Chapter 5

Well, we had worked ourselves out of another job, and this time it really felt good. There is nothing I hate worse than rape, and kidnapping is right behind that. Having stopped both made me feel very, very good!

Well, Liz and I do like a little down time every once in a while, but this was getting ridiculous! We had been five weeks without a client, and we both were feeling very restive. Liz and I were about ready to walk up walls because of this enforced vacation. We both jumped for the phone every time it rang, and we even barked at friends on occasion. Of course, they were used to that and did not hold it against us, but it was embarrassing, all the same.

At last, something came through. A banker friend of Nathan Herschal, a previous client, referred us to him. Jason Rivers had a son who was nine years old, and the apple of his father's eye. Well, Rivers had received a threat that Jason, Jr. was to be the target of a beating if Rivers did not pay $50,000 to a certain Alphonse Hopkins to "protect" him. The story Rivers got was that this ill treatment might even include castration if Rivers went to the police or hired special protection for his son. We had received glowing reviews from Herschal and Jones, so Rivers wanted to hire us to protect his son.

We jumped at the job and agreed to start working on the case that very day. The first thing we did was to put a tail on Jason, Jr. every time he left the house for any reason. Liz and I alternated the job as tail the first three days to try to keep it from being so obvious that Jason, Jr. was being protected by us.

Rivers received a phone call on the third day saying that he had better pay the protection money or something very unpleasant was going to happen to his son. Castration was now a definite promise. As instructed, Jason Rivers laughed at the caller and dared him to try anything against Jason, Jr. We hoped to force the caller to take action. That was when we expected to grab him. There was no Alphonse Hopkins in the telephone directory in Worcester or for miles around. We just did not have anything to go on to help us track down the extortioner. The phone calls had all been made from prepaid cellphones, so Caller ID told us nothing.

Jason, Jr. was chauffeured about town since the threat had started. Previously, he had taken public transportation whenever possible, but that was a dead issue right now. On a Saturday afternoon, Jason, Jr. had arranged to meet a few friends to see a 3D action movie they had all seen at least four times: such were the viewing habits of preteen boys. Our plan was for me to follow the car transporting Jason, Jr. in a nondescript car we often used for such jobs. Liz would be waiting at the theater complex with her ticket already purchased. She was to walk in right behind the four boys and to sit in the theater with them two rows in front of her. By the way, she was wearing ear protection because of an especially raucous sound track.

In the meantime, I was to park our car and to follow them to the theater. However, I was to wait in the hallway outside the theater to watch for suspicious activity before the boys came out of the theater. Jason, Jr. had agreed to call for his car to meet him in front of the movie complex, and all four boys would be driven to their homes.

Two very boring hours later, the movie was over, and the boys came out. They were laughing and quoting lines of dialogue as they entered the hallway. A few moments later, a very dazed looking Liz came out. I could tell from the look on her face that the next time we did something like this, it would be my turn to sit through the movie inside the theater.

Besides me, the only other people in the hallway waiting for the movie to end were the cleanup crew waiting to sweep the floor of spilled popcorn, etc. There were four burly looking men in this crew, and I remember thinking that surely men as well built as these could have found better employment.

The four boys walked past the cleaning crew when it happened. Each of the four men pushed a large refuse container on wheels in front of the boys and made a grab for each one of the kids. Of course, the boys were not expecting anything like this to happen, so they were easy for the men to catch.

Both Liz and I were caught by surprise by this sudden maneuver. It took a few seconds for us to react, but three of the boys had been caught by then. The fourth boy had tried to run away, but he was held by a jacket sleeve by his captor. The man was reeling in the boy somewhat like a harpooned fish by the time Liz reached him.

She did not fool around. Though this was not Jason, Jr., she fought to her maximum ability to overcome the would be kidnapper. She was outweighed by at least 60 pounds and was about six inches shorter than the man, but she finally managed to get in a well aimed blow to his balls, and that put him down for the count.

I was blocked away from the action by a group of kids who stopped to watch the action, so I was not able to reach any of the kidnappers before they had slapped a mask over the face of each boy and dumped him into a refuse container. They took off at a dead run for the exit, and there was no way I was going to catch them. By the time I managed to get out the exit door, all six had disappeared. I assume that a panel truck or something similar had been waiting for them, and it took off as soon as it was loaded.

I ran back into the theater complex and helped Liz to overpower the man that she had been fighting. The kids were still in the way, but we managed to drag the failed kidnapper and his victim back into the empty theater and closed the door. The crowd of kids disappeared while we were there, so we had a few minutes to "talk" to our captive.

I jammed a pistol barrel into the gut of the crook while Liz pulled down his pants and underwear. Our captive was lying on the floor so that he could not escape. I asked a question and got a nonsense answer as expected. That was the signal for Liz to grab the thug's scrotum and twist and squeeze. He let out a scream of pain, and I repeated the question.

We had time to get a good bit of information from the thug with me asking and Liz twisting and squeezing. She even jammed her fingernails into his skin, and the crook thought that it was a knife about to cut off his balls. That was the final straw, and he told us where to find all three kids. Included was a good description of the building that they were being held in.

Bearing in mind our recent experience when some kidnappers were released because there was no room in the local jails, I took the time to break the crook's hip. I figured that being in the hospital with a broken hip was good enough to keep him immobilized until we had rescued Jason, Jr. and captured the rest of the gang.

The boy we had rescued was delivered home by the car that had been sent for Jason, Jr. and his friends. Liz and I headed for the address we had extracted from our prisoner. We figured that there would be at least one more effort to collect the "protection" money before something was done to harm the boy. We didn't know what to expect for his two friends, but we were afraid that they, too, were in danger.

We arrived at the house we were looking for after half an hour of driving. Late afternoon traffic in Worcester was heavy, no matter which day it was! Mostly, the problem was large trucks and semis making deliveries to stores for the following week, but there were also many private cars on the road: just a normal day with the traffic in Worcester.

We parked a block away from the house we were looking for. It was a large wooden house in a quiet residential neighborhood. There was a cellar and three stories of living quarters, so we could not be sure where the boys were being held. My personal vote was for the cellar, but Liz lobbied for the top floor. It really didn't make much difference: we were already where we could look through the cellar windows, to that was where we started.

We had stripped to our fighting clothes which we had worn under our regular outfits, and I must say that Liz looked very fetching in her outfit. I swear that woman could look good in any outfit, and she was proving it today. Our weapons consisted of our pistols and our "sticks" that were one inch in diameter and 26 inches long. We were both experts with using the sticks, and we could break bones or kill with them with a minimum of provocation. Liz had suggested the sticks because we would not accidentally harm the boys with them as we might do with our guns.