Kidnapping

Five months earlier

Joshua Miller, known by his friends as Josh, married his wife, Lily, fourteen years ago. They were high school sweethearts and wed once Lily finished college at age twenty-one. Josh forewent college because academics were never his strong suit, and he decided to pay for his younger brother’s post-secondary education since their mother was unable to afford it. He took a job in construction after leaving high school, and though it was backbreaking and laborious, it was well within his skill set and he enjoyed it. He was able to put his brother through school and eventually, he and Lily bought their home in Alliston—a mid-sized farming town in Ontario.

It was at their new home where they connected with other young families like themselves. Their daughters, Daisy and Dahlia, who were ten and eight, were happy young girls involved in many extra-curricular activities. They attended an elementary school down the road with the other neighbourhood kids, which meant the parents had bonded over the endless number of fundraisers and spirit days. They were fortunate enough to find a “village” to raise their children.

Lily, who had always been a supportive wife, encouraged Josh to convert the basement of their home into a “man cave,” so he’d have a space to unwind after a long day at work. There were more Barbie cars and doll clothes than jerseys and dart boards, but at least he had the eighty-inch TV for movie or hockey game nights with the guys.

Josh’s three neighbourhood friends, Justin Peterson, Brendon Garcia, and Wesley Morris, were coming over to watch a movie since there were no exciting sports on for their weekly guys’ night. They agreed to watch an old mafia movie they were all big fans of. None of them had seen it for years, so it would still be interesting, but if they talked through it, everyone would still know what was going on—well, maybe not Justin—he didn’t know much.

Josh stood in the basement when he heard the doorbell ring, then his wife’s footsteps as she headed to welcome his guests. Within a moment, his three friends were standing in the basement with him, and he offered them each a drink. None of them were heavy drinkers, but they liked to partake a little during their Friday night gatherings.

After everyone greeted Josh and settled in, Justin started complaining about his wife, Scarlett. Together, they had a nine-year-old son, Oliver, and that was all they had in common. “I swear, guys, my wife is like a newspaper. New issue every day. Only difference is, I can’t toss them in the recycling and be done with it.”

“Why don’t you divorce her?” Brendon asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to call it quits for real. Ollie would be caught in the middle, and it gets messy.” Justin took a sip of his beer, appearing deep in thought, which was unlikely.

“Yeah, I get it. It’s expensive too.”

The three other men looked at Brendon, not surprised his take on the matter would come down to the cost. He was a notorious cheapskate.

After another fifteen minutes of repeating his wife’s complaints, Justin implored, “Let’s forget about the drama and get to the movie. There’s no problem some good old-fashioned mobsters can’t solve.”

The men remained silent for the first thirty minutes of the movie before Justin spoke up again. “Ollie said there was a kid napping at school the other day.”

“What? How did I not hear about it?” Morrie asked with wide eyes after choking back the drink he nearly spit out.

“It was no big deal. The teacher woke him up, and he got detention, but I guess everyone was teasing him,” Justin replied with a shoulder shrug.

Morrie heaved out a sigh. Kid napping, not a kidnapping. “Justin, you’re about as sharp as a bowling ball. Do you think before you speak?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Justin shook his head. “Bowling balls aren’t even sharp.”

“Exactly.” Morrie rolled his eyes—a frequent occurrence.

“Did you hear The Gadget Factory was robbed a few nights ago?” Brendon asked.

Morrie hesitated before clarifying, “As in burglarized, or a man named Rob walked in? With you guys, I can never tell.”

“No, three guys broke in sometime in the evening, tied up two employees, and stole whatever they could get their hands on. The news report didn’t say too much, but they made off with a lot, apparently,” Brendon explained. “Who would have thought? In our little town?”

“No kidding? I’ll have to look up the story. I haven’t heard anything.” Morrie drifted off into thought, concerned about a serious crime so close to home. The electronics store in question was less than a mile from their home in the opposite direction from the kids’ school.

“I didn’t hear anything about it either, but I heard sirens the other night. Makes sense if that’s what it was about.” Josh noted, since sirens in their area were uncommon. “Did they catch the guys?”

“Not last I heard. They’re still on the loose.” Brendon was unfazed by the potential danger as he never broke his focus on the massive TV. “They just said there were three men. One was very tall.”

“I don’t like the idea of some criminals running around our little town. I wish I could go all ‘Fat Tony’ on them.” Justin pushed out his non-existent gut.

“Who’s Fat Tony?” Josh asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s my gangster name. You know? Fat Tony.” Justin’s pupils threatened to escape the corners of his eyes as he glared at his friends from the left end of the sofa.

“Justin, you’re not even a little fat,” Brendon pointed out. He eyed his own dad bod he’d been perfecting for the better part of a decade, making him more qualified to be Fat Tony.

“That’s the beauty of it. It’s ironic. I’m a skinny, blond guy. Nobody would catch on that I was Fat Tony.” Justin shoved some salt and vinegar chips in his mouth.

“Right.” Morrie shook his head and stared at his friend for a moment, wondering how he found his way out of the womb. He probably needed a c-section because he got lost on his way to the birth canal.

“Morrie here can be ‘Whitey’, and Josh, you can be ‘Corky’,” Justin continued.

“Corky? Why would you call me Corky? And Morrie is Jamaican! We need better names than those. Like… I don’t know. But something else.”

“No. Ya see? It’s the perfect way to throw everyone off your trail. Irony.” Justin tapped his temple with his index finger. “Whitey is a great gangster name, like Whitey Bulger.”

“I’m pretty sure he was called whitey because of his hair. The name doesn’t really suit me, Justin.”

“Fat Tony.” Justin levelled Morrie with a glare. As nonsensical as the man could be, he was dead serious at that moment. “That’s why it’s ironic. Because it doesn’t fit you at all.”

“So why Corky?” The smile lines around Josh’s mouth and eyes deepened.

“Corky. From Corky Romano. He protects his family by playing both sides of the law.”

Wires were getting crossed and Josh’s face expressed the same level of confusion as the other men who were listening to Justin come up with gangster names. “I don’t think that’s ironic in this situation.”

“No, but it’s my favourite gangster movie.” Justin shrugged.

Josh and Morrie locked eyes with each other, exchanging their opinions without a word. Josh mouthed, ‘Corky?’

Morrie chuckled and returned, ‘Whitey?’

After a long tilt of his beer, Justin added, “Brendon can be ‘Scarface’, but we’ll call him ‘Scar’.”

“But I do have a scar.” Brendon pointed to his lower lip that was split in a skiing accident—an accident where he kicked himself in the lip with his ski.

Justin stared at Brendon, inspecting his minuscule scar. “Not a cool one. It’s still ironic.”

“Okay, so if we all have gangster names, what do we call our gang?” Josh asked with a glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Turf Posse. No, wait, Ghetto Gang.” Justin spewed off random names in between mouthfuls of chips.

“Fat Tony, we don’t live in the ghetto.” Morrie grumbled, tired of inspecting the back of his own head from all the eye-rolling he had been doing.

“Fine. What about The Block Band? No, I’ve got it. Suburban Watchdogs,” Justin declared.

“Yeah, Suburban Watchdogs,” agreed Josh. “I like it. Sounds like a cooler version of Neighbourhood Watch.”

“Fat Tony, Whitey, Corky, and Scar of the Suburban Watchdogs. Sounds like a rag-tag group of culturally confused misfits.” Morrie chuckled, picturing the mayhem that would come from assembling his friends to accomplish anything beyond beer drinking and arguing over sports. They couldn’t even arrange a bake sale.

“I don’t know what that means,” Justin replied, “but we’ll need uniforms.”

The other three men stared at Justin, unsure if he was serious. They had repeatedly overestimated the number of functioning brain cells he possessed, so one could never be sure.

“Uniforms?” Brendon asked, scrunching his nose.

“Yeah. Nothing obvious,” Justin replied. “We can’t be walking around in tailored suits; that would be too… what’s the word?”

Morrie waited for whatever stupid thing was about to come out of his neighbour’s mouth, but after a few seconds of watching the wheels spin in Justin’s head, he prompted him with some suggestions. “Suspicious? Uncomfortable?”

“No, expensive. Anyway, we need to find something so people take us seriously. Leave it to me. I’ll find the perfect solution.” Justin’s words never inspired much confidence. It really was a miracle when he got his trash to the curb on the right day.

Brendon cringed. “Let’s just pick something we all have already. I don’t want to spend money on something stupid.”

“You are the cheapest person I’ve ever met.” Morrie was always surprised by the extreme lengths Brendon would go to in order to save a dollar. There’s frugal, there’s cheap, and there’s Brendon.

“Nah, I don’t buy it,” Brendon replied. “Have you ever seen that cheapskate show on TV? Some guys pick anniversary gifts out of dumpsters.” He took a sip of beer, chasing it with a few chips, but squinting his eyes from the burn of the vinegar flavour. “They’re geniuses.”

“You want to give your wife a gift from a dumpster?” Morrie took a second to remind himself to stop being surprised by the nonsense he heard on Friday nights.

“No, I don’t have a death wish. I’d just rather buy something practical—like a dishwasher or an oil change. I don’t want to waste money on flowers and jewellery.” Brendon pointed at the TV, indicating the mafia member’s wives decked out in diamonds and furs.

Morrie shook his head. He thought about how lucky Brendon was for having a wife like Anna who put up with him. The woman gave him three beautiful children, and as far as Morrie could tell, she was a great wife and mother, all while working as an office administrator for a local diagnostics clinic. “Buddy, you know most people live and learn—you just live. Don’t you remember a couple of years back when you bought Anna the vacuum?”

Brendon leaned forward from his spot on the couch. “Hey, that was a Dyson! She should have been more appreciative!”

“I agree, man. Those things ain’t cheap.” Justin patted his friend on the shoulder to placate him. Of course, Justin would agree.

“You’re telling me. I had to save up my loyalty rewards for years to buy that for her. Then she had the nerve to hit me with the attachment. Now it just collects dust.”

Morrie couldn’t blame Anna for her reaction. “Women like romance sometimes. She deserves something to make her feel special.”

“Heck, I was trying. She’s always complaining about the mess left around. I thought it would help.”

Nope. Morrie decided it was not even worth continuing that conversation. It’s one thing if your wife asked for a vacuum, or you purchased it together, but buying one for an anniversary as an attempted romantic gesture was a bit presumptuous—and evidently dangerous. This was more evidence that these men were too different to team up for anything.

The men fell into another comfortable silence as they continued watching their movie. The incessant munching, gulping, and burping sounded like a symphony of bad manners, but they all focused on the cinematic masterpiece that depicted life in the American Mafia. It looked easy enough.

After the credits rolled and the men consumed every crumb of sustenance, they continued joking around about their newly formed “gang.” Well, three out of four of them viewed it as a joke. Justin appeared ready to go “Fat Tony” on anyone attempting to jaywalk. For some reason, he was really amped up by the idea.

After midnight, Josh saw his friends out since his wife and daughters were already in bed. The entire neighbourhood was dark and quiet. “All right guys, I’ll see you around.”

“G’night Watchdogs!” Justin pointed finger guns at everyone and acted like he was trying to win the Wild West.

Morrie again rolled his eyes. “Justin, I swear when I look into your eyes, I can see straight to the back of your skull.”

“Whitey, you make no sense, man.”

“Point proven. And stop calling me Whitey. Morrie, Wesley, even Wes is fine, but I’m no Whitey.”

“Irony, brother.” Justin tapped his head again as he winked at Morrie.

Morrie released an exasperated sigh. “Goodnight, guys. I’ll see you around.”

Everyone said their goodbyes and headed to their own homes for the night. Little did they know the very men who had terrorized their town just a few days prior would be back at it again very soon.