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Willis’ Lucky Escape
by
Austin Mitchell
Willis woke up with a headache. He knew that it was after midnight because he had heard the National Anthem being played on the radio in an adjoining room. The room was dark and his hands and feet were bound. As he lay in the darkness he recollected what had happened earlier in the day. After dropping off a female passenger in Queensbury, he had been driving his taxi on Molynes Road when two men waved him down. It had been about two o’clock. They wanted to go to Papine. His first instinct had been to drive on but he remembered that he hadn’t made Bydie’s money yet. This was Friday and the man would want his money first thing tomorrow morning. One man came to sit beside him while the other one sat in the back.
They were on Hope Road when he found a knife sticking him
in his side.
“Hey guy, we’re going to show you which road to turn into. My brethren has his gun with him so don’t bother try anything.”
“It’s not my taxi this, brethren. It’s a man I’m driving it for.”
“All the better, we don’t like to take away anything from people like ourselves.”
Despite his pleas to the men, they took him to a lonely road in Meadowbrook Estate. They had tied his hands and feet and locked him in the car trunk. He was highly suspicious that he was in Portmore and that the men had gone on a robbery spree with his taxi.
Willis knew that when they returned, they were going to kill him. They would probably run the car with him in the trunk over a precipice. He felt weak, having not eaten since midday. They had taken away his cell phone, his wallet and all the money he had on him.
Willis wondered what Marlene was doing when she didn’t see him come home. He was normally home by eleven o’clock. He would eat his dinner before having a bath and going to bed. He had to be up by six o’clock or even earlier. His two children, ten year old Roger and six year old, Jassette, were bound to ask for him. Jassette, especially, never liked to go to her bed until he came home.
Willis heard voices and suspected that the men had returned. He hadn’t heard a car, maybe they had left it down the road.
The door to the room where he was, was kicked open and the light turned on.
“Who are you? The guys aren’t here, Vinny,” the man said.
“Who are you talking to, Bounce?” the man named Vinny asked.
“I found a man tied up.”
“I’ll soon be there,” Vinny replied.
A few seconds later,Vinny came into the room.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Willis remained silent. Who were these men, he wondered?
“Two men took away my taxi. They tied me up, left me in this room here. They said that when they returned they’re going to kill me.”
Willis was sure that the two men were armed. Both of them had their shirts out of their pants.
“We can’t do anything for you. You just have to wait on those men,” the man named Vinny said and left. The other man followed him. The room was again plunged into darkness.
Willis slumped back into a corner of the room. He wondered who this last set of men were. It seemed that there were enemies of his kidnappers.
One of his kidnappers had a distinct voice that he would recognize anywhere, Willis thought. It had a nasal drift to it. This was the man who had been in the back of the car. He also had a mole in his forehead. The other man, the one who had his knife sticking him in his side, had a huge knife mark on the right side of his face.
He missed his cell phone and knew that Marlene would have called it several times.
Reggae music was coming from at least two places. He suspected one of them to be Bam’s jerk pit over in Braeton.
It must be after one o’clock now, he thought. The second group of men had turned off the radio. Willis stretched out on his
back on the floor. He knew he would be killed once his kidnappers returned. Then he thought he heard voices.
The men had returned! He heard footsteps and then the lights were turned on.
“They kicked in the door, Coley,” one of the men said.
“Hey guy, anybody came here?” the other man asked.
“It must have been Bounce and Vinny, Cliffy,” Coley said.
“Let’s get out of here. How did they trail us here? They might have told other members of their gang where we are,”Cliffy warned.
Coley turned to Willis.
“Hey, guy we’re going to give you back your taxi. We’re going to drive you somewhere and leave you with it. We’re going to blindfold you. Do you know where you are?”
“No, I don’t know where I am,” Willis replied.
“He’s lying, remember it’s a taximan we’re dealing with. He knows everywhere in town,” Cliffy opined.
They locked him in the car trunk. They hadn’t bothered to blindfold him. He knew that there were two cars now. He was certain that the men were going to kill him.
They were driving for about a hour and a half when the car stopped. He was tense, waiting for one of the men to open the car
trunk. They opened the car trunk, but from his position he couldn’t tell where he was.
The men started pushing the car. He was sure they were pushing it over a gully. He shouted at them, but they paid him no mind. He felt the car rolling, then he himself rolling, and then the car plunged into water then everything went black!
***
A month later he was out of hospital, but walking on crutches. Six weeks later he could do away with the crutches. Bydie, whom he was driving the taxi for, said that he could get back his job. He said that the car had been written off. He told him that he was lucky as the river the car fell in was very shallow. He had been found the next morning by a farmer who had raised an alarm. He had been flung out of the trunk of the car and lay face down on the river bank. Villagers had untied him and took him to the top of the road where a car had taken him to the Linstead hospital. The next day he was transferred to the Spanish Town hospital.
Willis, not seeing any other alternatives, decided to resume driving as soon as possible. Marlene was fearful for him, but her job could not sustain them as she just worked at a nursing home and they had the two children to clothe, feed and send to school.
So Willis started driving again for Bydie, but he never forgot his ordeal. All his friends and colleagues said that he had been lucky. All the drivers on his route had each other’s cell phone number.
“One of the men had a nasal drift in his voice like that disc jockey, Linkman,” he told Marlene. This was the man called Coley, who had been at the back of the taxi. He also had a mole in his forehead. He hadn’t told any of the other drivers anything about the two men. Cliffy was the name of the other man who had been sitting beside him.
One day he was in the Clock Tower plaza in Half Way Tree when he heard two men talking. One of the men had the same nasal drift like one of his kidnappers. He took a quick look at the man. He had a mole in his forehead and had a flat top hairstyle. Willis knew he had to be brave. He didn’t see any policemen about the place. That was how the police were, they were never around when you needed them.
The next week Friday he was again in the same plaza when he spied the man. Willis saw a police party passing by and alerted them and they confronted the man.
“This guy must be a madman. I never took away any taxi for him,” the man protested when he was taken down to the Half Way Tree police station.
The man had no identification papers on him. He told the police that his name was Marvin West and that he was from Portland. He refused to say where in Portland he lived or what kind of work he did.
The next week Willis heard that another of the man’s cronies had been captured. Two weeks later he was called to an identification parade. Despite Marlene’s misgivings he went. It was the man with the telephone cut, Cliffy! He positively identified him. They held an identification parade for the man named Coley a week later. Willis went and was surprised, they had four men, two of them with a mole in their forehead. He had taken a good look at both Cliffy and Coley before they boarded his taxi. So like he had done with Cliffy he had no trouble identifying Coley.
Willis changed his route and began driving on another route. He has given the police a statement. He has heard that Cliffy was caught driving a stolen vehicle. He has also heard that documents belonging to the owner were found in the stolen car. He has heard that both men have been hit with several charges, including attempted murder, kidnapping and car stealing. He is prepared to go and give evidence against both men.The End. Austin’s blog: stredwick.blogspot.com