by J. B. Hawker
“Roberto’s dead? Oh. Well, Lucca can vouch for me. He met with me and gave me the instructions.”
“If you are who you say, and if you came to purchase this supposed cargo, then you must be carrying the purchase price, no?”
Felice was beginning to enjoy himself, again.
Tenny did not like the direction this conversation had taken, at all.
He attempted to rise to his feet, but Parma’s man shoved him back down with his foot.
“So, where is it? Prove you are here for a legitimate business transaction and, as they say in your American movies, show me the money.”
Somehow Tenny did not feel Parma’s good humor was a positive sign.
“Oh, but, er, I wasn’t so sure about this meeting, you see, so I left the money behind on my boat, in a safe place, until I could check things out,” he improvised, “but I can get it. In fact, I will be happy to go get it for you, right now.”
The look Parma gave him prevented him from even trying to rise to his feet this time.
Opijnen was grateful he’d thought to hide his duffle bag in the alley behind the warehouse. The money was his only insurance.
Parma silently contemplated his two captives, rather like a circling shark contemplating his next meal.
Bunny was grateful for his distraction, no matter how brief.
Outside the office, Max was astonished.
What the hell is Opijnen doing here? This just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.
He heard Bunny’s voice while the door was open as they dragged Tenny into the room.
She was alive, for now, anyway. And Max’s hands were free, although he kept them held behind his back to avoid notice.
But what good were his bare hands against half a dozen members of the Italian mob?
Reaching the door to the room she shared with Bunny, Taffy fumbled with the key.
Behind her, Lucca muttered impatiently, “Open it, cow!”
The insult infuriated Taffy, empowering her to act.
Her diminutive size belied her abilities. The years spent working alongside her husband on the potato ranch had given her strength and her daily yoga routine kept her flexible.
Channeling her frustrations and outrage, she whirled around and gave Lucca a hard push while stomping down on his instep.
When he fell, howling, to the floor, she dashed into the room and quickly threw its three deadbolt locks.
She grabbed up the phone to connect to Luigi, but the line was busy.
Lucca was pounding on the door, yelling for her to open up and die.
Down the hall another guest opened his door and stuck his head out to look around.
Lucca shouted something to him in Italian and the man quickly disappeared into his room with a loud slam.
In a rage, Lucca pulled his revolver and sent several shots through the door.
At the sound of the gun, Taffy bolted into the bathroom and locked herself in.
She hadn’t really thought through what she would do after getting into the room and suddenly feared she had made everything much worse.
Only now did she consider that what she had done might be taken out on Bunny and Max back at the warehouse.
Chapter 18
Whoever takes money to do wrong invites disaster. Refuse such gifts, and you will live. Proverbs 15:27
Felice Parma was beguiled by the new possibilities.
This smuggler's arrival changed everything.
Since Parma was no longer convinced these silly women were working for anyone but themselves, he had been concerned more with the return of the icons than in getting information.
Toying with the little bunny rabbit had been for his own amusement.
He wanted to retrieve all the art objects in order to guarantee the full price his uncle had negotiated would be paid.
Now, with the Dutchman under his control, he saw it would be a small matter to get all the money and keep the icons, as well.
Unlike his late uncle, Felice had no honor and no compunction about cheating their buyer.
This was working out better than he could have imagined.
Parma was smiling to himself when his phone rang.
“Pronto!”
The smile vanished as he listened to Lucca’s excited words.
“Come? How could this happen, you fool? Overpowered you? But she is only a tiny old woman! Idiota! Wait there. At least try not to let her escape the room. I will send some real men to assist you with this powerful creature. Pah!”
Max was startled when Parma opened the door and shouted angrily to his men.
Four of the five who remained in the warehouse left immediately.
The capo returned to the office without a glance in Max’s direction.
Max thought the odds were somewhat better now, although the remaining goon outweighed him by at least thirty pounds and was half his age.
This was going to call for strategy, not brute strength.
Max considered the situation.
Bunny and Opijnen were in the office with Parma and one of his henchmen.
Max was in the warehouse with the other one.
The numbers, now, were even.
The three captives were older, but hopefully wiser, and fighting for their lives.
He needed to figure out how to use those “advantages” against professional killers.
If he were television’s MacGyver character, he would make a helicopter from chewing gum and shoelaces and fly them all to safety.
Too bad he wasn’t the action hero type, also he didn’t have any gum and he was wearing loafers, so no joy there. But he had to act soon.
He had no way of knowing when any of the others might return.
In the office, Felice had made a decision. He motioned for his man to pull Opijnen to his feet.
“You will prove you are who you say, and not an accomplice of this band of brigands, by taking us to the money. Once there, we can complete our business and you may sail away, as arranged. If the money is not where you say, we shall kill you.”
Tenny went pale.
The money was his only bargaining chip; he knew turning it over meant certain death. And now, not turning it over would end the same way.
He had to go along and hope for a chance to make a break for it.
“Well sure. That’s reasonable. The money’s on my boat. But, of course, I will need to check out the merchandise before you get paid,” he blustered.
“But, of course. It is all in the boot of my car,” Parma lied glibly. “Let’s go.”
They went out, leaving Bunny tied to a chair in the empty room.
On the way out, Felice walked over to his man, Gino, who remained in the warehouse.
He spoke to him quietly, nodding in Max’s direction and then gestured to the office.
The looks being exchanged gave Max a sudden premonition this man was being instructed to kill the prisoners following Parma’s departure.
Opijnen and his escorts arrived at the docks without incident.
There had been no opportunity for him to flee.
Tenny was becoming ever more frantic.
A sudden desperate idea came to him. It might be suicide, but something similar had worked for the movie character, Jason Bourne, and he could see no other options.
“So you are a man of the sea, eh, Dutchman?” Parma asked him, jovially.
“I am eager to see this smuggler’s boat of yours, and to be certain it is safe for our cargo. Once assured, I shall have Stephano, here, collect your parcels from my car, you will pay us and we may complete our transaction and part as friends.”
Felice did not care if the smuggler handed over the money voluntarily. He was certain once they knew which was his boat, finding the cash would be no problem, even if Stephano had to dismantle the vessel.
In the meantime, he was enjoying this pretense of gentlemanly cooperation.
Felice always felt he could
have been a great and famous actor if he had not gone into the family business.
Tenny was not fooled by Parma’s theatrics and led the men away from Zeemeermin and toward the boats moored closer to the open bay.
At a gap in the row of boats, he suddenly swerved to the edge of an empty slip and dove into the water, disappearing beneath its dark, oily surface.
“Get him!” Felice shouted to his man, but there was nothing the mobster could do.
Hanging over the side of the dock and peering into the blackness beneath revealed no sign of Opijnen.
The two men walked up and down the pier, checking between the boats, muttering Italian curses all the while.
“He cannot stay under indefinitely or he will drown. Keep watch while I get a flashlight from the car,” Parma ordered angrily.
Gino, the lone gangster left in charge at the warehouse, had spent several minutes chatting animatedly on the phone.
He seemed to be taking advantage of this unexpected lack of supervision to conduct personal business.
Max wondered if he was making social plans for the rest of the night, after he had dispatched his victims. Would he take out his best girl, then, and entertain her with all the gory details over a nice plate of tortellini?
“Avante!”
His call completed, the thug pulled the gun from his shoulder holster and prodded Max toward the office.
Max was careful to maintain the illusion that his wrists were still bound.
When they walked in, Bunny flinched and looked up fearfully.
Seeing her injured face shocked and sickened Max before filling him with rage.
The bastards! What had they been doing to her?
“Bunny! Are you okay?”
“Oh Max! You’re all right. I was afraid they’d killed you.”
“Non parlate,” Gino instructed. “No talk!”
Motioning Max over to the couch where old Parma had died, he bent over and untied Bunny from the chair and prodded her to stand.
When she stood, after being tied to the chair for so many hours, Bunny’s legs gave out.
Her circulation had been compromised and her lower limbs were asleep.
Caught off guard, Gino dropped his gun, as he instinctively tried to catch her.
With a leap, Max snatched it up and stood pointing it at the astonished mobster, who let Bunny fall to the floor.
Bunny struggled to pull herself onto the couch with her hands still bound behind her.
“Great work, Max! How did you get your hands free?”
“I’ll tell you later. The problem now, is how do I get you untied while holding a gun on this character? We have got to tie him up and get his cell phone to call for help, but you will need to hold the gun while I restrain him. Any ideas?”
“Can’t we get my hands loose the same way you got free?”
“I’m afraid not. I used the edge of the license plate on the car we came here in, and Lucca and Linda drove away in it long ago.”
“Ohmigosh, Linda! er, I mean Taffy. They took her to our hotel to get the shepherd statue ages ago. Why haven’t they come back?”
“Calm down. We have to concentrate on getting out of this mess and then we can try to find Linda, and maybe get her to give up her stupid nickname kick, too.”
“I’m sorry. Of course, you’re right.”
Bunny took a deep breath and began to look around the office with her one good eye.
She had been too distracted at first, and then too defeated, to really look at her surroundings before.
Along with the couch and a couple of wooden office chairs like the one she had been tied to, there was an old metal desk pushed up against the far wall.
Bunny hobbled over to the desk.
The drawers were on the side facing the wall.
She used her leg to push one end of the desk away from the wall a bit and managed to wedge her hip into the space she created.
This gave her the necessary leverage to move the desk out far enough to open the drawers, if only her hands had been in front of her.
She remembered once seeing someone manage to move their bound hands from behind them to the front by stepping through them.
Oh dear, it won’t be pretty, but I’ve got to try!
She began to wriggle around and pulled her arms as low as possible down her back, trying to slip them around her hips.
Her arms were much too short.
Pulling so hard she feared the tape would cut through her wrists, she stretched the tape ever so slightly, and managed to slip her arms around first one hip and then the other, leaving herself in a painful version of the deep forward yoga fold Taffy had tried to teach her.
She shuffled like a humpbacked turtle over to the couch and, using it for balance, edged down onto her knees, and then flopped onto her side before rolling onto her back with her feet in the air above her head.
She was just wishing she had paid more attention to Taffy’s yoga lessons, when she was distracted by snickering.
Amazingly, Max and the mobster were both standing there, one holding the other at gunpoint, while stifling laughter at her expense!
Fueled by indignation, Bunny managed to pull her hands around first one leg and then the other to find herself, at last, lying flat on the floor with her hands across her stomach.
She stood up with as much dignity as she could manage and walked across to the desk where she pulled the drawers open, one by one.
In the shallow center drawer she found a letter opener and began to awkwardly stab at her bindings.
By the time she had her hands free the men were once again on guard and wary.
“Shall I hold the gun, now, Max? I’m not a great shot, but I don’t suppose I could miss at such close range.”
Max motioned for the man to sit on Bunny’s recently vacated chair and handed her the gun, showing her how to aim and fire it.
Max jerked the cord from a lamp on the desk and proceeded to bind Gino’s hands and feet.
Once certain the man would not be able to overpower him, Max searched his pockets for the phone.
He traded Bunny the phone for the gun.
“Can you call for help, Bunny?”
“I’m not sure what the number is for emergency services, so I’ll try to call the operator and just hope she understands English.”
Punching the zero on the phone’s number pad and pushing “send” did not have the desired result, so Bunny proceeded to try each number in turn, with similar frustrating results.
This cell phone was their only hope for rescue.
Bunny feared, if they were forced to set off on foot to find help, their unfamiliarity with the area and the language would leave them vulnerable to recapture.
She could feel panic rising and fought to control it.
The others could be returning at any moment.
Chapter 19
But you are given the judgment evil people deserve. A fair judgment will be upheld. Job 36:17
When Parma’s men arrived at L’Attico, they walked into the waiting arms of the police who were already on the scene in response to Luigi’s call.
Lucca had been arrested while trying to kick down the door to Taffy’s room.
He was taken away shouting “Stregha brutta!” at the top of his voice.
The investigator questioning Taffy noticed there were bullet holes in her suitcase on the bed.
When Taffy opened the case, they discovered a bullet had exploded the head and shoulders of her shepherd souvenir.
“Oh, my shepherd!” she cried, lifting the remains of the statue from the plaster shards and dust.
“Why, there’s something inside it. Look here...”
She held it out to the police officer.
The policeman took the remnant of the statue over to the table to examine it under the lamp, then stepped out into the hall and called to his superior in some excitement.
“What is it? What did you find?”
> Taffy came to the door to see what was happening.
“Signora,” Ricardo Tamagni, the officer in charge, turned to Taffy, “Where did you obtain this figure?”
“In a poky little old shop in Verona. I didn’t really want it, at first, but the shopkeeper insisted that I take it, so I did. Why?”
“Did this shop have a name?”
“I don’t know. I mean, of course it had a name, but it was something foreign and I don’t remember foreign words very well, I’m afraid. Let me think. It was a tiny shop on one of the roads leading off that plaza by the Roman coliseum and it had lots of stuff besides nativity figures crammed into the display window. The shop was rather dark and dirty inside.”
“Perhaps the shopkeeper had a name you can remember, if it wasn’t too foreign, that is?”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive. When I said that about foreign words, I just meant I don’t remember words in a language I can’t pronounce. The shopkeeper didn’t introduce himself, though. He was very odd. He just insisted that he had what I wanted, thrust the statue at me and scurried like a rat into the back of the shop.”
“Can you describe this man?”
“Well, he wasn’t very attractive, I’m afraid. I suppose he was about forty or so, small and dark; a wiry, rumpled little man with squinty eyes and a thick scar worming its way across his forehead. As I said, not very attractive.”
“And until just now, you had no idea what was inside the statue?”
“No idea, at all. In fact, I still don’t know what you found. Is it drugs?”
“No, it is nothing like that. This appears to be a set of very valuable religious icons. I believe they may be the ones stolen from a church in Venice earlier this year.”
“Did you say icons?” Taffy asked with a gasp. “Now it starts to make sense.”
“What do you mean?”
This finally gave Taffy the chance to explain what had been happening that day.
Tamagni looked at her skeptically before making a call on his cell phone.
What he learned must have confirmed her story, because he began to take notes of every detail as he grilled Taffy for any information she could provide.
