Don't Get Fancy Nancy

by Mark Fitzgerald

  After Steve, Nancy was the next most experienced shooter; having almost killed Steve yesterday. She did really well. I loved the way she set her jaw when she got ready to shoot. I love her… I love her.

  The little Colt shot big bullets. On my first shot the gun ended up five feet behind me. I think it almost broke my shooting finger.

  As usual I embarrassed myself. "Steve, are we supposed to hold it up and down or sideways like the bad guys sometimes do?" Now I got the look from BOTH Steve and Nancy. Straight up and down, I guess.

  Nancy and I shot enough to have emptied and reload our guns three times. Steve told us about the "safety" … the trigger locks. He told us three times in fact.

  We finished up with the machine gun. Cool. Totally cool. The gun didn't really have much of a kick. It just vibrated so rapidly and pumped out an amazing amount of bullets in those short bursts.

  At the top of the stairs, when we were finished, Steve asked, "Safeties on?" I hope my blush didn't show in the dark. I felt like a stop light. I lied and said it was on, but put it on as quickly and quietly as I could. I doubt if I fooled Steve. Steve was nobody's fool.

  "I think we need to go for it tonight, kids. Let's go over everything again. Look at every piece of paper, every piece of ID ... even your dad's notebook, Nancy. We'll only get one chance so we better be sure we are at the right place when we move.

  Steve talked us through it all one more time. Whoever Mr. Brown is he is one of the good guys, at least he is who your Dad thought would be the first person to contact. I guess we messed up and called Mr. White." Steve beat her too it... beat Nancy to her apology. "Hush Nancy... you had a lot to remember... but we can sort it all out. I'm not sure that making the calls in the wrong order didn't tell us stuff we wouldn't have known otherwise. Let's just go with what we know."

  "Here is the thing we have to keep in mind. This may not be a case of good guys against bad guys. Spies are all bad guys, really. Each side does the same kind of things, so being good or bad in just the opinion of the side they are on. Your Dad is probably ex-CIA. He was probably put in a witness protection program here in Canada. Maybe he's still a spy. Maybe he's a double agent. Maybe a triple agent. All we can do it take a shot at finding him, based on what we know and hope things work out.

  I would think that they haven't moved your mom and dad too far yet. Since they didn't get you or Todd they can pretty well assume the police have become involved. I would think Todd has gone to the police by now and if he has gone to the police, I bet the police are being very careful to not be noticed. I would think the police can recognized a spy situation right from the beginning. My guess is that those two goons I took care of today have legitimate driver's licenses. Probably the names are fake but the home addresses might not be. They probably have fake documents but it would be stupid to put a fake address on your drivers license because if it was ever checked and discovered you had lied you would have to come up with a good reason. Makes more sense to be truthful.

  "So, Mark, give me the license of Trudy's dad."

  I will always remember this adventure as the time I screwed up everything. I'm pretty good at stuff, normally. Just not much of a spy. I had gotten all the documents mixed up. I had Trudy's picture but I no longer knew which wallet it came from. "I can't Steve…….. I don't know which license is his. I got them mixed up."

  "You're not much of a spy, Mark, '' teased Steve. I was relieved but I still got the "look". Nancy spared me the look this time; after all, her record was no longer perfect either.

  "No matter kiddos. There's only two addresses. Fifty fifty. Maybe we make two visits tonight. Hey, we got a car."

  "For what it's worth I think Trudy looks more like "little ugly" than "big ugly". Steve and Nancy agreed. So it made sense to hit "little ugly's house first". It had the same postal code as Nancy's house BUT …so did "big ugly's" address!

  "I bet both these guys were planted to keep eyes on your dad, Nancy." Steve was right probably, or they might have been planted to kill Nancy's dad when Mr. Brown or, possibly, Mr. White told them to.

  Steve was standing in the kitchen staring at his unopened bottle of whiskey. He was "having a moment". Neither Nancy nor I could breathe. Suddenly Steve exclaimed, "Saddle up kiddos, we're moving out".

  ~

  Armed to the teeth, two eleven year olds and a "troll" rode to battle in a really ugly but practical car. But first ,McDonalds again. You'd think we wouldn't be able to eat but Steve was so nonplussed by the likely events to come that we became somewhat the same and ate with much joy and enthusiasm. Three fillets was probably excessive, on my part. I suddenly didn't feel the agility of an eleven year old boy with a 38 in his pants. With the safety on!

  There was still a phone book attached by a wire to the payphone. Rarely do you see that. A phone book with a comprehensive city map in the first few pages.

  Meadowbrook Lane was really just a couple of blocks south of Nancy's house. "Big ugly's" house was not much further away, only to the north of Nancy's. He lived on Hamilton Street. I was totally wrong in thinking Trudy lived near the school. We could have walked to either in ten minutes. But walking, secretively at night in Calgary, is just not possible. Canada is a country that does its public stuff right. No scrimping. There are streetlights every couple of houses . When there is snow on the ground you can read a book in the middle of the night, almost.

  The alleys are dark. Unpaved too. But generally passable if it hadn't snowed too recently. We were okay in that regard. We would drive by alley and park behind the house when we made our assault.

  We got lucky too. The house had a garage and there was no car in the driveway, so we could park our car without blocking the alley and possibly calling attention to ourselves. There were lights on in the house; mainly the basement though. Unlike most basement windows in all our houses they had curtains; drawn curtains.

  We had to open the gate to the backyard. It wasn't going to be easy. No one had used the gate, it seems, in a long time and it was stuck in place at the base by the densely packed snow. To make matters worse the gate swings inward so to clear the snow you had to be on the inside of it. So, it fell upon me. The gate was really only three feet high but I am only about four foot four myself so I really had to scootch up and over the pointed fence slats. I got hung up. It was then I remembered I had a loaded gun in the front of my pants. I couldn't imagine how I was going to get out of this deal with my willy!!! But, I took my time and got over finally. I had to kick away at the snow for almost ten minutes before I had cleared enough snow from the bottom of the fence to allow it to swing far enough for Steve to hobble through. It wasn't unit we were all inside the yard and were taking our first steps that we were confronted with the very loud crunch each of our steps made on the crusted over snow. It was very loud. Loud enough that dogs started barking from both neighbouring houses.

  Steve whispered, " Follow me!" We did exactly as he did, rapidly moving, noisy or not, to the side of the house and positioning ourselves flat against the wall. Surely, if someone looked out they would see the open gate and the all the disturbed snow. "Quick, Nancy, run around and ring the front doorbell right now." It was sheer brilliance. I was right behind Nancy. Steve stayed at the corner of the house behind a big fir tree. You know, the kind that don't drop their leaves… er… needles, I should say.

  Someone cracked the door a tiny bit and whispered, "Who is it".

  Nancy offered up, "It's just Mark and Nancy from school. We were just wondering if this is Trudy's house."

  "Why", said the voice.

  "Oh no real reason, we were just walking back from church and Mark said he thought it was and I bet it wasn't so we thought we would ask."

  "Trudy's asleep. Like you kids should be by now. What kind of church keeps kids out this late, anyway?"

  "Seventh day Adventists." Stated Nancy. With no direct knowledge of their religious customs but knowledge that the church congregation we "fellowshipped" with th
is morning were "Seventh Dayers".

  "Go home."

  "Yes, ma'am." Nancy and her occasional "ma'am".

  Back at the big fir tree we had a" pow wow". I started with,"The lady said Trudy was asleep, so this must be the house. I just don't think they would keep hostages in a house with kids."

  Nancy was next and as usual she had good things to offer. "Maybe Trudy isn't here right now. Maybe she is with her mom and whoever was behind the door is lying. I mean if her parents are divorced maybe she and her mom live somewhere else."

  Steve was shaking badly. It wasn't really that cold. He looked really sick and uncomfortable. "Steve, are you okay."

  "Not really, Mark. I made a bit of a mistake… I should have had a drink or two before we left. I thought I'd be okay with out it but I'm not it seems. But we've got to keep on with this. Can't stop now. We've already made contact with someone who might give us away. Let's just get to the other address and see what we see." Steve was silent for a minute. He was embarrassed. We were all silent which meant we had the chance to hear the familiar strains of "The Beverly Hillbillies" tv show coming up from the basement and the giggles of an enthusiastic little girl. Most likely a girl named Trudy.

  "Let's get going," insisted Steve who struck out in from of us.

  Nancy whispered in my ear, "I have an uncle, I've never met, who has the same problems as Steve. My dad he gets the shakes if he doesn't drink regularly. That's why my dad quit drinking he said."

  No more talk like this in the car but I had something to say. "I get this. I know what's got to be going on. My guess is both the "uglies" live at big "uglies" and that’s where Nancy's dad and mom are. I'm sure of it. Boy, you two aren't much as spies!"

  I got the "look" and "Ya think, Mark?" in unison from both of them. Blushing again,I am sure.

  As we pulled onto Hamilton Street, Steve commanded, "Take the safety off your guns. Don't worry about anything, you'll know what to do... when to shoot. Make yourselves small targets... always."

  The house was totally dark. There were no cars in front or behind it. It probably was the "uglie's" house. Only they were dead, so if Nancy's folks were still alive they were probably in the basement wondering what had happened to cause the "uglies" to be gone all day. We had just stopped the car about four houses away and cut the lights when a black van turned the corner and pulled across the wrong side of the street to a sliding stop in front of the house. Four men came barreling out of the van and were up the stairs and attempting to batter in the door when Steve yelled "Stay here for now". Steve was out of the car and running like a fullback in seconds. Not hunched over at all. And fast as a bullet. When he was one house length away he opened up that machine gun on the porch. He got two guys for sure. One was clearly dead on the porch. One fell off the porch and was on the other side of the concrete stoop out of the line of direct fire. The other two guys retreated back to the van. Steve rolled on the snow in this little sideways gymnastic tumble to the cover of the house's corner. He let the machine gun rip again; shooting at every inch of the van within his direct sights. It went quiet. Steve was no doubt reloading behind the cover of the house. The guy who went over the side of the porch stoop was not wounded it seemed. He was up and around the other corner of the house before Steve had finished reloading and getting a bead back on the van. One guy from the van was still in the fight. He had a machine gun now as well. Probably exactly the same kind of gun as Steve; company issue. They sounded exactly the same. The van guy's gun was absolutely chewing up the corner of the house. It looked like monster locusts had attacked it and were eating it away as we watched. Steve was not even getting time enough to fire back at all. His cover was dissolving.

  Now amid the all the gunfire we could also hear the wail of police cars; lots of polices cars. And the wail of neighbourhood dogs. And it was snowing huge fat flakes that were so illuminated by the street lights that they actually obscured the view we had of the action from the car. We were petrified. We knew we had to help Steve but against a machine gun that had a perfect view of us we had little hope of getting to better cover with out getting killed and little hope of hurting anyone from this range. Not with the 38 I had.

  We didn't have to move. The police cars were already tearing up the street and sliding to battle stations on both sides of the street; on the side of the van opposite us. The nut with the van started shooting at the policemen . It was machine gun against pistol. The Calgary police are not gunslingers. They don't carry heavy duty hardware. Just enough firepower to take down/perhaps only discourage criminals. A halfway position between English Bobby and Texas Ranger. The van guy was winning. Until he forget for the slightest fraction of a second about Steve and Steve riddled him with bullets. It was suddenly quiet. Almost beautiful… absolutely silent by contrast to the riot of noise moments before. The silence of falling snow.

  It made it easy to forget the one guy from the van who had made it all the way around the house and was not only thirty feet from Steve, who was finally walking away from the corner with his gun held over his head, toward the police cars. Nancy and I both saw him; just as he was about to shoot Steve in the back.

  I screamed.

  Nancy shot that son of a bitch right through the head.

  That was fancy, Nancy.

  ~

  "Communications Plus", in there white van pulled up just as the police were running up to Nancy and I. We did like Steve. Hands and weapons over our heads. Todd tumbled out of the van and ran up to us yelling to anyone who would listen, "She's my sister, don't shoot her." They didn't shoot her. Nor I, for that matter.

  For a few minutes there was so much going on, so much noise, so many swirling lights that we sort of when into a trance until Nancy saw her mom and dad coming done the front stoop of the house with the guys from "Communications Plus". Mom came barreling up to Nancy and Todd. Nancy's dad was a little more, what's the big word… nonchalant? Like this was just a day at work for him that involved a little overtime this particular day. Steve was walking… not hobbling…beside him. When they got to Nancy he said, "Nancy, I see you already met your uncle Steve. You,too Mark. He says you guys did great. You got a little fancy at the end, Nancy. That's what Steve said."

  ~

  Nancy's dad had just had a feeling it was going to happen. Uncle Steve, who really did have a big alcohol problem, had once been a really great spy himself. He had been Steve the Hobo for almost a week'. loitering in the same bus shelter, eating his meals at McDonalds. Waiting for whatever was to happen to ... to happen.

  "Communications Plus" really were the good guys. CIA probably. No way of knowing. Todd had been instructed just like Nancy. Only he made the calls in the right order.Whatever.

  I still get the "look" from Nancy at least once a day. For the last thirty years now.

  The End

  Postscript

  Girl's underwear really is more comfortable than ours.