The Scratch

“Donna! Donna!”

“Donna said enough. Just wanted to let you know she’s alive and well and if you want her to stay that way you’ll settle for second place in the tournament. See ya! No cops!”

“Who is this?” he shouted as the phone went quiet on the other end.

Jimmy hurried back to the floor area of the Dome to confront Scar. “Where’s Donna?” he asked angrily.

“Who’s Donna?” he asked with a sinister commanding smile.

“You know who she is. You kidnapped her. One of your goons just called up here and told me to lose.”

“Sorry, but I’ve been right here all day, with you. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Might be somebody else. Somebody probably with a big bet on the game. Can’t help ya.”

“I ought to slug you right here, right now.”

“Now wouldn’t that look real nice on nationwide television? That would just prove how violent you really are. Then you’d never stand a chance at your trial.”

“If anything happens to her you’re going to pay for it with your life!”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, that’s a promise.”

Jimmy walked over to the waist high wall that separated the floor area from the stands where his friends had gathered to wish him well before the start of the final match. A number of new fans were also gathered asking for autographs. He signed a few before returning to the table area where the final match was about to begin. The announcer introduced the two players over the public address system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to start the 1982 World Championship Billiards Tournament final round. Both players this year are from Metro City; Jimmy Nealy in the red T-shirt and his opponent, Phil Evans. They’ll play the three sets of the Best-Eight-Out-Of-Fifteen games with the winner taking home $250,000.00 in prize money. We’ll begin with the coin toss.”

Donna lay handcuffed to the brass frame bed in a bedroom of an old split-level house several miles south of the city. She was unaware of just how many kidnappers were present inside the house, but she had been listening carefully as they came and went in the front rooms and had counted six different voices so far. She recognized several of the voices as Snake, Joker and some of Scar’s other accomplices. She knew that they were deep into drug trafficking and now kidnapping, and she could just imagine what other crimes they had committed. She listened as the men argued vehemently as they watched the tournament on the TV in the front room.

“This is all getting out of control,” said Joker. “We’re gonna have to off the girl now. You had to go and let her see your face.”

“You saw what happened,” defended Snake. “She pulled the mask off before I could react.”

“And we’re gonna have to off this boyfriend of hers, too before all this falls into our laps,” argued Joker.

“We were doin’ just fine till this Sergeant Jenkins got us involved in all this,” said Snake.

“I say we get him to finance our flight out of the country. Take a million of that drug money from the evidence room there in the station house and a couple keys of coke, we can go to Mexico and live comfortable for a long time.”

“I don’t trust him,” said Roland, one of the other men present.

“He hates anyone that takes or sells drugs. That’s why he had us off Doc Rogers. He’s going to off us, too. Y’all are crazy tryin’ to deal with him.”

“There ain’t no dealin to be done. Either he comes up with a million or two and some dope or we give his little secret up,” offered Snake.

One of the other men, Willy, spoke up. “I’m with you Snake. Let’s get some money together and get on outa Dodge before this whole thing gets more outa hand. They’re gonna figure it all out anyway once we have to off the girl and this Nealy character.”