The Little Black Book

Our story begins with a dream, not an extravagant or lavish dream, but a simple one of a nice little home, a wife, a quiet life, and a promising career in the Marines. A dream Darren once lived in but has since lost to the reality of combat trauma, Alcoholism, and what they have now coined as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). With a medical discharge, a rocky at best marriage since his return from Iraq, and a long stint of not being able to hold down any job; Darren was on a downward spiral he was unable to pull out from. He couldn’t really blame his wife for going to live with her mother. She tried, she really tried. But the screaming sleepless nights, along with everything else made it hard to cope with, nothing more than a distant dream now.

One that only surfaces when he lets his guard down with a little help from his old friend Jack. You may know him by his proper name, Jack Daniels. He had just finished a 12- round bout with old Jack and had slipped into a sweet stupor when his slumber was interrupted with some commotion in the alley he was sleeping in. He chose this alley because the building he was sleeping by has recently been under remodel and there were plenty of large boxes and scrap materials laying around to offer some semblance of shelter. A large box to sleep in, covered with some leftover insulation for warmth, who could ask for more? At least here there was no trash, no odor of urine or rats to bother you. It seemed that’s all this city had to offer wherever you go. The stench of rot and decay. What ever happened to the vision of a grand and beautiful future he used to see in the movies as a kid? Oh well, reality always seems to send a round house kick to the teeth whenever hope tries to poke her sweet little head from the shadows. Why should tonight be any different?

I drifted back into consciousness to the sounds of people having an argument near the box I was sleeping in. I peeked my head out of the box to see two younger guys roughing up a smaller much older man. One was tall, about 6 feet and big, linebacker big, and the other was small and slender, kinda built like one of those guys you see racing horses at a derby or something. The big guy didn’t say much, he clearly was the enforcer. Had the old man up off the ground and against the wall, steady delivering blows to the gut while the smaller guy kept yelling out demands.

“I know you keep stashes of goods for every criminal in town. Jewels, money, stolen property. Now you’re gonna show me where they are, and Jimmy here won’t break every bone in your pathetic little body. And that’s before he kills ya”.

The little guy had such a squirrely voice, like a cross between a scared little girl and nervous teenage boy asking his crush out on a first date, scratchy like.

“Search him!”

The big guy dropped the old man and started digging through his pockets.

“Found it.”

The little guy opens the book and is clearly not pleased with what he finds.

“What the hell is this? What kind of writing is this? This is just a bunch of scribbles and random weird words. What are you trying to pull old man?”

The Old man doesn’t say a word so Jimmy goes to work on him.

“Ummph…. Uggh…the sounds of each blow echo through the alley. Jimmy’s working this old guy over pretty good. I can hear the sounds of splatter hit my box as blood sprays out his mouth from each blow.

A voice in the back of my head tells me, “this isn’t your fight Darren, this has nothing to do with you”, mind your own business and this will be all over as soon as the old guy gives them what they want.”

Another blow, and another, a couple of kicks, this guy’s not giving in. It seems to last a lifetime. Then I hear an all too familiar sound. “Click-click”, the sound of a 9mm being cocked.

“Jimmy here is very impatient old man; he has a real temper problem and hates when he doesn’t get what he wants. Now talk or I let him have his fun.”

Still nothing from the old man but moans of pain.

“Jimmy, give him one in the knee, see if that loosens his tongue”.

“BANG”. Jimmy pops one in the old man’s knee, I shudder from the explosive sound of the gunshot. Memories of combat rush back in an instant. Faces of fallen brothers and sounds of the chaos of war flood my mind.

“BANG.” Jimmy lets loose on the other knee.

“I said one dammit.”

The old guy’s tongue loosens alright, just not how the little guy wants. He lets out a scream that chills my soul. I hear the voice again trying to keep me restrained, “you don’t want any of this, you’re in no condition to mess with these two guys.” But then I hear another voice, it’s familiar but faint. It’s the voice of the many years of training I’ve had. It’s the voice of my loving wife. It’s the voice of my mother who taught me right from wrong. “Is this who you are? Can you stand by and watch them kill this man?” There was only one answer, No!

Without thinking I reached for a nearby piece of pipe and a second later I was on my feet behind the big guy. Gotta get him first, he’s the real threat.

I let loose with the pipe to the back of his head, I hear the distinct crack of bone as I connect and almost instantly I feel a volcano about to erupt from my gut at the sound of his head caving in.

“Keep it together D, can’t go all broken arrow now”.

“BANG”, The gun went off, burying a slug in the old guys lower abdomen. A jerk reaction to Jimmy being hit in the head. Jimmy goes down face first and doesn’t move. Now the little guy. With eyes the size of dinner plates he stares at Jimmy in disbelief and then to me. I motion towards him and he franticly turns tail and runs towards the mouth of the alley. In his panic he dropped the little black book he’d taken off the old man. No sense in chasing him. I look to the old man who is reeling from pain and holding onto life by a thread.

“Hey… hey old man. Are you ok? (silly question). Let’s get you to a Hospital, the words were meaningless even as they rolled out of my mouth, I’d seen that type of wound before in combat. A gut shot with dark blood flowing out, even if I could somehow stop the bleeding, this guy had about 10 minutes left without immediate care. The look in his eyes seemed to say he knew that too.

He reached for the book and thumbed through to the middle. He ripped out the middle page then flipped to one of the pages at the rear and ripped it out also. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a pen. He wrote a name and address on the back cover of the book and told me. “This is the name and address of my daughter. She’s never known me because her mother didn’t approve of my living and made me leave shortly after she was born. She’s in college and I’ve kept tabs on her. Make a copy of this page and give the original to my daughter, the other page is for you for delivering this to her, she will know what to do.”

I begin the argument in my mind about me not being the right guy for this but before it can even make its way to my lips, I hear that squirrely voice again. I look up and the little guy is back at the mouth of the alley with two bigger guys pointing at me.

“That’s the guy, get him”.

I make a break for it franticly running for the other end of the alley.

“BANG, BANG”. They finished the old guy off. My heart collapsed, and I heard that voice again, “see, now what was it all for? Now you’ve got these knuckle draggin knee breakers on your tail.” I brushed it off and just kept running till I made it to the subway and lost them.

As I rode on the train, thought after thought raced through my mind. Was it even worth the effort? The old guy wound up dead anyway, and now you’re tasked with finding some random girl who didn’t even know the guy. What for? That other voice again, “he made a request of you with his last few minutes left on this Earth, it must be important”.

I get off the train about a block away from the address he gave me. It’s close to morning now, “just get this book to this girl and soon this horrible night will be behind you”, I think to myself.

I get to the address, a three- story apartment building in Queens. As I climb the stairs, I run through what I could possibly say to this girl that sounds the least bit not crazy. “Ding-Dong”, I ring the doorbell and a small- framed girl answers the door. I can see the resemblance. She favors her father, especially in the nose and eyes.

“Hello, can I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Darren, you don’t know me, but I knew, well I kinda knew your father”.

“My father? I don’t have a father, not at least one that has ever been around to speak of.”

I explained who I was and the circumstances leading to me being there. I hand her the book and told her that her father said she would know what to do. As she flips through it, I explain that when I looked in the book it just seemed like a random bunch of scribblings that didn’t make any sense. She stared intently at the first page, then the second.

“It’s written in different languages, several in fact. Every other word is a different language. You have Pashtu, Farsi, Arabic, Western Aramaic, some Hebrew, and Egyptian. Strange though.”

“What’s strange?” I asked.

“Well, I’m in college right now studying Linguistics, the study of languages, and every language this book is written in is a language I know and study.” The book gives directions to a several different locations, but it’s useless because there is no origin point. Each page starts out with instructions like, go two blocks and take a left, go one block and take a right. But there is no origin point.”

I remember the page.

“Do you have a copier?”

“Yes.”

I copy the page, and hand her the original. As she reads, she discovers the middle page gave the central starting location you would need to follow the instructions, it’s like a map key. I gave her my page and asked her to decipher it. She wrote the instructions down and I quickly set off to find out what was so important. As I followed each instruction. It led me to an old furnace in an abandoned building. As I opened the furnace door, inside was a leather bag. I opened the bag and inside were rolls of cash. I counted it out, $20,000. I quickly closed the bag up and walked outside. It was morning now, dawn, the sun was rising on a new day and everything seemed refreshed and new. I took a deep breath and bathed in the morning sun. A new day.