EXTRACTION

So here I was again, sitting in a parked car in the middle of the night waiting for something to happen. As I had often mused in situations such as this, I did a lot of sitting in cars and waiting during the course of my life and work. By now I was pretty good at it. Nonetheless, I still hated it. This was the third night of my vigil. A Friday night at the end of the first week of March. The weather this week had been mild by late winter standards in Birmingham, low seventies during the day and mid forties at night. Tonight it was forty-four degrees. Actually it was this morning because right now it was a few minutes before three a.m. So really it was Saturday morning instead of Friday night. If nothing happened I’d probably pack it in around seven or eight, and maybe try again Saturday night. That was the problem when dealing with stalkers. They never gave you advance warning of their actions so you could better plan your life.

Inconsiderate bastards, the lot of them.

A few days ago I was at home reading through a very old book of translated works by Nietzsche. It had been years since I had read any of his stuff and I’m not quite sure why I was trying it again. I was looking at books in a used bookstore last week and came across this large volume of his that was only fifty-nine cents. Who could pass that up? So I bought it. After a few pages I began to wonder if perhaps I had overpaid.

Some said Nietzsche was nuts for most of his life and others believe he lost his marbles only near the end. I’ve often been on the fence about this and have really never cared, but now I’m starting to rethink a bit and am closer to the side that thinks he was nuts for most of his life. The book’s about a thousand pages long and I really wasn’t sure that I would make it through the whole thing without going around the bend myself. Luckily, by page thirty-seven, I received a call from someone who was in need of my services. Or rather the call was from someone who knew someone who was in need of my services.

Reverend Tom Boone was the pastor of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church over on Sixth Avenue South in Birmingham. At present, he is sixty-four years old with a full gray beard and a matching head of unruly hair. When I had first met him he was clean shaven and had a full head of neatly trimmed jet black hair. This had been more than thirty years ago and I myself had a full head of jet black hair back then. And I was about eight.

Tom Boone had been only the second minister of Saint Paul’s in my lifetime, and at present he didn’t show any signs of being ready to retire. He was still vital and all of his parishioners looked to him for guidance and help when their lives weren’t going well. He was a man with a mission and truly believed in what he did, his work was everything, as were his family and his flock.

When I was a kid I had attended Saint Paul’s with my parents because it was the family church and that’s what kids did. However, as I began to grow up I pulled away from the church and have never looked back. For me there is nothing in religion. I have nothing against those who believe, those who preach and pray, but it means nothing to me; and I’m quite comfortable with that.

Over the years Tom has tried to reach out to me and get me to come back to the church. He’s never brash or a bully, he never attempts the fire and brimstone routine, he simply talks to me and tells me what his faith means to him and how he has seen the power of religion and spirituality lift people up in their lives. I listen sometimes, I actually like Tom, but he has never swayed me, and he never will. Although I know he’ll never give up on me, I believe that some part of him has come to realize that he will never succeed with me either. Even so, he and I have some great talks from time to time. And also, from time to time, when the occasion has arisen, he has directed a client or two my way. As was the case a few days ago when Tom called and asked me to come over to his office at the church.

Felicity Lowe is a thirty-five year old divorced mother of two. She works as a personal secretary at an office downtown and lives in a modest house in the Roebuck area on the east side of Birmingham. A month and a half ago she ended a five month relationship with a gentleman by the name of Tommy Beale, a salesman at Jim Skinner Ford in Center Point. However, Mr. Beale was not ready for this relationship to end and he kept coming by Felicity’s house and even met her when she came out of work a few times, trying to talk to her, despite her firm statements to him that he should not continue to do this. When Beale ignored her and kept coming by, Felicity contacted an attorney friend and had a restraining order issued against him.

This order worked for about a week once it was served. Which, unfortunately, is the case in a lot of these situations. Beale continued to come by her house, but only late at night when no one else saw him. A couple of times he slashed the tires on her car in the driveway and once he even broke into her home and trashed it when she and her kids were out. Felicity called the police and they came out and took statements, wrote reports, but since no one actually saw who had done the break-in and the vandalism, there was little the police could do. Which, unfortunately once more, is usually the case in such situations.

Luckily for Felicity Lowe her mother is friends with Julia Boone, Tom’s wife. She told Tom about the problem and asked if he could recommend someone who could help. That’s when Tom called me. He and I met and then a meeting was arranged with Felicity a few hours later. She explained the situation to me and as she spoke I realized that I was looking at someone who was on the verge of losing it, someone who was frightened to death for herself as well as her kids. Someone who really needed help. I was also reasonably sure that she couldn’t afford to pay my usual fee for the kind of service she would obviously require. It’s a good thing I’m a nice guy sometimes. Or perhaps just a sucker for a damsel in distress.

I agreed to take her case, and so here I am, once again sitting in a parked car waiting for something to happen. At three o’clock in the fucking morning!

I covered my mouth as I started to yawn, shifting in the front seat of my 1996 dark blue Ford Taurus. There was no way that I was going to get comfortable after this many hours of sitting, but I really didn’t want to get too comfortable, if I did something might get missed.

Felicity Lowe’s house was toward the north end of Park Place off of Roebuck Drive. The street was narrow and there wasn’t a whole lot of cover where you could park and be unobtrusive. This was the kind of neighborhood where somebody sitting out in a parked car for too long would get noticed and a call would be placed to the cops. And for this reason I had asked Felicity if she was close to anybody in the neighborhood and she had given me several names.

A house down the street and across from hers belonged to a couple on that list. I went and had a talk with the owners after my client called them and explained what I was going to be doing for her for the next few days. They sat and listened solemnly, wanting to do whatever they could to help. They were a retired couple with no children of their own in the area and had come to look upon Felicity and her children as an extension of their family after they moved into the neighborhood a couple of years earlier. They were genuinely distressed when they learned what Felicity was going through. This worked out well for me because they were willing to help without question or hesitation.

Since their house was almost at the dead end of the street and it was not really well lit by streetlamps at night, their side driveway made the perfect surveillance post for me, especially when they parked their station wagon at the front of the drive and blocked my Taurus from view of the south end of the street. I had a good pair of binoculars and could adjust them to see the area around Felicity’s house—which was well lit by streetlamps—with no problems. Cars came and went for most of the early part of the night and then began to taper off after eleven. There were usually no pedestrians out past nine in this neighborhood and anybody on foot would bring immediate suspicion. These facts kind of made me wonder just how it was possible that Tommy Beale had managed to get into Felicity’s house unseen on multiple occasions. Maybe he had been a ninja in another life.

Or maybe he was just lucky.

No police cars patrolled this street either. Ordinarily after a restraining order was issued—especially once there was evidence that it was being violated—the local precinct would increase patrols in the vicinity. However, once I took the job I had a talk with a friend of mine in the East Precinct and asked him to have the patrols pulled. Beale wasn’t likely to make a move if he saw cop cars and that might make things drag on for a while longer than they needed to. Whether I’m getting paid or not I don’t like to sit and wait forever. I’m a short-term guy, get in and get the job done, then get out. If Tommy Beale was still harassing his ex-girlfriend, then I wanted him to come sooner rather than later, and then this would be over and done with.

But this might not be the night either. So I guess my weekend is shot.

Oh well, Nietzsche will just have to wait a while longer.

What a shame.

I was reaching for my half-consumed bottle of water when a slow-moving dark colored pickup truck caught my attention. Actually what really caught my attention was the fact that the pickup was driving slowly down Park Place without headlights on at three in the morning. Curious indeed.

I put the water bottle back on the seat and picked up my binoculars.

A Ford F-150.

Tommy Beale drives a Ford F-150, dark green.

Coincidence? I think not.

Maybe my weekend plans just improved, I thought, pressing the send button on the communicator attached to my throat.

“We may be in business,” I spoke plainly. “There’s a pickup that fits the suspect’s vehicle description moving slow past the target house and about to take the left on Lilac. May just be passing through or casing the place. Let me know if he stops back there somewhere.”

A moment later I received a quick reply.

Suddenly I felt a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach and smiled soberly.

Yeah, action stations.

Or as Holmes would have put it: The game’s afoot!