but did let a hint of derision appear at the corner of her mouth.
Both the well dressed woman and the man in the 80% three season wool suit without a tie could see the problem. She said to him, “You said this was going to be easy. Now what do we do?”
The butler figured he wasn’t being paid to perform this type of mental labor. His jobs were bodyguard, strong arm kidnapping assistant, and serving wine at the correct temperature, so he remained mute. The woman gave him a disgusted look, and then looked back at her car, which would have functioned fine if they only had one kidnapping victim; but they had three. She looked at Paul, then Stella, then Anna, then at the backseat. Said, “The three of you are just going to have to squeeze in.”
Paul and Stella looked through the window, then at the woman. Paul said, “Lassie, you’re joking. I wouldn’t get in there if I was sandwiched between Scarlett Johansen and Alicia Keys, and both of them were naked.” He looked at Stella, said, “Sorry, dear.”
The woman looked at Jools and said, “You take the two girls home, lock them up, then come back.”
“It’s a twenty minute ride home. You want to wait here on the street, hanging out with Paul McCartney, for an hour and a half? We only had one set of chains set out for him. I’ll have to dig two more sets out of the attic for the women; get them all hooked up to the wall, and that will take some time. You sure about this?”
Anna said to Jools, “Why don’t you take the two of them home. I’ll stay here with her,” nodding at the woman. “We’ll shoot the shit. You come back, pick us up.” The others could discern Anna licking her chops at this proposal, Paul wondering what kind of woman his daughter had made friends with in France on the set of the Spielberg movie. A woman who carried a gun, just going out to dinner on a slow Tuesday night in Charleston.
The woman said, “I think not. We’ll call a taxi, come back tomorrow morning for the car.”
She nodded at Jools, who said to her, “You going to grab Stella, drop her on her head if they all make a break for it while I’m dialing a phone? I only have so many hands.” The McCartneys and Anna wondered at
the tone of the butler’s voice, which showed hints of impatience and even insolence, them not knowing much about the butler’s code but thinking butlers were supposed to be paragons of propriety and subservience. The woman nodded understanding and opened her purse to find her cell phone. She had to hold the purse with two hands due to the weight of five guns, which sat on top of the phone. She took one gun out and put it under her left armpit, stuck the second one in the alligator belt that separated the top half of her linen suit from the bottom half; tucked the third gun, a Sig Sauer nine millimeter, under her chin, set the fourth on the sidewalk at her feet, and held the fifth gun in her left hand. She held the purse, with the cell phone in it, in her right hand. At this point she looked at the others, who were spellbound at the incompetence of her performance. All this just to call a taxi. The woman had a lot of self-confidence, and didn’t care what the others, including Jools, thought at this point in time. She handed the purse to Paul, reached inside, and took out the phone. Jools took this opportunity to look up and down the street, wondering who might come along in the next minute or two. Even with a gun tucked under her chin the woman was able to give the taxi company her location and the address of their destination on Sullivan’s Island. She buttoned off the phone, stuck it back in her purse, took the gun from under her chin and put it in the purse, then the one under her arm, then the one in her belt, which was digging into her side, and finally bent over to pick up the one on the sidewalk. Her purse again weighted more than a sack of groceries. At this point a police cruiser came down the street and rolled past them. Anna knew she could just run out in the street in front of the car, and the whole thing would be over. She wondered what the police would think when they searched the woman and found the arsenal, she being so good looking and so well dressed and all. But Anna thought this whole thing was interesting, her being the adventuress type, so she stayed where she was.
Two minutes later the taxi arrived and pulled over to the curb. All five of the kidnappers and kidnappees looked at it. On the side, in bold green graphic swatches, they read The Green Taxi Company, The Environment is Our Business, Too. It was a Prius, an electric car that could sit three people in addition to the driver, who was Pakistani, just like all the drivers in New York City. The Prius only could hold four small humans because the entire trunk was taken up with 1000 pounds of batteries, all of which had cost significant sums of energy to manufacture in China. Jools, still holding his gun behind his back so the driver couldn’t see it, used it to motion Paul, Stella, and Anna across the wide sidewalk and away from the taxi, so that the woman could formulate her next great plan in peace. She stood looking at the electric car, wondering if this whole kidnapping thing was worth the effort.
The driver leaned across the front seat to the passenger door and turned a hand crank that lowered the window, because the Prius didn’t produce enough juice to operate power windows. He said, “No problem, lady in linen suit. I take three of you, come right back for other two. No problem.”
Across the sidewalk Anna was asking Jools about his H&K 40 cal, knowing it cost three times what her Glock cost, which was in the woman’s purse, wondering why people would pay that. Status, that’s all.
The woman said, “Would you please call and have them send another taxi? We all need to go at the same time.”
“Call who, lady? No one to call. Just me.”
“Call your company. Your dispatcher. Ask for another car.”
“I’m the company, lady. I’m The Green Taxi Company. Just me. My wife doesn’t drive. When I earn enough for another Prius, then I teach her to drive.”
Anna wondered when the woman, or Jools, was going to remember about the BMW. That they now had two cars.
The woman said to the green man, “Stay here.” She went over to the others, said, “This is a nightmare. We gotta get home. I need a drink.” To Jools she said, “You take Paul and her,” motioning to Anna, “in the taxi. Don’t let her try anything. I don’t trust her. I’ll take the other one with me. Where’s the duct tape?”
“In the car.”
The woman went over to the BMW, set her purse on the ground, removed the five handguns, not bothering to look around and see if there were any more cops or other Tuesday evening diners around, found the car remote, put the guns back in the purse, and unlocked the car. She looked on the floor, then in the back seat. “Where is it?”
Jools said, “Where you put it.”
“Me? I didn’t get it. You were supposed to get it. You’re the butler. That’s what you do.”
He looked from Paul to Stella to Anna, then said, “Yes, you’re right, I should have gotten the duct tape. That’s what I do, fetch and use the tools of the trade, the little silver tasting cup on the chain around my neck, to taste the wine before serving it to you, heating up the clothes steamer, getting the wrinkles out of your silk blouses, bringing the duct tape to tie up the kidnapping victims; yes, those are my jobs, I should have brought the tape with us. Sorry.”
The woman said, “How am I supposed to drive us home with her sitting next to me, not tied up with tape? She might grab the wheel, veer us into the other lane, crash head on into a bus.”
Stella looked at the woman, then at her father, and did the she’s crazy gesture with her hand up near her ear. Looking back at the woman she said, “Look, if it’ll make you feel better, and get us off the street, I’ll drive. You can cover me with one of your five guns. You know how to use a gun, right? Safely? Not going to squeeze the trigger accidentally if we hit a pothole? Right?”
“I’ll be careful. Now c’mon, let’s go. I need that drink.”
Paul squeezed into the front seat with the driver, and Jools squeezed into the back seat with Anna. The driver looked at Paul, put the car in gear, and started humming A Hard Day’s Night. The other two got in the BMW and followed.
Chapter 4 – The Kidnapper’s Place
The twenty minute ride out to Sullivan’s Island was uneventful. Paul took the harmonica out of his pocket and played along with the humming of the Pakistani, who performed a respectable medley of Beatles songs. Jools and Anna debated whether his ownership of the H&K was a matter of it being a status symbol, which was her position, or a superior piece of ordnance technology, which was his position. In the literally colored blue car following the symbolically colored green car, Stella told the woman a little bit about the Spielberg movie she and Anna just had completed. This was the first full length Spielberg movie Anna had starred in, though previously she’d had a small part in a Spielberg documentary about the history and culture of champagne, which had starred Catherine Deneuve. The movie had filmed in the Pyrenees, and was Spielberg’s remake of For Whom the Bell Tolls, with Anna playing the Ingrid Bergman part. Stella told the woman Spielberg had asked her father to do the score for the movie, and when that didn’t work out, he had asked Stella to do the costumes, which did work out.
Twenty minutes later the cars pulled into the driveway of the woman’s house. The woman lugged her purse over to the green taxi and said, “Pay him, please, Jools.”
“Me? Pay him? With what? I didn’t bring any money.” Everyone looked at him, thinking, Jesus, not again. Then he said, “Kidding,” extracted himself from the rear seat of the taxi, tucked his gun under his arm, and took his billfold out of the inner pocket of his suit coat. It was one of those long leather wallets that held bills unfolded, very aristocratic. The Pakistani looked askance at the gun and greedily at the billfold. It only had taken one look at the woman’s three story house to tell him these folks had money, so he hoped for a big tip. After all, he had serenaded them with song during the trip, hadn’t he, performing with the guy with the harmonica? Jools handed him two twenties, which was fair enough.
He said to Jools, “You have gun because you’re afraid I might steal your money during the trip? Usually, with taxi drivers, it is other way around. We are afraid of passengers.”
/> The other four watched to see how Jools was going to deal with this. He said, “I’m, umm, a CIA agent. I was just showing Agent Anna here the special features of this gun. It has a built-in GPS targeting device that calculates the exact location of the target to within two centimeters, and transmits that information via satellite to the person holding the gun, who then interprets that information, and fires.”
The Pakistani said, “Oh, yes, very nice. Very high tech. CIA, yes, very nice, we have many of you now in our country, can hardly walk around without stepping on one of you. We feel very safe with you helping us the way you do. Thank you, sir, and thank you for showing me your gun with its special features. Thank you all for patronizing The Green Taxi Company. I will tell my wife about this fare tonight, yes. Good night, good night. If you need special ops taxi driving service, you call me, yes. Maybe I get to see how gun works with its GPS targeting technology. Very nice, good night, good night.”
While she watched this weird scene play out, Anna had found three ways she could get away from the kidnapping attempt, but that meant leaving Paul and Stella. She knew she could get away and call the FBI, and they would show up and do their thing, but her intuition told her no, don’t go that route. Stay with the McCartneys and let this thing go down the road a bit. When the taxi pulled out of the long driveway, Jools waved his gun at them, shooing them towards the house, which was elevated, with the ground level being the carport. They entered the carport and climbed a wooden staircase that led into the kitchen. The woman set her purse down on the granite counter with a loud thump, one gun poking the end of its barrel out the opening. Jools motioned to the other three to sit on the counter stools. Anna sat in the middle, right in front of the woman’s purse that contained five guns, including hers. She looked at Jools, who got the message, picked up the purse, and took it out of the room. In the meantime the woman got a bottle of cognac out of a cupboard, and a large bottle of club soda out of another. She lined five rocks glasses up on the counter, filled one with ice cubes, and poured herself a stiff one. She said, “Help yourself.”
The Kidnapping of Paul McCartney Page 2
