Authors: William Hutchison
Giovanni picked up the phone and called Hans, who answered immediately.
“I take it you’re calling me to report that you found Charlene and Randy.” Hans waited on the other end for a response. His temper was short indicated by his clipped tone.
“Boss, I’ve been here for nine days. I had a lead they were living in Hermosa Beach with someone named John Larson. Do you know how many John Larson’s there are in the Hermosa/Manhattan Beach area? You probably don’t so let me tell you. There are 15. I went on Spokeo and did several reverse phone directory searches and found locations for all of them. I went to each of their homes and none of them knows anything about Charlene or Randy. It’s as if Larson vanished or never actually existed. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to hear any excuses. You have seven days to find them and take care of Randy. Bring Charlene back for me. We have unfinished business. If you don’t, you’re off the payroll. I mean it!”
Hans slammed the phone down damn near breaking it.
At this point, Giovanni wracked his brain.
Little did he know he was sitting at a bar just blocks from JR’s apartment.
A twenty-something server dressed in a very short kilt skirt came up to him. “Can I get you another beer?”
He was in a new bar that had opened recently. It was called, appropriately, the Twisted Kilt.
The bar, one of a chain, mainly followed the same marketing tactics that made Hooter’s a household name. It was rustic with all types of memorabilia hanging on the walls. Old black and white pictures of the beach area as it looked in the late 1920’s were seemingly randomly placed. Surfboards were hung from the ceiling along with old life vests and buoys enhancing the nautical beach theme. The wooden bar and barstools which were wrapped in two-inch rope like those used to secure tugboats to the dock added to the deliberate atmosphere the owner’s envisioned when designing it.
The old adage, build it and they will come was spot on—especially if you hired young, attractive, and voluptuous servers and dressed them in white, tight-fitting blouses, and short skirts.
In the beach area, concept bars come and go like the tide.
Some last only a month or two as the fickle and wealthy beach crowd sought out, found and rejected the new places abandoning them quickly for even new hipper spots.
The Tilted Kilt was established six months earlier, but it had survived that initial try-and-fly period and was now always packed with men who came for the hot wings.
(Yeah that’s right they came for the hot wings: NOT.)
Giovanni answered after a brief pause. “Sure bring me another Bud Light. I have to watch my figure,” he said jokingly as he patted his tummy.
She went to the bar and was back in seconds with his beer.
She noticed Giovanni seemed grumpy by the frown on his face.
It was her job to not let that happen. She pulled up a chair and sat next to him. He reminded her of her late uncle Tommy, who was Italian like she was.
“Why so down Mister?” She extended her hand and put it on top of his. “My name’s Lisa. What’s yours?” She reminded herself it was all part of the job. Make the patrons happy no matter what.
He looked into her brown eyes and saw his niece.
He opened up.
“Look I, I’m from Joisey. I’m here on a job and I’m not havin’ very much luck.” His accent was thick
“I suspected as much. You don’t look the beach type. What business brings you to Hermosa?”
Giovanni was normally cautious talking about what he did and why he did it. It served him well over the years, but this young thing in front of him so reminded him of his brother’s daughter he continued in spite of himself.
“My boss sent me here to find somebody named John Larson who owes him a lot of money. I’m sort of a debt collector if you catch my drift. But I’ve been here nine days and have nothing to show for it. I only have a week left, or I’m gonna get canned. I can’t afford that. I came to this bar to think things out.”
Lisa listened and the intonation Giovanni used so reminded her of her late Uncle Tommy, who was also from New Jersey, she felt compelled to help him.
“Look. I’ve been in Hermosa my whole life. I know people here. Maybe one of my friends knows this John Larson.”
As a long shot and totally out of character, Giovanni continued leaning forward, slugged his beer down and listened intently.
He had nothing to lose at this point.
He was grasping at straws.
Maybe this young thing in front of him was his ticket home.
Now his accent thickened. “OK, so’s this John Larson is in his thirties. He’s from back East and works as a bartender. My information says he came to California about two years ago. I’ve been in and out of the bars up-and-down the South Bay and nobody seems to know him. It’s like he’s a ghost.”
Lisa’s eyes widened. They certainly wouldn’t know anyone by that name because he hardly ever used his last name.
Everybody, including herself, knew him only as JR.
She knew him---intimately. They had dated for a short period of time eighteen months earlier after he first arrived. It had been a torrid affair, but they still kept in touch typically on her initiation because of their social ties to New Jersey and because she deeply cared for him.
“I do know someone named JR Larson, but I don’t know what JR stands for maybe it stands for John.”
She knew, but she intentionally lied.
If JR owed Giovanni’s boss money—enough for him to send this henchman all the way across the country to collect it—she had to lie to protect him.
It made her think JR was in some type of trouble and she couldn’t have that.
Maybe if she found out enough information, she could warn him, giving her one last chance to rekindle what she had lost.
Although, on the surface, Giovanni didn’t look dangerous, appearing to be more of an aging businessman with a bad comb-over than a thug, the more she studied him, the less sure she was of her initial avuncular assessment of him.
The fact he resembled her late uncle Tommy had clouded her judgment. She noticed a ragged two-inch scar over Giovanni’s left eye, which ran from his eyebrow up to his hairline, what little of it there was. He also had several scars on both hands. His knuckles seemed oversized as if they were broken and had mended several times over.
She could imagine how he got those.
She had never gotten over JR, although, she knew that he had moved on.
She was fearful for him and decided to get up and leave to warn him.
Maybe JR would fess up and be grateful.
She didn’t know.
What she did know was it was time to act and act quickly.
Giovanni was having none of it.
Before she could get up from the table, he removed his hand from hers, reversed it put his hand on top of hers and clenched it tightly; so tightly it hurt and kept her at the table.
He knew she knew something.
He was going to get it out of her one way or another.
He continued squeezing her hand, leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I’ll stop when you tell me where I can find him.
I know you know. I can see it in your eyes.”
Lisa’s hand felt like it was caught in a vice. If he continued squeezing, he’d break every bone in it.
Reluctantly and through tears, she gave him the address, after which he got up abruptly and left before Lisa could summon help and without paying his tab.
Lisa was on the phone to JR before Giovanni got out the door.
It was 2:30 in the afternoon and Giovanni had a slight buzz on after the two beers he had at the Tilted Kilt. He hustled to the parking structure, got into his car and left. Exiting the garage, he punched JR’s address into Google Maps and was at the apartment within five minutes.
He knocked on the door.
No one answered.
He put his ear to the door and listened.
Dead silence is all he heard. It was obvious no one was home.
Frustrated, he pulled out his wallet, got a credit card, slipped it in between the faceplate mounted to the door and the strike plate and wiggled it up and down while tugging on the doorknob. Because the apartment was old and the locks were equally so, the credit card allowed the latch bolt to be freed from the strike plate and the door opened quickly. He had used similar techniques several times before when breaking into homes in his younger days.
Giovanni entered the apartment, scanned the surroundings and saw evidence that more than one person lived there: two plates of half-eaten pancakes were on the dining room table. He went to the bedroom and saw panties lying on the unmade bed. He saw two toothbrushes on the sink in the adjoining bathroom.
The crown jewel was when he found a picture of Charlene and Randy taped on the wall next to the bed—a sweet, but an adolescent token, probably done by Charlene, to mark her spot.
Giovanni thought, “Not only did I find John Larson’s apartment, but I also found where Charlene and Randy live.”
He was now so close to his goal he could taste it. But no one was home.
He could wait for them and surprise them when they came in, but what if they had gone away for the weekend, or longer?
He might be sitting here for days.
No. That plan wasn’t good at all.
He had to go find them.
He could always return.
They had to come home sometime.
He started looking for any evidence where they might be: pulling out drawers in the bedroom, tearing through the closet and scattering piles of clothes on the floor.
He found nothing.
Finally, he went into the kitchen and found the trashcan under the sink. It reeked of the remnants of rotting fish Charlene and Randy had eaten two days prior. He wasn’t about to put his hands in that mess.
He picked up the can and emptied its contents on the kitchen floor.
Hallelujah!
In the pile, there was a slip of paper. It was covered in tartar sauce, but still legible. It was a pay stub from a place called the Hermosa Beach Yacht Club with Charlene Messenger’s name on it. Although there wasn’t an address, one quick Google search and Giovanni had it.
It was only 200 yards from where he was now.
He pulled his cellphone out and called Hans, eager to report progress.
Hans was still perturbed by the lack thereof. When he saw who was calling his blood pressure immediately elevated.
“Okay Gi, what have you got? It had better be good.”
“Boss, I met this chick at a bar in Hermosa Beach.”
Hans interrupted him. “I don’t want to hear about any girl you met in Hermosa Beach, Miami Beach or Rio. Now what the fuck do you have for me?”
Gi was hung up on wanting to tell his story. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. “Well, she looks like my niece.”
Hans interrupted again. “Screw your niece. I don’t care about her. What did you find out?” He’d been down this road before with Giovanni, who was so stupid if brains were dynamite he wouldn’t have enough to blow up a glass Christmas ornament.
Giovanni was taken aback, but his job was on the line. When he finally realized that, he got back on point. “Okay boss, this gal I met told me where John Larson lives. He didn’t go under the name of John. He went under his initials, JR Larson.”
“Go on.” Hans was becoming calmer. His heart rate was slowing and his blood pressure was dropping. (Giovanni could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.) But he didn’t hire him for his brainpower. He hired him for results and it looked like results were about to be forthcoming.
Giovanni continued. “Listen, I got the address five minutes ago and I thought I’d call you and let you know that I’m making progress finally. I’m in JR Larson’s apartment and I found a picture of Charlene and her pimp boyfriend, Randy. I also found a paystub in the trash. It has the name of the place Charlene works. It’s the Hermosa Beach Yacht Club and it’s only a block away. I called you to let you know I’m about to close this deal. I’ll go over there and if I see Charlene and Randy, I’ll take care of him first and bring her back to you afterwards. It will be a cake walk, like the old days.”
Hans listened but was still livid. “I’m not interested in progress. I’m interested in you finding the bitch and her pimp. Now get to work!”
Hans slammed the phone down again.
He was glad Giovanni was finally making progress, but he still hadn’t found them. Perhaps his threats made the difference. He was pleased with his management skills. (But then again, how hard is it to manage an ape?) Hans pushed that last thought out of his head and took credit for making things happen even though he was three thousand miles away.
Tiffany walked in wearing a low-cut, revealing white blouse and dropped some escrow papers on Hans’ desk.
She was stunning.
She had dark hair, which hung at shoulder length, a little turned up nose, small hands and 36DD breasts.
She stood five foot two.
She was, in a word, smoking-hot, which is why Hans hired her in the first place. It certainly wasn’t for her typing or filing skills, and she did know how to work the clients by simply being her own vivacious self, which disarmed even the toughest ones.
She was very, very good at that and over the two years she had worked for him, she had earned him a boatload of money.
She looked absolutely stunning today.
Hans had been with Tiffany several times before over the past two years. But their’s wasn’t a regular thing. They only got together on special occasions, such as when his investigation by the SEC was completed without any charges bein lodged against him.
That was two weeks earlier, and now he was feeling pretty good about his minion’s progress finding the little whore who had tried to blackmail him. He gathered the papers from his desk and put them into the filing cabinet, sat back into his chair and summoned Tiffany to his lap.
She acquiesced and he had her right there in the office.
Sometimes life is good.