Da Mann

Da Mann(Anthony Colombo) It was getting late and my son wasn’t home yet. I was trying to watch the news but didn’t seem to be able to concentrate. Daniel is eighteen, a senior in high school. I know what you are thinking, eighteen and a senior. Yes, I graduated at seventeen like most normal people, but Daniel is far from normal. When he was a freshman, he was involved in a boating accident on a family picnic. The accident took the life of my wife and son Frederick and left Daniel near death in a medically induced coma for almost six months. It took another six months of rehab leaving him a year behind his classmates. Danial became a super student. he is the only reason I made it through the deaths of the hearts of my life.

Daniel had to struggle with classes and studies. Recovery left him partially handicapped both physically and mentally. He had to put in an “A” effort just to get a “C,” but he did it and his grades where so good that he earned a scholarship to UCLA. During his last year of High school he also worked a part time schedule to earn money to buy a car for use at UCLA since he would be moving away from home.

The phone rang and I jumped. The caller was my mother, she wanted to know if I had heard from Daniel. I had not but I began thinking of his first day. Carla was in hard labor for five hours. The doctor offered drugs, but she turned them down. Other women on the floor were screaming, cursing the doctors and their husbands. Carla only looked at me and smiled.
The doctor said, “it looks like this baby is Irish. I can see red hair.” Back then we didn’t know the sex of a baby until it was here.
Then it was over, he was here. I asked Carla, “what are you going to call him?”
“I think Daniel after your dad and David for my dad.” She saw a smile on my face and asked, “What’s that for?”
“You know you just named him Daniel D Mann, Right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well that makes him Da Mann!” and started laughing. I started calling him that right then and there,.
I looked at the clock and saw it was now 12:30 AM. The phone rang again. This time it was a male voice I did not recognize. He started by saying, ”Daniel is fine, but if you want him to stay that way, it will cost you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but I don’t have a lot of money.”
“You are a famous architect. You have enough.”
“Hay, I have a business. I am not Frank Lloyd Wright.”
“Ok, what can you get together in a couple hours?”
“I have 75,000 I can get tomorrow when the bank opens and a friend that I can hit up for 25,000 more. That, my take a little longer because I haven’t seen him for 2 weeks. I am not even sure he is still in this country.”
“I’ll call you at 11 AM tomorrow.”

I couldn’t sleep. At 8 AM I was on the phone. Richard Barlow answered on the second ring. He wanted to know what I needed the money for. I told him Daniel relapsed and needed more rehab. He is such a good friend; I didn’t have to say anything else.
At 11 AM the phone rang. The voice asked about the money. I told him I had $100,000 in cash. He told me that would do. He then told me where to take it so he could have it picked up. I asked about my son and was told he was fine. I then told him that I didn’t feel good about the drop site. We finally settled on a site inside the city limits where I told the caller I felt safe, he agreed, and we settled on 11 PM as the time for the drop. What he didn’t know, I felt safe because I knew the area very well.

I arrived early and sat in my car waiting for the appointed time. I saw his man’s car pull up stop. The driver turned off his head lights and sat in the dark watching. I then made my move as if I hadn’t seen a thing. I walked to the agreed upon spot and set the bundle down. I went back to my car. I turned the headlights on and drove to the corner all the while keeping an eye on my rear view mirror. As soon as I made the turn, I grabbed the hand break slowing the car to a stop without taillights. I had already removed the light from the fixture in the roof so there was no light when I opened the door.
At the corner I saw a figure crossing the street. Quietly and quickly I made my way back to the drop off point. I came up behind him and put my .380 caliber automatic pistol behind his left ear. He said, “you know this is going to cost you a son?”
“The way I see it, my son is already dead. What happens to you depends on what I find out from you. Now get to your feet and go into the door in front of you. Don’t, do anything stupid.”
The building he was going to enter was a warehouse owned by me. I walked him to a set of stairs at the rear of the main floor. When we got to the basement I had him sit in a chair and tied his hands behind him. “I am going to ask you just one question. What happens to you depends on your answer. Now, you can refuse to answer, or you can try to lie to me, but if you do you get a bullet. First one in the ankle. The next in the knee. The third in the hip, and if I still haven’t gotten what I want the fourth will be right here,” and I pointed the muzzle of my gun at his heart. “I hope you understood all that because I will not repeat it,” and I smiled.
I took a step back and aimed the gun at his ankle. I then said, “where is my son and how many of your friends are with him?”
He said, “that’s two…” He never finished. I fired, and the bullet tore into his ankle. He screamed and pushed back from the pain. The chair tipped over crushing his arm between the floor his body dislocating his shoulder.

I tipped his chair back up and waited for him to calm down. When he was as quiet as he was going to get, I said, “the AND, is a conjunction, it makes two thoughts one question. Now let me ask THE ONE QUESTION again, “where is my son AND how many of your friends are with him?” This time he was more responsive. He told me they were out on route 4, two miles past the quick stop and gas station. They were on an abandoned farm. They were in the barn. There was just one thing more to do. I calmed him down and told him to call. I said to tell them he had to change a tire. If they asked about his voice, he was to tell them he smashed a knuckle on a stuck lug nut. The phone call was to buy me some time.

The drive took just twenty minutes. I repeated the same maneuver as I did at the drop site. I snaked my way to the house. It was dark and empty. I moved around its sides until I saw the barn. There was a light on in it. I made my way over to the nearest wall and looked through the only window on this side of the building. It must have been the tack room but was empty now except for a cot. There was enough ambient light for me to see my son lying on that cot near the door to the main barn area. Just beyond the door was a table and two chairs with two men sitting on them.
I had the advantage. They were expecting someone, but not me. I went around to the front of the barn where the two large barn doors are located. I had my pistol in my hand and raised it as I pulled the door open. Since they were expecting a friend and not me, I was able to get the first shot off. The man sitting nearest me fell to the floor holding his arm. The second man stood so quickly that he almost tripped over the chair. It threw off his aim. So, when he fired twice the rounds went wide striking the floor and the door above my head. His shots startled me, and I fell backward. As I fell, I fired twice. One round struck the second man in the stomach and the other round hit him in the leg.

You might ask what the police were doing while all this was going on? They have what’s called a “shotspotter” system and it zeroed in on the area near my warehouse where they found the pickup man lying in the street with a bullet wound to his ankle. He couldn’t tell them about me without telling them about the kidnapping. As for the two men in the barn, the police got an anonymous tip about fireworks and found two gunshot victims. They had to figure out what to tell the police without giving away their part in a kidnapping. Suffice to say we never saw them again.

Ah, but what about the bullets? Right. The three men are still alive, and the police will recover the bullets. They will find out that all four came from the same gun. It would take some time and something very stupid on my part, but it was a possibility. Not a problem. San Francisco Police had one of their, get guns off the streets, drive. I was second in line. A police officer held his hand out and I handed him my gun and three magazines. He handed me two crisp new one hundred-dollar bills. Nowhere near the cost of the gun, but still, a nice day in Santa Cruz for me and Da Mann. Thanks fellows.