THE TIMING, JOE PARENTE [ereader ebook .txt] 📗

loud crash. The conversation stopped in the other room and I thought I could hear whispering. We looked at each other as if our hands were caught in a cookie jar. Then the conversation between Frank and Gustav started up again.

I looked at her with relief. Gustav continued, “do you think that I can see him?”

“He is missing at this time.” I heard Frank say.

“I thought you had Jules locate him.”

There was quiet; no sounds were coming from the room. It was as if they were listening.

Gustav started again. “Did you say that you had Jules located?”

“Just a minute Gustav, I have to go to the bathroom.”

It raced through my mind that we were in trouble. “Judy, something is wrong! Get into the bedroom!” We shut the door and suddenly the inner door to our room crashed open! We could hear the wood frame splinter! Like a herd of elephants, feet were everywhere. There were three voices! Frank was ordering them to search the room as we huddled in the bedroom. Luckily, as our door was flung open those that were searching didn’t look in the bedroom closet.

“Here is a broken glass. It must have fallen from this chair. Let’s get out of here; I’ll have someone get this door fixed.” Frank was saying.

The sweat was running down my face. I told Judy to wait until they had cleared the room before leaving the cramped space. From the sound of that door being crushed, I knew that we had to be even more careful so as not to be seen.

“Let’s be easy now. I think that they have left.” We opened the closet door and prepared to vacate.

“I left my purse on the coffee table. Do you think they saw it?”

“If I know Frank, I’m sure they did but did they put two and two together?”

I checked the front door. “Let’s go, its clear.”
We stepped into the hallway right into the barrel of a gun held by Jules. “Got you again, huh Brad?” He smiled that sick smile.

“You are a fucking liar!” He slugged me in the stomach that completely doubled me up! I gasped for air. I couldn’t call him a liar again; I couldn’t speak. Judy had screamed out when Frank held her back. Managing to struggle free, I smashed the side of Jules face with a backhand! He dropped; the gun flew as he hit the carpet!

Judy continued to scream arousing a big guy just two doors down. He saw that we were being accosted. He then ran down the hallway to intercede. By this time, Gustav jumped back into his room leaving Frank to face us. Jules wasn’t smiling anymore because of a size fifteen shoe pinning him to the floor. I yelled to Judy to get to the stairway, then to get a cab. Wait in front, yelling that, I would catch up with her. I still didn’t know the big guy’s name but I was grateful that he came along when he did.

Frank knew that he was out-numbered. He ran down the hallway as he escaped towards the elevator. Jules broke loose and followed.

I thanked the ‘moose’ while on the run. I had to make sure my girlfriend was safe. We met out front with no sign of the two. We jumped into the cab then took off in a hurry to put some distance between them and us.

My neck was sore from checking to see if we were followed.

There it was, a black Cadillac limousine making a corner and catching up to us. The aggressive way it was traveling, I was sure that Jules was driving.
“That wiry, smiling son of a bitch, he’s right behind us!” I yelled! “You’ve got to loose him!”

The driver threw daggers at me through his rear view mirror. “Hey mister, I ain’t no race car driver. I don’t do that! I ain’t loosin’ my license!” He pulled over and told us to get out.

We swung the cab door open on the busy sidewalk and ran into a bar full of people. Moments later Jules entered; his eyes were wild! It felt like a horrible nightmare at the sight of him! Grabbing Judy’s hand, I dragged her through swinging wing like doors to the kitchen. The cooks and waitresses scattered with the commotion.

Finding our way out the back into an alley, I pulled Judy into the street where we were lucky enough to flag a taxi.

We were safe. No way could Jules follow now. I felt stupid the way I fell for his story about being fired from the hotel. It was just a scam to find out what I knew about the operation. It was the same type of fraud that Frank had pulled on me when I first met him after his disappearance.

I knew that Jules wouldn’t take this lying down. His eyes made him look as if he was a wild animal going for the kill when he followed us into the bar. I was worried about Judy’s family and about how much Jules knew about her brother. I had misjudged Frank. He was definitely pulling the strings being well trained by Willhelm Rhorem. The criminal activities that led us to this point had to be told to the police. Searching my pocket for the cell phone, I discovered that I must have left it in the room.


THE TIMING Joe Parente

Chapter 13


This day was a blur, and I needed a cell phone. “Driver do you have a cell phone?”

“Sorry buddy, the company won’t let us have one. All I can do is call the shack.”

I turned to Judy. “We have to get to a telephone right away!”

She squeezed my hand. “We are only two blocks away from Doctor Carlisle. Let’s stop there. I gave the address to the driver.”

“Driver, do you know where that is?”

“We’re on the way but keep your shirt on, this traffic is murder.”

What normally would take a few minutes, ended up feeling like it took an hour.

It was slow going but curiously, when we arrived, there were several of the clinic’s employees on the stoop milling around. There was a fire engine truck with lights flaring and another blasting its siren just turning the corner.

“What the hell is going on?” I yelled, out the rolled down window.

Someone in the crowd yelled back. “Fire alarm, someone pulled a fire alarm!”

We jumped out of the cab and ran to a fireman standing by. “What happened?”

“We get some of these once in awhile. Some jerk pulled this one for fun. I’d like to catch the bastard.” He motioned to the group. “All clear, you can all go back to work.” He then said something over his radio’s microphone while heading towards his truck.

We looked around for the doctor and Jeff but they weren’t on the street.

“Is my brother upstairs with the doctor?” Judy asked Irene, the clinic’s receptionist.

“Doctor Carlisle is up there, he is making a call trying to find you.”

We had puzzled looks on our faces as we ran up the steps. We found the doctor in his office holding a paper towel to his forehead.

“What happened to you doctor? Where is my brother?”
“Thank goodness you’re here.” He hung up the telephone. “The fire alarm went off so we evacuated the building. Turns out, it was a false alarm. Anyway, I took your brother out the back way and we were met by some guy that pushed me down to the ground. He took your brother. Boy, I must have scraped my head.” He looked at the paper towel he was holding. There was a small amount of blood. “I’m sorry Judy but that guy took me by surprise.”

“Can you describe him?” I asked.

“Yes, he said he knew you, I think he said his name was Jules.”

We eyeballed each other as I shook my head. “Did he say anything else?”

“He told me to give you a message. He said, if you talk to anyone about what you know. It could be hazardous to his health.”

“That son of a bitch! Doctor, which way did they go?”

“I don’t know, when he shoved me down, they took off before I could get my bearings.”

“Are you sure you’re ok?” He nodded as a way of telling me, he was. I turned to Judy. “They probably made their way back to the hotel. Doctor, I need to tell you what we have learned about this pellet. This implant activates an unnatural neural activity in the brain and—“I continued to tell Doctor Carlisle everything we had learned. “You will have to promise me that you will not tell anyone about this until we find Jeff safe.” I grasped Judy’s hand firmly.

She was upset. “These men have crossed the line when they took my brother. Their ruthlessness has caused them to kidnap Jeff and we have to make sure that he is not harmed!” Judy started to sob as I held her tight.

“We better inform your dad about this but let’s make sure that he does not go to the police.”

Later that afternoon, we worked out a plan that would try to put an end to this nightmare. Bill Foster agreed that we should not alert the authorities, at least, not until we exhausted our effort. We all, however, concluded that we would not fail.

Judy started at the hotel, acting as a maid. She was able to find a uniform in an unlocked employee’s closet but unfortunately did not locate a master key to the rooms. She acted as a trainee, working with a woman that didn’t question her. A number of rooms were checked but the maid that she was working with was assigned to a small portion of the hotel. The hotel had over two hundred rooms so the work was slow.
Judy was able to get into the room she was renting and found the cell phone that fell behind the easy chair earlier that day.
One of the office employees at Baetacom rented another room under his name. That room became our home base as we tried to