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

a stinging smile because I noticed his bruised and swollen face.

My smile turned to seriousness. “I want you to return my belongings that had been taken from my room and I want them now.”

His smirk returned. “How do you know that I took them?”

We were head to head but my voice was determined.

“Don’t bullshit me, Jules you are in a bunch of trouble. I want my stuff and I want Jeff returned to us immediately. If you don’t, I’ll see to it that you will pay. Those bruises that I gave you will only be the beginning of your problems.”

He guided me to a quiet corner. “I only took your things to put them in a safe place. I’ll get them back to your room, but what is this about Jeff? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I told you not to bullshit me Jules. You’re in this over your head.” I only do what I’m told, Brad. I don’t know what you are talking about w-“

I grabbed his arm. “You’re lying!”

He pulled free, at the same time, checked to see if any one was looking. “I don’t know what you are talking about!”

“Frank has Jeff in a room somewhere in this hotel. He took him from a doctor’s office and said that you did it. That is kidnapping!”

“I didn’t do that!”

It sounded as if he was telling the truth. I put the pressure on. “He has implicated you in this thing, you fool. You lied to me once to get information, how do I know you are not doing it again? Hell, I think I’ll call the cops on this. They will straighten things out.”

He seemed worried about me calling the police. “Wait, now, what if I can help to find out where he is?”

“Things will go better for you, you low life shit! I’m still not sure of you.”

“Let me prove it to you. You go back to your room and in about two hours, you’ll find your belongings will be returned. I’ll try to find out about Jeff too.”

“No, no. I have a better idea. I’ll go with you now, for my things. I’ll give you two hours to find Jeff, ok? Meanwhile, I’ll wait in my room. I have some calls to make.”

“Yeah, that will work too. Just don’t call any cops about this.”

I accompanied Jules to a security closet off the main floor and retrieved my things, then headed to my room. On the way, I dropped off my things at the other room that the Baetacom employee had rented yesterday.
In my old room, I looked around to see if I could find anything; it looked clean. Just before I left, I took the telephone off the hook. Looking down the hallway, I managed to find my way to the back stairway then to our safe room without being seen. I didn’t trust Jules for one minute, besides if he had information about Jeff; he could leave a message on my cell phone.
Calls were made to Judy and Bill to keep them up to date. I asked Bill to go to room number 1027 my old room on the tenth floor. I wanted him to monitor it and report any movement. I used the next thirty minutes to shower and freshen up. Shortly thereafter, the telephone rang.

Bill Foster sounded stressed. “Brad, it’s me, two men just kicked in your room door!” I could hear the elevator’s floor signal over his cell. “From your description, it looked as though Jules was holding a gun! I saw it all because I was hiding by the ice machine vending area with a good view of the hall. You were right not to trust Jules!”

“I’m glad I wasn’t in there! How close are you to me?”

“Just down the hall, unlock the door so I can get in. I’m nervous about being here!” He sounded out of breath. “Call Judy; have her meet us, we need to re-group!” He was saying the same words that I was thinking. Moments later we were all together knowing that it was more important than ever to get Jeff to a safe place.

We had to make sure of Jules’s intentions. By leaving the phone off the hook, we were able to fool them into believing that I was occupying the room. They played their hand when they kicked the door in. We decided that, we could take no chances of being caught.

In the middle of our discussing our plan, we heard some wild activity happening outside on the street. Car tires were screeching and loud yelling preceded ear-splitting sirens. The sound immediately grabbed our attention as we rushed to look out the window, down to the street. There was a mass of people gathered around someone lying on the sidewalk. Aid cars and a fire engine were making their way to the sight. From our view from the second floor window, it was hard to miss the pool of blood building around the head of the victim. A police officer was pushing the crowd back from the body so that the emergency folks could attend to the body. It didn’t look good. As the mass of on-lookers stepped back, we got a better look at the person lying there. Judy gasped at the recognition of the man. It was Jules!

A small group was huddled together while one of them was pointing to a room far above us. We were in shock! Jules had plummeted out the window from the tenth floor! It may have been that he was pushed! Either way, Jules was dead!

If Jules was a victim of Gustav’s mind-bending brain switch, then Jules’s death may be a difficult to prove homicide. Even someone as cunning as Jules could fall prey to the hallucination it causes. I know; it happened to me. It was devastating. The helpless feeling that it created took away all reality and reason. The anxiety that Jules was feeling may have set off the pellet’s microchip to implement the event.

Somehow, I felt that Frank was involved. He was the only person that I could think that would be capable of doing that. Frank was continually upset with Jules’s performance in handling things. Every time Jules did a job, he bungled it.

The only way to tell if there was a pellet installed is by performing an autopsy. The pellet was so small that detection was impossible unless the doctor that did the postmortem was alerted to the fact that it might be there. The only way to tell if the chip was in was with a CAT scan, something not done in a standard anatomical autopsy.

One thing that rushed through my thoughts was that I might have been responsible for causing the anxiety to manifest itself in Jules’s mind. Knowing that Jules was a ‘rat’ still did not justify that I might have had something to do with his death.

“I can’t believe it!” Judy cried in horror. “We have got to tell the police what we know!”

Bill held his daughter. “Yes, we will. I don’t want my son to end up that way.” He glanced out the window with a sorrowful look. “Brad, I think we have waited too long. We have enough information to get these guys, don’t we?”

I paced the floor. “Yeah, we do have that, but what about the warning that Frank has given us?” I turned to look at both of them. “If we only had Jeff, I would feel so much better about it. This is going to bring many police into the hotel and I am sure there will be a lot of questions. Let’s go down, meet them, and tell them what we have found. Surely, they will start a search, especially with all the information we have.”

The telephone rang breaking the silence as our reflexes made us jump from the shrill sound. I picked up the receiver and made an indication for Bill and Judy to keep still. I said nothing, waiting for a sound from the other end.

“Hello?” There was a pause “Is that you?” There was another pause and then click, a hang up. I shrugged at the other two.

The telephone rang again, this time I simply said, “yes?"

“Hey, Brad, is that you?” It was Alphonso.

“Alfo, thank goodness that was you. I didn’t want to answer the first time just in case it was--“

“Hey, that’s ok. You told me to watch for Jeff, well I seen him!” A siren‘s blast drowned him out. “Man you won’t believe what’s going on out here. This dude just jumped out of the hotel and th—“

“I know, we saw it all from up here!” I interrupted. What’s this about Jeff?”

“I seen him, man he was in one of the hotel’s vans that shot out of the underground parking ramp. See, I was waiting out in the cab to see if anything was happenin’ and this dude smacked the sidewalk. Right after that, I seen this van comin’ out of the parkin’ garage. I knew it was him, ‘cause that Frank guy was with him. We can follow him if you hurry, but not to worry there is a lot of traffic, he ain’t gettin’ too far too fast.” Alphonso said with animation.

“We will be right down!”

“Ok, but hurry, this one is on me!”


THE TIMING Joe Parente

Chapter 15


By the time we had gotten to the outside of the hotel, the police had the street cordoned off. We took the back stairway and were able to get by the police to the awaiting taxi. This path avoided the questioning from the ever-present cops that were telling everyone to stay put. They were not allowing anyone to leave or enter the hotel. Our quickness had made it possible to get by them.

“I seen him go this way, past the alley on the left.” Alphonso pointed to a dark dirty alley, with its garbage bags and dumpsters strewn about. There were people living in old cardboard, appliance boxes, halfway down the alley. We were all looking in different directions trying to spot the hotel van. Our cab driver knew some short cuts so