A Pair of Second Chances (Ben Jensen Series Book 1)

by Brian Gore

  This time, she'd been more careful. She carried no plastic and she'd pay their expenses, only in cash, and only in small bills, so as not to attract undue attention. Considering the bundles of $20's in her gym bag, she'd have no shortage of those.

  The girl was working as hard as she could manage, to leave no connection to her location. But still, whispering in the back of her mind, was that fearful question; "How have they always found me?"

  Tyrone always beat her when they’d dump her at his feet. “Fucking Ho!” he’d holler as he kicked her. “Who da fuck you think you are? You leave when I tell you leave! And Ho? Yo ass ain’t goin’ no where! Yo ass belongs to me!”

  She knew, this time, it would go beyond a beating. This time, she'd not taken only herself. She'd taken his son, and a large sack of cash, along with the, 'ho', that he considered his property.

  If, she was caught this time, her son would be left without a mother. His last chance at any sort of a normal, decent, life would be finished.

  The last beating had left her in a condition that required they take her to the hospital. A broken rib had punctured a lung… She told the doctor and nurse, working on her, she’d tripped and tumbled down the stairs… She remembered they’d just looked at each other… a knowing look.

  He’d beaten her again when he got the bill for the hospital. “Yo ass ain’t made me that much in a year! Worthless Skettle!”… and another kick.

  They might recede, but the thoughts were never… gone. Always, in the back of her mind, she expected a dark windowed Yukon to pull up behind her on the highway. Always, she couldn’t shake that nagging fear that they were coming… and her glance would go to the rear view mirror.

  Always, she failed to completely escape the weight of their presence.

  But this day, she would enjoy. This day her son and she would laugh, and tease each other. This day, they would live.

  The little red Saturn continued its journey northwest, rolling across Iowa. Mon – ta – na growing ever nearer.

  “Why we going there Momma?”

  “Montana?”

  “Yes. Why are we going to Mon – ta – na” he still struggled with the name.

  “Jamaicans will stand out in Montana Timmy. I’ll see ‘em coming.” She regretted the words as they left her mouth.

  “Huh?” the boy asked, not having any idea what she was talking about.

  “Never mind. You lay your head back and take a nap… we’ll pull off in an hour or so, and find a place to stay for the night, OK?”

  “OK, Momma… I’m sleepy.” He was asleep, almost as fast as he laid his head against the back of his seat.

  Watching him in the rear view mirror… and glancing back down the road at the same time… the dark thoughts returned, and her eyes started to fill.

  “No! I won’t let that bastard win. NO!... Not this time…” She shook her head, working to regain control. Slowly the panic receded and calmness returned. They’d not find her today. They wouldn’t find her and her son. She had time to find a way. Somehow, they would... vanish. They had to.

  How she didn’t know. Getting the car secretly bought and cached for her, biding her time until she had the opportunity to grab enough cash to give them a chance, was as far as her thinking had taken her, and at that, she'd done well.

  Now, it was all by the seat of her pants. At 26, she’d never really been out on her own. She'd only been on the street a couple of weeks when Tyrone had taken the nearly 18 year old homeless girl off the street. Taken her off the street, to put her, right back on the street. The shame and humiliation still ate at her, deep inside.

  Once again, she looked at the little boy in the back seat and swore to herself; “I don’t matter. He is all that matters. I do whatever it takes… to take care of him.” The unspoken words, flowing though her brain, served to steel her will, and choke down the dark thoughts that would recede, but refuse to go, completely, away.

  With those thoughts crowding her mind, she drove that little car, northwest across Iowa; one eye on the road... the other, on the rear view mirror.

  Chapter 3

  It hadn't taken Tyrone's men long to find the cab company that had sent a car to the condo early that morning. By noon, a few dollars, along with a thinly veiled threat, to the right dispatcher, and they had the name of the cabbie who had driven the car, as well as his home address, though they had no intention of using that.

  It was far easier, and safer, to have that same dispatcher radio the driver in question that afternoon when he came on shift. He'd be sent to pick up his first fare at a particular address. It was a request that the dispatcher, having been given a keen interest in the welfare of his family, as well as himself, was only too happy to honor. His submission was made all the easier once he'd been very convincingly advised of all the bad things that can happen to a man's family. The things that he just can't be there to protect them from.

  "There's all sorts of accidents that can happen to a person. They can get hit by a truck walking home from school, fall out a window, all sorts of freak things; and you never know when they might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time, what with all the rapists and murderers loose on the streets! It's a mean world. A mahn has to be careful! You know?"

  Yes, he knew. He knew very well indeed. What did he care about what kind of trouble that driver had gotten himself into? Just a damn foreigner anyway. It was none of his business! His responsibility was to his own wife and family.

  The result being, of course, when the cab pulled up in front of the run down apartment house, on a nearly deserted side street, four men were waiting, in a non-descript Chevy van. The van, sitting just down the block, started up and quickly pulled alongside. As it stopped beside the cab, the side door slid open as two large Jamaican men jumped out.

  Without saying a word, they jerked the door of the cab open. While one man held an automatic pistol to his forehead, the other slashed the seat belt strapping the man in, slicing his arm in the process. The man with the pistol, laid it hard across the side of the cabbies head, stunning the driver. Together they simply drug the cabby out of his car and tossed him into the van. As he hit the floor inside, his kidnappers jumped in behind him. While one slammed the door, the other landed on top of him, pistol to his head.

  The screeching tires of the departing van echoed off the dilapidated buildings lining the street.

  The young boy... stood looking over the top of the dumpster, just inside the alley way across the street. He was hiding from his grandmother so he could smoke a cigarette. As the van squealed away from the now empty cab, he stubbed out his cigarette, walked to the mouth of the alley, looked around the corner of the building at the white Chevy van, now turning the corner at the end of the block, and then walked quickly up the street in the opposite direction.

  Less than 15 hours after he'd dropped the girl and her son, the cabbie was tied to a chair in a run down warehouse miles from where he'd been kidnapped; a warehouse from which Tyrone ran his operation; a warehouse where he endured a less than gentle interrogation from Tyrone's goons.

  "How many times I gotta tell You? Dispatch sent me a call for a fare at the Heartwood Terrace Condos. I drove there, picked up a girl and a small boy and took them to the airport... I dropped them right in front of American Airlines. Where they went after that, I have no idea. I don't even fucking care! My job is to drive the cab... Not watch where the crazy women, that you boys can't handle... go!" The cabbie spit out the words through his battered lips.

  This cabbies defiance amazed his torturers. In the past, the men they'd interrogated had started answering questions they hadn't even asked yet... once the jumper cables had made contact with their genitals a few times.

  But, not this time.

  The more they tortured this man, the angrier and more defiant he seemed to become. Every ten minutes or so, Tyrone would call and ask if they had the information he wanted. With each call, he was becoming angrier and more threatening himself; "Make that
white bwoy talk! I'm losing patience bwoy!"

  They all knew what could happen if Tyrone lost his temper.

  Their fear of Tyrone, and what he might do if they failed, resulted in having their frustrations magnified by fear. As a consequence they had surrendered to a more simple but just as brutal, beating.

  They would have been well advised to think less of Tyrone, and have some fear for, and pay closer attention to the current victim of their brutality. Had they known who he was, had they known where he had been and, what he had been, they might not have been so careless.

  Though they'd brutally pummeled his body, mangling his lips and face, cracking ribs, and leaving little of his body un-bruised and beaten, that technique was proving even less effective than the jumper cables had been. If anything, the Cabbie was more defiant than ever.

  Knowing the rage he'd face from Tyrone, if he didn't come up with some answers, and damn soon... the big Jamaican's efforts became ever more desperate.

  In their desperation, no one noticed his hands slowly working on the thin nylon cord he'd been bound with. Though the knots were secure, they slipped, and nylon stretches. Each time they hit him he jerked on those ropes tightening the knots, and stretching the rope. Each time they hit him he gained a tiny bit of slack... until finally he worked the loop from one hand... freeing his hands... which he kept held behind him, waiting.

  "You better be mo' careful how you talk bwoy..." the big Jamaican threatened. He leaned in close, to the man's face, and pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the defiant cabbies forehead. "... bad things can happen. You'll pay a high price for thinking you're a tough guy." With a laugh he shoved his victim's head back with a violent thrust of the pistol. The badly beaten cabbie glared at the Jamaican who'd beaten and tortured him. He glared through eyes not yet swollen closed, and wide enough yet, to reveal his hatred, and not a shred of fear.

  His response to the threat was not especially tactful. "You miserable fool, I survived the worst those Croatian pigs could hand out. I didn't talk then... I made them pay! I'm not about to betray that poor girl now." Then grinning at them, his bloody teeth showing between torn and split lips, he spoke again; "You are not going to find her, and the day I fear dickless scum like you, or anything you can do... is not today!"

  In ultimate defiance, he spit blood and saliva in the big man's face, as the frustrated sadist leaned in close, attempting to intimidate his captive with the sheer weight of his presence.

  That act of defiance triggered the response the Cabbie expected and was indeed hoping for. His tormentor wiped the blood and spittle off his face with his left hand, while still holding the pistol to the driver's forehead with his right, and looked at the mess in his palm. In a fit of rage, he reached the pistol back to swing it at the Bosnians head.

  As his arm swung back around, intending to crack the Bosnians skull, the supposedly helpless victim suddenly reached up with his own right hand, deflecting the blow up and over his head.

  As is common, the fool gunman had the weapon loaded, a round in the chamber, and his finger on the trigger. The violence and surprise of the block caused his hand to instinctively tighten, touching off a round, which flew harmlessly out of the deflected weapon, into a wall. The sudden and unexpected detonation of the weapon in that confined space had the affect of momentarily stunning everyone in the room.

  Unexpected for everyone other than the cabbie that is. With lightning fast action, his hand stabbed up and deflected the striking weapon. As he stood up, his whole arm continued over and down around his assailants' wrist, locking the pistol under his arm! Without an instant of hesitation, in what appeared to be one, fluid, continuous, violent, movement, he rotated his whole body against the trapped arm, snapping it with a CRACK! at the elbow.

  Grasping the barrel of the weapon trapped under his arm with his left hand, the pistol was deftly stripped from the hand of the screaming gunman's broken arm as he fell to the floor. The now armed cabby, continued to rotate. He added his right hand to the grip, his finger going to the trigger as he brought the weapon up and fired a double tap into the chest of the first man the weapon's sights swept across. That was an unfortunate man standing against a wall on the other side of the room; a man who was only now starting to draw his weapon.

  The cabby continued to rotate to his right, to engage a third Jamaican standing just inside the door, when that man fired his own weapon... putting four rounds into the cabbies chest.

  The Bosnian cabby, late of the Bosniak Militia, died with a smile on his face. Voicing his last thought; "Finally it's over... soon... I'll again be with my wife and child... soon."

  Jamal stood with his weapon in his hand, heart pounding, frozen, wondering; "What the hell just happened?" as two men, weapons drawn, crashed through the door.

  "What the Fuck Mahn?" they hollered in unison, over the screaming of the man with the shattered elbow. Weapons thrust out in front of them, they scanned the room and their eyes took in the spreading pools of blood leaking out of the two dead men.

  "God Damn! I don' know... one second he's tied to a chair... next thing I know Jomo's screaming and that mofo has his pistol and he's shootin'. The son of a bitch nearly killed me! God Damn!"

  "Look at him!" one of the men exclaimed "The dead bastard is grinning!"

  Jamal just snapped a terse; "Help him... and clean that shit up". He gestured with his gun hand, first at the still screaming Jomo writhing on the linoleum, and then, at the two bodies sprawled across the floor; the grinning corpse of the cabbie, and Jarick, the unfortunate Jamaican drug runner. He himself backed out of the door to get clear of the room. He ran the fingers of his free hand across his shaved head, his mind still spinning in confusion and his heart racing from adrenalin.

  A few minutes were spent getting himself under control. He needed to collect his thoughts before he walked out a side door of the dimly lit warehouse and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. His thumb speed dialed a number while his hand still shook slightly. The phone rang twice before it was answered with a sharp; "What? You find out what I need to know?"

  The big man replied in an almost whining voice that belied his size; "Uh... Tyrone... he wouldn't talk... an' uh... he's dead Mahn..." the rest spilling out in a torrent of words with that musical Jamaican accent; "and so is Jarick. Jomo has a broken arm and that crazy God damn Cabbie wouldn't say anything but curse at us! He wouldn't fucking talk mahn!"

  "What you mean dead? What the fuck happened Jamal?" Tyrones' voice, squalling back at him, sounded like a tiny little lion roaring out of its cage inside the cell phone.

  "I don't know Mahn. We was all standing in the break room. Me, Jomo and Jarick. He was tied to the fuckin' chair Mahn. Jomo was zappin' him with the jumper cables, and when he still wouldn't talk other than to cuss us, it made Jomo mad so he went to pistol whip his ass. Next thing I know, Jomo's on the ground and screaming, the cabbie's killing Jarick with Jomos' pistol... shot im dead! and I'm bustin' caps in his ass to keep him from killing me! I don't know what happen Tyrone... I just know that crazy bad bwoy is dead and he don't tell us a damn thing."

  The silence on the other end of the line, unnerved the big Jamaican. "Tyrone? Why we need anything from him anyway? Why don't you just find her with her phone... like you always do Mahn?"

  You could almost hear the wishing in his voice... The fear took no wishing to hear. None at all. That big Jamaican was scared.

  "Because you stupid damn nyega... she either don't have the damn thing, or it's turned off!... Shit!"

  "We'll find her Mahn! We'll find her, we'll get the money back, and your son... I swear it Mahn!" The big man pleaded, as if he was pleading for his life.

  "Yah Jamal" Tyrone growled back; "You'll find her, you fucking better." and the line went dead.

  You could see that big man shrink a little as he relaxed, his fear of his boss receded for the time being. He looked at the phone in his hand for several long seconds before flipping it closed, and turning to walk back i
nto the warehouse, to make sure the "Mess" was properly cleaned up.

  Just as he reached for the door knob his phone rang, the caller ID said TT. "Damn" was all Jamal could say as he flipped the phone back open to answer; "Yah, Tyrone what you want me to do mahn?"

  "Jamal. You send two of those lazy bastards to take the garbage to the same dump we've used before. You make damn sure they do it right... You Understand?"

  "Yah, Tyrone... I got it."

  "And Jamal... as soon you have that taken care of, You come here, I'm waitin' on you bwoy."

  "I'll be there in a half hour Tyrone." He flipped the phone shut, a fresh knot of fear growing, deep in his guts.

  The two he'd left inside were already wrapping the bodies in plastic sheeting and duct taping it closed. They were wearing latex gloves to ensure they left no prints on the plastic. They'd been careful to sweep the bodies to ensure no obvious evidence was wrapped up with the unfortunate cabbie, or Jarick, just in case. Brightest bulbs in the building they weren't, but a life of living on the wrong side of the law had left them with at least a small amount of street smarts.

  Jamal walked up just as they finished with the taping. "Put it in the van and get ready to go. Take Jomos' pistol too. You dump the pistol a mile or two out. You weight these heavy and tight, like I showed you before, and run another couple of miles before you put 'em in, got it?"

  "Yah Jamal. You know me. I'll do it right Mahn." replied Terrance, the smaller of the men, though still by most standards, a big man.

  "Yeah Terrance you will" Jamal told him; "but first, send somebody to take Jomo to the emergency room. Tell them to take their own damn car. Tell him to say he fall down the stairs. Tell who you send, to drop him there and then get their ass, straight back here."