The Mystery Man

It was a dark day. The sky was colored over with husky black clouds that seemed to laugh at the simplest happy thought. Rain had been seeping from the sky for nearly a week now, damping even the most optimistic of souls. Me and my partner Jack had been shut up in our small office hoping that someone would knock on our door with a nerve racking case, to shoot out shared boredom dead.

"We have to get out there Cable." Jack said, he was leaned back in his wooden chair, his feet up on our shared desk. "I've only got a week left till my cruise, I've got to do something memorable to think about while I'm out there."

Jack had a girlfriend. A broad named Judy. She was a sweet little thing with the heart of an angel and a body that will put your mind on the devil. She and Jack were happily married but Judy was worried that the job might cause him too much stress and insisted that they would go on a relaxing cruise to get away for a while. She didn't account for Jack's fear of the ocean.

"Wish I could help you out pal, but we ain't got a case yet." I said taking a puff of my cigar. "And there ain't nothing memorable about getting lunch."

"It's still something." He said, swinging his legs off my desk and standing to his full six feet two inches. "Let's head over to Lue's. On me."

I thought this over. We couldn't afford to leave the office in case a client came in. but then again a free sandwich at Lue's was something I just couldn't say no to.

"All right." I said getting up and grabbing my coat. "But we best come right back here. We can't afford to miss a client when the mortgage is coming up."

And like a roar of ferrous thunder our door was thrust open with such force the glass from the widow shattered to the floor. Standing barefoot in the middle of the shattered glass was a bloody, messy, shook up little boy. He was a small kid, painfully thin, with a sharp face that would send a knife running. It was clear that he had something on his mind that brought him here.

“What the hell…” I remarked in utter shock. “Kid, how the hell did you get here?”

“I… I need help.” He sobbed, collapsing to the floor of broken glass. “Please.”

Jack rushed to the kid’s side and helped him to his chopped up feet and guided him to the wooden chair.

“What’s your name, kid?” He asked looking around for something to stop the bleeding.

“N…Nathan.” He gasped, Biting his lip to ease the pain. “You have to help me! They took my brother! I… I went to the police but they wouldn’t help! You have to find him! His name is John. The… they’re going to hurt him! You have to help! You have to…”

“Woah, woah, woah kid.” I said cutting into his frantic talk. “Slow down. You’re giving me a migraine. Start from the beginning while my friend patches you up alright?”

He stared at me for a minute then nodded his head and started over.

“My brother came home last night from the docks. He.. he works there. He was scared. He locked all the doors and moved stuff in front of the windows so people couldn’t look in. I asked what he was doing but he told me to go hide. So I…I hid in my closet. I was in there for an hour! I was about to come out when I heard shouting. My brother started to scream and glass broke and there were loud popping noises, and more men shouting and then it all went quiet. I crawled out of the closet and John was gone! You have to find him please!”

The kid began rummaging through his beat up pocket of his beat up coat and pulled out two pennies and a dime. With that money he couldn’t even afford a gumball.

“This is all I have! But John has more! He can pay you but you just have to find him!”

“There's no need for that kid.” Jack said, kneeling down before the kid. “We’ll find your brother free of charge. Let’s go Cable.”

“Stay here Nathan.” I said, slipping into my coat. “We’ll be back with your brother all safe and sound.” 

Me and Jack left him and walked out into the pouring rain

****

We headed to the kids house to search for clues. The rain was still coming down hard when we got there. We didn’t need a key for the door because it was hanging off one side.

“They picked up after themselves pretty good.” Jack muttered, touching a new glass window. “Replaced everything.”

“They must have left something behind.” I scowled as I looked in the closet the kid must have hid in. “ The door was clearly broken. They forced their way in.”

“Or the brother just broke it. The kid was in pretty rough shape Cable. Maybe he had a head injury of some sort. Damn, we should have taken him to the hospital Cable. We gave him a flimsy band-aid and left him alone.”

“He’ll be fine Jack. Besides, if the brother weighs ten times as much as the kid he wouldn’t have a chance of busting the door like that.” I grabbed a jacket hanging up in the closet. “The kid said John worked at the docks. We should go down there. See if anyone's seen anything.”

“Cable, look at this!” Jack exclaimed, picking something up from the corner. I rushed over to him. “What is it?”

“A recite.” Jack said pocketing it before I could see it. “It’s to a window company. Let's split up. You head to the docks, I’ll check this out.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “We can tackle this together. We might get more answers if we’re both in one place.”

“I’m sure.” Jack said, opening the busted door. “We’ll be faster this way. And if John was taken the way Nathan said he was, speed is something we’ll need.”

***

After dropping Jack off at the window shop I headed down to the docks to see if any of his co-workers had seen anything unusual lately. What I got from them wasn’t anything helpful. They just kept saying John kept to himself and wasn’t that social of a guy. After realizing I couldn’t get anything good out of them I decided to go see the shipping manager to figure out what he could tell me.

“Johnny hasn’t been here for days.” he said when I approached him. “When he comes around I’ll have to fire him. Shame though. He was a good worker. He just kept getting distracted by those friends of his.”

“What friends?” I asked

“Well I mean, I don't know if they were friends but they'd come around here every once and awhile and talk to Johnny. Distract him for the whole day they would. I had to put him on the night shift at least five times just to keep us on schedule.”

“What'd they look like?”

“ Well one of them was pretty tall and lanky. With a funny hat. The other one was a large fellow but a good six, maybe seven feet. I never got too close to them. Oh there was a third guy too. But he'd never come out of the fancy car they'd drive up in.”

“You know what kind of car it was?”

“A nice one. They guy had to be a millionaire to have to own it. It’s pitch black with tinted windows. The license plate was ET something. I don’t really know.”

Something was off about his story though.

“You said John hasn’t been here for days?”

“Yeah that’s right. I have his work record if you want to see them.”

“If you can get them for me that would be a real help.”

Sure enough the records showed that John hadn’t showed up to work for the last five days. So why did Nathan say he came back from the docks last night?

After I left the docks I went to meet Jack at Lue’s to share our information. “The window shop was a bust.” Jack said, taking a bite from one of his fries. “The sales lady said that John went there last week. Apparently a window broke and he had to replace it. Cable, I’m starting to think the kid wasn’t telling the truth.”

“Well just hang on pal. According to the dock manager John had some shady looking “Friends” visit him at the docks. The guy said they drove a real fancy black car, with the license plate that starts with ET.”

“You're kidding.”

“Not at all. But that's not the only thing I got. Apparently John hasn’t been at work for the past five days. So he wasn’t at the docks the night he disappeared.”

“So the kid was lying.” Jack muttered. “Maybe we should go back to the office. Ask him more questions, see if he remembers anything. We kind of just jumped into this case. I mean our only suspect is a black car.”

“It was a fancy car. Black with the license plate starting with ET. The two guys that the dock manager saw were both over six feet. One was lanky and the other was large. this matches the description.”

“Of our mystery man.” Jack scolded. “He’s been a thorn in our side since we started our agency.”

I couldn’t help but agree with Jack. The mystery man had been causing trouble ever since we began to pick up business. He had solely been responsible for hundreds of crimes we’ve tried to solve over the years. He’s done as little as jaywalking to murder. We knew that finding John would be the key to catching him. We finished our French fries and headed out.

Jack argued as we waited, parked by the curb of the rich side of town. “If this really is the mystery man we should get back up. I mean, he’s gotten away from us so many times. We can’t expect to catch him without some backup.”

“If we don’t pursue them now John could be dead, Jack. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

“Still this feels like a shot in the dark. I mean we don’t know if he’ll even drive by here. It feels random….”

“The last three times we’ve lost him he escaped down this street.”

“Still…”

“Black car at six o’clock.” I snapped, cutting Jack off. A shiny pitch black car rolled past us. The windows were tinted with a license plate that started with ET.

“That's our guy!” I remarked, turning the sirens on and speeding after them.

This was it. This guy was going down. He’s always been one step ahead of us, but this time we were neck in neck.

The black car immediately picked up an impossible speed that I knew I couldn’t compete with. I took a sharp turndown a deserted alleyway. The road is bumpy but it's the road I have to take to catch these guys. The black car pulled out just behind me from the other end of the alley and I sped up. My tan squad car rammed into the fancy car rear making it spin out of control. I only allow myself to be stunned for a moment. I lead from my crashed vehicle, retrieve my gun from its holster and throw the door open of the black car. There are three men in the car. One is tall and lanky, the other is tall and wide. The third one is tied with a gag in his mouth.

“John?” I ask just before something heavy hits me in the back of the head and I lose consciousness.

***

I woke up in a dark room, tied to a chair. I couldn’t tell how big the room is, or if I am even alone. All I knew was the sound of heavy rain.

“Jack?” I whispered into the darkness. I didn’t get a response. Maybe he escaped. Maybe he’s locked up somewhere too. I can’t think about that now. I need to focus on getting out of here. 

I began to try to stand in my chair. I succeeded in getting it a couple inches off the ground. It’s not much but it is enough. I slammed it back down on the cold cement floor hard. I heard it crack but nothing happened. I tried slamming it down again. And again. On the eighth time the wooden chair finally shattered leaving me to fall backwards on the floor.

The chair was gone and my bonds were loosened. I easily slid my hands free and stood. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness but only so slightly. The room was still pitch black with no light what so ever. The only thing that was in the blackness is me, a broken chair, and my gun. I let out a chuckle. Whoever kidnapped me must have been real thick headed to leave it with me.

The rain suddenly became the last thing I was aware of. As I put my hand on my gun I heard footsteps drawing closer. And closer. A lock unclicked when I dove into a corner. My gun at ready. A blinding light filled the room. I couldn’t see but I could make out a shadow in the doorway. I had a shot. I almost took it when his voice cut me off.

“Don’t shoot.” He said in an eerily calm voice. “Or else you'll be shooting your own partner.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah.” He said letting light flood into the room. “ You’re real stubborn, you know that? I told you not to go looking into the car. I said the kid had a head injury. You insisted on looking into this. And now you’re caught in the middle of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Where are we?”

“You mean you don’t recognize it? You’ve been here at least 100 times.”

Jack flipped on a LIGHTSWITCH revealing the hauntingly familiar lay out of his house.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, almost whispering.”

I heard more footsteps coming from down the hall and I raised my gun again. Two big guys walk in each holding the arm of a beat up looking man. The same man who was gagged in the car.

“Is that John?!” I demanded. Jack got a real sad smug look on his face.

“When I said I wanted to do something this morning. I didn’t think that it would be this.”

“Jack what is going on?”

“You know the mystery man we’ve been chasing?. The one who we never see? The one who’s behind everything, and always one step ahead of us?”

“Jack… what are you getting at.”

“Well I’m just saying there wasn’t much crime when we started a detective agency.”

“Jack…Jack no. No. you’re not thinking straight. He's got in your head. He…”

“Who? The notorious mystery man? Oh come on Cable. Isn’t it obvious by now that I am the mystery man?”

Shock filled my body. I should have seen this coming. His disappearances. Showing up late. His sudden knowledge of cases that we had only spent a few minutes on.. I was blind. I was stupid. But I didn’t feel betrayed. I felt like I had a chance to do something memorable and missed it. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Come on Cable.” Jack said as he rolled his eyes. “You always wanted to be a cop. You’re a good guy, how would you react if I told you I murdered people for the sake of my career?”

“I would have joined you.”

It was now his turn to look shocked.

“Come on.” I continued. “You really thought I wasn’t bored of people knocking on my door asking to find some twenty dollar necklace?”

“But you hate crime. Some crook shot your father…”

“So? I hated that old man, and the hell he put me and my mom through. And let me tell you a secret. No crook killed him. I did.”

Jack still had that dumb dumbfounded look on his face, but then it broke into a grin. And he started to laugh.

“Man you’ve got to be kidding me! I spent all this time causing crimes for you to solve when we could have been out there running the Mafia or something?”

I started to laugh too. It was the first real laugh I laughed in a long time. I glanced at John in the arms of two tall guys.

“What’d he do?” I asked

“Huh? Oh… oh he’s just a little slow paying back his debt.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“We’ll… I was thinking about just bruising him a little, giving him a scare. But now he knows who we are.”

I gingerly raised my gun and pointed it at his head.

“May I?”

“Be my guest.” The shot went off and Jack turned back to me and asked, “What about that kid, Nathan?”

“Who cares. We’ll make it look like a suicide. You already said he could have a head injury. Who’ll believe him?”

Jack let out another howl of laughter. I let out one of my own to match it. Jack put his thin arm around my shoulders to steady himself. When he calmed down, he guided me to the door where a fancy black car awaited us.

We sat in the back seat as the two tall men began to drive. And for the first time in a long time I felt that I was doing something that really mattered. Something that would make a difference. Something people would be talking about for a long time.