Authors: William Hutchison
Giovanni got into his car and typed the address to Blondie’s apartment into his GPS. He’d start there first. If he couldn’t make Blondie talk, he’d follow up on the leads at Charlies’.
Fifteen minutes later, Giovanni left the elevator on the sixth floor, walked down to Francis’ apartment, and pounded on the door.
Francis was inside watching the nightly news. Lester Holt, the new black newscaster who replaced Brian Williams, could be heard in the background.
“I’ll be right there,” Francis said as he went to the door to look through the peephole. He didn’t recognize the fat little Italian with a bad comb over.
“What do you want? I don’t know you,” Francis said still curious and a little annoyed.
Giovanni didn’t like his tone. He pulled the gun out from his sweatpants and fired at the deadbolt. It split in half and fell to the ground. Francis was moving away from the door when Giovanni shoved it open with his shoulder. The door offered no resistance to his 220 pounds. It flew open knocking Francis to the floor.
When Francis got up, he was staring into the barrel of Giovanni’s pistol. (This must be the person that Hans had warned him about earlier.) Two times in three days, he’d had a gun pulled on him. Maybe it was time to relocate.
“I’m going to give you five seconds to cooperate,” Giovanni said as he pulled back the slide on the pistol chambering a round. The metallic click sent shivers through Francis’s spine. He said nothing. All he could do was bob his head up and down in agreement. His head moved like a bobble head on a board when the car came to a screeching halt. His eyes were wild and wide with fear. He started sweating.
Giovanni leaned over and stared directly into Francis’s eyes. Francis could smell the garlic on his breath and in a whisper, Giovanni spoke softly and menacingly. “I need you to tell me where Randy Chappelle and Charlene Messenger are. I need to know it right now! If you don’t tell me, you’re not going to be able to say anything to anyone again because you’ll be dead. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Yes sir, perfectly…perfectly clear.” Francis stuttered. His voice was trembling. Tears were welling up in his eyes and began to run down his cheeks.” Francis was hyperventilating. He was terrified. He began to feel lightheaded.
“Okay. Now that you understand, tell me where Randy and Charlene are. He started counting backward from 5…4…
Giovanni didn’t even get to three when Francis blurted out through sobs,
“They aren’t in the city anymore. They left on a flight to Los Angeles yesterday. I ta ta took them to the airport in the morning.” He was stuttering and sobbing at the same time.
“Did they say where in LA they were going?” Giovanni pointed the gun between Francis’s bloodshot, tear-filled eyes.
Francis nodded. “Randy has a friend that lives in Hermosa Beach, California. His friend’s name is John Larson. That’s all I know. I don’t know where in Hermosa he lives. I know he said he was going to visit an old friend named John Larson, but nothing else. Honestly, man. That’s all I know. John Larson. Hermosa Beach. Larson, Hermosa Beach.”
Francis couldn’t catch his breath.
“Okay. I believe you. What’s this Larson look like?”
Francis, still shaking wracked his brain.
Giovanni held the gun to his Francis’s head again.
The cold steel of the barrel against his temple caused such a release of adrenaline; Francis recalled only one thing Randy had told him about his friend.
“He has red hair and freckles. That’s all I know.”
Giovanni stood up, put the gun down, turned and started to leave. However, before exiting, he stopped in the doorway abruptly, pointed the gun at Francis right knee and pulled the trigger.
The bullet shattered his kneecap. Blood and bits of bone splattered on the floor. Francis screamed out in agony
Giovanni put the gun back into his sweats and then pointed his finger at Francis. “Thank you for the information. I won’t be seeing you again.”
Francis grabbed his knee, rolled over on the floor and moaned in agony. He wouldn’t be playing tennis anymore, but he was thankful he was alive.
Giovanni got into the elevator and left as Francis desperately crawled to his cell phone and dialed 911.
Before leaving New York City, Randy closed his bank account and got out every dollar he had in the bank. That was $30,000 in cash. He didn’t know how long he was going to be in Los Angeles, but given the description of Giovanni by his friend, Larry, who was the bartender at Charlie’s, he knew he might be there an extended period. When Larry called Randy to warn him someone was looking for him, he gave Randy Giovanni’s complete backstory, even the rumor about Giovanni having rumored to have been blackmailed and Giovanni offing the guy who did it, burying him out in the desert between LA and Palm Springs.
Although Giovanni hadn’t been in New York for over ten years except for an occasional trip to help out Hans, his story had been told and retold by those who remembered him.
Bottom line: he was not the type of man anyone wanted to cross.
Randy got the message.
After Randy had cleared his bank account, Francis picked him and Charlene up at her apartment and drove them to LaGuardia.
Charlene didn’t need to go to the bank. She was in a constant state of being broke and had been supported by Randy for the past few months. She clung to his arm as an abalone clings to a rock.
He was her lifeline.
He was her sustenance.
Randy and Charlene arrived in Los Angeles in midafternoon. As soon as he was on the shuttle to the rent a car center, he called his friend, John Larson, to let him know they arrived safely.
He hung up the phone, and Charlene who had been listening to the one sided conversation asked, “So tell me again how long you’ve known John?”
In their haste to leave town, she wasn’t paying attention when he told her earlier. Charlene often did this: the not paying attention thing. She was into her own thoughts a lot and often didn’t hear when others were talking. Not that it was a problem for Randy.
It wasn’t.
He did the same thing, but not because he was into his own thoughts, he often tuned her out because he wasn’t interested in what she had to say. After so many failed relationships, he was able to do this compartmentalization very efficiently and left few little clues that he was doing so. He was a master at deception. Charlene was simply another bimbo to him, albeit at the present time, a special one that offered other benefits.
“Like I said earlier, we’ve been friends for a couple years,” Randy acknowledged half-heartedly.
His tone was clipped, but Charlene didn’t notice.
“He used to be a bartender at Charlie’s. He had a sister that was living in Southern California and she got sick and died. He went out to take care of her the last couple of months of her life and he never came back to the East Coast.
Charlene leaned forward. Her interest was piqued. “What did she die of?”
“An overdose, Charlene.
The chick was a mess. She was in way over her head with heroin addicts. She was trying to come clean. When John got the call, she was very sick and in rehab.
John went to her to help her through it.
Two weeks after she was released, she went right back to her old habits, and was found dead on the beach after a two-day party.”
“That’s horrible,” Charlene remembered the toll alcoholism had taken on her father and that she and her mother had had to push him down the stairs to end the abuse.
That memory was painful, but she felt no remorse for her father.
She did feel sorry for John’s sister, however.
“Yes, it’s awful. Drugs will fuck you up. That’s why the only drug I do is alcohol. John never came back here, but we kept in touch on and off over the last couple of years. He’s a good friend. I’m sure you’ll like him. When I spoke to him before we left, he said we could crash on his couch in Hermosa Beach.”
“Where’s that?”
“Like I told you before, Hermosa Beach is about eight miles south of the LA Airport. It’s an upscale beach community. Lots of young professionals who work in the studios in Manhattan Beach live there.”
“What does John do for work?”
“He’s doing the same thing he did back at Charlie’s. He’s a bartender at a place called the Hermosa Beach Yacht Club.”
“It sounds impressive.”
“Not really. It’s not as good as that. According to him, it’s a small little dive bar only two blocks from the beach in South Hermosa. It opens early and closes late. It has some regulars who walk there, drink all day and then stumble home. Anyway, I told him we were coming to visit, but I didn’t tell him why. I said we might be there a while and he didn’t have a problem with that. His girlfriend lives in Palos Verdes and he spends a lot of time up there at her house overlooking the ocean. He said we could stay as long as we want. He even offered to help us find jobs.”
“You mean real work?”
“Yes, Charlene. I mean real work. I’m out of the blackmailing business. It’s too dangerous.”
(He didn’t tell her about Giovanni’s past. Instead, he had told her he owed Giovanni money for a loan that he couldn’t pay and needed to leave. He wanted to shield her from the truth.)
Hearing this, Charlene bought his story in its entirety. Randy was never that good with money. That’s why he did what he did for a living, but the marginal benefits of him paying her bills out ruled her common sense. Had she thought about it for more than an instant, she could have seen through his charade, but, at the present moment, she was only concerned about her own well-being. Women who are desperate grab onto the first sure thing they can find, and that’s exactly what Charlene did.
She needed him and moved closer, grabbed his arm and kissed him. Maybe Randy was her knight in shining armor.
She could always hope.
The shuttle bus driver, an overweight black female in her forty’s smiled when she saw the couple embracing. It brought back memories of her when she was married and couldn’t wait for her old man Horace to get home.
He had died three years earlier and now all she had left were sweet memories. Still smiling, she pulled to a stop in front of the rental counter and opened the doors.
“You kids have fun in LA. Honeymoon? Vacation?” Not that it mattered to her. She was making small talk and remembering her husband, nothing more.
“It’s not like that,” John replied. “We came here to look for work and are staying at a friend’s house in Hermosa.”
“That’s where I met my husband,” She said wistfully.
The sentiment was lost on Charlene and John.
They exited the bus and got their car.
It was nearing dusk when Todd, Stephanie, and John pulled back into the Redondo Beach Harbor. During the lesson, Todd had gone down below to drink his vodka at least four times if not more. When you add that to the Bloody Marys he had on the way to Redondo from Marina Del Rey, he was feeling no pain as they slowly motored past the break wall. He had let both Stephanie and John drive the boat for the last two hours teaching them how to turn, drive in reverse, stop and point the sailboat into the wind. They would need to know all of these basic maneuvers before they took the boat out themselves. They needed to understand how the wind pushed Arachne around both under sail and under power.
Today’s lesson emphasized the under power part.
After they mastered that, Todd would teach them the more difficult “sailing” part.
Both students were well educated and picked up the basics quickly. After two hours, Todd felt confident in their ability to steer without hitting the rocks or another boat, something that rarely happened in all the years he had been teaching novices. (Lucky for him, because he was in no shape to steer the boat himself after he had so much to drink.)
As they rounded the Bell buoy outside the harbor, the bevy of seals barked as they passed. The king sea lion was still in his perch atop the buoy and fought off the younger pups as they tried to gain a warm spot out of the water.
“Okay, John, you’re going to take it into the slip. I think you can handle it,” Todd slurred.
John nodded in agreement and slowed the engine remembering the command “Red, Right Returning” as he guided Arachne between the center buoy and the red channel marker on his right.
The wind was coming from the mainland and was pushing them to port as they headed down the main channel towards their side tie slip which was all the way at the end of the harbor, about a quarter mile away. Arachne was slowly drifting away from the rocks near the Portofino when Todd grabbed the wheel and made a small correction to keep it centered in the channel.
“There. See how she’s responding to the wind? You’ll have to steer to starboard to compensate for what the wind is doing.” Todd turned the wheel to the right and Arachne veered back on course.
John observed and then took the wheel, letting the boat start to drift to port and slowly brought it back to starboard until it was motoring right down the channel.
“I see what you mean. It’s subtle. You have to pay attention.”
“Right,” Todd responded. “When the Santa Anna’s are not blowing, it will be different. When the wind is coming from offshore and blowing on shore, you’ll have to continuously steer more to port to keep it from drifting into the rocks. Always check the weather, but more importantly, look at the flags near the Harbor Patrol house.” Todd pointed to the right. The Spanish Stucco two-story mansion was home to the Harbor Patrol personnel that kept the harbor safe. A flagpole with an American Flag was right outside. “See how the flag is waving? It will tell you what the wind is doing. Use what you can.”
“Yeah, good point.” John studied the flag, which clearly indicated the wind was blowing from onshore out to sea. The flag was flying perpendicular to the channel.
“It’s easier if you take visual clues from the flags or the wind indicators on the sailboats. Unless you’ve sailed for a long time, trying to sense the wind any other way is difficult. Always look for other clues and then adjust accordingly.”
Stephanie was laying out on the bow and had loosened the top of her bikini. She was faced down not paying attention to either man.
Todd studied her bare back, casting lurid glances and thinking thoughts that were even more so.
John was watching everything and could see Todd was interested. “Okay buddy, keep your eyes on the prize.” He grinned as he thought to himself poor Todd doesn’t know what he’s getting into.
John did and Todd could have her for all he cared.
He was done. The only reason he wanted to learn to sail was to get rid of her.
As Arachne rounded the channel past the King Harbor Yacht Club, which was perched at the end of the Harbor, Todd reached over to the throttle, pushed it forward and added more power. The boat was slowing and about to stall because it had lost momentum due to the Santa Ana winds blowing directly up the channel.
They had just passed the Yacht Club docks and John noticed a big powerboat was about to pull out from a channel on the left. The captain wasn’t paying attention and was moving much too fast, obviously in a hurry to catch a sunset cruise with his guests, six bikini-clad babes with glasses of wine who lined the bow. The captain was watching them and didn’t even notice he was on a collision course for Arachne.
John spoke. “What do I do now?” as the powerboat continued to accelerate towards them.
Todd turned his head abruptly, forgetting Stephanie, and seeing the situation, jumped in front of John, grabbed the wheel and accelerated past the bow of the powerboat. Had he not taken this evasive measure, the Luhrs would have T-boned them, more than likely causing significant damage.
The rush of adrenalin counteracted his drunken state.
The girls on the bow of the powerboat were clueless. They only smiled and waved.
“Fucking idiot,” Todd thought as the powerboat passed his stern. He put Arachne in full reverse and stopped in mid-channel, turned and flipped off the powerboat’s captain.
“Get a fucking clue, asshole!” He yelled, pumping his hand and middle finger up and down to make his point.
The power boater heard him but didn’t turn around. He was still staring at his girls on deck.
He was in his own world.
Todd whistled and yelled again. “Hey asshole, next time watch what the fuck you’re doing. Just because you have a big boat doesn’t mean you own the road.” Todd flipped him off again.
“This is what I’m talking about, John,” Todd said. He had completely sobered up now. “You have to continually pay attention. A sailboat doesn’t stop on a dime like a car. This could have been a fucking disaster.”
Stephanie heard the commotion and stood up. She forgot her top was loose and it fell off as the power boater turned around to respond to Todd’s threat. When he saw Stephanie, his jaw dropped and he forgot about his six guests on the bow of his boat.
He waved and smiled. “Sorry about that,” he yelled back still ogling Stephanie. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
The powerboat owner was in his mid-30s and driving a half-million dollar boat.
Stephanie blew him a kiss and smiled. Perhaps he might be a possible candidate for later fun and games.
She wondered.
He blew her a kiss back as his boat continued down the channel at more than eight knots, three knots above the posted limit. At this speed, he’d need over fifty yards to stop.
It was a bad choice, to blow her a kiss instead of driving.
That twenty-second stare cost him thousands as the port side of the powerboat ripped into the seawall guarding the channel on his port side. The concrete wall cut into the side of the powerboat ripping off the rub rail and the bow station as the boat lurched forward.
The impact was so severe one of his guests, a cute brunette Latina in her mid-twenties, was thrown overboard by the impact and nearly caught between the hull and wall.
Had that happened, she would have been crushed.
Fortunately, the boat rub rail took the impact and slowed the momentum leaving enough space between the wall and the hull to keep that from happening. The captain immediately cut power and engaged his bow thrusters, which pushed the bow even farther from the wall saving the young girl’s life.
She was struggling to stay above water when one of the other nymphets threw out a life ring, which she grabbed for dear life.
Her friend walked toward the back of the boat dragging her through the water like a submerged rag doll until they got her to the swim step where she struggled to get aboard.
Todd was howling inside when he surveyed the damage to the powerboat. The entire rub rail was hanging from the port bow nearly touching the water. The stainless steel rails were bent and twisted as if some giant had grabbed a handful of stainless steel tubes and turned them into a macabre piece of modern art. Except it wasn’t art—not pretty at all--and it was going to cost him thousands to repair.
“Fucking asshole! It serves him right!” Todd exclaimed.
Stephanie, no longer topless, agreed and came back to the cockpit.
John was in shock at how close they came to being rammed. All the color leached from his cheeks. He looked like an Auschwitz victim. No color. No expression.
Todd saw the dismay on John’s face and wanted to diffuse the situation. “John it wasn’t your fault. You were doing everything right. You just need to be more aware of what’s going on in the harbor around you when you enter the narrow channel. It’s nothing on you. In fact, I was the one that screwed up. I should have been watching.” (What he was actually saying was, he should have been paying attention to where they were going and not ogling Stephanie like the power boater was ……Oh, well.)
He shifted his focus, trying to make a bad situation better now that he was sobered up.
“You see what I mean? You can’t come in under full power when you’re in this part of the harbor. There’s a five-mile-per-hour speed limit. You need to keep it under that, but you don’t want to go too slow. You need to keep making enough headway to make sure that you have control of the boat and the wind doesn’t have control of you. It will take practice. You’ll get it. You’re doing fine.”
John still felt stupid, but he understood. Todd was actually an excellent instructor.
They tied the boat up and made arrangements for the next sailing lesson and, as they were leaving the dock, Todd asked if he could do anything more for them.
Stephanie smiled coyly. “Not now, but maybe later.” Stephanie knew Todd was hammering down the booze, but he was cute and he was available.
She liked both.
It was a double win for her.
Todd knew exactly what she meant, but kept his interests hidden lest John get suspicious. He was, after all paying the bill.
(Little did he know John didn’t care what his bitchy wife did anyway. He’d be done with her in no time.)
Before John and Stephanie got into their car, Todd yelled out to them. “How about we meet for drinks at a little watering hole nearby?”
John hesitated but turned back at Stephanie, who agreed instantly.
He could use a drink after what happened in the channel.
John gave a thumb’s up and followed Todd to the Hermosa Beach Yacht Club, which was three blocks down the street.