Posting Pictures

The tall, kind tuxedoed man did look rather pale while guiding Liam and Eve out from the night club. He knew Mr. Cantini well and thus had no good hopes for Liam and Eve’s departure out there on the street. At the point where he left them outside the entrance door, getting a last glimpse of their backs before the door closed between them, he felt both relieved and sad. Relieved as he had nothing to do with this anymore, but sad as somehow Liam and Eve had gotten to him, his conscious or his heart. They were like two innocent children who had been caught up in a situation with the wrong kind of guy. Anyway, he now just wanted this to be over with so everything could go back to normal again, whatever that was.

There was still a small line of people controlled by the doorman waiting to get in, but other people were spread out in the surroundings too, waiting for something else. There was no doubt that they were waiting for Liam and Eve’s departure, and when they showed up at the doorstep the activity in the air increased.

Mr. Cantini’s orders were clear: Eve’s money bag was to be nicked, and at this point things didn’t look too good for Liam and Eve getting home safely.

However, through the tube displays Tobias and Patrick could follow each and every one of Cantini’s men outside because they were marked, outlined in red. Liam and Eve were still marked with purple, and Patrick guessed that Liam in an initial stage of this setup had something to do with it.

As Liam and Eve moved down from the doorstep, some of the red-marked people started to flash. The closest one to them pretended to lean on a short decorative fence at the edge of the sidewalk just outside the club entrance, and he just happened to get entangled in it as Liam and Eve passed. His trousers had gotten hooked on one of the sharp pins sticking out, and somehow he just couldn’t get loose to nick Eve’s bag and run away. He really did try, but it all became too ridiculous with so many the people looking that he had to stop trying, just as Liam and Eve in their usual disorderly manner were passing. He stood there trying to look normal with his pants caught in this tiny fence.

Another man who had been standing in the shadows watching started to approach Liam and Eve from behind. But as they came out on the sidewalk they split, Liam to the left and Eve to the right, which confused him. Who to follow? After a few seconds’ thought: the money bag of course. But at that time both Liam and Eve had changed course, heading back to each other again, with the man now standing at the brink of the sidewalk close to where the queue ended. However, Liam and Eve didn’t stop to meet; they just passed each other with Eve jabbering, “Where, where?” in an incessant stream.

The man didn’t know what to do, and no one else did either because Liam and Eve’s direction seemed not to have been set yet. The man at the fence was still looking embarrassed and tangled, unmoving.

Liam and Eve passed each other a couple of times with Eve still jabbering, “Where, where?” and Liam silent and happy.

Eventually as they met for the fifth time, “There, there it is!” Eve exclaimed so that everyone could here, the people in the queue too.

Liam stopped, looking around himself.

“There, there it is! We go there,” Eve told him as she pushed him slightly in the side.

“There? Yes! I like ca…” he tried to say as Eve grabbed him by his jacket sleeve and dragged him with her down the sidewalk to the right.

Right, finally it was decided in what direction they were going, and the surrounding gang reassembled once more, as this was it. The man behind tried to follow as discreetly as possible, trying to open his vest as they left the people in the queue. For some reason his vest was buttoned up with all kinds of buttons here and there that he never before had taken any notice of. He just couldn’t get his gun out. When that option was out of the picture, he hurriedly tried to approach Eve and grab her bag to run away with it, but instead he stumbled and fell flat to the ground. His shoelace had gotten untied—in his haste he’d stepped on it.

Liam and Eve didn’t take any notice; they were fully focused to get “There” wherever that was.

A black limousine drew up beside them as they walked, but the men inside couldn’t get their car doors to open. They were very active trying, oh yes, but to no use. The limo drove beside them slowly for about a hundred feet with some cars passing from behind, until it happened to run into the back of a car parked by the sidewalk.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” someone was heard yelling from inside the car to the driver.

“I DON’T KNOW, IT WASN’T ME!” was the answer from the driver.

Another black car came up from behind, as Liam and Eve proceeded their walk taking no notice, but as it slowed beside them it was hit in the back by yet another car from behind that was driving faster, unaware of the snail’s pace of the crowd focused on Liam and Eve.

Liam and Eve still took no notice of all the fuss surrounding them, as if they were fully concentrated on their task to get “There.”

After about six hundred feet “There” it was.

A blue mailbox: one of those old iron metal mailboxes standing like a monument from ancient times, and there was this big bold text engraved in it.

“Picture Post,” it said.

“There, there it is!” Eve jabbered pointing.

Even though they’d left many people behind in disarray, there were still some people following and observing their every move. As Liam and Eve got to the mailbox, Eve was just too short to reach up to it, so one by one she handed Liam the fully stuffed money envelopes with just a picture of a building on them, and one by one, fully visible to all watching, he threw them all in.

“There,” Eve said, without repeating herself.

As that was done, Eve pointed Liam back to the night club, and in pretty much the same manner as they got to the mailbox they went back again. All the surrounding people watching didn’t know what to do. Eve’s knitted bag had been emptied of its contents; what were they supposed to follow now?

Liam and Eve passed the black car that was smashed in the back with the now many more people out on the street arguing, but their arguing stopped, as if they were all surprised at seeing those two heading back to the night club. But Liam and Eve took no notice, content that they had fulfilled their task and nothing could stir that away.

They passed the limo and its still locked-in men shouting at each other. But too, their yelling stopped, and the driver once again tried to start the car to get them out of there. But wasn’t there this chugging sound remarkably similar to a boisterous chicken coop coming from under the hood? And, yes, wasn’t there also these pig grunts coming from the exhaust pipe when the engine misfired? But Liam and Eve took no notice.

They met the man who had fallen behind them, but he was now standing up straight again, having tied his shoelace, but he like the others didn’t know what to do seeing them coming back.

The man entangled with the fence was gone, but a big piece of his trousers was hanging sadly.

Well, now outside Mr. Cantini’s night club again, Eve went a bit out in the street and waved like she was trying to get a cab. And strangely, like from nowhere, a cab showed up, pulled over, and pick them both up.

Mr. Cantini was furious when he heard the story of how Liam and Eve had escaped. Their taxi had been followed all right, but there were these small incidents that put each follower off the trail. One car ran out of gas, another got run over by a bus, and the third one just happened to lose its steering wheel right when the cab was turning around a block.

“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!” Mr. Cantini was yelling at his men. “CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT?”

No one assembled in a back room of the night club said anything, especially not the guy with the ripped trousers.

“THERE WERE THIRTY OF YOU OUT THERE—WHY ON EARTH CAN’T YOU JUST GRAB THESE TWO NITWITS—WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE EASIER THAN THAT?”

“They took a cab,” said a small voice.

Mr. Cantini lowered his voice, “All right, they took a cab. What was the license number of that cab, if I may ask?”

“We don’t know; there was a picture on the license plate instead of a number,” another small voice explained.

“It was a picture cab,” yet a third, clever voice chimed in.

Mr. Cantini could have exploded there and then, but he tried to his best to calm himself.

“So, what picture did the license plate have, and what kind of company runs picture cabs, if I may ask?”

There was a moment of mumbling among the assembled people before one of them spoke.

“It was a picture of a garage on the plate, and there were pictures of buildings all over the cab,” he proudly exclaimed, with all the others backing him up by nodding.

“ARE YOU CRAZY OR WHAT? HOW THE HELL CAN WE LOCATE THAT CAR BY A SILLY PICTURE OF A COMMON GARAGE? DOES ANYONE HERE HAVE ACCESS TO SUCH A PICTURE REGISTER? WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE SUCH A GARAGE, HUH?”

No one had heard of a garage picture register before, and no one would recognize the garage or the buildings, so they all shook their heads sadly.

Mr. Cantini called for that tall handsome tuxedoed man who had guided Liam and Eve throughout their visit at the night club, and he asked him if he knew where these people came from or where they lived. The tuxedoed man shook his head.

“I couldn’t communicate with them. I guess no one could,” he answered.

“But we got the money,” a clever voice was heard.

There were a few seconds of silence, like everyone was expecting to hear a small “hurray” from Mr. Cantini, expecting or at least hoping for everything to be forgiven.

“Right! WHERE THE HELL IS IT—WHERE IS MY MONEY? DO I HAVE IT HERE IN MY HAND?” Mr. Cantini yelled.

Yet another couple of seconds of silence passed with everyone looking at each other.

“It’s in the box,” one then said.

“Yeah, it’s in the mailbox,” another one fell in.

“WHAT THE HELL IS MY MONEY DOING IN A MAILBOX?”

“They mailed it,” a third voice explained.

“Yeah, I saw it,” a fourth voice verified.

“Picture Post it said on the mailbox,” yet another clever voice proudly added.

That did it. Mr. Cantini exploded, yelling his heart out, and he was close to getting his automatic rifle out to further emphasize his dislike of his men and their failure. This stupid picture talk that no one could verify anything from just made him go berserk.

The meeting was adjourned like nobody ever after would want to bring the issue up again. But a main question still remained: the money in the picture mailbox and what was going to happen to it

Liam and Eve arrived safely back home in their picture cab; it was the same cab and driver that drove them there in the first place. One of the first to welcome all three home, cab driver included, was Patrick. He hugged Eve for a long time and then Liam, and he told him how awesome he was.

“I like… awesome,” Liam proudly repeated back, smiling.

The cab driver got his share too, and Patrick felt relieved that everything had gone so well.

The money had been picked out from the mailbox through a tube display without any one of Cantini’s team noticing. How they try to conquer that picture mailbox is yet to follow; Tobias explained to Patrick that his teammates would make that a challenging task.

What seemed like a game at first was not, and Patrick knew it. How he knew it he wasn’t quite sure, but that scam out there was for real, and even with backup it took quite some courage for Eve and Liam to perform like they did. Regardless of who they are, what they look like, or their handicap, Liam, Eve and the cab driver had done something most other people wouldn’t even dream of doing, and Patrick emitted his full admiration through his welcoming hugs.

Tobias was there too, but not so much in the forefront as Patrick, and he enjoyed the sight. He was thinking about having been told that there was something about Patrick, that he was special. The fact that it was Mr. Green himself who had said so made him stand out, and to an extent Tobias could see that now.

The full outcome of this whole setup with Mr. Cantini was yet to come, but that was postponed for the night. It was late now, and after a small welcome-home party it was time for bed. Tobias brought Patrick with him up to his apartment, where his son’s room had been prepared for Patrick. There was no doubt that Patrick was happy now, and on the way to the apartment it was like he couldn’t stop asking and talking, something he never had done before.

But the late hour finally took its toll, and Patrick fell asleep in a bed, between clean sheets, which he hardly knew existed before.

Tobias stayed up a bit longer; it had been an exiting day for him, too, and he needed a moment by himself. He had lived a long time with these people whom society had regarded as useless and less intelligent than normal people and whom it had rejected. He had seen their variety and how they could bloom when taken seriously. Patrick was for sure one of them, even though not obviously handicapped, but he was different. How, or in what way he differed, Tobias was not sure of. That was something to be discovered, as his task regarding Patrick was not over yet.

Next Tobias was to prepare Patrick to go to Skyjland with him and to tell him the story.

…