Scamper's Find

by Terry H. Watson

  “This is my round guys; we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  From a distance his wife spotted him with his friends and resigned herself to several hours of patient waiting for her spouse. Have your last fling she thought to herself, a new regime starts tomorrow, honey.

  As the new superintendent, Tony Harvey, circled the room accepting sincere, raucous congratulations, Carole Carr breathed a sigh of relief and remembered the conversation she had with him not many months previous.

  “I need a change, Carole,” said Tony as they had lunch together in the staff restaurant. “I’m in a rut. That suspension back there gave me a jolt. It was cruel and demeaning and made me doubt my own ability to do the job. I want to move on. I’ve applied for a job with the Los Angeles Police and if I’m successful, I’ll be off soon.”

  “I understand where you’re coming from Tony, but, boy, will I miss you. I can’t imagine ever settling to work alongside anyone else. If it’s what you really want, then go for it! I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  Deep down, she felt as if she had been handed a bombshell. She had never given a thought to life without her trusted partner. She shared her fears with her husband who knew the bond between the two was so strong that they could almost read each other’s minds when it came to solving crimes on their patch. Their work relationship was stronger than with any other of their work colleagues. They trusted each other implicitly and in dangerous situations with their very lives.

  “I’d hate to see him move away from CPD too, Carole, but he’s such a skilled and experienced detective who deserves to go for promotion. LA isn’t the end of the world and I’m sure we’ll visit. Let’s wait and see what pans out with his application before you get yourself any more upset. You’ve cried non-stop since Tony broke the news to you. The kids came to me and asked why mom was upset. They thought Walt had died on his visit to the vet and that you didn’t want to break the news to them.”

  He laughed as he tried to cheer his forlorn wife. At the mention of his name, Walt, the family pet, bounced onto Carole’s lap almost toppling her from her chair and succeeded in bringing her out of her miserable mood.

  That was some months ago. Tony was unsuccessful in his application for promotion to the LA police force. Mayor Carson encouraged him to apply for Benson’s job.

  “You would be a hell of an asset to CPD. This city needs you to stay on and clean up the place. It was unfortunate about your suspension over that political fiasco. I must say, you handled it stoically. Any other guy would have caved in under the pressure. You have my unreserved admiration and support Tony, go for it!”

  Tony did indeed submit his application for the post of Chicago’s superintendent of police but kept the news to himself. He even joined in the speculation as to who the new boss might be.

  “I hear it’s to be a guy from New York,” commented one cop. “My cousin is with NYPD and says the guy in mind is a real smart ass, doesn’t miss a trick and gives his squad a tough time.”

  “No. It’s some tough guy from Boston. Everyone knows the job is his,” chipped in another.

  “Well, let’s hope the city chooses someone sweet and cuddly,” commented Tony while attempting to keep a straight face.

  When he was called for interview, he almost lost his resolve to remain silent. So excited was he that he desperately wanted to share the news with Carole, knowing her kind wishes would send good vibes and dispel the nervousness he felt in the pit of his stomach.

  CHAPTER 5

  Previously in Rio de Janeiro, ‘Les’s Bar’ on Copacabana beach-promenade had been exceptionally busy with training in full swing in the area for the Beach Soccer World Cup that took place every two years. The district buzzed with excitement as the imminent tournament drew near. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion on the fitness and otherwise of each team aiming for gold. Bars and clubs benefited from the extra clientele, with ‘Les’s Bar’ showing an increase in sales.

  “Fred, more beer barrels down this end,” said B-J, the owner.

  “Coming up, boss.”

  The head barman smiled to himself. The word ‘boss’ brought back memories of a previous clandestine period in his life.

  Loud steel-drum music assailed the ears. Locals talked incessantly about the upcoming games. They were vocal in their encouragement of their team. The noise level increased as the evening wore on, and to the bar owners, the tills rang out like church bells celebrating a festive day.

  “B-J, will you be supporting your England team then and watch them crash out in the first round?” teased one customer.

  “Yeah,” said another, “they’ve only been in one final. But us, we’ve got the most powerful team, been in every world cup final. Beat that, B-J!”

  “Best change your allegiance to Brazil, buddy, got more chance of success… give up following losers!” said another drinker to the seemingly good-natured Englishman who owned the popular bar.

  “Our guys have the skill. Hey, you should see how they play. It’s fast moving, they can score from anywhere on the sand.”

  “Yeah, and the goals come fast and furious.”

  B-J roared with laughter as the banter continued, drinks were demolished and the tills rang out like music to his ears.

  ***

  “You ever think of going home to your England?” asked Fred as they sipped a beer during a lull in business. Afternoon temperatures drove most people indoors and gave bar staff a well-earned rest before the evening mayhem began.

  “Sometimes I think it would be nice to see dear old London Town again… have to say, I do miss the place, but I’ve been away so long…” B-J continued with his reverie.

  “I’d sure as heck like to visit England, see all them places you’ve told me about. Maybe get me a nice English gal to settle down with. I don’t seem to have much luck here.”

  “You’re right. You’ve no chance pal, not with them scars. You scare the pretty girls away. Even with that plastic work we forked out big bucks for, you still look like a Halloween monster,” chuckled his friend, knowing the remark would be accepted with good humour.

  That night the oppressive heat kept B-J awake. He mulled over the idea in his mind. It might be nice to see the old place again. He lay awake thinking of his early life and upbringing in a rough area of east London and of his criminal career, which to him was the norm for his generation, where poverty and deprivation was rife. Me mam did her best, I suppose, given the little we had and the extras I managed to acquire helped her out. Miss you old gal. You died too young.

  In the morning he spoke to Fred about their conversation the previous evening.

  “Do you really think we could visit England, Fred? I’ve been mulling it over and have a notion to go back to Blighty.”

  “Blighty? Where’s that?”

  “Sorry, buddy… it’s a slang term for England. It got me thinking of the old place where I grew up; memories came flooding back, not all good ones, but it was my home, and where I learned the trade.”

  “Trade? You mean the criminal kind?”

  “Hey, keep your voice down,” implored B-J as he looked around. “It’s been good to us, buddy. Just look how far we’ve come; we own our own bar here, and we get a good living from it, don’t we? We are almost respectable now.”

  “Us? Respectable!” laughed Fred. “Look at you with that ponytail thing you insist on having hanging down your back, and where’s your hair gone from the top of your head then? You ain’t no beau, my friend.”

  Good-natured humour kept the two friends grounded and helped cement their friendship. They reminisced about how fate had brought them together in a Chicago prison many years ago where they established a friendship built on trust and unequivocal loyalty, and very firmly grounded on the code of honour among thieves.

  A shoddy money-lending business which t
hey established in New York had a detrimental effect on their unfortunate clients, but led the pair to a lucrative financial deal in aiding and abetting a heinous crime that resulted in tragedy and deceit, sending shockwaves around the political world and putting an end to the career of a potential president.

  “And look at us now! Anna’s money has set us up for life. She was a generous employer, a real nice lady,” said B-J as he let his mind wander to that episode in his colourful life of crime.

  “Yeah, but we did work for it and gave her what she wanted in the last months of her life. It was only right for her to award us so generously. Hey, I’ve never admitted this to anyone, but she sure scared me to death. Me! Scared of a broad?”

  B-J laughed at his friend’s discomfort and secretly wondered why his best buddy showed such nervousness at the mention of the name of Anna Leci. He didn’t think of him as someone who ever felt guilty or had a troublesome conscience and he never questioned his best buddy’s unease.

  “That’s how she was able to control those guys and get them to carry out her plan to abduct the kid; fear and terror, Fred, fear and terror.”

  “Shame Les never got to spend his share of the money!” smirked Fred. “Hey, I’m sure he’d be happy for us to keep hold of it. After all, he broke our sacred code of honour. We can’t forget that. He was a wimp was Les, no backbone.”

  Fred smiled nervously as he thought of the ruthless way they had made use of their ex-prison cell mate. His brows furrowed at some long gone memory, suppressed, but never quite leaving him in peace. At times he shook with terror as he recalled past activities. He never mentioned the nightmares that crept up on him, unforgiving and unrelenting, tearing his soul apart at times, disturbing the casual life he now lived and menacingly threatening his comfortable existence.

  “Sure, but he’d be pleased we’ve called our business after him; kinda forgave him, gave him respect like.”

  Both men turned to the neon light above their heads, lifted their drinks, and in unison said, “Cheers, Les.”

  “Shame about the others on that plane, though. Sure didn’t expect such a disaster. Hey, I was real sure the passengers would be okay. It was Les I was hoping to injure, not kill; just meant him to suffer a bit. I must have set the device too far back… it must have been too powerful,” mulled a slightly downcast Fred who almost nightly suffered flashbacks to the airplane crash, guilt oozing from every pore of his being. He did not share his fears with B-J.

  B-J attempted to console his friend. “Fred, what’s done can’t be undone. Sure it was a shame about that kid, but don’t dwell on it. So, what do you think? Could we safely make it to England without being caught? We’d need new passports and stuff, and would have to travel separately with several days between us. You know the authorities will be on the lookout for us. Look on it as an adventure, a bit like Bonnie and Clyde – you know; the outlaws who travelled around Central America with their gang. Sure gave the cops a hell of a headache! We would have to change our names again.”

  “Do you think they’re still after us, after all these years?”

  “Fred, they’ll never give up, not after all those deaths, and as for the kid’s pa, that politician guy, that was big-time news, they’ll be after us forever and a day, sure as I sit here. We must be on every wanted list there is. The FBI will have us on theirs for ever. We must be public enemy number one. Hey, we’ve already outsmarted them for years, what with my cunning planning and superior intelligence! We can still give the authorities a run for their money.”

  “Okay, B-J, you know me, fearless and always up for a challenge. Let’s see if we can rub their noses in it and get ourselves to your Blighty place. Now, I just happen to know a guy who can turn out perfect documents.”

  “Fred, I knew you would come up with the goods, and money is no object. I’m sure Les wouldn’t mind us having a road trip on him. We’ll drink to his memory in dear old London Town. I know a real good East End pub where we’ll down a few pints of English beer. You ain’t lived, Fred, until you’ve tasted English beer. We could ask Dan to take charge of the bar. He’s a cool guy and real honest.”

  “Imagine us having honest friends,” roared Fred.

  As they watched the beach area come to life with sun-seekers settling themselves to catch the endless heat for their already bronzed bodies, and surfers riding the foamy waves to hone their skills, B-J continued:

  “Sure glad you got that bit of plastic work done on your ugly mug; changes your whole appearance. You look real cute like! You look a heck of a different person now from those years ago when even the cops were scared to look at you!”

  “Yeah, well at least we’ve put our honest earnings to good use!”

  “Honest earnings? Well, I’m not sure how honest our earnings were, but it was sure nice of Anna to reward us with mega bucks.”

  The normally jovial Fred paled at the memories stored in his heart, memories he was unable to share with his best friend.

  “You okay, buddy?” asked a concerned B-J. “You look a bit pale.”

  “Yeah, I’m good. I think that chicken korma has upset me. Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll need to teach you the language before we go!” said B-J laughing at the expression on his mate’s face.

  “What do you mean? Don’t they speak English over there?” he screeched.

  “Sure, of course they do, they invented it! I’m talking about London’s very own language, cockney slang. It’s like, special to Londoners, real Londoners that is, ones like me, born in earshot of Bow Bells, that’s the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church, just up the road from where me mam gave birth to me.

  Listen up Fred, here’s your first lesson: ‘we’re having a giraffe’ means ‘we’re having a laugh’; laugh rhymes with giraffe; ‘finger and thumb’ is ‘mum’, got it?

  “Another one, Fred, is, ‘having a butcher’, which means ‘having a look’ and ‘play the old Joanna’ means ‘piano’… you following all this?”

  Fred nodded, totally confused as to why they had to change words which to him were self-explanatory. Their hilarity ended abruptly when the first of the day’s customers arrived at ‘Les’s Bar’ to quench their thirsts.

  CHAPTER 6

  Results from DNA testing were faxed from Brody Cameron’s forensic team to Detective Inspector Rab McKenzie. McKenzie read the report and immediately called Cameron to discuss the findings.

  “Great work Brody, you always come up trumps. So, we now have a positive identification of our first victim from the pit shaft. Poor chap, what a death. Who could have done that to a fellow human being? He must have been absolutely terrified to have been thrown in there alive knowing there was to be nothing for him but death; makes me shiver to think of the poor guy.”

  “Save your sympathy, Rab, for the victims of your so-called tragic pit-man. Are you ready to hear our guy’s exploits? Do you recall the chaos in Washington a few years back when a presidential nominee had to stand down shortly before the elections?”

  “Aye, who can forget that? It caused chaos over there, and then it was followed shortly by that mysterious plane crash carrying his daughter; aye, I do remember it well.”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation in the USA. It has gone international, as two of the suspects behind it were still at large, at least until now. We have identified our boy in the shaft as Alfred Wysoki from Chicago, one of the prime movers behind that crime where all those people on the plane with the girl were killed. We suspect the second body to be that of his mate, Barry Jones, a London man who had been in the States for several years. Over there he went by the name of Barclay Ellis-Jones. We’re hoping to have results of his DNA in a few hours. I’m about to phone some high official in Chicago. As gruesome as their deaths were, part of me has little sympathy for them, not after what they did.”

  “Well I never took
you for ‘an eye for an eye man’,” said Rab, “but, you know, some cases make us grow a hard shell, don’t they? And this seems to be one of them. I understand how you feel about those guys. The human race hasn’t evolved too well, has it? There’s still that primitive need to kill. But, man, that’s big news. But how did the two suspects from the USA end up down mine shafts in Scotland? And thirty miles apart, at that?”

  “That’s for detectives like you, Rab, to solve! I’ve done my bit,” laughed the forensic scientist preparing for another smoke of his pipe. “You know of course we’re on hand to help where we can. I’ll keep in touch with the the big boys from America when they have the forensic results, then no doubt they will contact you and your squad and link up with your team. It’s been a good day’s work; nasty, but we got a result.”

  Brody Cameron mulled over Rab’s comment as he lit his pipe, satisfied when the smoke finally emerged like an old steam engine struggling to power up. Maybe I am a bit too thick-skinned now and have neglected to see the person behind the mounds of evidence. Hmm, food for thought, even at my age. An eye for an eye? Hmm.

  The new superintendent of CPD, Tony Harvey, busy moving furniture around, had hardly settled into his new office when he had a call from Scotland from Doctor Brody Cameron with news his police force had long been awaiting. After preliminary introductions and congratulations to Harvey on his new post, Cameron got to the crux of his call.

  “We have found someone here we believe you’ve been trying to trace in relation to the tragic disaster you guys had four years ago concerning Lucy Mears, the child who was abducted: Alfred Wysoki.”