Blessed are the Children

By Al Rennie

When two high school girls set out to establish their reputations within Riverview High Scool, they trip into the clutches of big city predators and simply disappear. The local police investigation has hit a wall. Public concern and outrage mount. The same thing is happening in other small towns surrounding the metro area with police investigations reaching the same unsatisfactory result. Acting Deputy Chief Jackson is desperate when he approaches Al with a personally dangerous proposition entirely outside of any known police protocol. Al agrees to ask Norm, his ex-cop friend from L.A. to work with him in an effort to shut down these vicious crimes. Assistance comes from a strange quarter. Jimmy Fair is a dying biker who - when he isn't in jail - occasionally works for Al. He offers to help. He can go where the deepest undercover cop can't. He does and the result...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Rennie
• Release date: Nov 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466113084

Al Rennie

I was born and raised in Toronto. I attended Upper Canada College before taking a degree at Queen's University. I have worked as a lifeguard for the Toronto Harbour Police, a youth worker for the Toronto YMCA, and an English teacher in Lakefield. I am married with two great daughters and an extended foster family. My interests include Maple Leaf hockey - this is our year - New England Patriot football and writing.

Book preview

Blessed are the Children

A novel by

Al Rennie

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Al Rennie

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Image Credit: Photographer – Michael Murray

Cover Credit: Rita Toews – probably the most caring and patient cover creator ever!

Formatting Credit: L.K. Campbell – just great!

Dedication

For my wife – Marsha

How does she do it?

A few Reader Responses to Clearwater Journals after it appeared on Free e-books.

(Rated Number Two on their Top Ten List of all genres with more than 11000 hits in eight weeks.)

What a riveting story with bouts of wry humor. Again Please. – Bruce

Excellent read with more twists and turns than a road through the mountains. Enjoyed every minute! – Kingstonbears

A really well written book. Loved it a bunch. Hope he does another soon. Maybe a series??? – Wa6ype

A truly fun read, great sense of humor and a good plot. I recommend this author with pleasure. – Evelyn

Excellent writing, fast paced, liked it a lot. – Toerien

Gripping story, believable characters. Would definitely recommend. Very well written. Thoroughly enjoyed it. – Rachel Caldicott

Put my life on hold until I finished it. Great read! You live the character’s emotions and you can’t be sure of the outcome until the last page. – Charles Hough

Could not put it down – Alta De Lang

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff…

—Holden Caulfield to his younger sister, Phoebe, in the J. D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye

Blessed are they who do justice, who constantly do what is right.

—Psalm 106:3

Note to Reader: This was my third attempt at writing with the purpose of becoming a published author in the traditional sense. It sat with a Canadian literary agent for a few years without getting published. I have edited and re-edited it to update the content. The tone is different than the Clearwater books because they were written for fun. In any case – enjoy!

—Al Rennie

Chapter 1

Pam and Michelle – We gotta do something!

It was a week before the new school year. The back-to-school shopping had been done although another trip to the mall during the Labour Day weekend was inevitable. They were teenage girls. The mall was their second home. Golf had long lost its appeal, and tennis was way too much like work. The expensive Junior Memberships their daddy’s had bought the little princesses were wasted – too bad – so sad oh um! Pam and Michelle, sixteen going on twenty-seven, were quite content to lazily loll in the hot afternoon sun beside the twenty by forty foot backyard pool Pam’s dad was so proud of. Mindless Rap music blared tunelessly from the CD player in the pool house set back from the concrete decking surrounding the pool. Glossy teen magazines, nail polish and remover, open chip bags and cans of Coke lay carelessly discarded around their thickly padded chaise lounges.

Wonder who our grade eleven teachers will be this semester? Michelle asked idly as she messaged some Hawaiian Tropic dark tanning lotion onto her tawny stomach. She then looked over at her new friend, Pam, who was reading – her lips moving as she worked through the words – some article about how to be popular with your peer group.

Don’t know; don’t care, replied Pam as she impatiently dropped the glossy magazine onto the cement deck. I don’t even want to go back after my horror show with the guys at Maxie’s last week. How could I know that weed would be so strong – I mean I was already half in the bag when I toked that grass. Shit, I still shake when I think about it. Puking everywhere over everybody! So gross! It said in that article that you got to be true to your own beliefs, and you can still be popular or something like that. That writer lady doesn’t live in our world; that’s for sure.

I’m not looking forward to going back to classes too much either, Michelle muttered as she watched a four foot black and white plastic whale wearing a soporific smile float by on the gleaming aqua blue surface of the pool.

Yeah, well you had an excuse for slapping Joey when he groped you. You hardly even know the guy.

Maybe, but now the guys call me the Frigidaire whatever that is supposed to mean – duh, like I knew he was going to put his hand down my pants.

We should think about doing something to establish our reps at school – at least different ones than we will have. If we don’t, it’s going to be one long boring unsocial year. It’s gotta be something to get us back in with the guys. You want to sit at home watching hockey every Friday and Saturday night? Don’t think so! I mean Francy had a party last Saturday night; we didn’t even get asked to go. What’s that all about? One screw up and all of a sudden, you’re like somebody’s toe jam.

What do you think we could do? asked Michelle uncertainly. Sometimes Pam worried her. There isn’t much that hasn’t been done by the guys we hang with. It would have to be pretty extreme – like way out there.

There’s got to be something. Something way, way out there – over the edge! But then we’ve got to be able to prove that we did it – whatever the hell it is – and we got to do it together – and soon.

No offence Pam, but I don’t think getting reps as junior dykes is what we want, Michelle giggled.

Pam shot her bud a withering look. I didn’t mean that together – not close to funny! and then she giggled to.

Don’t worry about it right now, we’ll think of something, Michelle said. You ready to go in the pool yet?

"No, I don’t want to get my hair wet – all that chlorine screws up the color. I’m bugging my dad to switch over to salt – it’s really neat. Let’s really think about how we can get solid with the guys and lose this totally unfair weenie rep we’ve got going for us right now.

For Pam and Michelle, their whole objective that night was so simple – very simple. They wanted an adventure, something that was wild and exciting, but true. What they were after was an incredible story of adventure, with appropriate proof, if possible, to impress their friends. Something so extreme and so entirely out there that their reps would be solid for the rest of their high school years – maybe even their lives. To show up drunk at a school dance on a Friday night, and throwing up in the girl’s washroom, possibly getting arrested and driven home by the cops and then suspended for three days was dismissed as too, been there – done that. Making out with a much older guy or even a black guy – once a really big no, no would barely earn an oh um anymore. No, this had to be really extreme, maybe even a little bit dangerous. What they had finally decided upon after almost a month of serious consideration, would euphemistically be called, in some of the more articulate teen circles, dangerous and gratuitous partying – risky business. In other more mature circles, their idea would be described as just plain stupid. But hey, these kids were young. Stupid for them was an everyday fact of life and not really a major or even an important consideration. If their scheme worked out the way they had planned, their reps would be solid forever. Every kid in their school and all the other schools in the town would know about them.

Actually, slumming was a pretty good description of what this adventure was all about and what they were doing here. They had already been refused service at four of the trendier bars in town. They were getting desperate. They had heard the old guy who ran this downtown bar would sometimes serve kids if the action happened to be slow. Wherever they finally could get served, they would put their plan into place. Drink some booze; meet some older guys – guys their parents would have a major hissy fit about – guys from the wild side. And maybe later, smoke some weed with them. No little high school weenies. Bikers would be okay, but they might get too rough – and dirty – young and handsome guys who knew how to dress like on the soaps would cut it, rich business guys would be better – and safer – musicians would be cool. Do the nasty – it would be like in the movies. Get it all captured on the Canon digital mini camera – or even Pam’s new android cell – as proof and wham – instant citywide celebrity. An older guy to them, and they had discussed this definition at some length, an older guy was anyone who had a G2 driver’s license and could buy beer legally.

You bring the condoms? Pam whispered to Michelle just as they were about to enter the bar.

Yeah, I swiped a few from the big bowl of them my brother keeps stashed in his room, Michelle replied as she paused to adjust her bra strap. They’re supposed to be really thin and lubricated. I saw an ad for them somewhere in one of the glossies. She wasn’t as sure of this as Pam, but she couldn’t let her friend know it. She was new to this town, and having come from Toronto early last spring, she was supposed to be more sophisticated than these country kids. Pam was the only one to become a friend since her family moved here, and that was only because they had both found themselves on the guy’s un-cool list this past summer.

Let’s go do it then, said Pam.

Both Pam and Michelle lived in the small central southern Ontario city called Riverview – an hour and a half drive north and east of Toronto. For some reason known only to them, the two youngsters imagined themselves as some new Canadian throwback variation of the old time Californian valley girls popularized in past low budget teen films and television sit/coms. For earning passing grades in almost all their grade ten courses, their parents had bought them, at insanely high cost, junior memberships at the only exclusive private golf and tennis club in the area. No slinging burgers and fries at the local McDonald’s or Burger King for these princesses. They both lived in the section of town that all the real estate agents often liked to refer to as the most desirable. Their parents were considered well off and floated with the social cream of the town. It was while Pam and Michelle were lying on the sun lounges in their tiny bikinis catching a few rays beside Pam’s backyard swimming pool that their need for an incredible rep had been conceived. The fact that they were used to drawing the attention of almost every adult male present at the golf club whenever they bothered to go there probably contributed something to the maturation of their notion.

On this night, almost a month later, the two young girls really had no business being here at all. For that matter, they should not have been here on any other night or in any other bar. They were both barely sixteen years old. They were both playing at being twenty-seven. They had fake I.D. that would fool no one. They both had all the physical attributes down strong enough to fool most near sighted bartenders. They had made certain that their make-up was applied effectively. Bi-weekly visits to exclusive big city beauty salons, like Bruce of Crescendo, and popular tanning studios, like Golden Glo had taken care of the appearance of maturity. They both were blessed with firm, trim tanned bodies – the very best any private fitness consultant could give them. In the case of the slender blond, Pam, who for a fifteenth birthday present from good old Mom and Dad, had gone from an A to a nicely filled C cup – just like Mom’s and as close to Brittany Spears as you could get – the physical and sexual appeal had gone off the scale. The transformation in breast size had happened during the course of a week early last summer with a little help from a Toronto plastic surgeon known for his willingness to do any medical procedure if the money was right. I mean it was what she wanted, her mother would rationalize to their friends. And now her body was enough to almost guarantee spontaneous ejaculations among her male peers. No, the physical was actually pretty convincing. Unfortunately, what betrayed both their maturity and their intellect were the behind the hand whispers and the childish little girl giggles.

The shabby old beer joint that they had entered was at the street level of the once famous and fashionable, but now ancient and decaying, Queen's Hotel. The old establishment had, in its day, actually been an important Riverview landmark that had gone to seed and was now waiting for demolition over the strenuous objections of the local historic society and its current owner. The Queen's was on Main Street in the older downtown core of Riverview. The core, as in many urban areas, was now rotted, but once, a century or more ago it had been the social and business hub of city's upper crust. Its decline had been as gradual and as irresistible as the erosion of a riverbed. In its current state, it was a worn out focal point in a ghetto slum made up of the old red brick and field stone mansions that had been divided and then subdivided into apartments and rooming flats inhabited by transient college students and welfare cases that no one cared about. No matter how much the old hotel had decayed, and it certainly had, there persisted a certain charm or elegance to this old building which had been at different times in its celebrated past: a stop-over for royalty, a ballroom for a multitude of fashionable New Year's Eve parties thrown by Riverview's wealthiest and most respected citizens, a coach stop, a traveller’s hotel, an upper end restaurant, and briefly, a courthouse during a long ago renovation made to the County Courthouse which was also now regarded as an historical site.

Before the wrecking ball descended, as it inevitably would thanks to the recent strong provincial urban renewal grants, the stately old hotel with its various blemishes, including its bar, had once again poked its name and picture into the public's consciousness for another moment of attention and scornful outrage. The most recent media attention – that is before the one involving Pam and Michelle – was generated when the owner, looking to bolster weekend receipts, had introduced strippers and lap dancers. The dancers arrived for the Thursday and Friday night trade as well as for Saturday afternoons and evenings to do their stuff to entertain a certain element of the male population in the Riverview area. They also did whatever was necessary to separate the men from as much of their money as they could. The guys were generally just looking for a fun time and were prepared to pay the inflated prices for whatever beer was on tap to view the female goodies on display. It all seemed to work well, and that allowed the old hotel to continue trucking on in spite of the morale outrage.

What had most recently created angry public demand for the demolition of the old hotel had nothing to do with the strippers, and everything to do with Michelle and Pam. On the particular night that the two girls wandered into the tap room of the Queen’s Hotel, the owner manager of the joint, had no idea of the problems that would follow them. If he had even a whiff of the trouble they would create for him and his drinking establishment in the weeks to come, he would have thrown those two under aged teenage girls out faster than three day old garbage. Instead, he let them walk in from the street and stand there quietly looking around in the dark of the smoke soaked decrepit saloon. And then it was too late.

There was little doubt that they must have smelled the beer and smoke and urine all badly mixed with the thick pungent ammonia deodorant that emanated from the direction of the washrooms in the back corner of the bar. That did not stop Pam and Michelle from moving to a small table near the back of the bar. The strippers were not present. The small stage was empty. It was only Wednesday.

The current owner manager of the Queen’s, was an elderly stooped Italian man named Tony Vespi, whose perpetually watery black eyes, like his bar, had seen better days. His remaining three claims to fame were his thick black Pistol Pete moustache that he carefully groomed every morning, his strippers/lap dancers who arrived on Thursday and stayed until early Sunday morning, and his cheap beer prices – the cheapest draft beer in town – Monday to Wednesday. He did not discriminate. It was well known that he didn’t check identification very closely. That had to be at the very least a part of the explanation that the old hotel had attracted the attention of two pampered girls who walked into it on this particular evening. Anyone off the street with a few coins could buy a draft beer or a cheap house wine if that was his or her preference. His indifference to regulations also explained his popularity and recent notoriety with the vigilant vice officers serving with the Riverview Police Department.

The newer, noisier and legally aware water-holes, which were more fashionable with the Dinks, Yuppies and just over twenty crowd with money to spend could be found in the assorted strip malls which lined Lansdowne Street to the south and Haskins Street to the north. Both areas had been farmer's fields when this old doll of a hotel, The Queen's, had been one of only two legitimate bars in the whole county.

Pam and Michelle, of course, didn't know this or would not have particularly cared if they had been told. No, school was back in and their reps stayed in the toilet. So this was their long awaited for forbidden night out – the night that they would make a reputation for themselves. Both sets of parents had been duped into believing that each of their teenage princesses was staying at the other's home overnight to study for a mid-term English examination. Tony, the old Pistol Pete bartender, had seen it all and was now bored with it all. These two bambinos were more than old enough to drink in the old country. What the hell! There were no cops around; it was a quiet night. Give them a thrill – one beer each and ask them to leave – they would have a story to tell to whomever cared, and he would have a few bucks that otherwise he wouldn't have had. So where's the harm in that. Everybody’s a winner.

The two darkly tanned athletic looking guys – looking very much like the late season wealthy cottagers who from time to time dropped in here – were passing the time of evening at a corner table nursing their iced club sodas. Both were young enough, handsome enough and narcissistic enough to be gay – and maybe they were. They had spotted the young stuff the moment teens had entered. What incredible good luck! This drink at the Queens was supposed to be a quiet prologue to the action planned for later that night – action they had enjoyed a number of times before in small towns like this one. They had a plan for the rest of the evening, but as the Arab pals of their boss might say, If Allah delivers you a gift, should you say no. Not at all; you should embrace those opportunities and give praise in Allah’s generosity. And these two kids, giggling at their small table and sipping draft beer were just perfect. The slender blond haired kid with the big boobs, barely contained by the tight powder blue blouse she was wearing would be incredibly popular. The boss himself would like her. Her dark haired friend, a little taller – with smaller but more natural breasts – would fill their bill in a lower range very nicely. Rocco would be pleased. The Arabs would be ecstatic.

The two good-looking men looked around. They didn't know anyone here and didn't want to. And if the old bartender wanted to try anything that would just be too bad for him.

The younger guy, probably a strong tennis player, was deeply tanned and would evoke in any one watching him the sense of a lean tough version of Brad Pitt meets Mickey Rourke. He was wearing an off white cotton tennis sweater, tied by its arms loosely around his neck, over a navy Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, faded blue jeans and scuffed white tennis shoes. He leaned towards his older pal and whispered something as he nodded in the direction of the two teenage girls. The pal was the young stud’s back up. Although older and more muscular, he was dressed identically to his younger companion except in place