The Incident (Chase Barnes Series Book 1) by John Montesano Page A
Authors: John Montesano
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commanding whisper with a deep sinister undertone. Talking the way I do sometimes the morning after a night of hard drinking. Raspy, worn out, and hung over.
I’d been out on my own for just a couple of days and wasn’t ready to carry my gun. I hadn’t held a gun since the incident and hoped that I’d never have to again. I continued my walk, a little more quickly this time. It didn’t take me very long to realize that Paterson must have a lot of people that needed their hair done. Nearly every corner on the block was occupied by either a beauty salon or a barbershop. Both serve the same function but apparently are gender specific.
Passing a store called, “G’s Spot,” I became very intrigued. I window shopped. It appeared to be a clothing store, not a sex shop as originally assumed. Very creative. A little further down I found the Passaic County Jail neatly tucked away, just like School 5, in the middle of Paterson’s social life. Another reason why Paterson deserves its reputation. I finally found a safe place to eat, “A Taste of Italy.” I ordered a pepperoni and a black olive slice and sat at a corner table facing the street. I grabbed a Snapple out of the refrigerator. School wasn’t out yet so the place was empty, which gave me a chance to run through everything I’d gathered so far on Esteban Machado.
I took out a pen from my pocket and began making notes on a brown paper napkin. I had: (1) Esteban into drugs?, (2) Crazy house/home life, (3) Older brother in jail for drugs, (4) Reported missing by mother, where’s dad? (5) Fights in school, (6) Klein shady? It was a longer list than I anticipated but it was still worth shit. Nothing connected or even casually intertwined the way I’d hoped they would. Javier, Esteban’s older brother, and Esteban’s incident reports at school indicating his knowledge and possible experience with drugs was the only possible connection I had. I kept attempting to convince myself that it’d only been a couple of days. But just a couple of days to me was an eternity to someone unwillingly on the lam like Esteban.
Then I thought about Klein, School 5’s principal, and whether or not he was putting up a façade, a show to hide something, or he was just that much of a douche bag and simply rubbed me the wrong way. I added another line under number six on my list, to pay Klein another visit.
TWENTY SEVEN
Esteban was tied to a chair with nylon rope intertwining his wrists behind him. The tough image had dissolved faster than an Alka- Seltzer in a glass of water. His street knowledge seemed to be outdone. His bullying impulses were no more. Esteban was in way over his head and he was finally starting to realize it. He was beginning to think this was one of those scared straight programs his mother and teachers kept talking about. A farce to get him to behave better but his mind wavered back and forth from fiction to reality.
He wasn’t sure if he was in some sort of cage but it was a dimly lit box. Dimensions and square footage weren’t Esteban’s motif so he had no idea how big the space was but started feeling claustrophobic. The space was empty except for the chair he was sitting in and the two thugs he was pretty sure were the ones who had picked him up from the baseball field last night. He had no idea if these were the same two that had originally snatched him up and chained him to the backstop or they were part of a small army.
Esteban didn’t remember getting from the parking lot of Checkers to where he was now. Last thing he recalled was lying on his back attempting to shake loose the ropes that bound his wrists. Then everything suddenly went blank. He watched the two guys talking to each other as they
I’d been out on my own for just a couple of days and wasn’t ready to carry my gun. I hadn’t held a gun since the incident and hoped that I’d never have to again. I continued my walk, a little more quickly this time. It didn’t take me very long to realize that Paterson must have a lot of people that needed their hair done. Nearly every corner on the block was occupied by either a beauty salon or a barbershop. Both serve the same function but apparently are gender specific.
Passing a store called, “G’s Spot,” I became very intrigued. I window shopped. It appeared to be a clothing store, not a sex shop as originally assumed. Very creative. A little further down I found the Passaic County Jail neatly tucked away, just like School 5, in the middle of Paterson’s social life. Another reason why Paterson deserves its reputation. I finally found a safe place to eat, “A Taste of Italy.” I ordered a pepperoni and a black olive slice and sat at a corner table facing the street. I grabbed a Snapple out of the refrigerator. School wasn’t out yet so the place was empty, which gave me a chance to run through everything I’d gathered so far on Esteban Machado.
I took out a pen from my pocket and began making notes on a brown paper napkin. I had: (1) Esteban into drugs?, (2) Crazy house/home life, (3) Older brother in jail for drugs, (4) Reported missing by mother, where’s dad? (5) Fights in school, (6) Klein shady? It was a longer list than I anticipated but it was still worth shit. Nothing connected or even casually intertwined the way I’d hoped they would. Javier, Esteban’s older brother, and Esteban’s incident reports at school indicating his knowledge and possible experience with drugs was the only possible connection I had. I kept attempting to convince myself that it’d only been a couple of days. But just a couple of days to me was an eternity to someone unwillingly on the lam like Esteban.
Then I thought about Klein, School 5’s principal, and whether or not he was putting up a façade, a show to hide something, or he was just that much of a douche bag and simply rubbed me the wrong way. I added another line under number six on my list, to pay Klein another visit.
TWENTY SEVEN
Esteban was tied to a chair with nylon rope intertwining his wrists behind him. The tough image had dissolved faster than an Alka- Seltzer in a glass of water. His street knowledge seemed to be outdone. His bullying impulses were no more. Esteban was in way over his head and he was finally starting to realize it. He was beginning to think this was one of those scared straight programs his mother and teachers kept talking about. A farce to get him to behave better but his mind wavered back and forth from fiction to reality.
He wasn’t sure if he was in some sort of cage but it was a dimly lit box. Dimensions and square footage weren’t Esteban’s motif so he had no idea how big the space was but started feeling claustrophobic. The space was empty except for the chair he was sitting in and the two thugs he was pretty sure were the ones who had picked him up from the baseball field last night. He had no idea if these were the same two that had originally snatched him up and chained him to the backstop or they were part of a small army.
Esteban didn’t remember getting from the parking lot of Checkers to where he was now. Last thing he recalled was lying on his back attempting to shake loose the ropes that bound his wrists. Then everything suddenly went blank. He watched the two guys talking to each other as they
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