Four Fingers

Crime is a growth industry. Missing fingers are a mystery.

Four Fingers

Chunky Patty is part of our work team. She spells Patty with two ts which is annoying and absolutely wrong because one t would suffice in our estimation or should I say in my estimation as not to draw others into my opinions without permission at this or any other time. It was her habit to be late to our weekly Wednesday meetings. This was ill advised because anyone in our organization who did not arrive on time to work ended up missing permanently after their first infraction. Patty was significantly overweight. She wears black leather outfits to conceal that fact. She also has one eye. I never asked her about the missing one. I was happy for her that she still has useful vision in executing the missions assigned to her adequately.

Our boss is a stickler for punctuality. He insists on a strong, if not rock solid work ethic from his staff.  Being late carried with it heavy consequences. This rule if not adhered to with due diligence or anyone deviating from his few, ironclad, simple rules, would be eliminated. I do not mean fired. They would end up in the river riddled with bullets or simply disappear forever from the face of the earth.

We operate out of a very large vacant warehouse made of aluminum and copper. It is situated by a fast moving river in a remote wooded area of the state. (River and state names withheld for security reasons.) An office space, a medium sized wooden structure, was built inside the center of the warehouse where we can conduct our clandestine business. It is furnished with a large oval dark blue marble conference table with seven comfortable black leather swivel chairs. Gerard Stone, our leader, has his own private executive room connected to the meeting room. It is large enough to accommodate a work desk, a few chairs, a single bed and a private bath room.

The warehouse has a small kitchen area situated to the north end of the structure and a full bathroom to the south. Outside of those features the place is completely empty. There is one entrance door and one large motorized garage gate entrance to accommodate all of our cars. We all park inside to avoid detection from the outside world. There are no windows. The facility is strictly utilized exclusively for our operations planning.

Mr. Stone is a powerful individual in every sense; physically well built, strong, tall and wide. He is probably in his late fifties. Some might consider him to be somewhere between good looking to average depending on your views and dispositions on such matters. He is a towering figure over looking us with piercing black eyes that penetrate the soul, with the ability to see well into the future with dynamic ferocity and vision that surpasses the common man. He has a missing index finger on his left hand. More about that later.

He built his empire in the manufacturing and sales of illegal weapons and in metal commodities trading. As a side line business he runs a well organized hit man squad. We have one woman in the group, Chunky Patty, so perhaps we should refer to it as a hit persons squad to appear PC.

Gerard Stone hates his first and last name so we are instructed to refer to him as “Max.” or “Mr. Max.” Being that I am eighteen, the youngest member of the executive board and hit squad, I am relegated to the lowly position of observer in the proceedings. On this particular Wednesday only five of us were in attendance. Peter, one of our long term employees had been shot twice in the back of the head and once in the chest by some outside agents or subcontracted agency members for unknown reasons a couple of days ago. It was obvious that our man was ambushed by at least two individuals since he was shot from behind and from the front in his chest.

Max does not take such matters lightly. He instructed us to take our forces to the known crime families in our region to destroy as much property and take as much life as necessary to get our point across that we are unhappy with the way they conduct business.

We were not about to point fingers so we developed a scorched earth policy which meant the destruction of all our competitors and included considerable torture and death. We went after them with the full impact of our law. Mercy was nowhere to be found in that picture.

Naturally we picked up our cell phones almost simultaneously to contact our people when we learned the news about Peter and set the path of destruction in motion immediately.

I only had a small group of thirty five trained killers assigned to me since I was new to the organization. I had my people stop in their tracks to focus on and implement our strategy on this very important, very sensitive project. They were instructed to pick up high explosives and extra weapons to accomplish this task. It only took mere moments to get the names and addresses of businesses and home addresses of the targets we needed to touch. We were very well networked in the crime community, well informed, fully conversant of our competitors locations and weaknesses. We now live in the information age so it is vital to our interest, to our survival to be in the know, especially in our profession. For the most part they were soft targets one and all so we were met with little resistance.

By our next meeting we were less sad and more able to move forward with our normal activity. Ninety percent of our competition were removed from the equation, from business as usual. They were in a word devoid of life as a matter of fact. We could enjoy our lunch in peace at the hideout in the forest and talk about kinder, gentler items of interest. The river seemed to be moving faster than usual, raging on with many dead bodies, speeding along, bobbing like lumps of wood face down to who knows where and who cares as long as it does not interfere with our operations and organization.

There was still the matter of the missing index finger on the left hand of Mr. Max which disturbed me to no end. The fact that it was not there along with the other fingers puzzled me to no end. How could the absence of something so seemingly trivial and mundane cause such havoc with my psyche? It was always there or not there in front of me on display, haunting me at every turn, at every hour of the day and night. He seemed to not care or give thought to this strange condition. How did it become missing in the first place? Was it a punishment inflicted for a crime committed? Was he born without it? Did someone chop it off? Was there a medical or disease related issue? Did he remove it himself for some known or unknown reason? Was it a work related incident? The more I thought about it the more concerned I became. I could not sleep? I could not eat lunch at our weekly meetings with the others knowing that the finger was not there with us. I tried to position myself to the right of Max at the table so as to not be distracted from other pressing business related concerns.

It was not the same as Chunky Patty with the missing eye. She still had a perfectly good other eye, however if she loses that one she would not be able to function as well or at all for that matter since she needs that eye in our profession to pull the trigger with skill and accuracy from time to time in order to survive. After all, she is a large target herself and it is required of her to kill or be killed on those occasions when she is in the public's eye or under attack in any circumstance. In fact it is an imperative for her in this given occupation choice she has made to be on her game with an abundance of sight and precision. Being that crime is a growth industry we must all be on top of things. Murder and death are in high demand in legal and illegal circles these days.

Looking at Mr. Max on the other hand, he still has 9 fully functional fingers on his hands. (7 fingers, 2 thumbs if you want to get technical.) He could get by just fine with fewer of them than Patty could if she were to lose the one and only remaining optical source, which is part and parcel of her person and skill sets.

I can not be unfocused on that hand with the missing finger. It is like it is mocking me. My attention has never been drawn to his right hand with the five fingers. I never give that a thought. Why should I? What is there to fear or be concerned about a normal hand? What about a glove? Why does he not consider wearing a glove on that hand gone wrong?

In this day and age with advancements in medical, technological and science innovations, why this man of great stature and wealth does not resolve this condition effortlessly with some prosthetic or mechanical device is beyond me.

It is with great effort that I try to look Max directly in his eyes or at his full head of thick black hair when I am in his company but my vision inevitably gravitates downward towards the hand like magnets drawn to iron. Yes. The finger is still missing. It is still not there. Where could it be? Why should I care if it is there or not? Maybe there never was an index finger to begin with so there is nothing to think about in that regard. In the history of mankind, most people are born right handed. I know that Mr. Max is right handed. He writes with his right hand. He favors his right hand when using a spoon or fork to eat. He motions instructions to us with his right hand. His left hand, generally speaking, just sits there limp on the table or by his side but I know, even when it is not showing that something is amiss, something is wrong but I just can't put my finger on it.