Chase to the Encore

by P G Loiselle

  Take care.

  Mickey.’”

  Amy leaned back, stretched up her arms and groaned. “Over a million bucks in there. Worthless shit, of course. I hid the bag and forgot about it. When I got wind of the checks being cut this morning, I knew what I had to do.”

  “A cool million,” Stevie said as if he was impressed.

  “Monopoly money,” I said to him and turned back towards Amy. “How’d you know about the checks? I didn’t tell a soul.”

  “Paid a ton of money to some shady private investigator to dig up dirt on Stone. He also bugged Carney’s office for me. When I realized that Stone was there, I listened in. Everyone thought I was only listening to music on my Walkman like always.”

  “Come on. You had his office bugged, thinking that this Stone character would be there someday?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “By the way, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but what did Carney mean with banks and sharks? And what porn picture of you?”

  “Oh, the picture. Some unknown jerk must have taken it when I was at the Foxy Lady with Dale and Stevie, to get our minds off Scheister. Pretty innocent, really. The rest was just bullshit,” I said, not divulging the loan I got from the scam artists Carney set me up with to fund the Warrior Songs LP. “Let’s get back to that Stone guy.”

  “Those hoe bags will make your jimmy fall off if you’re not careful.”

  “Stone, Amy.”

  “You’re a big boy, Luke. Just saying. Anyway, who controls Far Out? Who were the checks made out to? Who should have gotten all the company’s money?”

  “HJ Enterprises?” I stood up and opened my eyes wide. “They own Far Out?”

  “Whether they own it or only control it is the big question. But what do you think the J stands for?” She didn’t even wait for me to answer. “You guessed it, Joey. Still no idea what the H stands for. The PI’s still working on it.” She rose with clenched fists as if she was pleading with me. “Why do you think I work for that piece of poo Carney in the first place? One reason only: Justice with a capital J.”

  It was all too much for me. My brain needed time to process all this information. I felt my face sag.

  “Luke, you’re like the only person who makes it even tolerable to be there in the first place,” she said and leaned over to ruffle up my hair. “Without you to bust balls and goof around with, I’d have gone ballistic already.”

  I smiled, indicating my understanding. Amy or no Amy, I’d leave that job in a heartbeat if Stevie’s dad wasn’t cosigner on the mortgage, and I didn’t owe those loan sharks so much dough. How could I possibly chance not getting a new job, going belly up and having Mr. Jameson stuck with the tab?

  “Ok, let’s get back to the story,” I said. “I cut the checks and you found out. How’d you get the money?”

  “Yeah, how’d you get the money,” Stevie repeated, apparently thinking my same thoughts.

  “You always tease me about the jerks I date, Luke, but some of them come in handy. One of my ex-boyfriends, a conceited asshole but hot and I love him to death, he’s manager at Cranston Credit Union

  “Where Far Out keeps their bank accounts,” I said.

  “Right. And after you cut the checks, Carney called the bank to make sure they had enough moolah to pay out. And I listened in. It sounded like the million would be picked up at four. The instant Carney hung up, I rang my ex and arranged to meet him in his office at three. I raced home, grabbed the funny money and made it right on time. I begged and pleaded for my ex to switch the real cash for the fake stuff. At first, he refused, so I was forced to offer some additional incentives he couldn’t refuse. And he did it, somehow. When Stone’s bag boys came to pick up the dough, they counted it and didn’t notice a thing. I waited in the wings for them to leave and snatched the real million my guy left in the dumpster in a garbage bag. When they brought the money to Stone, he must have realized that the worthless paper was his handiwork. They all went back to the bank to find out what happened. Stone and Carney must have been there too. They argued for hours, and my guy offered to call the police several times so they could investigate. It must have been Stone that refused and freaked out. At some point, he left in a steaming huff and took his entourage with him.”

  “How do you know all of this? You couldn’t have been there,”

  I said.

  “Had a little rendezvous with my ex after all was said and done, to settle up on my end of the bargain. He told me what went down in the bank and was surprised I had it in me to pull off a caper like that. I told him, like I told you, that it wasn’t about the money and gave him enough good reasons to keep his mouth shut about it.”

  “Like in the movies,” Stevie said, jaw wide open.

  “Snap out of it, boner boy,” I said to him. “We need to come up with a plan and quick. If they could find me at The Corner, it’s not going to take them long to find us here. Amy, where’s the money?”

  She handed me a backpack.

  “We can’t keep it in here. Let’s put it in something else.” I looked around the room and it hit me. “Stevie, empty out that old guitar case.”

  “My road case? What’re you going to do with that?”

  “What do you think? Hide the loot, of course. A backpack’s too obvious. They wouldn’t think twice about checking it. But a guitarist carrying around a guitar case?”

  “Grand plan,” Stevie said, patronizing me.

  “That’s no plan,” Amy said. “That’s a storage place. What do we do after that? My detective promised a smoking gun but hasn’t even delivered a smoldering cigarette butt.”

  “Slow down, Amy. First, we need to get you and the money to a safe location. But where? Have any friends who can help?”

  “Could go to Rocco’s house, another ex-boyfriend, and zip it about his name. He lives in a high-class bachelor pad in North Providence. I’m sure he’d take me in for a while.”

  “How safe is that?” I asked, grinning because of his name.

  “Safer than with my other ex from the bank.”

  We all agreed on Rocco’s since there was nowhere else to go. The question was how to get her there in one piece? It was already 2:00 a.m., and a night drive would be too daring. We thought it best to get some shuteye and make our move in the early morning, hoping that an oracle would appear to one of us in a dream and guide us on the right path. And seeing that didn’t have a chance of happening, we’d at least have been a little rested and could think clearer.

  We awoke at dawn and first wanted to test whether they were onto Stevie. It only took a coffee run to Dunkin Donuts to prove he was being followed. I figured they’d still be staking out my house too and hoped they hadn’t already forced their way in. We had to give them the slip but in a way that wouldn’t make us look guilty. We also needed to convince them that we had nothing to do with suspect number one, Amy. The plan was for me to book it home, change, go directly out the front door and head straight to Best Breakfast. Stevie should meet me at the diner an hour later, and we’d lose them from there, somehow.

  Amy started off with me and the guitar case. Like the night before, we ducked through shrub-laden fields and leafy groves and hid behind any static object big enough to conceal us. She stowed away in a fort some kids built in the woods near my house off a one-way street. We aimed to pick her up at noon. By that time, she should be waiting close to the road, veiled by the greenery, and hang tight for our signal. Again, I proceeded to cut through the neighbors’ yards, blending into the landscape, and snuck into my own back door, case in hand.

  After the quickest shower and shave ever, I grabbed my old Sears and Roebuck guitar, which was ripe for the junkpile, crammed it in the case and walked out the front. With the garage open, I placed the case in the back seat of the car so it was upright at a slant. As I reversed out of the driveway, a black sedan drove in front of the entrance and block
ed the way. It could only have been Stone’s goons. I got out of the Beast and approached the two fellows, who looked like they were there to repossess my TV because of nonpayment.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, even though I really wanted to hurt them instead.

  They looked at each other, laughing, and then back at me. “You want to help us?” the balding, pudgy half of the duo said to me and stuffed his meaty babyface so close to mine our noses almost touched. “Yeah, you can help us. There was a gentleman who you talked to yesterday about some missing property. You remember that, right?”

  I retreated two steps, but he followed, so I accepted his invasion into my personal space as part of the game. “How could I forget? It was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. Like I said to him, I’m only the bean counter, and I’d be happy to sit down with him and Mr. Carney to see if I could find the problem. I wrote the checks, nothing more. And I know that there was enough money to cover it. I confirmed it myself.”

  “You confirmed it yourself, eh?”

  The other guy didn’t speak, only guffawed like a mental case. There was about a minute of crazy laughter while the two goggled at each other. The baby-faced talker finally silenced his partner with a slight gesture of his eyebrows and proceeded with the inquisition.

  “So, what you got in the car, eh?”

  “Lots of things, I guess.”

  “Lots of things you say, wise ass. Mind if we take a look?”

  “Well, yes, I would mind actually and...”

  “It wasn’t a question. Rodney, check the car.”

  Rodney, the dim looking one, started rummaging through my stuff. He searched over, under and everywhere in between. There was almost no place he hadn’t looked when the guitar case finally begged his attention. He placed the case on the lawn and stared at it, waiting for his partner to continue.

  “What’s in here?”

  “What do you think? A guitar of course.” My gaze turned steely, as if it was a face-off.

  “A guitar, hmm? You hear that, Rodney? There’s a guitar in there.”

  Rodney giggled with an occasional grunt.

  “Listen here, Jonny.”

  “Luke. My name’s Luke”

  “Ok, Luke, ok, Skywalker. You hear that Rodney? Luke Skywalker.” Rodney only gurgled up absurd sounds of amusement through his nose and gullet in response. “Listen up Skywalker, you got a choice. You can tell us whatever you need to now, and we’ll take it easy on you. Or maybe, we’ll find what we’re looking for in this case, and there’ll be grave consequences.” ‘Grave consequences’, the exact phrase Stone used.

  “Yeah, yeah, grave consequences,” Rodney said, uttering his first words like some tough-talk from a nincompoop deputy.

  They proceeded to open the case, slowly, to find…my old Sears guitar that accompanied me through my early days as a novice musician. They must have been disappointed with their find since, by the looks on their faces a minute earlier, they might have thought they’d struck gold.

  “A guitar,” said the superior. He gave his underling a nod.

  Rodney picked it out of the case, raised it high in the air, and smashed it on the pavement, Pete Townsend style. It splintered into a thousand pieces and was strewn over a ten-foot radius. I was expecting him to jump up and down like a baboon and start beating his chest, but he only stood there with the guitar neck in hand, strings dangling, looking like a simpleton.

  “Why’d you do a thing like that?” I asked as if talking to two rational grown up men. “I did absolutely nothing to deserve it.”

  “Listen up, sonny. I don’t believe a damn thing you say. We didn’t find anything now. But if you or one of your precious friends have our property, we will, and they’ll be a high price to pay.”

  They turned in unison and strolled off to their gangster mobile. Before climbing in, the baby-faced talker stalled and looked back. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Say hello to your girlfriend for me, Amy Almeida.” He got in their car and inched away.

  I stood on the lawn staring at the remnants of my Sears special, perhaps getting a wee bit sentimental. I’d put on the coolest act of my life considering the peril I was in. Inside, I was shitting bricks. We didn’t just place the contraband in the guitar case for everyone to find by unhitching two solitary latches. That was never my plan. The hard, felt covered, inner shell of the extra-bulky touring case, once removed, was deep enough to stash the whole million considering that it consisted of bigger bills. We stuffed it to the brim with the tightly rolled cash and sealed the lining with a hot glue gun, making sure to remove any excess adhesive. They would have had a hard time taking it out, but if they had any inkling that their ‘property’ was in that hidden compartment, I would have been a goner. Thank you, Oracle.

  I picked up the shattered pieces of the destroyed instrument, retrieved my real guitar from inside and put it in the booty-filled case. As before, I placed it in the back seat, diagonally from the floor to the rear window so there was an air pocket underneath and started off to Best Breakfast. Although I left my house feeling triumphant about my sleight of hand trickery, along the way I realized something very significant. How did they know Amy’s real last name?

  “Almeida,” I whispered to Stevie while sitting at the long counter of the diner.

  The waitress towered above us and interrupted with an almost cartoon accent. “What can I get you’s two?” Although polite, she looked stressed out considering it was Saturday and the whole village seemed to be in the diner waiting to be served.

  “I’ll have a number five with bacon,” I said, “and can I get French toast instead of the buttermilk pancakes? To drink, a large orange juice and an iced coffee.”

  “What’ch you having, honey?” the waitress asked Stevie.

  “Ahem…Egg muffin, over well.”

  “Can you speak up, hon?”

  “Egg muffin, over well, extra cheddar, Canadian bacon, coffee milk.” He ordered the same thing every time he went for breakfast, like he was sitting down with a trusted friend. He hated coffee yet somehow loved Eclipse coffee milk. And he was totally grossed out by eggs except if they were hard and rubbery and sandwiched in with a smothering of other food stuff, he could eat them all day long. When the waitress was gone, we continued.

  “Almeida?” Stevie asked. “He knew her real name?”

  “No clue how since Amy changed it like over ten years ago. Maybe there’s something she’s not telling us?”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Let’s keep it down before the wrong people get wind of our conversation.”

  The waitress showed up with our drinks. I sucked down the frozen coffee elixir through a curved straw, while scanning the surroundings for potential undesirables. Out of the store front window, I noticed Dale’s feathered head flapping towards the door like a hawk on a mission. He entered, looking full of confidence, and secured the last seat near us at the counter, adjacent to the cashier. What was he doing at Best Breakfast?

  “Fellas,” Dale said, barely acknowledging our existence and giving no explanation as to why he was there.

  “I called him from a payphone,” Stevie said, muttering from the corner of his mouth. “We need friends to help.”

  I was about to question Stevie who he was to decide that we needed help but stopped myself. Who was I to decide? There’s safety in numbers and Dale, with his get out of my face attitude, was exactly what we needed, if he remained levelheaded, that is.

  “No, that’s cool, Stevie. He’s cool. Yeah, Dale, you’re cool.” I babbled in whispers as if I was insecure about it. We didn’t look at each other or alter our facial expressions, and if someone had been observing us, they might have thought we were talking to ourselves.

  “Ma’am? Scuse me, Ma’am?” Dale stole the waitress’s attention from an older couple who wav
ered too long with their order. “Can I get the Hungry Man special, eggs over easy, sausage on the side?” She abandoned the couple and put in his order, most likely assuming we were together. Our food emerged off the hot grill facing the counter as if premade, and we all scoffed it down.

  As the yoke of Dale’s third egg dripped from his burnt white toast onto his chin, the only other thing he mumbled at breakfast was, “you go, and I’ll cut them off at the pass.” As he spoke, he stared at the bacon sizzling on the griddle, looking pissed off at something, like his hairdresser had broke it to him that he was balding, or he’d been outdone by a rival Prince Charming vying for the same princess.

  I had no clue what he was up to, but Dale was a doer, and I trusted his judgement. There are cowboys who only blow their tops and get blown away in the process because of their rash actions. And there are cowpokes who wait for the right moment to overcome their target and bring them down with full force without notice or suspicion from the unsuspecting victim. Dale was usually the second type.

  It was getting close to noon; we had to split. We paid, went outside and Stevie took his guitar case from his car and placed it upright in the back seat of the Grey Beast in the same manner I had mine.

  “They destroyed my first guitar,” Stevie said. “A gift from dad, only a cheapie but sucked anyway.”