The Find

Dr Finkle, a man as peculiar as his name, was gifted a free night stay at the Aisling Hotel to go to a conference in Dublin. Dr Finkle lived in Limerick, and was glad he didn’t have to make the long trip home after the conference, because then he wouldn’t have been able to drink to numb out the droning lecturers. He made the most of sleeping in a bed all to himself for once. Usually there would be a few stragglers from his large family that would appear as the night progressed, but not tonight, tonight the bed was all for him.

After a glorious night’s sleep and because the Aisling Hotel was only a two-minute walk to Houston station Dublin, Dr Finkle only had to cross the road after breakfast to get back to his brood. He placed his small, black, plastic, wheely case on the rack above him. The train filled up quickly and they were off. He knew that it was only an hour and a half journey and let his good wife know when the train left the station.

He smiled as he drifted in and out of sleep listening to the clickety clack of the train. The recent dinner party himself and his good wife hosted came into his mind. They always played the game, ‘what baby is this?’. There were pictures of each of the kids as babies in black and white print on the mantle. There was a wager as to who could place the baby to the child, a wager he almost always lost. They were so bad at it that they had the child’s name printed onto a sticker attached to the back of each frame.

Dr Finkle woke abruptly as the train had reached his destination, Limerick junction. He took the case off the wrack and quickly got off the train, just as it was about to pull out of the station. He immediately saw Mrs Finkle and the seven kids standing on the beginning of the platform. They were holding up a ‘welcome home daddy’ sign which made his heart ache with glee. He began to beam with pride. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and, as he walked toward them, they abandoned the sign and ran into his arms. He squeezed them tightly and kissed each and every one of their heads. He had missed this…even though he was only gone for one night. He kissed his wife and they went home.

‘Let me see, let me see!’ Isabelle, the six-year-old gap-toothed little angel kept chanting until Dr Finkle put the case on the kitchen table and opened it. As he flipped the lid, expecting to see the seven little gifts he had bought, one for every child, he gasped and moved back from the case. It was full of money! Dr Finkle wasn’t a poor man or a rich man but he knew that this amount of money would pay for seven pairs of braces and seven college tuitions. He looked up at his wife and they shared the same surprised yet devious looks. He quickly closed up the bag and, being the upstanding citizen as he was, rang the police.

An hour later, two uniformed members of An Garda Siochana arrived at the door, wrapping their knuckles on the wood as the doorbell was broken. Dr Finkle invited them into the madness to show them the case and they took it from there. Dr Finkle only heard information about the money in dribs and drabs over the next few hours. At the back of his mind he couldn’t help but think of the poor old sap who was missing their money but got seven little trinkets instead. Come to think of it, Dr Finkle had his address on a tag attached to the handle of his bag.

 

 

 

Carl found the journey arduous as all he could think of was that there was three million euros in a suitcase on the overhead wrack. Henry on the other hand, slept the whole way to Cork, only waking when he needed to pee. When they pulled into Kent station in Cork, Carl had to nudge Henry awake with his elbow. Henry woke with a start and took a minute to orientate himself. He took the precious cargo from the overhead wrack and they made their way out to the car that was waiting for them in the loading bay.

‘Did you get it?’ Frank, the brains of the operation asked with excitement as Carl got into the passenger seat of the car, leaving Henry to sit in the back. Carl nodded his head and the three of them cheered to a job well done.

‘I told you it was a piece of cake!’ Frank said as he patted Carl’s shoulder in excitement.

‘Yea,’ Carl began, ‘like you said, they tried some of the coke and handed us the suitcase!’

‘Did you count the money?’

‘A cool three million!’

‘Excellent!’ Frank said giving Carl a fist bump, and drove off.

When they made it to the house, they opened the suitcase and was shocked that all that was in it was some clothes.

‘WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO WITH MY MONEY!’ Frank yelled so loudly that Carl was convinced he had punctured his ear drum.

‘It was all there,’ Carl was certain, ‘someone else must have taken the wrong bag!’ his voice becoming audibly fainter as he spoke.

‘WHAT!!’ Frank took out his gun and pointed it at Carl’s temple. ‘Give me one good reason as to why not!’ he said through gritted teeth.

Carl swallowed hard…fear setting in.

‘Oh look!’ Henry piped up. The gun was now pointed in his direction. ‘Theres a name tag on the bottom, wrapped around the wheel!’

Frank put the gun back in his belt and bent down to look at the discovery more closely. ‘Dr Finkle, ay?’ He rubbed his fingers against his chin that was covered in three-day old stubble. He roughly tugged the name tag and the wheel came off the suitcase. He laughed a laugh you either joined in on or stayed quiet. Carl chose the former, he was just relieved the gun wasn’t swinging around anymore.

 

 

Four hours later, Carl, Frank and Henry pulled up to the house that was illuminated with blue flashing lights.

‘Shit!’ Frank said softly. ‘SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!’ he pounded the steering wheel. ‘There’s only one thing left to do!’ he sighed.

‘What’s that boss?’ asked Henry from the backseat as he stuffed his face with a greasy peperoni pizza.

‘We kill them!’

 

 

The police stayed and asked Dr Finkle all the questions in the world…and then some. He told them all he knew but that wasn’t very much to go by.

‘I slept for the majority of the journey!’ Dr Finkle said for the thirty second time.

‘Do you recall any tiny bit of information about the man sitting opposite you?’ the detective asked, desperate to build the case against whoever or whatever deal went down in Dublin. They were presuming it was the same crowd who had been monopolising the cocaine market in Dublin recently. If they lived in Cork, it stood to reason why they couldn’t find them…. they were looking in the wrong place.

‘All I can recall is a man with a black baseball cap, his hoody over it, asleep!’

‘Do you know what stop they got off at?’

‘They were still on the train when I left, so I’m presuming Cork!’

The detective moved out of earshot of Dr Finkle and he couldn’t tell what he was saying to his colleague.

‘My name is on my case,’ Dr Finkle blurted out, ‘and my address!’

The detective turned around and looked at his watch. It had been five hours since Finkle rang the police. That gave the real owners of the money ample time to get here presuming they were indeed from Cork.

‘Is my family in danger?’ Dr Finkle asked the all-important question.

‘We’ll have a police man here all night to keep you safe!’ the detective reassured him.

 

 

As Carl, Frank and Henry entered the Finkle household through the unlocked back door in the dead of night, they were met the rumble of snores coming from upstairs. They quietly checked each room in turn, finding a sleeping police man on the couch in the living room. One of them put a gun to his temple. He woke wide eyed and, as another held out a cloth, pouring chloroform onto it and placed it over his mouth and nose. He was limp in seconds. They tied him up with cable ties and put duct tape on his mouth before dragging him by the scruff of the neck to the kitchen.

With downstairs clear, they slowly climbed the stairs to where the rumbling snores were coming from each room. Cable ties at the ready, Frank stopped the others as they were about to walk into the room that had Sarah and Isabelle’s name on it. He signalled that they forgot to put the silencers on…so they did as quiet as three little mice.

They quietly opened the door and could only see one child in her bed. They put the chloroform rag over her sleeping mouth and tied her up like they had the police man. Then they went into Sean, Colin and Marcus’s room. Once again, they could only see one sleeping child. They repeated the procedure they had done to his sister and made their way to the room marked; Emily and Jessica. They were met with two cribs. They didn’t want to hurt any babies, so they put the cable ties loosely around the two sleeping toddlers, gently putting on the duct tape so as not to block their little noses…they weren’t going to suffocate anyone tonight…. they had much bigger plans.

There was only one room left. It was a room that took them by surprise as there were three kids and two adults in the king-sized bed. They took Franks lead and exited the room slowly. He told the other two to douse another two rags with the chloroform and that way they could immobilise three out of the five with ease, then the plan was to catch the other two before they woke up the neighbours.

Rags at the ready, and they were off. They entered the room again, but this time they could only find four people sleeping. Dr Finkle was missing. They immobilised the other four and just as they were about to leave the room, the door closed.

Dr Finkle was a great athlete. He had a black belt in karate…something that came in very useful here. With one kick, Carl lost his gun…. with another, Henry’s. The two unarmed men tried to advance to a place where they could subdue their opponent with chloroform, but Dr Finkle was good at his craft. He moved erratically, kicking or punching one of them with every pass until he had immobilized Carl with a kick to the groin and Henry with a sharp dig in the gut. And then there was one….

Frank pointed his gun, not at Dr Finkle, but to his wife, who was now awake screaming into her duct tape.

‘Make one move karate boy and I will kill your lovely wife here!’

Dr Finkle held up his hands in surrender, begging for Frank not to kill his beloved wife, the mother of his children, his best friend. He noticed that his eldest, Marcus, who was himself on his way to being a black belt in karate, was awake. Frank didn’t…. but Dr Finkle did.

As Dr Finkle tried to draw Franks attention away from the bodies in the bed, he knew that Marcus, who was also in the cub scouts, always carried his Swiss army knife with him where ever he went. Dr Finkle prayed that he hadn’t broken form and that he was cutting himself free as he spoke to the scumbag who intruded on his family.

He talked calmly to Frank, all the while making sure he could see his eldest in his peripheral vision. He turned Frank away from the bed so as he was now looking at the ensuite, his gun still pointed in the general direction of Mrs Finkle. Once he had him turned enough, he shouted, ‘NOW!!!’ to his eldest who grabbed the gun as Dr Finkle tried to immobilise his mortal enemy.

At this stage, the other two had regained their composure as Frank and Dr Finkle were fighting to the death. They noticed the older boy had a gun in his hand…Franks gun. They looked at each other as Frank ordered, ‘shoot him you idiots!’ before passing out from the chock hold he was under from Dr Finkle. Once Frank was out, Dr Finkle took the gun from his son and asked the other pair how they would like to play this?

They looked at each other and held their hands up and, after Marcus cut through the cable ties on his ankles, he put their own cable ties on them…tightly.

‘Watch it kid! Not so tight!’ Carl protested, so Marcus tightened them further still.

 

With all three bound and gagged, Dr Finkle went downstairs to the police man who they had subdued first and untied him. He immediately called it in and the front was covered with bright blue, flashing lights in no time. A van came and took the three men, who didn’t go easily, away. Dr Finkle high fived his son and they were alive with adrenaline. Once they had gotten the bad guys sorted, Marcus had gone around freeing his younger brothers and sisters from their shackles.

There they stood; Dr Finkle, his wife, and the seven kids on the front step, victorious as the van with the three Drug dealers who the Gardai had been looking for years drove off.

 

 

 

picture from pixabay