Bella and the Black Book: Chapter Three

So let’s recap. Me and a gunman are out in a parking lot where I run into my elderly neighbor who pisses himself at the sight of a firearm and violence is about to ensue.

I had a moment to actually register how bad life was about to get as the gunman swung in the direction of Mr. McGuffy with every intention of ending his life a little sooner than initially anticipated by Mr. McGuffy’s friends and family. Personally, I realized I could have taken that particular moment to make a break for it myself. After all, he just turned the weapon away from me to deal with another threat and if I remember correctly, handguns are only good up to a certain distance unless you’re a crack shot. Granted, I didn’t know if my captor was a crack shot, but the chances that he wasn’t were higher than the chances that he was. Either way, I didn’t take the obvious chance to exit stage left. Instead, I did the heroic thing: I turned around and ran right into my captor.

The gun went off and my head started to ring like I was inside a bell tolling the hours.

In the scuffle, the book hit the concrete. I would figure that out later. Right then, I was a little busy trying to keep this burly fellow from lowering that pistol into the range of any of my vital organs, most notably my brain. As he and I were turning in circles in the parking lot, Mr. McGuffy was rapidly (at least for the geriatric he was) making his way back toward his apartment.

“Stupid…” He said a word I refuse to use in reference to myself after that, so I’ve decided to leave it off. Either way, his displeasure was obvious and it was immediately followed by him knocking me back on my butt. As I was sitting there, looking up into my all too imminent demise, the smell of Mr. McGuffy (boiled cabbage now overlaid with sugary urine, I’m pretty sure the guy is a diabetic) came back to me in a rush. There was a mystery smell with it which got my attention.

Mr. McGuffy was standing right in the shadow of the apartment complex with a sawed off shotgun in his knobbly knuckled arthritic hands and had a look on his face I don’t think I’d ever actually seen on him before. Saw it on Jimmy’s face once or twice, prior to his incarceration, right before he sent someone to the hospital, so I knew what it was. It was pure and simple righteous whoop ass.

“Get out of our lot.”

This is what it must be like to be the third wheel in a Mexican standoff.

Missed a Chapter? ONE | TWO

Bella and the Black Book: Chapter Two

I’m going to die over a stupid book. Somewhere in Hell, Jimmy is busting a gut laughing at this.

The gunman hauled me to my feet and I tried to ignore the flash of pain from his grip on my wrist.

“March.”

Underneath the sound of our footsteps, muffled as they were by the carpet, I tried to hear Mr. McGuffy. How far had he gotten? He was a 67 year old man with bad arthritis in both knees and a penchant for boiled cabbage, but he was a nice enough guy. I really didn’t want him involved in this. After all, he hadn’t even met Jimmy. I glanced back, quick, to see where he’d stashed the book. He had it under his arm, the one with the gun sprouting out of the end. At the front door of my apartment, he moved in close and said,

“Don’t make me have to start shooting.”

I hoped Mr. McGuffy had gone back into his apartment to pee.

I opened the door.

“You know, if you want the book, just take it. I won’t say anything.”

That was true. Who was I gonna tell that my convicted felon ex-lover had left me a book written in a secret code which might or might not lead to the money left over from the heist that sent him to jail?

My captor was not convinced. So not convinced he pressed the gun into my spine and used it to urge me forward. Stepping out into the hall, I looked both ways. No elderly neighbor in sight, but the whisper, slide, shuffle of Mr. McGuffy’s slippers was there coming from the direction of the giant garbage bin behind the building on the far side of the parking lot. I turned right. The building fronted on a busy street, but no cars were likely to stop. Seeing this, they’d probably speed up.

“No. Left,” he corrected.

Left toward the parking lot and poor Mr. McGuffy. I turned left, walking slow. My captor had shifted position, no longer directly behind me, but behind me enough to hide the gun still pressed against my back.

Bright daylight dazzled my vision as we stepped out of the building’s shadow into the sunshine of mid-morning. Was it mid-morning? I couldn’t even remember if I had finished my coffee. Sudden fear of death can do strange things to your memory. The smell of the bin was just starting to warm and expand to cover the parking lot, one of my least favorite smells. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw what I could already hear, Mr. McGuffy making his slow murmuring shuffle way back across the parking lot, the stank cabbage smell still clinging proudly to his clothes. He looked seedy in his irregularly washed bathrobe and hair sticking up in what his neighbors referred to as his electro-shocked Einstein hairdo. He shielded his own eyes with one shivering hand and smiled.

“Ms. Hardin,” he greeted me. Mr. McGuffy, for all his hygienic failings, always managed to sound like an old movie actor, all mellow and whiskey smooth.

“Morning, Mr. McGuffy.”

No one ever tells you how hard it is to make the usual morning small talk when a gun is pressed to your back hard enough to leave a mark.

“Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

“We really haven’t got the time this morning, sir,” I said reminding myself to keep the fear out of my eyes and the pain out of my smile. “It’s nice to see you though.”

“You kids,” he muttered. “Always in such a hurry.”

“Ain’t it the truth.”

Mr. McGuffy was almost past when he noticed the gun. At least, I assume he noticed it. He pissed himself in the parking lot. Or maybe that was just old age. Either way, my captor wasn’t planning on waiting to find out. He swung the gun in Mr. McGuffy’s direction.

Oh, shit!

Missed a Chapter: ONE

Bella and the Black Book: Chapter One

I really hope he doesn't mess up my hair was my first thought. My second was, he has a gun barrel pointed at my head, he's going to do a lot worse than mess up my hair. 

Those two thoughts circled once before I thought I saw his hand move, it was a blurry motion to my eyes, but the sound of him pulling back the slide made me shut my eyes and do something I haven't in a while: pray.

"Where's the money?" 

He had a heavy smoker voice, the two seconds from a stoma from throat cancer kind, but he was very clear. The only problem: I wasn't.

"What money?" 

The gun pressed harder into the side of my head leaving a round indention in the hair and skin there no doubt and he leaned in closer. I held my breath, almost afraid the sound would excite him into actually shooting me. He paused there, his exhalation a mix of cigarette, fried chicken, and sickness. Throat cancer for sure. 

"Jimmy's money," he whispered in my ear.

Jimmy. There was a name I hadn't heard in quite some time. Pretty much not since he had gone to jail four years prior. Funny how often he was coming up in my life lately though. I had only attended his funeral yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before, I lose track without someone to remind me. Not that him telling me really helped. Jimmy had been, on his best day, a secretive bastard, making it almost impossible to get the answer to any question in a timely fashion. This made his last gift to me, a notebook written in a cipher, particularly poetic. It wouldn't take me forever to translate, but more than long enough for the answers I found to be useless by the time I found them.

"I don't know about any money." Oh, shit, now he's really gonna shoot me. I immediately started praying again, hard.

"You were his Bella. His confidante. His sweetheart. You mean to tell me you don't know about his money." I sat very, very still even as the pain mounted in the side of my head to something scream worthy. I really didn't want him to shoot me.

"He," I gulped for air. "He left me a notebook."

"Get it!" He snatched me up off the couch and slung me to the floor. I gasped in surprise and started to get up. "No," he grunted. "Crawl."

I crawled across my living room floor aware of how some of his smell changed as I did. I almost wanted to sneeze to get the tickle out of my nose. Jimmy had never smelled like that, no matter how excited he got. I would have sneezed, but the awareness of that gun was enough to keep me playing straight. The door to my bedroom was open and I creptthrough. He followed me across the floor and grunted as I knelt by the bedside table and picked up the black notebook there. He snatched it from me and began to flip through it.

"What is this shit!"

"A cipher." I was amazed at how calm I sounded while down on my knees with a man with a gun behind me out of my line of sight. "Jimmy was nuts about them." I put my hands behind my head and laced my fingers together like a prisoner. "I haven't started translating it yet."

A beat of total silence. I could hear Mr. McGuffy shuffling down the hall and my nose was picking up the rank cabbage in the half-closed black bag he was carrying. Then the gunman spoke.

"Get up. We're going for a ride."

 In the movies, this is where the mob takes you to a different location and puts two in your skull. I didn't even know yet how true that thought would turn out to be.