A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth

by Hans G. Schantz

  “George P. Burdell,” I insisted. “By the way, I never got to tell you how impressed I was at the ‘Engineering 4 Engineers’ chalking. That was incredible work.”

  “You?” Marcus looked incredulous. He blew up at me. “You goddamn lying piece of shit. You and your fucking SJW friend fucking me over all the fucking time. I’ve been hanging out here for an hour, and you’re the fucking friend of George P. with the Firefly T-shirt I’m supposed to help?”

  “Yes,” I acknowledged. Marcus was shaking his head in disgust. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, “for fooling you, for everything, but friends of George P. do what they have to do for George P. and for the good of Tech,” I explained. “And I don’t think their mommas would approve of that kind of language,” I added.

  Marcus cracked a thin smile. “Damn, but you did fool me and good,” he admitted. “You,” he said, “you got George P. the answers for the social justice final, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. He may have been fooled before, but he was figuring it out quickly, now.

  “You… you’re not just a friend of George P. You… you are George P. Burdell, aren’t you?” Marcus dared me to deny it.

  I thought about that a moment. “Yes,” I acknowledged, “I was George P. Burdell,” I said, savoring the words, “but right here, and right now, Marcus, you are George P. Burdell. This is Georgia Tech, and when a friend of George P. needs our help, we are – each and every one of us – George P. Burdell.”

  “I am George P. Burdell?” Marcus thought about that a moment. “Me? I don’t know if I’m tall enough for this here ride,” he admitted. “I… am George P. Burdell?” he said tentatively, mulling it over, getting used to the idea, nodding his head. “I am George P. Burdell,” he said decisively. “George P., he kept my ass in school, and if a friend of George P. needs my help, this is Georgia Tech. We can do that.”

  I got in the Chevy. Marcus drove me around to where I’d hidden Dr. Chen. I got him into the trunk of Marcus’s Chevy without Marcus getting a good look at him. It was surprisingly spacious, and certainly more comfortable than doubling up in the vacuum chamber. Then, I explained to Marcus what I wanted. “Me? You want me to get this dude past a ton of cops?” He laughed at my naivety. “You gotta be kidding me. They see me, they be pullin’ me over. It like a reflex for ‘em. See black dude. Pull over black dude. Search black dude’s car for drugs. Throw all our asses in jail when they find dude in trunk.”

  “They’re too busy looking for the guy in your trunk,” I explained, “to have time to hassle you or me tonight. No one will want to waste the time to search a couple of harmless students. You’ve got the Tech parking stickers on your car and a Tech ID. We balls it out if they stop you. And, the dude in your trunk? You’re way better looking than he is. No way are they going to mistake you for him.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes at that.

  “Besides, I’ll be with you,” I assured him. “I’ll vouch for you to the nice officers and explain to them what fine upstanding young men we both are.”

  He was still skeptical. “This dude in the trunk better be George P.’s own home boy for what you’re asking.” I guaranteed Marcus he was, and he finally acquiesced.

  Sure enough, the campus police stopped us twice at their checkpoints. Each time, they asked Marcus for his ID, took a good look at the two of us, and waved us on through. We got out on to Techwood Drive and were stopped again by city cops. Finally, we got across the Interstate on North Avenue with no further problem. I guided Marcus to Dr. Chen’s Chinese restaurant off of Peachtree Road. I was tempted to drop off Dr. Chen and return with Marcus, but Dr. Chen’s friends intrigued me. He implied he knew the agents after us. Did he and his friends know about Xueshu Quan and the Civic Circle? Also, I needed to get that letter from him to help persuade Professor Graf.

  It wasn’t too far to the nearest MARTA station, and I could make my way back to campus by myself, if I had to. I got Dr. Chen and both our bags out of the trunk, and then I told Marcus he could head on back.

  “You sure you don’t need me to hang around?” he asked.

  “I’ll take MARTA back,” I explained. “I’ll leave this duffle bag with you though,” I pointed to Sarah’s climbing gear. “I’ll be in touch with you where to drop it off.”

  “Good luck, man,” he said.

  “You, too. Thanks, George P.” I shook his hand. Marcus snorted and drove off.

  I opened the door for Dr. Chen and followed him in. Dr. Chen said something in Chinese to the girl at the reservation stand. Her eyes got big. She looked suspiciously at me and she headed back into the kitchen. “My family will want to thank you for your help,” Dr. Chen assured me, “but first they will have to find someone to verify who I am.”

  The girl came back, trailing behind an older man in a tux. “I am the manager,” he explained. “We are honored to have you as our guests. If you will please wait here,” he said to me, “while I have some tea with you, sir,” he said to Dr. Chen.

  Dr. Chen spoke to him in Chinese. They were having a disagreement of some kind. Finally, the manager relented. “Please leave your bags here,” he said, “You may both follow me.” He led us back through the kitchen to his office, and brought an extra chair for me into the cramped room. A waiter brought in a tea pot with four cups.

  The manager eyed Dr. Chen suspiciously as Dr. Chen poured the tea into the four cups. He appeared angry as Dr. Chen arranged the cups in a pattern. The tension in the room was rising as the manager glared at him. Dr. Chen glared right back at the manager, deliberately chose one of the four cups, and took a sip. The manager exploded in a shout, and the door burst open.

  Things got confusing. A man grabbed at me. I was still sitting, so I had the perfect angle to land a solid uppercut to his groin. He let out a bellow as he delivered a vicious blow to my face, as I attempted to stand. He knocked my head into the drywall behind me. I hadn’t been hit that hard before. The blow stunned me, dropping me back into my seat long enough for a second man to pile on, knocking me and the chair to the ground and then pinning me underneath him. He was just too big and too strong for me. As they dragged me out, I heard Dr. Chen and the manager screaming Chinese at each other. I was dragged out the back door of the restaurant down the alley behind, into another door, and up some stairs. I heard keys rattling as they opened a door. They searched me, confiscating my knife, my keys, and my phone. Then, they shoved me into a room where I stumbled and fell across a bed.

  “You stay!” said one of the thugs in broken English. “Boss decide about you. You make trouble, you make noise and…” he gestured cutting his throat. His pal flicked a switchblade ominously. They shut the sturdy door with a solid “thud.” I heard the jangling of keys as the deadbolt slid into place.

  I hurt all over, but waiting passively for “the boss” to decide whether or not to kill me didn’t strike me as a winning plan. I could hear the low hum of people talking in the vicinity and the occasional high-pitched giggle. I could shout out and probably be heard, but if no one was troubled by the ruckus in the restaurant, I wasn’t confident about some Good Samaritan phoning 911, let alone the police arriving in time to save me from the thugs and their switchblades.

  I took stock of my surroundings. One bed with a well-worn cover. Sheets? I looked out the window. The parking lot was a good thirty, maybe forty feet below, but if I could make fifty feet of improvised rope, getting down would be easy. I tried the window. It was painted shut. The only way out was to break the glass. I could hear the thugs talking outside the door. I might be able to break the glass and climb down, but I wouldn’t have much of a head start, and they’d be right behind me. I wasn’t in any condition for a sprint, let alone a marathon. Maybe after I’d recovered a bit. Let’s make that Plan B, for now.

  I continued looking. There was a small bathroom, adjacent. I washed off the blood, helped myself to a sip of water, and began to feel a bit better.

  Back in the bedroom there was a small sofa, a table, and two chair
s. I searched the sofa and found a quarter, a nickel, and a couple of pennies to add to my inventory.

  Weapons? I could smash the bathroom mirror or the window, and use a shard of glass as my defense against two professional knife-wielders. That didn’t seem prudent. I might be able to use a table leg or a chair as a club. Perhaps I could electrocute them somehow? There were no lamps or appliances, from which I could scavenge a power cord to improvise a 120V cattle prod.

  I took a closer look at the wall. Behind the sofa was a phone jack. Of course, the thugs weren’t thoughtful enough to have left me a phone to call for help.

  Or, so they thought.

  That moment when you finally see how to solve a tricky problem? When a plan comes together? There’s nothing like that feeling of satisfaction and pride in your own capabilities. It makes you feel on top of the world. I didn’t have time just then to savor it, though.

  I got to work stripping the bed: I tore the sheets into long strips to fashion a rope, then, I carefully and quietly rearranged furniture to barricade the door. It would take them a while to get in, buying me more time. I placed a chair adjacent to the window, so I could use it to break the glass. The bed cover I set nearby ready to cover the sharp edges of remaining glass. I secured one end of the rope to the bed. My escape was prepared. Plan B ready, I got to work on Plan A.

  I used one of the pennies I found to unscrew the faceplate to the phone jack, and I peered inside. A red and green wire connected to the jack – a standard, single-line setup.

  The basic technology dates almost all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell. The green wire is connected to ground through a thousand-ohm load. The red wire is hot with -48V DC potential. When you pick up the handset, the phone shorts the red wire to the green wire, through a small transformer to let the local exchange know you want to place a call. The exchange confirms it’s ready by modulating the current with a dial tone that’s picked up by the transformer in the handset and delivered to the speaker. The newer phones use “dual-tone multi-frequency” (DTMF) signaling to dial. Each of the twelve buttons generates a unique pair of tones to let the exchange know what number you want. Older “rotary-dial” phones used a different scheme. A user would rotate a dial to a particular number and the dial would spin back to its rest position, opening the electrical connection with a sequences of “clicks” for a particular number. Dial 1, and the phone would click once, dial “6” and it would open and close the connection six times. Support for the old rotary phones was being phased out, but there were still enough of them around that most exchanges would support rotary dialing.

  I licked my fingers, shorted the red wire to green, and felt a tingle, so I knew the line was live. I had no way to detect it, but after a few seconds, I’d probably be receiving a dial tone. Then I dialed 911. Open-open-open-open-open-open-open-open-open… pause… open, pause… open, pause…. The line may have been ringing. I had no way to tell, and I had no way to talk with the emergency dispatcher on the other end. Sure, I could have tried Morse code, but how many people know Morse? I gave it a twenty count and then opened the wires to break the connection. I repeated the process again. And again. And again. See, I figured if I called 911 often enough, maybe they wouldn’t interpret it as an emergency, but at least they could use caller ID to figure out where I was, and they’d send someone out to tell the obnoxious phone customer to cut it out. When the police arrived or if the thugs tried to enter, I’d execute Plan B, break the window, climb down, and run for it.

  I’d made well over fifty calls before I saw blue flashing lights through my window. I peeked out the window, and I saw a police cruiser pulling into the lot below. I grabbed a chair and broke the window, the glass shattered and tinkled on the lot below. I heard shouting outside the door as I spread the bedcover over the remaining glass in the window frame, and the jingle of keys as I threw the rope out the window and climbed through. I straddled the rope between my legs, around my right thigh, and over my left shoulder to rappel down without any harnesses or hardware. It’s called the “Dülfersitz” technique. I was already out the window climbing down before the thugs got the door unlocked, and I’d made it almost to the ground before I heard a shout, “POLICE! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

  Don’t throw me in that ol’ briar patch Br’er Fox!

  I dropped to the ground and held my hands open and high to look as unthreatening as possible.

  “Hands against the wall!” shouted one of the officers. I complied and the other pulled the rope free, kicked my legs wider, and frisked me while his partner kept me covered. The officer expertly pulled one hand down after the other to secure me in handcuffs. I could hear the thugs banging furiously against my barricade through the open window above me as the cuffs bit into my wrists.

  “What the hell is going on here?” asked the officer. Just then a couple more thugs came running full-tilt around the corner.

  “Stop! Police!” the officers yelled.

  The thugs were completely surprised. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if they were going to keep coming at us or if they’d turn and run. They lost their initiative and split the difference by standing still. The officers handcuffed them as well.

  “What’s going on here?” one of the officers asked the thugs. They replied with an incomprehensible stream of Chinese.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a crowd gathering around the two officers and the three of us handcuffed and facing the wall.

  “Excuse me officers,” an accented but cultured voice called out. “I’m the manager of this establishment. Is there a problem here?”

  “Yes, there’s a problem,” the officer insisted. “We got a bunch of 911 calls from here, we pulled up to check it out, and we find this kid breaking through your window, and these two chasing after him.”

  I turned my head a bit to see the elegantly dressed Chinese gentleman speaking, “I’m sure it’s all just an innocent misunderstanding, officers. Our doors sometimes get stuck and with the noise, it can be difficult to hear someone calling for help. I’m sure the young man was just trying to get attention so he could get out, and we can hardly blame him for breaking our window and calling you for help.” He sounded so smooth and eloquent he was convincing me. Then, I noticed Dr. Chen standing just behind him. We made eye contact, and he nodded his head, urging me to play along.

  “Is this true?” the officer asked me.

  “Yes, sir.” I said. “Somehow I got locked in the room upstairs. I kept banging on the walls, but no one heard me.”

  “We are very sorry for placing you in this awkward situation,” the elegant Chinese man assured me.

  “911 is for emergencies only,” the officer lectured me. “What if you tied up the line while someone called in with a real emergency?”

  “I’m very sorry officer,” I said as sincerely and contritely as I could. “But I thought it was an emergency. I was trapped and couldn’t get out.”

  “Well why didn’t you say so on the call instead of dialing in and hanging up?” the officer grilled me.

  “The handset wasn’t working properly, officer,” I explained.

  “Did you get in a fight?” the other officer asked, referring to the blood on my clothes and what was probably an emerging black eye.

  “Oh we were just horsing around,” I assured him. I don’t think he bought it.

  “My name is Mr. Hung,” the Chinese gentleman said to the officers. “I’m very sorry for this misunderstanding. We’re prepared to overlook the damage Peter caused to our establishment, if he’ll forgive us for accidentally trapping him upstairs.”

  Of course it wasn’t that easy to get out of trouble. I got my wallet and things back from Mr. Hung. Once the officers decided they couldn’t pin a drunk and disorderly charge on us, they cited me and the thugs for disturbing the peace.

  One of the officers took me aside and said quietly, “This is no place for a college kid. You need to find some place to dip your wick on campus, not go looking for action around here
.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, though I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant.

  “My nephew has told me all about what happened, Peter,” Mr. Hung said, alluding to my rescue of Dr. Chen, who had since slipped away with the crowd. “We are both deeply sorry for the misunderstanding and for how you were treated. If you care to join us for dinner we will try to make amends.”

  The officers clearly thought I should leave. My job was only half done – I still had Professor Graf to rescue. I needed to hurry up to Chattanooga. On the other hand, Amit was already there by now, and at this rate, I wouldn’t be there until the wee hours of the next morning, anyway. Furthermore, I’d been too busy to get a note from Dr. Chen explaining the danger. I’d need his note to help me persuade Dr. Graf to take my warnings seriously.

  “I accept your gracious invitation, sir.” I replied.

  The officer who’d talked to me shook his head in disgust. “Your funeral, kid.” He said as they departed.

  We walked around the front of the building – the storefront proclaimed it an oriental massage parlor – and continued on to the restaurant where the adventure had started an hour or so ago.

  The same manager greeted us at the door. I locked eyes with his. He broke eye contact and hung his head in shame. “I’m so sorry, sir,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

  I let his question hang in the air for a moment, then I replied, “I will consider it.”

  He led us to a different table in a back room. Mr. Hung spoke brusquely in Chinese to the manager who cringed, bowed deeply, and exited the room, closing the door behind him.

  “We owe you an apology, Peter,” Dr. Chen said. “It is… unusual for an outsider to be present when we discuss family business. The manager was suspicious that I was not who I claimed to be and that you and I were trying to deceive him. When I gave him the recognition signal, he was upset that I would do so in front of an outsider. He ordered my brothers to detain us until Mr. Hung could arrive, and they were – over enthusiastic in the performance of their duties. I regret the… inhospitality we showed you. Those responsible will be severely disciplined. Thank you for letting our family make amends by treating you to dinner.”