The cellar

Carla was worried because Gordon and his kids had not arrived at the shelter as it was arranged. She went to the apartment from he was evicted and found the workers already demolishing the building. No trace of Gordon, his truck or brother Francis, the old Franciscan who volunteered to help him.

Her husband was a police officer, and she called him.

-You know, you can’t denounce a missing person if there is not some proof, or it has pass at least 48 hours, he told her.

-I know, Mike, but brother Francis would not disappear like this. In 60 years, he never failed to report to his superiors if he was going to be late to one of their reunions. And Gordon wanted a sure place for his kids. This is very strange and I need your help.

Reluctantly, Mike asked for some spare time at work and went to the marginal slump to ask some questions around the old building where Gordon had lived, and the foreman dismissed him violently. The police officer showed him his badge and a group of workers with hammers and other heavy tools surrounded him menacingly, so he had to call for help. Something suspicious was happening there, and he was not the kind of person who was going to let be intimidated by a group of thugs.

While he was waiting for backup, Mike went to tell her wife, who was observing from a nearby abandoned building, that she must get to a safe place because things were getting dangerous.

The rescue

-Shhh! Did you hear that?, said Carla.

-Yeah, It seems like the cry of a little kid, said Mike

-Seems to come from one of these low windows.

Mike broke the glass and yelled:”Police: there is someone there?”

A tiny voice said: Yes, the bad guys locked us in this cellar

-Is your dad with you?

-I think he’s asleep. They shot him and there was a lot of blood. I’m scared.

-I’m going to enter through the window. You wait for the police and call an ambulance, said Mike to Carla, before he began to slide through the little hole.

Mike found a dark, dusty room and a four-year-old kid on top of a table with a baby in his arms. On the floor there were the bodies of two men, the old Franciscan and the kids’ father, both bleeding, unconscious. They were alive, but barely. He tried the door and was locked and blocked from outside. He assisted the wounded and Gordon began to recover conscience.

-Are my kids alive?

-Yes, your boy is a hero.

-You have to go to my building. There were three men in suits hiding two corpses and bags of money. Brother Francis and I saw them when we returned to my flat to pick up something we forgot. Then they brought us here and shot us.

Silence. Waiting in the dark, it was like hours. He asked Carla to throw through the window her coat to cover the kids who were frozen, and he tried to keep warm Gordon with his coat and his body. The old Franciscan was almost dead. Finally, came the sound of many police alarms. One team went to the house and the other to liberate the prisoners in the cellar.

Carla arrived with the police. She embraced Mike and took care of the kids. She couldn’t believe the cruelty of the captors towards Gordon’s family, and took a last look at the tiny windows that had been their salvation and the beginning of the end for a gang of mobsters thanks to a brave kid.

FFFC 221