The Kidnapping of Paul McCartney

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 47 – Gale Gets Got

  The NNs, having accepted responsibility for exacting revenge on behalf of the owner and clientele of SYAMF, were feeling the pressure. They’d left Richard tied to one of the folding army cots in the quonset hut, and piled into the Dodge pickup. As they headed down the interstate towards town, they passed by the hulk of SYAMF. The BMIBC wondered if he had acted wisely in telling the boys from there that he would take care of the Junes. But the die was cast, and he had to perform.

  “What we gonna do, boss?” asked the NSSMIBC, still wearing the white sneakers.

  “We’re going to follow the plan I thought of the other day. Kidnap a second Junie, then offer the two-fer deal. Them for the Stirg bitch.”

  If the NSSMIBC had been just ever so slightly smarter, he would have remembered that the two-fer deal was his idea. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t, so the BMIBC got away with it.

  “Who’s gonna be the second person?”

  “Whoever we can snatch outside their house. The place on Church Street.”

  The MSMIBC said, “Can it be a girl, boss? We got a guy, and that’s no fun. We could have some fun if we snatch a girl.”

  “That’s ok, but we get whoever we can get. If it’s a girl, so much the better. I wouldn’t mind a little fun, myself, but the goal is to get the Stirg girl, and then Stirg himself.”

  The truck wound through the historic district, down Church Street, past the June’s house, and turned off down a side street, where it parked between a Jag and a BMW. After brunch the Junies sat around brainstorming how to find the four kidnapped friends and the two groups of kidnappers. Their hunter teams had gotten mixed up when Gwen sent Jinny up to SYAMF. Originally she had assigned Jinny and Roger to find Jools and Scotilly, and Constantine and Nev to find the NNs and Richard. She had to straighten that out now. She also thought she owed Stirg a courtesy call to tell him the status of things. After all, he was on the executive level of the operation, along with her and Roger. The others were worker bees, which is funny, considering that Constantine and his wife were billionaires, and had conducted business at the highest levels of Russian commercial corruption before deciding to retire to Charleston. But those things happen when you fall into orbit around the June’s sun.

  She called Stirg’s house and invited them to come over to their place for coffee, which they did, their mansion being only a ten minute walk away. Gwen asked Jinny to tell them about his adventure to SYAMF, but, displaying some false modesty, he said he was tired of the whole thing, so Guignard told the story, elaborating a little to make her man shine. When she was done Stirg looked at Nev and said, “Why didn’t you think of that?”

  They knew that Anna, Stella, and Paul were not in immediate danger, despite Scotilly’s attempts to induce a state of terror in them with her screaming about heads rolling. After all, how many bone fide Taliban terrorists would hire an English butler as one of their storm troopers? So they focused on Richard and the NNs. However dramatic and, in a certain undeniable sense, satisfying Jinny’s raid on SYAMF had been, he hadn’t accomplished his mission of finding out where the NNs were and where they were hiding Richard. Gwen decided to reformulate her troops, telling Constantine, Jinny, and Nev they now were the primary hunter team, and telling Roger he should work the Renee Fleming thing. The others would stick with her, doing what they could on preliminaries for the opera production, and waiting to receive material from the musicians. She told the hunters to report to her the next morning at 8am for instructions. Gale, being unattached at the moment and having no one to go home to and tell about Jinny’s bonfire escapade, hung around, playing with the June’s dog and waiting for cocktail hour to arrive.

  Outside the house the NNs tried not to look conspicuous in their black clothes and tattoos, which wasn’t easy given the type of high end and genteel neighborhood the Junes lived in. The BMIBC was sure some nosy neighbor was going to sic the cops on them any minute, but there wasn’t any better way to watch the house. He told his boys to walk around the block while he watched, and then one of them stayed watching while the other two walked around the block, and so on, trying to make it seem like they weren’t watching. At 3pm the four Junies and two Stirgers opened the front door, came down the steps, and headed down Church Street The BMIBC realized he couldn’t attempt a kidnapping from that large group, and didn’t know if they would split up or not, thereby providing a target. Should he follow them, or stay put? If he had known that one of the group was the guy who destroyed SYAMF and made a fool out of the clientele, he would have followed them and waited for a chance to exact revenge. But he didn’t know, and decided to stay at the June’s house, hoping no one would send for the cops.

  Inside the house Gale watched the kitchen clock tic around towards 5pm. At ten till, she asked Roger what they would be serving that evening, meaning as cocktails. He looked at Gwen, who said, “I’m worried about Richard. He’s the one in danger. I need to think about that, so I have a game plan tomorrow morning to give to the hunters. I think I’ll pass.”

  Roger felt more like Gale than Gwen, but he knew it wouldn’t be good form for him to drink while his wife worked, so he looked at Gale apologetically, who said, “If I knew you two would be boring tonight, I’d have left with the others. Good luck.” She kissed the dog goodbye and left through the front door. Cast adrift for the evening, she stood at the top of the nine fig vine covered brick steps, wondering how and where to placate her desire for a sidecar on the rocks. She felt retro tonight.

  She certainly didn’t look retro to the three nitwits hanging out down the block. She stood there on the landing, looking like something out of a TV commercial selling high end cosmetics, maybe a L’Oreal girl. She’d come to the June’s house wearing three inch white pumps with green stitching, a satin emerald green skirt, and a silk burgundy blouse with white lapels and collar. Before descending the steps she undid another button on her blouse, hoping that might inform her as to the kind of place at which she would seek her now much desired sidecar. Then down the steps she came, each extension of a leg resulting in not only a full display of skin, but an athletic tensing and bulging of her very shapely calf and thigh muscles. The three nitwits were entranced, along with the judge two houses up the street who was placing his trash in the can for next morning’s pickup.

  The BMIBC was the first regain his senses, smacking one of his boys across the shoulders, saying, “Her. She’s alone. She must be a friend of the Junes. Let’s follow.” She came down the street towards them, walking like a runway champ at the Milan international fashion show, wondering if she might talk Jinny and Guignard into going over to McCradys for a drink. The boss man, realizing how unusual they looked on the street, saw the trashcans at the house near them, and said, “Pretend we’re trash men. Push these around.” He took hold of one of the large brown plastic containers and started wheeling it up the street towards the June’s house. The other two followed suit, which hardly looked less conspicuous, three guys all dressed in black, no trash truck in sight, wheeling their cans across the cobblestones like UPS men delivering large packages on dollies. Gale didn’t notice them, not being in the habit of associating with trash men, and very intent to finding her sidecar on the rocks. None of the three guys were able to keep their gaze straight ahead as she passed by on the other sidewalk, them not being in the habit of associating with fashionistas of a high order, of the high order at which Gale existed, 247365. They gawked. Gale has one very fine ass, whether walking barefoot on the beach in a bikini, or down a city street, magnified and enhanced as it was tonight by three inch pumps, white with green stitching.

  The boys left the trashcans in the middle of the street and followed, leaving a trail of Idahoan drool in their wakes. The boss man told the NSSMIBC to get the truck, and find them. Two blocks down, Gale turned into Longitude Lane, a narrow alley that would take her towards McCradys and the first of several expertly made sidecars.
The NNs followed, the BMIBC saying to her, “Excuse me ma’am, but we’re from Boise, looking for some good shrimp and grits. Can you help us?”

  Gale turned around, ready to answer, this being the two hundred and twentieth time she, like all longtime residents, had been asked this same question. And never in the three hundred year history of the city had any of them failed to answer it with the courtesy that Charlestonians are known for, far and wide. Still, with her standard answer ready on her tongue, she was given pause by the shear ugliness of the two guys in front of her. She blurted out, “My god, what’s with all the tats?”

  The MSMIBC said, “This here’s our expressiveness showing itself, lady. The values of our brotherhood is ripely defined in each and every design. We is walking works of art, telling the world what we hold to be true and precious with each graceful movement of our arms and our legs. Fer instance, this one here on the side of my neck means….”

  The boss man thwapped him in the chest with the back of his hand, saying, “We ain’t here for a lesson in tat cosmology. We’re here for a kidnapping,” now looking at Gale. “You mind coming with us, quiet like? We got a use for you back at our place.”

  Gale didn’t understand right off the bat. Truth be told, she was fascinated by the image of a pair of dark blue hands encircling the MSMIBC neck, the tat the meaning of which he had started to explain to her. She tore her gaze away from it and looked at his friend who had mentioned the word kidnap.

  “Come again,” she said.

  “Would you mind coming with us, quietly. We, ah, require your presence.” He said this while staring down at her white pumps. He’d never seen any feet that sexy before.

  “You want to kidnap me? Here? What for? Oh, you’re not kidding. You kidnapped Richard? You those idiots? You the ones Jinny’s after, and now the others?” She paused. “You got the Junes after you, and now you want to kidnap me? Are you crazy? Where’s the place that would grow anyone so stupid? Where you from, boy?” She looked at the other guy, “Where you from, you little nitwit?”

  They took their eyes off Gale’s legs and looked at each other, then back at her. “Boy? Nitwit? Little nitwit?” The BMIBC stepped behind her and covered her mouth with a big hand that had the word Gramps tattooed across the back. He motioned to the MSMIBC to grab her legs, which he did gladly, and they carried her back down Longitude Lane to where, miraculously, the Dodge pickup showed up right on time. They threw her into the cab and piled in after her, the one guy weak from the religious experience he’d had when one of his hands accidently slipped high up Gale’s thigh. He sure hoped that was a prelude of things to come. With a squeal of knobby tires the pickup headed back to the haven of the quonset hut. After negotiating his way out of the historic district and onto the interstate, the NSSMIBC said, “Well what we got here?”

  Gale looked at him and said, “What you got here, moron, is a load of trouble greater than anything that tiny little pea brain of yours ever has imagined.

  Chapter 48 – Hey Renn

  The next morning Paul spent an hour creating the instrumentals for the two songs off of Dark Hope. He kept the drums simple, and then matched them with a bass line he worked out on the Rickenbacher and transferred to the synthe. The rhythm section was similar to that on Dark Hope, but of course the bass line was better, with him playing it. He played this for Anna over and over, getting her to where the rhythmic groove was subconscious, and she could concentrate on forming a melody line that matched it. He played some riffs on the Steinway, giving her some melodic ideas, and then went back to the synthe. He refined the sound of the multiple cellos, and then added a clarinet to give things a hint of wind. Stella worked the sound board until she had the mix where her father wanted it.

  It took them two hours to lay down Mad World, and another hour and a half to cover In Your Eyes. Stella had convinced her father that his cover of that song would be more effective at convincing Renee to join the project than Oxygen. When these were safely on the CD they took a lunch break. As they were eating soup and crackers in the kitchen, Paul talked about the first two original songs of the opera. “The first song on an album always is tricky. You have to capture the attention of the listener in a big way, same as the first chapter in a good book. But, it can’t be the best song, because then there’s no place to go but down. It’s like a connoisseur serving wine at a gourmet dinner with multiple courses; he or she never serves the best wine first, but saves it for last The first song has to hook the listener, and for something like this opera, has to hint at the main concept that will continue through all the songs. But it can’t be heavy. Now the second song, that’s the crucial one for the concept. That’s the place where I lay down the idea that the opera is about the relationships between mature men and women. That’s where we tell them what we’re going to tell them through all the songs. Then we tell them through the series of songs, and then at the end, we tell them what we’ve told them. The big recapitulation. Ok?”

  Anna said, “You’re the boss, but it sounds good. What about the first and second songs? Are those the ones we’re going to do first, and send to Renee?”

  “I don’t have to write the whole story linearly, with the action in sequence; I can write the parts of the story as they come to me. But I do have to write those two songs first, because they lay out the rest of the story. So yes, those will be the ones we send to her. You guys up for more work this afternoon? We did good this morning, getting down the Dark Hope covers.”

  Stella said, “I was hoping to get my hair done today, then go for a manicure, but seeing how I’m locked in a windowless, musty, concrete bunker with walls five feet thick, I guess we might as well get on with it.”

  Anna said, “The sooner we get those songs done, the sooner we get the CD to Renee, and the sooner we know if she’s in or out.”

  “The songs gonna get her, Dad? Gonna be that good?”

  He took his bowl to the sink and washed it out, then loaded the expresso machine with the crappy coffee Jools had bought for them. When he turned around from the counter he said, “I’ve been waiting forty years to write a song as good as Hey Jude. Today’s the day it’s going to happen. By dinnertime we’re going to have Hey Renn in the can. Guaranteed. You ready?”

  Anna thought, “Holy shit.”

  Chapter 49 – Gale Tames the Boys

  During the drive up the interstate to the quonset hut the NSSMIBC kept wishing the Dodge had a manual transmission, so he could keep upshifting and then downshifting the knob between Gale’s knees. Because there she was in the cab, squashed between him and the MSMIBC, with the BMIBC on the outside. Twice the BMIBC had to tell the NSSMIBC to keep his eyes on the fucking road, because his eyes were on Gale’s legs, just like the eyes of a cruising hawk are on that poor mouse down in the grass that’s trying to run home to his nest and family of little ones. She felt six beady eyes on her thighs, which was nothing new for her.

  When Gale walked down King Street swinging it, the only eyes not on her, male and female, were those of the blind guy panhandling outside the broad ornamental doors of the Charleston Place Hotel. Halfway down the block from the hotel Gale inevitably would reach into her purse, pull a C note, and fold it into her hand. The blind guy didn’t know much about her ass and legs, but he knew her OPIUM perfume, which he sensed fifty yards away, and which resulted in a big smile on his face. Another hundred in the can. “Hey there, Ms. Gale. How it swinging today? Things alright?”

  “I’m forty, Jonny, and it’s starting to sag, but not too bad yet. The boys are still looking.” She didn’t feel weird about saying that to Jonny, who she’d been supporting for years. He had a great sense of humor, as well as smell. “You think it’s time for me to switch perfume? I’ve been doing the OPIUM thing for six months now. I love it, but don’t want to get too predictable. Except for you, of course.”

  “You switch whenever you want to, honey. I figure out when
it’s you coming down the street, don’t you worry.”

  Gale couldn’t exactly say things were all right now, this being the first time she’d been kidnapped. Well, that’s not quite right. This was the first time she’d been kidnapped by neo-nazis; but there was the time a few years back when she’d been quasi kidnapped by a wealthy Italian Ferrari dealership owner. He’d practically run her over one night, tooling his yellow F12 Berlinetta down King at about twice the speed limit. She’d been carrying a big umbrella with a heavy, hand carved wooden knob handle, folded up, and as she barely sashayed her ass out of the way of the right side front fender, she’d rained down a blow with the umbrella on the center of the Ferrari hood, putting a dent in it the size of a cantaloupe. The guy had squealed to a stop, climbed out of the gull wing door that was hinged at the top, looked at the dent in the hood, looked at Gale, forgot about the dent, and, after five minutes of doing the Italian thing on her, persuaded her to get into the car. She then had spent the next two days shacked up with him on his yacht moored at the marina. When cabin fever set in, and without asking her, he had unmoored and set a course for the twenty hour ride to Bermuda. In her mind this constituted kidnapping, which caused her to withhold her provision of sexual favors for eight whole hours. That taught him. However, when they entered Hamilton Harbor and tied up at the dock of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, her resolve weakened, as did her perception that she was the victim of a sordid, wicked, and immoral kidnapping. It other words, she issued an unconditional forgiveness.

  But this thing that was happening now, turning off the interstate and heading down a back road into the pine scrub, still with the six eyes on her thighs, this was the real kidnapping deal. She remembered how she’d handled the Italian guy, so she figured she could handle these nitwits. She hoped she could, anyway. Fifteen minutes later the pickup turned into the bare dirt yard and stopped in front of the quonset hut. First kidnapping, the Royal Yacht Club; second kidnapping, the squalid compound of a bunch of moronic yahoos. Things had evened out.