The Missing Millions P2 - The Game

“Let me get this straight” said Lian Su Smith, her cold blue eyes sparkling with anger. “You shot 2 or 3 drunk men, threw an ashtray at an old lady who was fast asleep in her bed, climbed out of the first floor window of an apartment block, ran across a ladder onto the roof of a garage and escaped St Ringo’s without a backward glance”.

“You don’t know where Snow your partner is, and you didn’t see sight or sound of your target, Ruth Marrott”. “Have I missed anything out….oh yes, I forgot, you left Lollypops McCoy behind, being eaten alive by some creatures that you say were Zombies”.

Giacomo Kirk would have liked to explain again, how it wasn’t his fault, circumstances conspired against him but decided wisely he would bide his time and wait for the anger of Mabel Street Mob’s Boss to cool, at least a little.

Not so Montemagno Scott his sidekick, “they were Zombies Lian, honestly” he piped up, “we saw them tear into Lollypops with their bare hands and teeth, it was awful”

Lian didn’t even deign to turn in his direction but said coldly, “I see why they call you ‘Bananas’, Scott, you’re as mad as your Boss”.

Bananas was about to say something else but Lian continued, “Patsy if this man speaks another word without I ask him a direct question, you will shoot him; first in his left knee cap, then his right kneecap and then to ensure he understands, between the eyes, is that clear”. “Perfectly” Mad Patsie Jones replied and with a smile and then a wink in Bananas direction she pointed the large calibre automatic at his left knee cap. He gulped and went quiet.

Three hours after this conversation took place, Sam Snow woke, he hurt like hell, then he remembered the shooting. His shooting, two shotgun blasts at close range, luckily it was a confused situation and he’d not taken a direct hit otherwise he’d not be here feeling the pain, he’d be dead. He moved to look at his legs and his head erupted with pain, how the hell did that happen, and then he remembered the rescue and why his head hurt.

“You OK Boss” a concerned voice asked, it was Goodboy Johnston his right hand man. When the dizziness passed Snow asked, “where are we, any news of O’Hara”? “Dunno Boss, we’re in a cellar, the Marrott woman got you a Doctor, he patched you up and says you’ll live but I don’t know nothing about O’Hara”.

Snow was quiet for a minute or two and then said “I thought we had an agreement with her.” “So did I Boss, but it seems she thinks she made a different agreement to the one we thought we made” 

Pre-empting the next question he continued, “the doors locked and it’s the only way out and you can’t walk. Snow relapsed into silence and thought hard.

Lian Su Smith walked back into the room and looked appraisingly at Giacomo. She’d made some calls and the man might conceivably be telling the truth, improbable as it seemed at first. “Ok, go through it again, leave nothing out, no bullsh*t and you’ll address me as Ma’am or Miss Smith if you wish to walk out of here alive”.

“Yes Ma’am”

“Well” Giacomo began, “Snow and I knew which buildings were the targets and he suggested that I took the stucco ones and he took the disused brick ones. It seemed fair enough and so that’s what we did.

We both questioned the people on the street but the ones I spoke to didn’t seem to know much, or at least they were fairly tight mouthed if they did know anything”.

Lian interrupted him and asked about the people on the street, how did they behave. “Same as anyone” I guess, “they didn’t like being questioned by strangers and they all seemed a little wired, you know, on edge strung out but not unnaturally so”.

Then she asked, “It was Snow who chose for you to go into the stucco buildings”? “Yes I guess” he responded. “OK carry on”.

“Well Snow got a bit rough with the news vendor, his boy Johnson punched him in the ribs and when they’d moved on, one of the bystanders ran across to help him back to his feet”.

“The last time I saw Snow, he was talking to a squat tough looking guy. The man had his hand inside his jacket, looked like he might have been going to pull a gun on Snow, probably for his treatment of the news boy. Anyway at that stage I went into the 4 story stucco apartment and didn’t see or hear them again”.

“We started to explore the ground floor of the largest stucco and it was dark in the hallway. A man came blundering down the corridor, looked drunk, he was staggering a bit and I shouted for him to halt. He ignored me and I pulled my gun, he still came on and I saw a red feral gleam in his eyes so I shot him. Then another one came down the stairway straight at me so I shot him too”.

Mad Patsy looked admiringly at Giacomo. “You shot two men because they were drunk and staggering towards you”? she asked.

“They looked strange, weird, threatening” he replied.

“You were in downtown St Ringo, everyone looks like that”, she scoffed.

“They were Zombies, I know they were”, he continued.

“Don’t be ridiculous” Lian interrupted, “they only exist in Dime Store fiction, carry on”.

“Well we were on the 1st floor when I heard the Ground floor door being kicked open and some local thugs came in”.

They were shouting for us to clear out, that we were on their territory, I told them to back off or come up the stairs and we’d see whose territory it was. I never saw them because they didn’t come up stairs and so we carried on searching the floors. It was just a typical apartment block; each story had a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room. We checked each room as we went. There was no one on the 1st floor but in the bedroom on the 2nd was a dark shape in the bed.

“You shot that as well” asked Patsie with a gleam in her eye.

“No, I tossed a glass ashtray onto the bed to see what reaction I’d get”.

“And” Lian asked.

“Well I missed the bed and it smashed on the floor, a little white haired old lady sat up in bed and started screaming when she saw us. So I backed out and shut the door but she kept on screaming”.

“That’s when I heard the police sirens”.

“We didn’t see them at first but the siren got louder and louder”.

The crowd had pulled back from the crossroads, something had happened there but we couldn’t get a good view.

Looked like a body in the road but could have been most anything.

We did have a good view of the police car when it turned onto 3rd street, the cops got out because the crowd had started to converge on them and block the road.

On my life, the crowd looked just like the two I’d shot downstairs. Same sort of jerky movements and all.

Lian just nodded, one of her calls had been to the Police Chief, he confirmed that two of his men had attended a gun shot incident and had come back shaking and full of totally unbelievable tales, he’d booked them for a Psych Evaluation in the morning.

The Cops must have thought there was something really odd because they took to their heels and ran away, the crowd followed them but were soon out of our sight.

“We continued up the stairs, checking the rooms, I wanted to see if there was a way out onto the roof”. “Why” asked Lian, “were you going to jump off”? “I had a plan” Giacomo mumbled but didn’t elaborate.

Anyway on the top floor Lollypop opened the living room door. They all had the same layout so I’m sure it was the living room and that’s when they grabbed him. Six screaming zombies, grabbed him and pulled him into the room, Bananas slammed the door shut so they couldn’t get out again.

Patsie was liking these two more and more, she asked, “you slammed the door with Lollypop in the room, he was alive and you shut him in there”?

Bananas made a move to speak but Patsie waved her gun at his left knee cap and he remained quiet.

“Yes” said Giacomo, “we had no choice, it was him or us, eventually his screaming stopped and then the things started thumping on the door trying to get out”.

That’s when we heard the moaning in the street below, there was a crowd of the things trying to get through the door into the building. The local thugs on the ground floor were panicking; they started dragging furniture to barricade the doorway and windows. They were trapped because we were up the stairs; of course we were trapped as well, but I had a plan.

“You found a ladder”! “That was extremely lucky” Lian said. “Yes it was a bit, it took some hard work to get the idea accepted but Bananas and I made our escape and now we’re here”. He looked hopefully in Lian’s direction. “Ma’am”.

“And you didn’t see Snow or Marrott after that” she quizzed. “No Ma’am” he replied, thinking this was going better than the first time he’d tried to explain what happened.

Lian thought for a while before announcing, “well you’re just going to have to go back and find out what happened, you can take your man Bananas with you”.

“Ma’am”! He spluttered.

That’s when the phone on her desk rang.

“Hello Lian this is Ruth, how are you”? Lian wasn’t usually at a loss for words but the sound of Ruth Marrott’s voice on the phone knocked her sideways.

It’s a long story, as it often is, but when the Mabel Street Mob had been small time in the US south west, Lian headed up the mob but Ruth had been her bookkeeper and her right hand man, or woman in this case. They had parted on good terms. Ruth wanted to go straight and Lian wanted to expand from Bank Robberies to owning banks.

Lian missed the old days, the immediacy of walking into a bank like some western gunfighter or highwayman of old and shouting your money or your life. Not knowing how the next few minutes would pan out, get rich or get dead in fast motion. Ruth missed the old days as well, working for the National Reserve had been as boring as hell and when she’d seen the opportunity to cut loose with their millions, she’d taken it without a seconds hesitation.

“I’m fine Ruth”, Lian said, “how are you”. “I’m well thank you” Ruth replied amiably “but I believe we have a small misunderstanding”. “I have your man Sam Snow in my basement and he tells me you want something from me, he was a little vague about what it was, money it seems but he’s not sure how much and why”.

“You don’t know”? Lian asked. “Well no” Ruth answered truthfully. “I see”, said Lian “do you remember Redmire Richardson, President of the Fourth & First National Bank of Nashville”. “Of course I do” Ruth said, “the man’s as bent as a nine dollar note, I took rather a lot of money out of his bank not so long ago”. “Yes you did” Lian said “and quite a lot of it was my money, when the Bank went bust they gave 3 cents on the dollar, you owe me $845,988”.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone, then Ruth asked, “was that you in Venice”. “Of course it was me” Lian snapped, “you didn’t think I was going to give up that amount of money for old times sake did you”. “Humm”, Ruth temporised, “you know I had to leave a very nice apartment in Venice because of that”. “Yes I do know, my men trashed it looking for some clue as to where you went” snapped Lian.

Again it went quiet at the other end of the line before Ruth came back on. “Look” she said, “I have a little proposition to put to you but we’d better sort out the money situation first, I didn’t realise you had money in the Fourth & First National Bank, or I’d have spoken to you before now, I’ll transfer your $845,988 back tomorrow, lets say we make it a round $1,000,000 to cover interest and inconvenience, but you get my Venice apartment habitable again, at your expense of course and we meet on Friday to discuss my proposition. How does that sound”?

This rather came out of left field and maybe a little too easily. “What about my man Snow”? Lian countered.

“Good grief I hope he’s not a full time employee, you’re rather dredging the barrel if he is. Anyway, he’s yours if you want him, there’s another one with him and they left an Irishman behind in St Ringo, O’Hara I think his name was. He’ll be dead by now, the place is alive with weird creatures” Ruth continued. “I heard something about that” Lian stated but in an enquiring manner. Ruth took the bait, “yes it was the chemical plant up stream, it leaked some sort of poison into the river and the fish ate it, then the fools in St Ringos ate the fish, it’s affected them somehow, their brains have jellified and now they eat human flesh.

It’s hard to tell the before and after with St Ringo’s inhabitants but it’s not pretty”.

“What happened with Snow” Lian enquired without much enthusiasm. “Not much really, he broke into my building, he must have heard the alarm bell sound but they came on anyway. Up the stairs, 1st floor 2 doors, 2 bells but they ignored them as well. 2nd floor there was no bells just my men. They opened the door as if it was Sunday School. There was a flurry of gunshots and your men went down, all except for Johnson, he was out of the line of fire. I called a halt to it, told your men about the zombies, of course they didn’t believe me but I suggested we join forces to escape”.

“Snow was shot twice in the legs and had to be carried out, he’s a bit of a survivor that one, he insisted they leave O’Hara behind to make it easier for him to escape. It was like Fred Karno’s Circus carrying him down the flights of stairs. Every so often one of them would loose their grip and drop him. Funny really, it was always his shoulders that they lost their grip on, kept dropping him on his head. It doesn’t seem to have done too much damage though” she laughed lightly.

“We got outside, my boys had a truck waiting, we all piled in, then they saw the zombies, that shook them”.

“There was talk about driving through the crowd, can you imagine the chance of doing that and not losing control of the truck, so they reversed up and we got away.

I took them to my next bolt hole and put your two in the cellar. Snow’s OK I had a doctor look at him, well he’s a Vet really but it’s all pretty much the same thing and he says there’s no real harm done. Snow will never make the 100 yds sprint team but he probably never could anyway”.

“That was about it really, so I’ll see you on Friday”? Snow can bring the invitation! Lian was intrigued by the proposition as well as happy to get her money back and just said “OK” and they both hung up.

The Mabel Street Mobs first outing.

Well this completes a circular story that began in 2018 on my blog, and more for my entertainment than anyone else, sorry for so much text and not many photographs in this report, I umpired a game in Vagabond Manor with Snappers playing the part of Giacomo Kirk and Dougers in deepest Dorset playing the part of Sam Snow over an internet link. With these two, Umpiring is like wrestling with a giant python, they are immensely inventive and I never stick to the script so it’s always a bit of a worry to know if the game will go well or not.

Dougers has a dog who needs regular exercise and he was a little surprised to find that when leaving his men entering the 4 story building and while taking a pleasant stroll in the country with his dog he received various WhatsApp messages something to the effect.

Going up the stairs now, 2 doors at the top, gone through one door, bell sounded.

Gone through 2nd door, a different bell sounded.

Nothing found, going up stairs,

2 doors going through 1 door, nothing found.

Going through other door. Oh SH*T, O’Hara is down, shot in the leg, 3 men in the room.

Hell, Snow’s down, scatter gun got him.

Goodboy is safe - out of sight in the other room.

It’s not going well!!!

That was the situation when he got back on the call, The Mad Lord had been playing Dougers team as well as his own but with a carefree, colourful attitude to be admired by everyone….except maybe Doug. It was a pleasure to play a live game with these two reprobates, I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Should you be mad enough to want to read about the early exploits of the Mabel Street Mob there’s a tag on my blog that should help.

Cheers