More Than He Bargained For...

“OK...What kind of help are you looking for?”

He paused...”Well, I like Canada and all, but I really don’t like the cold enough to want to make a new life here. But worse than that is now that the Director has found me again, he’s going to demand I join with him again. If I don’t, I won’t be safe for long, even here. I will give you more information on him and his various pet projects, ones we didn’t keep records of, if you can find a way to get me out of here and make me disappear so that He can’t find me again.”

I smiled to myself and said, “All you had to do was ask, Dr. Bernstein. I think I can help you out sooner than you might think. Where are you right now?”

He hesitated for a moment, “Well, this is a pay phone near the Casino in Windsor, but obviously I don’t expect you be able to help me out this second. In fact, I was planning on meeting with the Director’s representative. I think I can stall him for a couple of days if I need to. So if you can arrange for someone to meet me at the Tunnel or the Bridge to Detroit and get me into some sort of protective custody in the next day or so...”

“Don’t worry Doctor, I shall be in contact with you very soon. By the way, are you on riverfront side of the Casino, or the land side?”

“Riverside actually, I can see the skyline of Detroit right from the phone here. So, should I come back to this phone at any time? I would really appreciate it if you can arrange something fairly soon!”

“Yes, I am sure you would. Let me contact you here at this number again in an hour.”

“Really? Wow, Rusty that would be great! I’ll be here then!”

“Good” I hung up on him. I thought to myself, ‘Ask and you shall receive, Dr. Geek.’

I put the phone down and hurried to take care of a few errands. It was going to be a busy night...

***

I sat deep within the shadows between the dumpster and the nearby building. I reached for my cell phone, flicked it open and selected the second to last number called, the one that Dr. Geek would be looking to answer in the next couple of minutes.

The area just beyond the shadow where I crouched was busy wtih people enjoying the warm August evening air. They paid no attention to the dumpster, if anything the smell wafting from it must have been fairly bad, because folks seemed to drift closer to the other side of the sidewalk as they passed by.

I activated the button that would call the number. The pay phone about twenty feet away began to ring. One figure from the bustling crowd edged toward the the ringing phone, looking around as he did so, as if to spot anyone who might be watching for him. After three rings, he moved to pick up the handset.

“Hello?” It was Dr. Geek.

I hung up when I knew it was him. Instead I sprung from the shadow in which I had been crouching and pushed my way through the startled couple who were passing my spot, oblivious to my presence previously. I could see that the good doctor was still trying to talk into the phone as I came up behind him.

“Damn,” he muttered as he hung the handset back up and started to turn around. “Wha....”

He never finished that thought before my carefully aimed punch to the solar plexis knocked all of the wind out of him. He doubled over in excruciating pain.

I heard voices behind me start to yell as they realized that a fellow patron was being assaulted right out in the open. This sort of thing didn’t happen all that much on this side of the Detroit River. “Hey, what are you doing?”... “Did you see that?”... “Is he hurting that man?”... were typical of the reactions.

Instead of enlightening those folks to the kind of man this ‘doctor’ really was, I quickly scooped the stunned man over my shoulder and bounded from the sidewalk towards the shadowy areas of the trees of the riverfront park that Windsor was famous for.

By the time any local Windsor cops could respond to the gasps and cries for help from the stunned crowd, I had found a nice patch of darkness and opened a rift between worlds to step through with my cargo.

He wanted to ‘disappear’, so I figured I would make that happen much sooner than he might have realized was possible. Perhaps he would regret his request, but I’ll let you good folks be the judge of that...