6.

Here's another story similar to the last one, but in an urban setting...

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"Jim Henderson and the Gangsters"

by

Maxwell G. Truethteller

[Copyright Maxwell G. Truethteller, 2025, all rights reserved]

One evening in the summer of 2014 Jim went to a Wifi cafe in the downtown area of the city where he lived. It was a local cafe that served food, drinks and had free Internet. Walking down the time-worn, narrow streets of this, the oldest part of the city, the most touristed, Jim eventually turned right into the cafe's brightly lit interior, where there was a moderate sized room, a new, trendy bar at the left and a dim passageway at the back that went to the kitchen and another room that opened onto a pedestrian mall, beyond which was the city's river.

Jim sat at a table in about the middle of the first room, hungry and looking forward to getting one of the cafe's excellent dinners. The waiter came up and Jim ordered an Italian dish and a draft beer. He said a few words to the waiter, Jim frequented this restaurant often and the staff knew him.

The place was in a very old building but had been nicely remodeled in recent years (by a new owner who was from Europe). "The new owner did a good job on remodeling," Jim thought, "now the place looks trendy and fashionable."

The waiter, a young fellow, a college student in the city, soon brought Jim's entree.

"Thanks, Bill, looks great," Jim said to him. Bill and his girlfriend Tina operated the cafe, Tina was the cashier and bartender while Bill handled the tables.

Jim chowed down on the dinner, which he thought was excellent--"They have a really good cook here," he said to himself.

After enjoying the chicken parmigiana dinner and the cold mug of beer Jim said a few more words to Bill and then brought out of a satchel a writing notebook and a pencil. He, an aspiring fiction writer and journalist, loved to write in cafes or coffeehouses and sometimes spent hours in them, his table often strewn with books, notebook, loose papers, etc. This evening he was working on a short story, as usual (he hadn't felt like trying the novel genre yet--he figured he'd know it when it was time to try that).

After a while Jim was engrossed in his work, forgetting the hustle and bustle of the cafe around him, its noise drowned out from awareness. But at one point, he looked up, when an unusually roucous group of men came into the cafe, about ten of them, all in one group. They all took up at a row of tables about fifteen feet away from where Jim was, tables against a wall of the cafe's dining room. They seemed, to Jim, kind of "disruptive" and maybe "ill mannered". But Jim payed them no more attention than that and went back to his work.

About ten minutes later, though, one of these fellows suddenly called out loudly across the room, in a kind of offensive tone. Jim looked up, wondering what these dudes were up to. But soon Jim realized that this guy was referring to him, and it seemed to be some kind of "smart remark".

Jim eyed the "smart remarker" suspiciously, trying to figure out what was going on, and decided to wait and see if he did anything else. In a minute or so, since this guy didn't say anything more, Jim went back to work, but keeping an eye on what appeared to be a sort of rowdy bunch, just in case they caused any trouble.

After a few minutes Jim sensed that this fellow who'd called out was "testing" him, to see what he, Jim, would do. "O.K., I get it," Jim thought, "this fellow's some kind of smart alec who's trying to get something started. O.K., if he wants to play that game, fine, I'll play it, and we'll see who wins."

Jim waited, and watched this bunch which he was starting to think might be some kind of "gang", as in organized crime. "Interesting," Jim said to himself as he sat back in his chair and watched them. He was waiting, giving them time, to decide whether they wanted to continue this confrontation or not. Then, after a few minutes, Bill the waiter came up to him and said, "Can you concentrate or are they bothering you?!" Jim just looked at Bill and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, "I don't know, let's just see what these dudes do, then take it from there, see what their intentions are".

Jim, from his small cafe table, observed these individuals some more. They'd turned their attention back to their dinner and weren't bothering anybody in the restaurant anymore. There was something kind of suspicious about them, all young men, and the one who'd called out, probably at Jim, wasn't 100% certain, seemed to be possibly the leader of the group, who, also, were of relatively short or moderate stature. Eventually Jim concluded that they were likely a criminal gang of some sort, probably involved in some sort of urban crime in the city--something like gambling, maybe. They reminded Jim of the "Penguin" in the 1960's Batman TV series, and his band of miscreants. Or, as Jim thought about it... the bunch of hoodlums in the movie Coogan's Bluff (1968) who Eastwood (as Arizona deputy Walt Coogan) battles throughout the movie, which takes place in New York City. That gang, in the movie, hangs out in a sort of working class pub in New York City--not that much different from the cafe Jim was in right then (and believe it or not, the hoodlums in Coogan's Bluff were also of sort of moderate stature).

"Maybe somebody's trying to tell me something, " Jim thought. "Truth is often stranger than fiction."

Jim figured he'd "put two and two together" and assume that these were definitely "hoods". They were definitely different from other people, "stood out"--and an air of being "up to no good" seemed to hang over them.

Then, surprisingly, after a while longer, they all stood up, payed their bill, and started out of the restaurant--the leader eyeing Jim warily and sort of anxiously as he walked out.

"He undoubtedly thinks I'm a cop," Jim thought. "Plain-clothes."

Jim watched the bunch as they hastily left. "Don't worry," he felt like saying. "I'm not after you."

A few months later Jim was back at this cafe, in the daytime. Bill was there, and Jim talked to him. Bill seemed glad to see Jim and Jim was glad to hear that there hadn't been any more trouble from those "goons" that Jim had--what other explanation could there be for it?--apparently run off.