The Tilsons Got Killed
A Downtown Tony Brown Erotic Mystery
By
LAHomedog
The Tilsons Got Killed
A Downtown Tony Brown Erotic Mystery
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This is my entry into the The 2021 “Hammered: an Ode to Mickey Spillane” Author Challengestrong>. Warning: This is a detective thriller. There is a lot of sex, action, and the body count is high.
This is a work of fiction. There is no such thing as a gang named “The NoHo-16” and some of the other major elements in the story.
I would like to thank as usual Eva_Adams and Redhaired Wonder Woman for their beta-reads and proofing, and the latest member of the Dawg editing team, fsa52. It’s a long story and you did an incredible job, ladies. I couldn’t have done it without you!
Please enjoy meeting Downtown Tony Brown, everybody. I’m planning others.
The Tilsons:
The Tilsons settled in the expansive sunroom that overlooked the infinity pool in their backyard, and the twinkling lights of the San Fernando Valley in the distance. It was a festive atmosphere with party lights and decorations courtesy of his kids exclaiming “congratulations, bravo, hurrah, and even a Mazel Tov!”
They were celebrating and had debated over the sunroom, the formal dining room that his wife Kelly had their architect design to hold 16, or buying out the Wine Room in the Beverly Hills Maestro’s for a blowout shindig.
But at the end of the day, Bradford Tilson wanted to celebrate this win with only his family. Kelly, his son, John, John’s fiancé Julie, his oldest girl, Ilene who was destined for great things in medical school next year, and the special joy of his life, his daughter Courtney. So they had sent the housekeeper home and made it a family dinner.
It was a funny thing, Of all of them, Courtney was the one who took after him the most.
John was smart and on a pathway to success, but his passion was sports. Anything with a ball. He’d end up a GM for a professional team one day. That’s why they bought Dodger and Lakers season tickets when John was only five. A lot of good times at those games.
Bradford thought back to the Showtime Lakers. Kareem, Big Game James, the others, and Magic Johnson before HIV forced him to retire in his prime. Yes. A lot of good times. But John was on his own course now, and soon would be starting his own family with the lovely Julie.
Ilene was the brainiac of the family and they were all certain she was going to be the doctor who finally cured cancer. At least, her scholarship to Johns Hopkins bestowed that imprimatur.
He was a lucky man. A loving wife, three kids, and one, Courtney, who wanted to follow him in the family business and had a flair for it. He was beginning to feel for the first time that the legacy of his commercial construction business was going to make it into the next generation.
He had worked it up from nothing. Starting in construction as a carpenter, then a foreman, and now one of the foremost construction firms in the country for major commercial projects from skyscrapers, to specialty projects such as new sports stadiums.
They were celebrating winning the bid on the long-awaited new stadium for a local team. They had worked hard to get the contract, and it was awarded today in a large press conference hosted by the team ownership filled with reporters of all media from newspapers to local news, to web-based sites like “The Athletic.”
Kelly stood up and said, “I want to start with a toast,” and she raised her glass.
“Shit,” Bradford blurted out. “Sorry, I mean shoot.”
They all laughed at his embarrassment.
“Wait a minute, honey,” he said. “I got a special bottle of your favorite wine for this.”
Bradford looked at his youngest daughter seated next to him at the table.
“Courtney, would you do the Old Man a favor? The bottle is in the gift bag on the counter by the fridge.”
“Sure, Dad.”
Courtney moved towards the kitchen in the front of the house.
BOOM!
The concussive force shook the house as the military helicopter rose up from the hillside, and grenades blew through the walls.
Diving for cover, in shock, Bradford and family barely registered that it wasn’t a major earthquake.
Glass and roofing flying, a chiseled specter in black body armor stepped into the scene.
In shock, Tilson looked at his wife and family, “You okay?”
They didn’t have time to answer as the first bullets hit.
He struggled for breath. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” He grabbed the sleeve of the invader’s arm turning it in the process.
“Canceling your contract.”
And he shot Bradford Tilson point-blank in the face, then killed Kelly, John, Julie, and Ilene with single shots to the head, dropped his unregistered Glock 9 on the floor, and walked back to the copter.
Chapter 1
I was sitting in a booth in Langer’s downtown eating the best pastrami sandwich in town courtesy of the lunch invitation from my favorite attorney, Mary Carlson.
The last time I saw her she was grabbing media attention with her camera-loving lush red hair, piercing green eyes, and Playboy quality, err, bodice along with her client of the moment, an abused star of a prominent Hollywood mogul. Others had gone after this sleaze many times before with no success. She asked for my help on what was probably a lost cause. The fee was too large to say no, and where others had failed, we nailed the scumbag, Mary winning millions for her client, and eventually, it helped to start a criminal prosecution that put him behind bars for a long time.
“This is the Marilyn Monroe of pastrami sandwiches,” I said.
“As if I would know,” replied the model-thin attorney on the other side of the table picking at her Chef’s Salad, hold the egg and cheese.
Langer’s is a gigantic deli, the size of a small aircraft carrier in downtown Los Angeles with a surprisingly good and varied menu beyond its sandwiches, verging on fine dining with some of its items. The skirt steak won a James Beard award. Open since 1947, it has been serving pastrami and other deli treats to L.A.’s powerbrokers, politicians, and criminal elite. Sort of the same thing, I guess.
Some folks think she’s a strident, spotlight-grabbing media whore who is only interested in promoting herself, but I think of Mary as a brilliant lawyer, who believes in equal protection under the law, does right by her clients, and has a Playboy quality bodice. Which is a lot more than you can say about most lawyers. She wanted me to take on a client for my services.
The Vice-President of the United States walked towards our table with all eyes in the restaurant watching the VP the same way the secret service was watching them. I had read in the papers she was in town for a fundraiser.
“Hi, Tony.” She said.
“Anthony. Madam Vice-President, it’s good to see you.”
“Right. How’s that arm?”
“Doing fine, thanks.”
“Mary.”
“Madam Vice President.”
Ms. Harris moved on.
“That was impressive. You got top billing,” Mary said.
I shrugged.
“It’s been 10 years since the Super Bowl, and she’s still asking me the same damn question.”
Ten years ago I was fortunate enough to heave the winning touchdown 80 yards down the field for the 49ers over the Chargers as I got hit by 345lbs of angry defensive tackle plowing me into the turf. The VP’s father taught at Stanford and was a diehard San Francisco 49er fan.
“Downtown Tony Brown,” guaranteed Hall of Famer, but I blew out the rotator cuff of my right shoulder on the hit. We won the game, and I won surgery, but the shoulder was never the same. The famed Dr. Jobe, who invented Tommy John surgery and saved the careers of 1,000s of major league pitchers, said it was the worst rotator cuff injury he had ever seen in his life, and I said a big adios to the NFL the fat multi-million-dollar contract extension, and my career.
At least I would never have to hear that damn Jim Croce song again as I was introduced and the stadium crowd singing along changing the words to “Bad, bad Tony Brown. Baddest man in the whole damn town.”
I tried to make it in broadcasting, but I took a belly flop worthy of Buster Keaton. Coaching wasn’t for me, so I moved back home to Los Angeles, went to the academy, learned policing, refused my test, and went off and got my private license as a PI, rented an office and put up my shingle. It was impossible for me to go from being the quarterback to a member of the rank and file!
I was much better being my own man.
A lot had happened in ten years.
“Mary, you are my kind of woman: Big Brains, Big Breasts, Big Heart, how can I say no, and how can you?” I flashed her my most killer smile.
“Come on Anthony, we had our night. It was really hot and you are a great lay, but I think business is business, and we are better as business partners than bed partners.”
I flashed onto that night. We were having a business dinner together at Vibrato, Herb Albert’s supper club on the top of Mulholland and Beverly Glen. We were listening to country songwriter Georgia Middleman performing her hits. Mary had the ribeye. I opted for my usual, veal scaloppini with drinks to start — Mary was old school and was drinking a Gimlet. I went for my usual Maker’s Mark on the rocks. Caesar’s salads and the standard sides.
We chit-chatted until our entrees came and then dove into business. Another of her celebrity female clients abused by a cheating husband. I ordered Mary another Gimlet and moved my knee onto hers.
“Mary, how long are we going to play this game between us? Come on, we are not kids. Don’t you think it is time already?”
She played with her side of creamed spinach and said, “I don’t know Anthony. You get me drunk enough and you might finally complete the negotiation,” and smiled. “I will say you do have the hottest ass of any guy I know in town.”
The hours of deadlifts and squats did show. Made it occasionally difficult to tailor my slacks to fit, well, that wasn’t the only reason, but worth it in a fight, or on a date.
Crème brulee, and cognac sealed the deal, and she drove me home in her new Mercedes sports car. A lot nicer than my jeep, the Brown Bomber.
We got back to her house high in the Hollywood Hills, went through the door to a lot of flinging clothes being thrown off by both of us.
Her tits were insanely gorgeous. No wonder she represented all of those Playboy Playmates — I was certain Hef had asked her once or twice to pose since I had heard they were a thing for a little while.
Too bad she didn’t, but I had them now!
We made out like teenagers down the hallway and up the stairs to her bedroom where I picked her up, threw her on the bed, and proceed to eat that $800 dollar an hour pussy like there was no tomorrow.
And I’m not talking hooker. I’m talking her legal fees that went up to $1,200 an hour in court.
Mary’s pussy wasn’t as groomed as I preferred, but at least she trimmed her flaming ginger pubic hair into a nice triangle, and had waxed it totally off her vulva and around her clit. And, her clit was as perfect as her breasts and her nails.
Not too long, not one of those you cannot find, not the fleshy kind, which I don’t care for, on top of fine, delicate lips that were leaking a sweet-smelling nectar that reeked of a fine upbringing, good hygiene, and serious arousal.
She rolled around and dove into a serious 69, swallowing my cock in one stroke.
The counselor knew how to make an argument in the Court of Cock and had me all the way down her throat on first dive. She came back up, rolled her tongue around my head for a while, and then started to throat fuck me again.
Jesus!
I dove into her pussy like crazy trying to meet her stroke by stroke and we both explosively came. Mary bucking, and gushing into my mouth, as I shot a ton of my hot, sticky, spunk down her throat and into her mouth.
I’m happy to report she was a swallower.
We laid back in bed sipping a glass of wine or two.
“I like how you twirl your gun.”
“Counselor, Private Detectives don’t twirl their gun. Cowboys twirl their gun.”
“Oh?” she lifted one eyebrow. “And what, pray tell, do Private Dicks do?
“We know how to aim our pistol and shoot.”
“You most certainly do.”
We shared a few more sips of wine and some laughs, waiting for my hardon to recover, and then fucked two more times with Mary cumming three more for a total of four, and I finally got my third one around 1 am.
She was a tiger in court, and a tiger in bed. A hot night.
Her serious voice jolted me back to the moment. “Look, Courtney Tilson is the only surviving daughter of that family that was slaughtered by those hitmen a few months ago. I know you saw it in the papers. You couldn’t miss it.”
“I need you to do a couple of things: Protect Courtney from the mob, that will not be easy, and find out which one killed her family and why. When you do, I am going to make sure the motherfuckers land in criminal court and face justice. And I’m going to help provide it. I am personally opposed to the death penalty, but I want to see these guys swing. I’m going to make them pay for what they did to this poor girl.”
“That’s a big order.”
“Do you remember the details?”
“Yeah, I scanned the headlines.”
“Then tell me, besides the US Army, who else has the money for attack helicopters, concussion grenades, and the rest? Smells like a mob to me, and a mob who is bringing in a lot of drugs from Southeast Asia. The Tilsons were killed with armor piercing bullets. Maybe a military connection. My nose is never wrong when it comes to protecting my clients.”
I thought this through for a moment considering the challenges and danger of the assignment. “Well, my nose is never wrong when it comes to protecting my own skin. You will have to pay for Ryker,” I said.
“I figured that and agree.”
We negotiated and settle upon an acceptable amount.
“Okay. Show me the file.”
Chapter 2
I have always thought you have to be either unlucky, deserving, naive, or dumb to get murdered.
I know that sounds rude, but I challenge you to come up with another reason.
“Unlucky” is how most of us get murdered. The guy walking down the street who gets popped while being robbed of his wallet, or in the wrong place at the wrong time as someone is shooting and killing others for no reason, or in love or involved with someone who kills you. Cops who are shot in the line of duty mostly fall into this category.
“Deserving” are the criminals in gangs, the mob, real criminals, or the scum of the earth who prey on others and live by the gun. “The Godfather” isn’t real, but the Italian, Russian, Armenian, Israeli, and the various drug mobs are. In my book, abusive husbands and guys who beat up women fall into this group.
I once had a problem with the Armenian mob on a case and a friend of mine, an Executive Chef at one of my favorite restaurants in Beverly Hills, said to me, “You don’t want to fuck with the Armenian mob. Trust me. They’d rather kill you than talk to you.”
I was smart enough to back off. I was not willing to fall into the “dumb” category.
I have a friend who had a wise-ass 25-year-old son, as many parents of 25-year-old sons have. The kid had parked his car at a local mall and was crossing the alley to enter it. A black Mercedes came screeching down and nearly hit him.
The kid flipped them the bird.
The Mercedes stopped, backed up and four guys got out with the driver on a cell phone. Suddenly a second black Mercedes showed up and stopped. Four guys got out. One walked over to the young man and sucker punched him. The kid hit the ground and the four guys beat and kicked the shit out of him.
They then took a carpet knife, and slit him from the base of his neck to his ass, and said, “We are NoHo-16, motherfucker. And we kill people for the fun of it.,” and kicked him in the head one more time, and split. Leaving him to the emergency room and 21 stitches.
He fell into the dumb category. I do not mean this to sound cold. I had major concern for my friend and his son, but if you incite the NoHo-16, some say the most dangerous drug mob in L.A., you fall into the dumb category whether it is by accident or not.
Or maybe he falls into “Naïve.” Some of us never realize that we are engaging in a relationship that is going to lead to their murder. That is the stuff that movies are made of.
Trusting, innocent, unaware people who are mostly killed for passion, greed, or vengeance.
“Dumb” is the most obvious category of them all. Challenging someone to a fight especially when drunk, calling someone a slur that you shouldn’t say, participating in an event that is designed to incite violence, fucking your best friend’s wife, pulling a gun on a cop. The list goes on and on.
Like it or not, a lot of people are killed because they are dumb.
Guys like me fall into that category.
If I get murdered it is because I’m dumb.
You don’t survive in my job if you’re dumb.
And Mary Carlson had just asked me to find out if Bradford Tilson and his family had been killed because they were unlucky, deserving, naive, or dumb, and who killed him, and I said yes.
That might have been dumb.
Chapter 3
Ryker was a bit older. The joke in the gym was “you’re old, but no one is as old as Ryker.”
That’s because he was a few years ahead of us. Army, Rangers, special forces. A few secret raids that you heard about afterward on TV news, a turn with the CIA performing missions that he would have to kill you if he told you about them.
He never said anything, but I heard through the grapevine about a few key assassinations that may have taken place.
I didn’t care. All in the line of duty.
A walking, human weapon who could just as easily kill you with his hands as his gun, but fiercely loyal to his friends and family and I was his only true friend.
Ryker was not tall. About 5′-10″, but solid as a rock, with 19″ biceps, a shaved head, and one of those special forces tattoos. Not on his upper arm or forearm like most, but on the left side of his neck. A snake sword through a death skull in a beret wearing wings wrapped around “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.”
He was a Chicago Cubs fan and would walk around Dodger Stadium wearing a yellow “wife beater” with big block letters saying, “Dodgers Suck.” No one questioned him.
Ever.
Quite simply he was a mean motherfucker.
He now worked freelance, mostly for the government, but also anyone with a legal need that met his fee. But he preferred to work with me, and I preferred to work with him
I knew I’d find him at the gym. Most likely over in the free weights. Which he was doing single armed overhead presses ten reps at a time.
He broke and we both went over to the health bar for a smoothie. Ryker poured a bit of vodka into it from a flask that he kept down on his ankle by his workout gun, a Glock 27 subcompact. The same as I keep in my ankle holster. I don’t remember who was the first. I claim I was. Ryker just laughs. A sign that as far as he was concerned the discussion is over. And that’s that.
“You still carrying that pussy-assed Glock 17 on your hip?” he asked.
“We are in love. And true love lasts a lifetime.”
After the derisive laughs stopped, I filled him in, told him the fees Mary was willing to pay, who I thought the bad guys were, and how I thought we should start.
“We are going to need some serious firepower if it really is the guys you think,” he said.
“Agreed.”
“And a car. I’m not wrecking my GTO for no job.”
“Agreed.”
“And Mary’s got to pay some cash up front, not that lazy ass pay bullshit that she usually does. Even though she is a fine piece of ass, I ain’t getting none of it.” He stopped and looked at me. “I want the cash up front.”
“Agreed.”
“How are we going to start?”
“The usual way. Let’s go knock on some doors, step on some toes, stir up some shit, and see what we can find.”
“Sound like fun to me.”
And we clinked our smoothies.
We started with Courtney. She was holed up in one of the three or four condos in one of the highrises on Wilshire by Westwood that Mary owned as safe houses to store her clients in need. Busy corridor, upper floors, and armed security at the doors downstairs thanks to the wealthy neighbors populating the building.
I was wearing a snappy, Hugo Boss jacket, khakis, and my old school Reebok Club Cs. Ryker, dressed in black as usual, had on a loose-fitting windbreaker to cover the hardware. He was never going to make the cover of “Esquire Magazine.” On the other hand, I had a chance.
Mary had arranged the visit. We buzzed the door, went up to the 11th floor, knocked, we heard a peephole and locks moving, and Courtney Tilson opened the door to let us in.
This is rude to say about a young client whose entire family has been murdered, who you are detecting for, but she was hotter than a pawn shop Rolex.
25 years old, with a freshly minted MBA, around 5′-8″ raven hair, beautiful, a killer body and right now, the saddest blue eyes I had ever seen. It was apparent that our ringing the bell had stopped a round of tears.
We introduced ourselves, she invited us in. I noticed she couldn’t help herself; she was a young girl with needs even if grieving, and I caught her check my bod out and I thought, Ryker’s ass.
OK. She had good taste in both.
Courtney and I sat on the couch. Ryker stood back on the wall silently observing. I knew he was carrying a Sig Sauer 9mm. with plenty of stopping power under his left arm as he always did while working.
It looked as if he was bored back there, but he was totally and completely observing and ready for action at any time like a coiled rattlesnake asleep in the desert.
Courtney and I worked our way conversationally through the pleasantries of introduction and the condolences of her family’s deaths.
“Mary tells me you were some kind of football star.”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago.”
“Who is he?” pointing at Ryker.
“As we said at the door, that’s Ryker.”
“Why is he here?”
“He keeps us alive.”
Courtney gave a little shocked nod. Maybe too much too soon on my part.
I started the small talk again, and as unpleasurable as it was going to be, I steered the conversation to the night of her family’s murder with the understanding that the target was her dad and her family was collateral damage.
She hesitantly described her experience which in relationship to the murders was negligible, having been in the kitchen getting her mom’s birthday wine.
She instead walked into the massacre, and at her young age had to see the scene of her entire family’s bodies bullet ridden, bleeding profusely, and everyone dead.
In a blink of the eye, she was an orphan.
One night in a long lifetime of nights should not define a lifetime. Yet, this one did. It was a sight that sadly she would see all of her life.
Therapy would help to find the way to put it into its own room in her mind so eventually she could move on to a productive life, but I knew it would take time for her to process from this trauma. Sadly, I had seen it more than once during my career.
It didn’t matter how many times I saw it. It always broke my heart and motivated me for vengeance on their behalf.
I was feeling that now. Big time.
“Let’s talk about your dad, if that’s okay with you?”
“Okay, if we have to.”
“Courtney, if you want me to catch the bad guys, we have to. Sorry.”
She nodded her head.
“Tell me about your dad.”
And she started to talk about him. For Courtney, dad was a mythical figure. Probably more so now. A perfect man who walked on water. As she talked, I marveled at a daughter’s love.
He was generous, kind, loving, but when he needed to be was a strong disciplinarian. A man who was a generous provider, and also somehow made the time to attend every soccer, softball, and high school girls’ basketball game. He was devoted to her late brother, John’s, sports career.
She went on describing Dear Abby’s perfect father.
I don’t know if Bradford Tilson was, but he most definitely was in his daughter’s eye.
“Tell me, what did your dad do for a living?”
I already knew this. The Tilson’s owned one of the largest, privately held commercial construction companies in the country. Everything from skyscrapers to national freeway contracts.
They were one of four companies that dominated the million, sometimes billion-dollar construction bid zone. For example, during the Obama administration Congress passed The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and Tilson landed the federal contract to expand the 101 freeway throughout the greater San Fernando Valley, delivering the project on deadline earning the bonus of 15 miles of the I-405 expansion.
That was the bread and butter. The sports stadium was the kind of project that Tilson Construction took on for fun, or more likely for son John’s sake. It might have been hard to deny a mid-level position to the son of the man who built your stadium.
Courtney described the family business from her perspective and despite her age, she knew it inside and out. Her dad had been training her to eventually take it over. It was what she had studied in college. Engineering, higher math, architecture, and construction. She held a master’s degree in commercial architectural construction. Hell, knew the equations on how The Empire State Building was still standing. Smart young woman.
She knew the biz back and forwards from sites, plans, materials and supply chains, vendors, ordering, trades, subcontractors, contracts, how to negotiate with government dingbats, how to hire crew properly. Hell, the redesign of the company website.
That would all be helpful. A knowledgeable victim is always a more helpful victim.
Think about it. Seriously, take a moment to think about it.
Most detectives in books accept the victims who have no idea what the fuck happened to them or why and solve the mystery.
That is great in fiction. In real life, sadly with victims like that, the case usually ends up a dark alley unless there is a lucky break. That’s how the real world works.
However, a knowledgeable victim who can give you something real to run with, that is something you can work with and solve.
That was Courtney Tilson.
“They had fought hard for this stadium project. Dad wanted it because he is, err, was a fan.” She had to pause for a moment to gather herself again. I waited.
She looked up at me to see if it was okay. I smiled yes and she continued.
“I guess mostly for John. He spent a lot of time wining and dining ownership, taking them to the club for golfing and dinner. He didn’t move in the sports world too much, but built a lot of specialty houses and condos, especially downtown, for celebrities and stars. He enlisted their aid with the hint that they would attend games on the house. You know, it’s good for the clubs. Seeing celebs on the sidelines on TV.”
I nodded.
“The last few years a different crowd moved into construction. Rougher, from other countries who played by different rules. It occasionally got violent on the sites. A number of serious fights. Dad had to install armed security for the first time in some construction zones, and solicit the help of the CHP who would station Highway Patrol cars at the beginning and end of the active sites. Then a gun came out threatening one of our foremen, and that was a game changer.”
I nodded to show I was listening.
“Dad started making sure that his friends in the developers’ world and also government would close their doors to certain folks and that was not taken kindly. The senior executives and I warned him to tread lightly, but he kept saying, ‘My business is my business. No one is going to tell me how to run my business.'”
“I think it killed him,” she continued. “That’s the reason why I asked Ms. Carlson for some protection. I want to go back to work at the company. I want to finish the stadium for Dad,” and she broke into large, sobbing tears. Her shoulders convulsing in her sorrow.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I moved in and offered a consoling hug. Courtney flung herself into me, I wrapped my arms around her, swallowing her into my chest and arms and she sobbed for a long time within my comforting grasp.
Finally, the sobs started to ebb and she raised her head. “I don’t even know you and I’ve ruined your shirt with my snot. I’m sorry.”
I had to smile silently. Grief causes so many different, out of perspective reactions. It comes with the trade.
“No worries. I have a good dry cleaner. Let’s get you freshened up.”
I did.
“Is there anything else? If there is, please tell me.”
She thought for a moment and said, “We had Ring cameras everywhere. Dad was a stickler for that. Maybe the police already have the video. If not, my dad’s phone would. Wherever that is. He always had it on him.”
“It’s probably with the cops. Do you know the password?”
“No prob. The whole family always used the same password. One of Dad’s rules. That way in an emergency, we could always have a phone to use.”
Another rabbit hole to go down and the tears followed as she fell.
“Courtney,” I said reassuringly. “That’s the best news I’ve heard today and could catch the” — I wanted to say motherfuckers but didn’t — “bastards who did this. I promise. I will and bring them to justice.”
And she leaned into me and started crying again.
At least this shirt was already ruined.
Chapter 4
I’m going to be honest; I didn’t know how to react or what to do.
For maybe the first time in my career, I was stumped.
I looked at Ryker, “Do you have any friends who can help us here? We need 24-hour security for Courtney.
“Red level?”
“Totally.”
“Done.”
I turned to Courtney, “Listen to me. We are going to send a few friends over here. They are going to look like really scary, bad men, because they are, but they are friends who will be here risking their lives to protect you. You can trust them. They will not harm you in any way.”
She nodded.
“Tell her it is okay to feed them and let them use the bathroom.”
“It’s okay if you feed them and let them use the bathroom.”
“You know I heard him, right?!” Courtney said, looking at us both as if we were a bunch of Dumbos.
“Sorry. Force of habit.”
I’m pretty sure I saw Ryker nod a yes.
I nodded towards Ryker. “He’ll stay here until reinforcements get here. You can feed him too, but careful of his bite,” and I smiled.
I was happy to say Courtney did too. Maybe her first in a while.
Ryker did not.
“What are you going to do?” she asked anxiously.
“I’m going to say hi to the folks over at your dad’s company.”
I looked over at Ryker, “Meet me later downtown after the reinforcements arrived.”
The imperceptible nod said, “Yes.”
On my way over to Tilson Construction, I talked with Mary Carlson, filled her in about our meeting, and told her the bill was going up.
Tilson’s on Figueroa St. downtown was an impressive building as you might expect. You know, one of those giant black glass and granite phallic symbols worshipping the Gods of Money and Power.
I went up to the enticing blonde at the front desk. I assumed an aspiring actress who someday I’d see on the large screen and say to my date, “You know, she checked my ID one day.”
“Anthony Brown to see Mister Higgs.”
She looked at my chest and waist, and then down at her iPad screen.
She looked up slowly this time spending a moment at the bulge in my pants. I wonder if she noticed I dressed left. Fortunately, she missed the bulge on my right hip. The pants bulge helps with that one.
“Yes, Mr. Brown, Mr. Higgs is expecting you.”
I leaned in giving her the full treatment, hoping to steal a glance down her blouse. The lace bra was red. “Are you sure? I think I’m early. Hanging around here for a bit would be okay with me.”
“Oh no! It says he wants to see you right away.”
I smiled. “Would that happen to be a universal invitation?”
“Sorry good looking.” She lifted her hand to show me the ring. “Married.”
“Well, that’s a damn shame.”
“Today, it might be,” she looked up and batted those baby blues.
“We could remedy that with a quick lunch later.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that I’m married?”
I stopped for a beat and said, “Maybe. But what I want to know is, does it bother you?”
She put her hand over her mouth and giggled as I went to the elevators.
Higgs was on the top floor. I stepped into the express, punched 55, and rode up.
The sign on the door said, “Richard Higgs, Chief Operating Officer.” It was next to the one reading “Constance A. Tilson, Vice-President.”
I went in without knocking.
Another incredibly enticing blonde was at the desk. She was ripe and promising of more to come. Maybe that was the Tilson way.
Made me think of Fox News and Roger Ailes and his thing about making woman blondes and then abusing them. I hated that. As I said before, I didn’t like men who abused women. I hoped that wasn’t the case here in Tilson.
“Hi,” Sherry Donaldson said brightly, based off of her desk plate.
“Hi there, Sherry. How ya doing today?” I smiled.
“I’m okay,” she said half-heartedly.
“Really?”
“Oh, don’t you know?”
She looked at me.
“You know Mr. Tilson was killed. It’s horrible.”
She paused respectively for a moment.
“Yes, I know.” I bowed my head, “Requiescat in pace.”
“Huh?”
“Rest in peace.”
“Oh.” She thought about that for a moment.
She was as cute as the Easter Bunny, but not as smart.
She looked back at me. “So, how can I help you handsome?” she asked.
They weren’t very subtle here at Tilson. Maybe that’s the construction industry way. I looked down at the locked and loaded twin 38s pointing at me and thought, “Shit, maybe I got into the wrong damn business.”
“It’s okay Sherry. May I call you Sherry? I understand. I’m Anthony Brown. I’m the private detective that is going to find his killer and give everybody the justice and peace they deserve.” I flashed her my badge. It was shiny.
She looked up at me. “Oh, Mr. Higgs is waiting for you. Please go in.”
I walked towards the inner office.
“And God bless you.”
I walked to the inner office and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
Ric Higgs was a slight, aging, good looking man with a dyed out-of-fashion Beatles cut in a custom made Savory Row suit by Ozwald Boateng. He stood up, extended his hand, and gave me a polite, business handshake.
“Oh, an Ozwald Boateng. Did you know he makes suits for the great Giorgio Armani, for his personal wardrobe, and DiCaprio? But you probably knew that already. I have a few myself,” and I smiled.
“I didn’t know you were so worldly, Mr. Brown.”
“Please call me Anthony.”
“Sorry, I thought it was Tony. They said you played football.”
It never stopped.
“Anthony.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Brown?”
“Well, Ric,” and I looked at him square in the face.
“Why don’t we start with who was your boss, Bradford Tilson’s enemies?”
“He shrunk a bit in his desk and said, “Errr, none that I know.”
“Oh, come on. Everybody has enemies of one kind or another, especially a powerful and important man like Mr. Tilson.”
“None that I could imagine killing his entire family,” he replied. “Oh, poor Courtney. Please take a seat,” gesturing to a burgundy leather chair.
“Of course, there are always rivals in this business, but what business doesn’t?”
“Yet Courtney told me about a gang backed construction company moving in recently.”
“Yes, that was unfortunate, but we thought we had that situation under control.”
“Really? Under control. Is that what you thought?”
“Oh,” and he slunk a bit in his chair. “Is that what you’re thinking happened?”
I looked at Higgs hard. There was something in my Spidey-sense that wasn’t right.
“And what are your thoughts, Mr. Higgs?”
He sunk down further for a moment. “I have no idea? Bradford was a god in this business. Everybody loved and admired him. Hell, I loved him like a father. Look what he did for me!” and he swung his arms towards the walls of the office.
“He gave me my fucking life.”
And then he got serious, “I don’t know why anyone would take his.”
Chapter 5
I figured while I was there, I would prowl the executive hallway. I strolled down the plush carpeting until I came to a door that read, “Sheldon Levine, CFO.” Now that was someone I wanted to talk to.
I walked in without knocking to another knockout. This one’s nameplate read “Kitty Fireside,” and this one was a redhead. She was hot and I wanted to sit by the fire.
A flowing red mane of hair, green eyes, and gorgeous in a Rita Hayworth Gilda sort of way. Like me, she was also packing a pair of guns.
She looked up at me and said, “Can I help you?”
“I think you mean, ‘May I help you?'”
She looked confused.
“It’s simple. Can and may are both ‘modal verbs.’ They express mood when used with main verbs. ‘Can’ indicates that someone has the ability to do something. ‘May’ refers to the possibility of something happening.’
She looked lost.
“When you respond, ‘Can I help you?’ you are implying you can help me without knowing what I need or desire. Rather than ‘May I help you?’ which implies that there is a possibility that you could help me or not.”
She looked at me confused. I sat down on the front of her desk. I think she was impressed by my arms.
“What if I had replied to your ‘Can I help you?’ by saying, ‘Yes you can. I want to take you over to that couch right now and make love to you.”
She blushed and giggled.
“Can I help you implies you will. Are you going to?”
She shook her head no.
“However, ‘May I help you?’ implies that you could or could not help me. So, when I ask the same question, your response is either sure, or I’m sorry sir.”
I didn’t think she got it yet.
“So, want to go over to that couch and make love right now?” I asked.
Flustered, Kitty said, “Oh no! I would never do that!”
“See? And that’s why it’s may and not can.”
I flashed my badge. It was still shiny.
“Anthony Brown to see Mr. Levine.”
Still flustered and shuffling around papers, Kitty Fireside replied, “Is he expecting you?”
“No, he is not.”
“Oh,” she said, “Mr. Levine is a very busy man.”
“I’m sure he is,” and I got up, walked to his door and barged right in.
“Who the fuck are you?!” he said, looking up from his desk.
I flashed him my badge. It can be impressive at times.
“Sorry Mr. Levine, Anthony Brown. I’m the detective who has been hired by Courtney Tilson to find her father’s killers. May I have a moment of your time?”
That calmed him down, and he motioned me to the same sort of burgundy, leather chair. I guess it was standard issue in executive furniture at Tilson.
Sheldon Levine looked as if you went to the dictionary and looked up CFO his picture would be there. Short, a round bald head, with one of those baldness patterns that leaves a silly, thin fringe just at the bottom, and his seat pumped up high off the floor with four large computer screens flickering graphs and numbers on the left wing of his desk.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“First, allow me to express my condolences over Mr. Tilson and his family’s deaths. The more I get to know about him, the more I realize what a great man he was.”
Levine put his head down for a moment, and said, “Thank you.”
After a moment, “We built this company together, Brad and I. I was his accountant back when he was just a construction guy. I’m of the Jewish faith and he wanted someone like me to be his accountant. ‘A Jew accountant.’ I am used to the slur. Every Jew is, but there was something so wonderful and appealing about Brad’s intelligence, imagination, and drive, I was willing to give him a hall pass. He turned out to be one of the least prejudiced, most committed to diversity CEOs I have ever met. He wanted to learn about humanity and understand everyone’s differences. I worshipped the guy.”
I was touched. We took a moment out of respect.
“So, Sheldon, may I call you Sheldon?”
“No. Please, God no. Only my mother calls me Sheldon. Shelley.”
“First, Courtney Tilson intends to return to finish her father’s work. We are going to provide protection. I assume you will assist with that.”
“You can count on it,” he said.
“Good. Next, Shelley, you spend your day looking at the numbers. What’s changed, if anything?”
“The materials. We can’t get materials. Anything steel, especially I-beams. Look, supply is messed up now thanks to the pandemic and everything out of Asia is out of whack, but the I-beams don’t make a lot of sense. Take a look at this chart.”
And he pushed some buttons on his computer to bring up a graph on one of his screens.
“Look at that jump in the graph. It makes no sense. Something is fishy here. I don’t know what it is, but I think Bradford was hunting it down and maybe that’s what got him killed.”
“Is that actually a possibility. People get killed in construction over I-beams?”
Shelley looked at me as if I was as stupid as a dog trying to fly, and said, “Detective Brown, people get killed in construction over a whole lot less than I-beams. Haven’t you ever watched ‘The Sopranos?'”
Chapter 6
I stepped onto Figueroa Street rather than taking the escalator down to parking to take a stroll around downtown to figure things out.
I prefer to think as I run, but that wasn’t going to happen here, so a nice crisp walk was going to have to do it. I headed south towards the Staples Center and the Times Square of Los Angeles, LA Live. I also thought a lot better with a juicy cheeseburger with all the fixings in my hand.
Not that long ago, downtown L.A. was a dump. A deserted town after 5 pm except for the hustlers, bums, bad guys, and gangs. But the City Fathers came up with a plan to revitalize it. We needed our own Times Square so LA Live was created across the street from the legendary Staples Center, home to the Lakers, the Clippers, the hockey team the Kings, and thousands of famous concerts and award shows.
It did the trick. The young folks showed up, the trendy restaurants arrived, the upscale ones came next, then the expensive condos, the millionaires, celebrities, and the hip folk started moving in followed by the artists, the Millennials, and in less than a decade, downtown Los Angeles went from being a ghost town to the hottest, thriving area in the city.
As I strolled south next to the soaring monoliths of buildings, I started going through my checklist.
Tilson was probably killed for something other than the stadium contract, and the family were sadly collateral damage. It was a military-style hit even though everyone kept trying to lead me to the Armenians. Levine was a good guy, but Higgs smelled dirty. And I wasn’t going to get into Mary Carlson’s sizzling hot pants again.
I think that was about it so far.
I was walking past The Original Pantry restaurant, the famous downtown eatery that never closes and has had customers every hour of the day since 1924 when the four of them showed up in front of me.
They were seemingly chosen for bulk and not beauty. Two of them, I’m guessing the hopeful brains of the outfit, stayed in front of me as the other two slid to either side.
Sort of a public place for this kind of thing, but hey, different strokes for different folks.
“You Brown?”
Loquacious.
Their spokesperson was wearing a Yankees hat, wrong fucking team if you ask me, and a coat that was too long and too warm for a Los Angeles day. He was built like a fireplug. Short, but I’m guessing 280 plus pounds of solid muscle.
“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” I smirked.
“You the dick working on the Tilson case?”
“Day and night.”
In the background, I saw Ryker glide into view effortlessly. Always on time. He silently slipped out his piece.
“So, you’re the guy working on the Tilson case?”
Smart cookie Ol’ Fireplug was. I gave him my brightest smile,
“Like I said, dickhead. That dick is me.”
“My employers want you to understand that you’re going to leave this alone from now on.”
“Really? Why would I do that?”
“Because we are going to kill you if you don’t.”
I laughed a little. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did enjoy watching Fireplug start to boil a bit.
I guess he took it as an insult.
Ryker clicked the slide on his Sig Sauer behind them.
“Dang. Not really fair at such a close range,” he said.
Fireplug turned around along with the others to look at Ryker. He smiled at them. By the time they turned back to me, my Glock was out down by my leg so as not to alert the public. I cocked it as they looked.
“Gosh darn it, guys. When you were planning this, did you have a Plan B?”
“A Plan B?” asked Fireplug. “What the fuck is that, asshole?
“Sorry for being obtuse, let me explain. Did you consider the possibility that you wouldn’t scare the shit out of us?”
“They said to warn you this time and not to kill you.”
“Well,” I said. “That killing part wasn’t going to happen anyway.”
Fireplug’s buddy was also wearing a too long jacket and I noticed some rivulets of sweat starting to run down his shaved head onto the tattoos on his neck.
I pointed to the ink. “You know, LAPD files your mugshot by tattoos nowadays. I look forward to seeing that one in the book.”
I turned back to Fireplug. “Who is your employer?”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“Oh, I might know him. Try me.”
I took the chance and raised the Glock, covering it with my jacket and sighted in on Fireplug’s forehead.
“I don’t think you’ll do it in front of all of these people,” and he lunged for me with a big, under-hand right. I moved left and he stumbled past me.
“You motherfucker!” and he came back for another. So, I nailed him with a round-house kick right on the kisser knocking Ol’ Fireplug onto his ass.
He sat on the sidewalk rubbing his jaw.
“Do you need I hand?” I asked offering one.
“Fuck you, asshole.” He stood up trying to look menacing. “Remember, you’ve been warned,” and turned around and left with the rest of his posse.
“Scared now?” asked Ryker.
“Shaking in my boots.”
“You know if you had shot him in the head, the others would have told you everything you wanted to know,” he said.
“Yeah, couldn’t do it. Too easy and not right.”
“Right? Good thing I’m here to keep your pussy ass out of having to enroll in some girl’s yoga class.”
“Yeah, the teacher is such a bitch!”
Chapter 7
The Hollywood Hills stretched out languidly like the long legs of a natural blonde as I drove over to The Parker Center in the Brown Bomber.
My phone rang. It had taken a while to retrofit Bluetooth into the old bucket’s dashboard, but voilà it worked. It was Nancy, my girl. Not my girl, Nancy, but Nancy my girl. Not my girl assistant… Oh never mind.
Well, not really my girl. My friend. We were friends. Friends. We liked each other. We understood each other. We were good companions in a cold world where that is a valuable thing. And when she got cold, she treated me like a down comforter and called me up.
Okay. We were fuck buddies.
“Hi Nance.”
“Anthony, where have you been? I’ve called all over. Was your phone off?”
“Sorry, the Tilson murders.”
“Aww, shit. I’m sorry. I should have known. Horrible business. Are you going to catch those fuckers?”
“Don’t I always?”
“That’s my guy. Dinner tonight? I’ll make your favorite linguine with my homemade meatballs and broccoli in a light garlic and olive oil dressing.”
“That’s not fair. I might have to work this one late.”
“Yeah, I know. It comes with the territory. But try not to make it too late. I’ll keep your supper and my engines warm as long as I can. I need you tonight.”
“Wait a minute! That’s really not fair!”
And she hung up.
Shit. Linguine with salad and a roll in the hay on the side sounded awfully nice tonight, but I was on a case, and Courtney Tilson’s needs for justice and closure were beginning to become more important than my primal ones.
I pulled out one of my illegal handicapped, blue windshield plaques and grabbed one of the few empty spots by the door. I’ll pay for it later in confession.
I entered the new Police Administration Building. It will always be the Parker Center to me, but political correctness and Chief Parker’s bad deeds made that disappear. I strolled up to the glass armored desk, looked at the policewoman sitting behind it, smiled, and said, “Anthony Brown for Detective Ragan, HHS. He’s expecting me,” and I flashed her my PI badge. It didn’t seem to impress her.
She called up, and said, “He says you should come on up. But don’t expect shit from him,” and she smiled.
She buzzed me in. I went to the metal detectors. I knew Clancy working the station today. “Hi, Matt.”
“Hi, Brown.”
I showed him my badge, he scanned it, I took out my two guns, handed them to him, he inspected them, slipped them around the sensors as I was walking through, and handed them back to me.
“Don’t shoot anybody. It will make me look bad.”
I gave him a snappy salute and headed on over to the Homicide Special Section where Detective Daniel Ragan and his buddies shared their workstations.
After hellos and male bonding rituals, I rolled over an empty chair and we started to catch up. His latest, my latest, and finally we made it to the Tilson case.
“I hear you caught it,” I said to Ragan.
“Yeah, what a fucking nightmare. I’ll tell you this, it was a clean, pro job like nothing we’ve seen in a long time around here. The kind of shit that they only make up in movies.”
“Mary Carlson and I are thinking it is the NoHo-16.”
“Yeah, I heard you were working with her again. Could be. That’s one of the areas we are looking at,” he said cagily.
“Any luck with the Ring camera’s footage?”
“Downtown, you’re already on top of that one?”
Ragan is the only one I’m okay with calling me that. “Come on man, the Tilson girl is my client. Are we going to share on this or not?”
“You’ll come clean with me too?”
“Shit, when have I not?” and he gave me a look. “Yes, all cards on the table as long as they don’t jeopardize my client’s personal safety. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“The Ring cameras?”
“Nowhere yet. You know how Ring is about client’s privacy.”
“I have the password. Do you have access to the phone?”
In a short while, the two of us were in Evidence looking at Bradford Tilson’s Ring app home base and four cameras showing his murder and the slaughter of his family.
“You guys are going to have to give this over to Artificial Intelligence for the full AI treatment and get all of the finer details.”
Ragan agreed.
We went back for a second time, this time for the details that we could see. At 0:17sec when the first shot hit him I said, “Wait. Camera 3.”
We punched it into full frame and as Tilson grabbed the assassin’s arm, in a split in the body armor there was a glimpse of a tattoo.
A mere glimpse of a section of it, but I knew it in an instant: A snake sword though a death skull in a beret wearing wings wrapped around “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.”
I looked at Ragan, “That’s Special Forces. That’s NoHo-16.”
Chapter 8
I knocked on Apartment 15’s door in The Ravenswood Apartments on Rossmore in Hollywood. I got a kick out of the fact that Nancy lived in the same building where Mae West lived in the penthouse her entire life.
I kept waiting for Nance to say to me, “Is that a gun in your pocket, or you just glad to see me?” so I could say, “Both,” but she never does.
Finally, a newly awakened, disheveled, blonde dish opened the door. Hair asunder and wearing only a skimpy white lace bra and matching thong.
“God, I hope you are not some kind of a door-to-door salesman.”
I looked her up and down and whistled. “You know, you shouldn’t be wearing that when you answer your door.”
“What are you talking about, dickhead. I knew it was you.”
“You shouldn’t be wearing that body.”
“Fuck you, Brown.”
“If you’re lucky, Blondie,” and I pulled her to me for a big, sloppy smooch my hand reaching down to her gold medal ass.
“Are you going to feed me or fuck me first?”
“Get in here, wiseass,” and she slammed the door.
Dinner was great. The side dish was better.
I’m not sure who was hungrier, but I was the one who dragged her into the bed, and ripped the bra and thong off into shreds — I made a mental note to stop at Fredrick’s of Hollywood to buy replacements sooner rather than later.
Pushing Nancy onto the bed I dove between her milky, white thighs. Yes, she was a natural blonde, but I’m happy to report that she waxed bare. The smoother it’s done, the harder the gun.
Nancy stretched out with her blonde curls flowing above her head. So provocative. Her lightly freckled natural breasts were perfection, firm, high on her chest with perky nipples pointing upward, flat tummy leading down to her criminally perfect sex.
My hands slid down her thighs caressing their silkiness. I took a long lick up her slit to her nub and rolled my tongue around it, feeling it become fuller and more present, then shoving my face into her sex drinking her in while inhaling the richness of that pungent odor like no other.
II put my left index finger on her clit to a low groan and gently spread its hood taking her button into my mouth. I licked around making her more and more aroused while slowly putting my finger into her very wet snatch all the way to the bottom, and started to finger fuck her as I got back to licking her delicious clit in long strokes.
It became more excited, growing in width and length. I took her into my mouth, squeezed my lips tightly around it, and started giving Nancy’s clit a blow job moving up and down as if it was a small cock.
Her hips started to buck in and out and move in a circle working in perfect harmony with the circles my tongue was making around her clit, and she started to moan in rhythm with her hips.
I moved my mouth tighter down onto her cunt flattening my tongue licking it very, very hard and fast.
I put my finger into her pussy, scooping up as much of her wetness as I could, and shoved it knuckles deep up her ass.
She screamed, grabbed my head with both hands shoving my mouth as hard as humanly possible into her clit, and climaxed, screaming at the top of her lungs as she pulsed and buck harder and harder for what seemed like an eternity until she slowly started to come down, steady her hips and released my head.
I climbed up and kissed her. Shoving my tongue deep into her mouth, smearing her juices all over her face as I did.
She panted as she came down from her climax, “Did you learn that at Acme Detecting School?”
“Nope, the school of the streets.”
“Good school,” and she rolled on top of me, grabbed my cock, and positioned it upon the lips of her dripping pussy.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you in after that, mister, on a 6-1-2,” and she plunged balls deep burying all of me into her intoxicating depths.
“A 6-1-2?”
“Yeah packing 6 and 1/2 inches of a loaded weapon.”
“Oh yes,” she moaned. “So fucking thick. I do like you inside me.”
I grabbed both of her arms, put them over her head, held them there firmly, threw her onto her back, and started to hammer her.
I rode her hard until I was pounding her cervix and had her grunting with each stroke, plunging all the way in, and started to grind against her clit. She started masturbating her body against my hard cock buried all the way up her, my cockhead hitting her cervix once more as she ground deeper and deeper.
I looked into her cat-green eyes, “Cum!”
I pulled out to my tip and plunged back into her again and again until Nancy started to cum hard and fast for the second time that night.
And I was right behind her unloading eight long shots deep inside until the magazine was spent.
I collapsed on her and said, “You’ve always been a great lay.”
“You too,” as she patted my ass. “Why do you think you’re my fuck buddy?” and she smiled.
We laid there for a bit until I said, “Need a drink?”
Nance nodded, I pulled out from inside her with a sad pop, her juices pouring all over the sheets, stood up and brought us back our drinks. She took a long draw.
“Damn, girl!”
“Arresting a perp always makes me thirsty,” and she winked as she slammed it back.
Chapter 9
Ryker and I were in the Brown Bomber riding out to Tilson Construction’s primary construction yard for the I-405 project, or as we say in LA, “The 405.”
Courtney was bouncing along in the passenger’s seat. Ryker in the back. Looking bored.
“This piece of shit tin-can is really your car?” she half-shouted over the street noise.
“Yeah, isn’t she a beaut?!”
Courtney leaned into the space between the front seats “Fuck no! Haven’t you ever heard of a Bentley, an Audi, a Tesla? Hell, a fucking Lexus??!!”
“Oh, are those cars?”
“Hey! Ryker? Did you hear me?” Courtney shouted. “Do you respond? Don’t you think this car is a piece of shit?!”
“Seems like a fine car to me,” He looked around in his way. Thought about it. “Yeah, seems like a fine car.”
I looked at her and saw her shaking her head in disgust.
“Courtney, this is a thing of beauty. Take a moment, if you will, to appreciate its greatness. The ’66 Ford Bronco is the first sports utility vehicle. The grandpappy of them all. A direct descendant of the WWII Ford General Purpose Vehicle — everyone calls it a jeep, like Kleenex for tissue, but it wasn’t. It was a Ford — which was the choice of Generals like Patton. Come on, it helped win the Big One, WWII! And it was designed by McKinley Thompson, Jr. the first black auto designer in the industry. It’s a fucking classic, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s loud. It’s uncomfortable, and it sucks.”
“But Ryker and I are in it,” and I gave her the killer grin. She smiled.
“And remind me why are we driving in this piece of shit?”
“You are going to introduce me to the foreman of your dad’s 405 job and I’m going to make nice to him.”
Ryker snickered behind me.
“Okay. His name is Bill.”
“Bill?”
“Bill Richmond. He’s my Godfather.”
Bill Richmond was a big man. He looked like he could kick start a 747. About 6′-6″ tall, I’d say 275lbs, a college football player gone south. Maybe a middle linebacker, or a defensive end. Anyway, the guy’s chest had its own Zipcode.
“Courtney!” he screamed and rushed to her to put his large paws around her.
They stayed in the bearhug for a long time. Obviously, there was deep affection going down there. She didn’t seem to want to leave the hug, and he didn’t seem to want to give it up.
Finally, they broke.
He kept his hands on her shoulder.
“I haven’t seen you since the funeral. Are you doing alright, considering?”
“Yes, thank you. These are my friends. They want to talk to you about Dad.”
Bill Richmond looked us over.
“Bill, this is my protector Anthony Brown and his friend Ryker.”
He looked at me. “Anthony Brown, I know you. Are you Tony Brown? Downtown Tony Brown? Wow! Thanks, dude! I made a lot of money on you on that game! What a fucking throw. Shit. I don’t believe it! Downtown Tony Brown. Cool! What can I do for you?”
Sometimes it helps.
“Bill, may I call you Bill?”
He nodded yes.
“It seems as if Mr. Tilson and his family.” I stopped and looked at Courtney.
“Sorry. You want to leave for this?”
She did, and Ryker put his sizable arm around her and led her off.
“It seems as if Mr. Tilson and his family were killed over this contract. This might seem like a simplistic question to you, but do you have any idea why?”
“Fucking yes, I have!” he shouted.
“It’s that god damned Armenian mob moving in. First, they went for materials, and now contracts. They couldn’t stand that Brad’s business and contacts were impervious to their ways. So they killed him. The motherfuckers. I’m sure of it.”
“I understand that Bill, and trust me, it is our primary lead, but you will allow that for the good of Courtney and the business, I have to look at all leads no matter how weak they might be.”
I looked at him man to man.
“Sure, no stone unturned.”
“Exactly, remember I’m not the cops. I’m the good guys. I’m on your team.”
That relaxed him.
“The Armenians were moving in, I understand.”
“Yes, aggressive motherfuckers. No regards to the law or to the rules.”
“But the Tilson’s were killed by weapons of war. Did you serve Bill?”
“Hell yeah. US-fucking-Marines. Southeast Asia and then Iraq. Semper Fi, asshole.”
“You?”
“No, Stanford and then pro-ball, but Ryker over there protecting our Courtney is Army Ranger and special missions. I think you’re both cut from the same cloth.
“A fellow in arms.”
“Yeah. So, Bill, help me put this together. The government puts this up for bid to the usual players. Let’s get real, this one is not a world changing contract. It’s nice, but sort of run-of-the mill at the elite level you boys play at. Right?”
“Yeah. Normal stuff for us. The stadium job was a big deal. A really big deal. This freeway job, no. Just business.”
“Okay, the way I figure it, killing Mr. Tilson for the stadium contract does not get the killers anything. There will be a new contract rewarded and, in all likelihood, it will not be them. So why?”
He looked at me. I continued, “I think it is this job and the freeway contracts. I think the stadium was a diversion. I think it is all about this and the contracts for the materials they are selling. And I think Ric Higgs is dirty.”
I looked him square in the eye. “What do you think about that?”
“I never liked the wormy asshole.”
“Listen,” he continued, “Post COVID, the supply chain has been a mess. China is inconsistent and along with all major construction, we have gone to searching on the open auction market. It’s the Wild West, man. And they have all gone remote. No one is in the office or even around here anymore. I no longer know who I am dealing with. No shit. Like I said, it’s the Wild, Wild West for crying out loud! Hell! Wyatt-Fucking-Earp is going to turn up any day now!”
“Shelley Levine thinks it all about the I-beams and something hinky is going on there.”
I could see the aggravation on his face as he grimaced yes.
“So, who is your supply chain manager, now?”
“Hell, I’ve never met her. Some Asian broad out of Monterey. Named Fei Hong. Go fucking figure. Higgs set the whole thing up. She’s connected to the big dudes over there. I assume some kind of tong, family, fuck, I don’t know. Whatever the fuck they call them over there.”
“Triad?”
“Sure whatever. What I know is we have been behind on materials and steel I-beams in particular have been in short supply and she had a supplier who could get us what we needed. Brad wanted to can her and I disagreed. Hell, we were getting the damn I-beams, but Brad was going to do it. He found someone else he liked and trusted better. Fine for me. As long as I have the materials to do the job. You know, we are on a late penalty if we don’t hit our deadline. Doesn’t seem fair with the pandemic, but the government is the government. Give me the materials, I’ll build the road. I don’t care if Pee Wee Herman is supplying the materials. You know what I mean?”
“Did Higgs know she was going to be fired?”
“Yes, the scumbucket did.”
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “Can you build a stadium without I-beams?”
“No, you cannot,” and Bill gave me the definitive nod.
“Guess I’m going, to be like Eric Burdon and The Animals. I’m going to Monterey.”
I looked at him square, “You ever hear of the NoHo-16?”
“No, should I?”
“Never heard of them in the business, or contract bidding or materials?”
“No. Who are they?”
“Not important. Just a lead. Okay, thanks. I’ll stay in touch.”
“Hey, before you split, can I get an autograph to prove to my wife and kids I met you?”
“Sure.”
It never fucking stopped.
Chapter 10
The Brown Bomber and I were tooling north on the 101 to Monterey. I left Ryker in L.A. with the red team to protect Courtney and set off to pay a surprise visit to Ms. Fei Hong.
Before I left, I Googled Ms. Hong. Seemingly a legitimate businesswoman. An online building materials broker. It turns out there were many. Like everybody, she had a website as a calling card listing her clients. It looked as if the largest one she had was Tilson Construction.
I shoved my playlist CD into the dash and Kenny Loggins came on. People nowadays call his music Yacht Rock, but really it is soft, progressive jazz. Kenny and I are kindred souls. and motored up the 101 towards Monterey on the Central Coast together.
Going through the Salinas Valley and turning left past the Laguna Seca Race Track, I hit Monterey. The home of the famous Cannery Row, its pier, Fisherman’s’ Wharf with the now forgotten sardine trade, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium the finest in California.
On the spectacular Monterey Bay, home of so much marine life the world-class aquarium had to put it on display. The Spanish founded the town in the 1800s and it has always been the home for artists, writers, and like-minded people. John Steinbeck, of course, made it famous, and then Hollywood helped. “East of Eden,” the movie version of the Steinbeck novel was James Dean’s breakout role. Hundreds of films and TV shows have been set in Monterey including Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” “Basic Instinct” and Clint Eastwood’s “Play Misty for Me.”
Sadly, Silicon Valley money moved downhill from Los Gatos and Santa Cruz destroying the coziness of the town over the last decade but then again, Silicon Valley money has moved like locusts destroying the entire Bay Area starting with San Francisco and moving beyond.
By the time I got there, the playlist had shifted to Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and a bit of Ella Fitzgerald thrown in. You can never go wrong with Old Blue Eyes, and Sammy.
I check into the Spindrift Inn, a charming and romantic boutique hotel on Cannery Row. My room had a spectacular view of Monterey Bay. I had brought with me my two regular pieces, a .357Magnum in case I needed the stopping power and a sawed-off shotgun that I left in the lockbox in the truck of the Brown Bomber.
I locked the Magnum into the room’s safe, just in case.
According to her website, Fei Hong’s office was located off of Cannery Row, but the voicemail directed me to her home south of the city in the posh Pacific Grove neighborhood on the southern tip of the bay. I drove over there after I had checked in.
The Beverly Hills of Monterey, Pacific Grove was featured in the mini-series “Big Little Lies,” and like the women in that show, Fei Hong lived on the coast overlooking the ocean and the bay.
The house was walled and gated, I drove up and rang the voice box.
“Yes,” a slightly accented voice said.
“Anthony Brown for Ms. Hong.”
“Regarding?”
“The Tilson murders.”
“Yes, I was awaiting upon you. Please come in, Mr. Brown.” And the gate opened.
I pushed the Ring doorbell and was buzzed in. The house was spectacular with views of the ocean that would make a sailor cum.
“I’m in here Mr. Brown.”
I followed the voice to a home office with even a better view of the bay. Fei Hong was sitting there, behind two screens, Zoom spotlights set in front of her, thick black hair straight down to her shoulders with a pink streak in the front swept to the right, pretty in a seriously smart way, what looked like a silk Stella McCartney top, with dazzling diamond earrings, and a sharp Chinese language tone to whoever she was speaking too. I’m guessing Mandarin, though I’m no expert.
“Please sit!” She invited in English.
I did, and waited.
Finally, the call was over. “Mr. Brown, I was expecting you. How good of you to come.”
And she stood up from the desk, completely naked from the waist down. Her pussy and ass on full display. Thick tuffs of black hair sprouted from the top of her crotch, but as she walked, the diamond mine looked bare.
Her brain may have been built for business, but her body was most definitely built for sin.
She held out her hand, “It’s my honor to meet you.”
I was difficult for me to look up at her face, but I met the challenge and won.
“Nice to meet you too. You are naked.”
“Yes, I always work this way. Especially on Zoom calls. We say, ‘Tā tígōngle zìyóu.’
It frees me. See anything you like? I am a broker, you know.”
“Well, yes ma’am. What’s not to like?”
“Calm your personal self, Mr. Brown, I’m joking,” and she walked back to her desk.
Her truly fine, tight ass from hours and hours on the Stairmaster showing off as she went back to her station. Before sitting back at her desk, she bent over to pick something up tantalizing me with her winking rosebud. Flowing down her back across to her right cheek and down the outside of her right thigh was a tattoo of a dragon wrapping around a blossoming plum tree.
“I have knowledge why you are here, and I desire to be of assistance however I can with this horrible tragedy of my mìyǒu and client Mr. Bradford Tilson, but you must excuse me. I am on a 24-hour world clock attempting to secure materials for my clients. May I seek your permission to visit you at your hotel later tonight?”
I said yes and wrote down the info.
“Shall I order dinner for us since you will be coming from work?”
“Yes, that would be quite nice.”
“See you at seven.”
She gave me an enigmatic smile. “I like American beefsteak,”
Chapter 11
I had showered and dressed in my finest Ted Baker British silk shirt, azure blue with a dashing pair of sand-colored khakis. The dinner was ordered. I checked the Glock to make sure the bullets were where they belonged. I knew they would be, but it couldn’t hurt to look, and I saw Bogie do it once in a movie. I put the Glock 17 under my pillow, with the ankle Glock behind a couch cushion. Hey, you never know.
I answered my hotel room door to the sight of a beautifully exotic Chinese woman wearing a floral print Vera Wong
“Ms. Hong so nice of you to join me. Will you please come in.”
She did, bowed, and said, “Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Mr. Brown.”
“Please call me Anthony.”
“If that’s the case, my American friends call me Fern.”
“Fern?”
“It’s easier than my full name.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Please come in,” and she glided her way into my suite effortlessly carrying a large Alexander McQueen tote.
I said, “Would you like a drink?”
I had a cart set up.
“Yes, please. Do you have a chilled rose?”
I did and poured myself a Maker’s on the rocks.
I gestured to the couch and chair. She looked around the suite.
“An impressive view.”
“Thank you, it pales to your home, though.”
“The gods have blessed me,” she bowed slightly. “How may I be of service to such an esteem gentleman as yourself, Mr. Brown?”
Esteemed? I’ve never been called that before. Might have to put on my new business card. “Esteemed Detective.” I liked the ring of it.
“Anthony, please. Well, as you know I’m investigating the tragic murders of Mr. Tilson and his family. Bill Richmond thought you might be of help.”
“Yes, Mr. Tilson, let’s take a moment.” She bowed and I did.
“Now we need to take a moment for the rest of the family so they can be settled together by the gods as a family and not separated in the afterlife. It is important,” and she bowed her head.
I joined her and we stayed like that for some time.
She finally lifted her head. “Bill. I perceive him as a good man.”
“Do you work closely with him? I was led to believe that Richard Higgs hired your services.”
“Yes, Mr. Higgs did, but I work most closely with Mr. Richmond.”
We chatted a bit more about her work until I said, “We don’t want our dinners to get completely cold.”
We moved over to the table, clothed, fully set, with a nice Caesar’s salad waiting for us and a well-marbled ribeye with all the fixings.
“You said you liked steak. I hope this is okay,” I said.
She looked me up and down spending extra time on my shoulders and chest.
“Mr. Brown, that is not quite what I said.” Another enigmatic smile.
We dug in anyway.
I looked up at her and said, “I understand that steel is especially difficult to find nowadays especially I-beams.”
“Yes, unfortunately, that is now how I spend most of my days,” Fern replied.
“And why is that, do you think?”
“There is no production in the mills overseas, and ports are slow. I’ve been lucky enough to find a steady supply out of Vietnam and Cambodia.”
“Really?! I didn’t know they had a steel industry.”
“Mr. Brown, you’d be surprised what most Americans don’t know about those two countries,” and that smile again.
We continued talking about her business. The steak was surprisingly good, the company was better.
“An after-dinner drink for you ma’am?
“Any chance, you would have a B&B?”
The minibar did. I had a Remy Martin.
We sat on the couch still discussing business.
“Mr. Brown.”
“Anthony.”
“Mr. Brown. I am a shy Chinese girl so please excuse me for saying this, but I like American men that are Caucasian and big and strong like you. Did you really think I was talking about ribeye? I Googled you and you meet all of my criteria for a lover. Do you think I was naked for you by chance?”
And she slid towards me and before I knew it we were making out with my hands on her tits and hers all over my crotch.
She stood up and walked over to the bed and patted it.
“Please come over, undress, and lay face down. I will be with you presently.” She reached into the massive tote and pulled out a number of bottles and scented candles that she then set about lighting. She stepped out of the room to the bath after lighting the final one.
I figured “what the fuck,” stripped, grabbed the throw from the bed, fluffed myself to a semi-hardon, laid down beneath it, and waited.
A few moments later, Fern was by my side. “Are you all set?” she asked, and I looked up to see a breathtaking topless beauty having already oiled her breasts that were glistening in the candlelight as she glided to the bed. The Vera Wong was gone and now below her waist was a floral print thong of pink roses.
The back tattoo had continued over her shoulder and around her left tit with plum blossoms covering her breast and a dragon’s head ending between the two.
She was carrying a rectangular pivoting mirror in her hand with a square wire base as a stand. She put it down in front of my head. “There so you can watch if you want.”
Fern gently leaned over pulling the throw off the bed. She gracefully picked up a bottle and squeezed some oil onto my back and began to rub it all over from my shoulders down to the top of my ass and gave it a playful slap.
“Mr. Brown, Anthony, as an esteemed member of the Tilson team, I am going to give you a gift of appreciation and friendship, Mr. Higgs asked me to give you a full body, health massage. It will be good for your material being and your spiritual aura. You understand? With permission, I shall begin.”
“Permission granted!”
She gracefully climbed onto the table, straddled me between her two thighs, and started to gently massage my shoulders and back. Nothing therapeutic, a warm up.
Then her hand moved up, gripped my neck, and began to rhythmically squeeze it, working away the stress and knots of the trip.
She then leaned over, kissed the back of my head, laid down upon me fully with her body covering me, her arms reached up to enveloped mine, her soft breasts making gentle circles on my back, her pelvis slowly grinding into my ass and her legs somehow vibrating softly and quickly against the backs of my legs.
“This is to make your aura rise from your being before the massage begins.”
“That’s nice,” I thought, but my aura wasn’t the only thing that she was making rise.
She sat back up, sitting on my ass now, and began to massage me in earnest reaching forward to my head, her nipples grazing my back, as she tenderly kneaded my scalp from the front to the back.
Her magic fingers continued upon my neck once again with the knots and an occasional cervical adjustment. She moved her strong hands to my shoulders and upper back massaging me, squeezing and caressing me, pressing deeply into my muscles. Shit, she was finding ones I didn’t know I had.
Changing position, she started to work on my back kneading me now from a different angle like an artisan baker kneading into her dough transporting me into a state of blissful relaxation.
She laid full on me again, but this time began the indescribable soft vibration over my entire body and not just my leg.
“Yes, I sense your aura effecting to separate and hover above you.”
She put a hand down barely tickling the bottom of my shaved sack and pushing herself upwards traced her nails along the seam between my nuts to sit back on my now naked ass.
Which wasn’t the only thing that was naked. Somewhere in translation Fern had lost her bikini bottom and was now totally nude rubbing her pussy in a small circle over my asshole, leaving a light trail of her juices while massaging by firm cheeks hitting my balls when the circle hit 6 o’clock.
The few tufts of pubic hair left above her clit on the lower strokes were tickling my rosebud deliciously causing me to have to make my own adjustment for my now rock-hard cock between me and the bed. She reached around to confirm, teasing the head with those practiced nails.
“Do not worry for this is a natural and expected biological reaction. It is an excellent sign from above of your good intentions.”
More oil was poured and her knowing hand began a supernatural deep tissue massage of my lower back and top of my ass occasionally dragging a finger down the crack to my rosebud and leaving a trail of oil pooling within its portal.
She kept massaging my lower back, kneading my ass, and grabbing both cheeks with her strong hands gripping from the outside to inside the crack along the tender outer brown ring of my backdoor, but now she was including the top half of my thighs within her manipulations.
Here rhythmic chirapsia continued along my thighs now capturing my calves, well-rounded and muscular from years of running and weight training.
“Anthony, I feel your core being starting to become one with your body,” and in a blink of an eye, her finger was deep inside my asshole way past the 2nd sphincter and on my prostate hitting the bullseye with a learned hand, rolling around the trigger points of my p-spot, milking it.
Maybe it was my aura? Maybe my core and my body were somehow becoming one. Whatever it was the precum started pouring out of me in a slow steady stream. A lot of it.
I knew I wasn’t having a prostate orgasm. At least I thought I wasn’t having a prostate orgasm — not that I had ever had one before — because it didn’t feel like any orgasm I’d had, but the milk kept pouring out.
And without removing her finger from deep inside my bowels, she used it as a rudder to roll me over with her other hand on my shoulder to effortlessly complement the task.
I was now on my back naked with my very erect cock sticking straight up trying to touch the ceiling of my room.
Keeping her finger inside me, Fern moved her thumb over the top of my balls, clutching them in her hand and giving them a gentle massage.
Still straddling my legs I saw a smile glance across her face admiring my manhood.
“Oh, you have been kissed down upon by a thousand of the gods, and with that, her finger popped out of my ass, a quick wipe with a cloth from nowhere, more magical oils, and Fern started on my shoulders again including my chest.
I’m no bear, but I do have enough chest hair to be considered manly with a clear stomach leading to a happy trail from my belly button down to my crotch that I shaved bare.
With all of the stomach crunches I do every day I would have groomed my stomach for vanity and six-pack sake, but nature — of should I say the gods — saw to it that all of my hard gym work was not for naught.
My pecs and arms were the next targets under her spell taking her thumbs and pressing them down into the meat of the long muscles and rolfing them upwards against the grain to my grunts of pain.
“For every pain must come pleasure,” and both hands landed at the base of my cock on either side and stoked it upward in the same manner but without the pain. Only pleasure. Oh my, yes pleasure.
Fern was now sitting on top of my balls with my hard cock nestled in her vulva and tufts of black pubic hair as she was rolling on my shaft, sensually massaging my chest and rippling stomach.
She was making long, sensuous passes down my abdomen stopping right at the base of my cock.
And then she began to massage it.
This was not a hand job. Her expert fingers were finding places upon my shaft that I never knew were connected to the head of my cock.
Her soft fingers explored up and down. Sometimes gentle, sometimes firm, sometimes hard settling into the area immediately below the head in between the crown and my circumcision scar moving in an area about 1/4″ of an inch and making the head of my cock throbbing, needing to explode.
I moaned, “If you keep doing that, I am going to have to fuck you!”
“That is my sincerest desire, Mr. Brown.”
I flipped her over and said, “My turn to do the massaging,” and shoved my cock inside her to moans and sighs putting a thumb on her fat clit.
“Oh yes. Have your way with me.”
And we did. Hard, rough, and long. Her wetness was loud and noisy. Fern came once, I kept going. She came again. I kept going still. She came again screaming something in Mandarin. I kept driving heading to my well-earned orgasm until she flipped me back over.
“Mr. Brown, you are a splendid lover, and because of that, I’m going to give you a special massage.”
She lifted herself off of my throbbing cock sitting on my thighs. More of that magical oil was poured on me, she grabbed my hardon, and moved her body back over me until the head of my cock was between her cheeks and her ass was resting upon it.
She smiled at me as she started to ease her way down. Her rosebud spreading easily and then gripping my shaft in a vice-like grip as she eased down in one smooth movement until I was balls deep in her ass.
I could feel the heat. Her 98.6-degree oven roasting my needy erection.
She started to move. I had never experienced an ass fuck like this before. The control of her ass and sphincter was incredible. She would tighten as she slid down, loosen as she slid up, and alternate that with fluttering and flickering between the two.
My cock was going crazy.
She lifted her way to the head of my cock and clamping down on the coronal ridge moved her ass back and forth a 1/4″ at a time knowing exactly when it entered her and when it left. Until my head was so engorged it hurt like it hadn’t since I was 18 and riding home from a date with blue balls.
She took me in balls deep again and started to grind against me.
“I want you to cum.”
And she started again, this time anal cowgirl. I watched as her face glowed in ecstasy and that tuff of black hair moved up and down on my cock with her oiled breasts swirling around the dragon on her chest until she plunged herself down onto me and came hard for the fourth time screaming as I finally shot deep inside her rope after rope after rope up her ass, deep into her bowels feeling the vice of her ass pulse on me as I came.
She sat back, her hands reaching behind her onto the bed as she rubbed her crotch into me. The glow of orgasm spreading across her beautiful face, and I was reeling in mine.
We laid there for a moment enjoying it. and then she said, “I have had many lovers all over this planet, but you are one of the best.”
“Thank you. I feel the same way.”
She bowed, “Many thanks,” and bowed again. This time in a more serious, deeper way.
“And that is why I’m so sorry I have to kill you now.”
And the assassin’s knife plunged towards me as I threw her off of the bed just in time, suffering a slash on my shoulder. I jumped to the floor, grabbing the Glock from under the pillow.
“Why?”
“They told me to.”
“Who?
“The powerful men I work for. They will kill me.”
“Tell me who they are. I can help you.”
“I have family. They will kill them too.”
“I really can help you. Please let me. You know that if you come at me again, I will kill you.”
She did.
And I did, hitting her smack dab in the dragon’s eye in between her breasts.
Chapter 12
It took a while for the Monterey cops to sort it all out including a call to Ragan down at LAPD HQ.
They didn’t seem too impressed by my shiny badge.
It was after 4 am, when they finally cleared out. I was exhausted. I looked at the mess and the blood and decided to deal with the hotel and the consequences later and ask for another room when my phone rang.
It was Mary Carlson.
“Counselor, are you up late, or working early?”
“Ragan just called me. Everything alright?”
“Well, not for Ms. Hong.”
“Asshole, I mean you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good, because you need to get back here as soon as they’ll let you. Higgs is dead.”
Chapter 13
A couple of stitches set my shoulder right, joining the parade of scars. I made it back down in record time. I’ll admit, exhausted.
Higgs had been killed in his bedroom. An explosive device had blown off the front door and he took one in the back of his head in his bathrobe. It looked like he was running. The cops found him sprawling out in a pool of blood and urine with his private parts on full display, a state that he ignominiously had to endure for hours during the investigation.
It’s rarely mentioned, but when people die, they urinate. Sometimes they also defecate, but that usually involves a long, violent death like choking or hanging. Gladly, that didn’t happen here.
Since there is no brain to control the bladder, it voids upon death. An overlooked fact in the news, movies, and television shows, but it’s a fact of life. So Richard Higgs, the COO of Tilson Construction had to lay there in death in pools of his own blood and urine as the LAPD homicide team did its thing.
By the time I returned, the autopsy was completed. I met Ragan at the morgue by Higgs’s remains.
He said, “One armor piercing shot in the head.”
“The same as the Tilsons.”
Ragan nodded.
“Same gun?”
“We have to get the final tests, but yeah.”
I looked at him. “Thoughts?”
“Looks like they are cleaning up loose ends,” said Ragan.
“That’d be my guess. Any pictures from the security cameras?”
” Yeah, looks like the same guy.”
“He’s a pro,” I said.
Ragan nodded. “I think our Army Ranger found a new career as an international killer. My guess, based in Europe now. There’s more work over there coming out of the former Soviet states. Meet his fee and he takes the job. He’s a cold-hearted machine.”
“Sure enough is.”
“You know, we might never catch him.”
“I know,” I said. “But we can catch the guy who hired him and that might be enough for me.”
“Well, I don’t know where you are going with this,” Ragan continued. “But M67 grenades, armor piercing bullets, helicopters, I could go on, in my book, this looks like serious drug money, ex-military, and the NoHo-16. Tell me about Monterey and the shooting.”
I did. Filling him in with everything I had learned up to that point, except for certain private items about Courtney. I kept to my promise, full disclosure, except when it came to her safety.
“Ok, I understand the connection between the Tilson’s and Higgs, but why Hong? Where does she fit in?”
“I think she was the Asian conduit for the big boys and it is all about the materials. And I think Tilson was starting to get in the way. My hunch is they are smuggling drugs in them. And, as crazy as this sounds, I think it’s the I-beams.”
“The I-beams?!”
“Yeah, think about it. How much smack could you hide in them and how would anyone at customs notice the weight difference. Hell, the customs process is totally different for this kind of stuff anyway.”
I watched Ragan think and nod.
I continued, “I don’t know how it is possible, but suppose you could forge an I-beam with a hollow inside and fill it with heroin? You could bring in billions of dollars undetected. And that would take cunning, connections, knowledge of the industry and Southeast Asia, and along with these attacks that speaks ex-military.”
“NoHo-16,” he said.
“Yes. NoHo-16. Probably started in the Indochinese Peninsula. Nam, Cambodia, probably Thailand and Laos thrown in for good measure.”
“If that is the case, we are undermanned and completely fucked!”
“Ragan my friend, you are. But what if we kept this on the QT. Before you try to bring in the Calvary. Can I have a few days to see where I can go on this?”
“And what does that mean, cowboy?”
“Four, five days.”
“Is Ryker with you on this?”
I nodded yes.
“Others?”
I nodded yes again.
He nodded too. “Downtown, I now have six stiffs on my hands. Seven if you count your Chinese babe, a whiteboard upstairs that is filling up, and the brass are squeezing my nuts. The shit is rolling down on me starting at the mayor’s office. Turns out Tilson was a major donor. You can have two days and that is a stretch.”
“I’ll need all that you have on this,” I said.
“Come upstairs.”
He gave it to me.
I started at Higgs’ place. A condo in one of the Wilshire Boulevard Westwood towers. The penthouse. As you would expect.
Ragan had cleared me to enter the scene. The blast was wartime huge, but the scene was insignificant. A rich man’s house in a high-rise where he died in his bathrobe.
I went back to my office to think things over. Ryker joined me. I was sitting at my desk writing on a yellow pad. once again jotting things down trying to connect the dots. I’m old school and think better when I use a pen and paper and actually write.
The office wasn’t much. On Hollywood Boulevard by Gower, on the second floor mostly for my personal nostalgia. Makes me feel like Marlowe. The best part is it had a window that looked directly into the ladies dressing room in the Pantages Theater next door.
Sometimes they would wave, sometimes put down the blinds, and sometimes they didn’t seem to care.
Today, they didn’t seem to care.
Ryker was looking out the window. “Nice costumes today.”
“I’m glad you approve. Let’s send a letter to the Times with your review.”
He shook his head, with maybe an “asshole” under his breath, and sat there watching me.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Figured.”
“Got anything?”
“When I know, you’ll know.”
“Expected that.”
I kept noodling.
My door opened and Fireplug and his three friends entered to visit again without knocking. This time his gun was drawn.
I looked up at him and said, “Hey! A true delight to see you again, but I don’t have time to have a playdate right now.”
He laughed derisively.
“My boss still says you need to lay off the Tilson case.”
I looked at him and said, “Did you guys give this any thought. I mean, do you have a playbook of any kind? Because you suck at this.”
“We don’t suck, and I’m warning you again to get out of this Tilson business. My boss said to make this as clear as day to you.”
I watched Ryker reach down to the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun nestled in the corner between the wall and the file cabinet to his right and silently bring it up cradling it in his arms. He cocked both barrels.
“Ten gauge,” Ryker said. “Damn, like fish in a barrel.”
He leaned back with the shotgun in the crook of his arm smiling. Meanwhile, while they had been understandably watching Ryker, I had pulled out my .44 Magnum silently out of the drawer which Clint had made sure everyone knew was “The most powerful handgun in the world.”
Fireplug glanced over at Ryker. “This doesn’t concern you.”
He turned back to me, “Listen buster, you’ll leave this case alone from here on out, or we’ll make you pay the price. Nothing would make me happier. I don’t like you, gumshoe.”
“Gosh darn it, under ordinary circumstances worrying about what you like and don’t like would occupy my every waking hour, but sadly, I don’t have the time right now. And quitting the Tilson case, I wish we could, but it ain’t gonna happen. Looks like fate stuck its foot out and tripped you, good buddy.”
“I’m giving you one last warning.”
“Like John Wayne in a cowboy movie? Ryker, ever heard that one before?”
And Fireplug went to shoot, as the others reached for their guns, but Ryker blew him away into the far wall with a double shotgun blast.
I raised the Magnum and l looked at the other three. “You guys want any of this?”
I guess not since they split in a hurry.
“How am I going to explain this shit?” I said to Ryker as I dialed Ragan.
Chapter 14
Ragan and his partner, Detective Johnny Walker were standing in my office with the coroner and the rest of the shooting team. I was always delighted that his partner was named after a scotch! Finally, I could rib someone else about his name.
Ragan looked at Ryker. “You know you can’t just go round killing people whenever the notion strikes you.”
“Seemed worth killing to me.”
Ragan didn’t answer.
“Dan,” I said, “The mooks came in here to gun us down.”
“And why exactly do you think that’s happening to you so much lately?”
“Guessing my sparkling personality.”
Walker looked back to Ryker. “Did you have to use both barrels of the shotgun? Shit man, we’re gonna have to pick him up with a sieve.”
“Shouldn’t have come at me.”
What could you say to that? The shooting was cleared and after four hours of questions downtown, I was finally able to get on with what was left of my day.
I was late for dinner with Mary at Musso and Frank’s. She knew and had a martini waiting for me when I arrived. I chugged it and asked for another.
“I like that you drink like a man.”
“That’s not the only thing I do like a man,” I said as I rubbed my knee against her leg.
“Yes, I know. Down big boy.”
Vintage Hollywood doesn’t come any better than Musso and Frank’s. Opened in 1919 on Hollywood Boulevard, it still serves many of the same classic dishes it did over a 100 years ago. A world-class steak house with an international flavor.
Dark wood-paneled walls, deeply tufted red leather booths, and legendary martinis, Musso and Frank’s has been the home for everybody from William Saroyan, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Golden Age of Hollywood stars loved it too including Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Bogie, Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Brando. The modern stars from Johnny Depp and Taylor Swift do too.
It has been featured as a location in 100s of movies and TV shows and their martinis were legendary.
I sipped on my second one.
“So, bring me up to speed.”
I did, including the last two shoots.
“So, you and Ragan are convinced it’s the NoHo-16.”
“Let’s say strongly believe.”
“But it’s them. I’m counting on you to help me bring them to justice. They killed Courtney’s family.”
Exasperated I said, “Mary I know. This case is hard on all of us. We’re going to get them. They’ve committed murders. The Tilsons were not their first, and probably not their last. These are bad guys. Really bad guys. Listen, it’s not like the guys who killed the Tilsons are taking a bus ride with me where they can’t get off at a different stop. They’re stuck with me now and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end of the line, and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is life in prison or the cemetery. Sorry, if it means you won’t see them in court, but Courtney needs revenge, and I intend to give it to her.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“I claim attorney client privilege.”
“Granted.”
“So, what’s next?” she asked.
“I’m thinking we’re going to go into the hornet’s nest.”
Chapter 15
Before any of that, it was time to escort Courtney Tilson to her first day back at the office. Ryker and I along with six Red Level guys brought her through the door in an armed shield to protect her.
Everybody there was supremely happy to see her, and all said the appropriate words. We rode the elevator up to the 55th floor and before I allowed her to enter her office, we cleared it. After we did, Courtney walked in as the CEO and COO of Tilson Construction and sat down at her desk.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
With a set jaw she said, “Yes. I have a job to do.”
“Good. Now listen to me carefully.” I pointed to the six red level team members, “Two of these guys will be in the lobby. The rest will be outside your door and strategically positioned in the hallway. You will NOT leave this office without them escorting you. And I don’t care if it’s to the can. Got it?!”
She saluted me, “Yes, sir!”
“Are you being sarcastic with me?”
“No, I hear you, and I have a private bathroom in my office.”
“Good.”
And Ryker and I left.
Ragan had told me the NoHo-16 hangout was a house in North Hollywood in the outer reaches.
We drove up to a once nice ranch-style house, the kind of two bedrooms, one and a half baths places that were built in the late ’40s for the returning GIs. This one now had a lot of deferred maintenance.
What was once a hideous Pepto Bismol pink was now a faded, peeling mess with half a roof, a rusty cyclone fence around it, and a half a dozen guys hanging on the porch and in the yard throwing the ball.
We walked up. “Wow, guys! For all of the money you’re making, don’t you think you could fix up this shithole?”
“What’s it to you, asshole?” said a guy with prison teardrops tattooed down his left eye, raising his shirt to show me he was strapped.
“Golly, gee whiz! That’s gosh darn impressive. I turned to Ryker, “You ever seen one of those before?”
“Nope. Can’t say that I have.”
I said to him, “That’s a surprise,” and said to Teardrop. “Can you fucking imagine? I’ve got one of those too!” And I opened my coat to show him my Glock.
He looked at me with his best “hard guy” stare. “You Five-O? I’ve never seen you before.”
I flashed my badge. “Nope, private dick.”
He laughed, “Go fuck yourself, Marrano.”
“I’d rather fuck you. You take it up the culo, right? A couple of good prison fucks being a bitch.”
I watched him seethe and twitch towards his gun, a Ruger 9mm.
“Since you’re the bitch who takes it up the ass, I’m here to see the boss.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Oh, thanks for asking. We are the good guys. And we are going to question you and then take you down to the cops to bust you for murder with some drug dealing thrown in on the side.”
“The fuck you are!” Teardrop said as a ton of guns showed up in the yard.
I looked at all of the weapons aimed at us hearing the John Fogerty lyric, “Sometimes I think, life is like a rodeo. The trick is to ride, and make it to the bell.”
These fuckers were hoping to stop that. I pulled out my Glock and Ryker’s Uzi submachine gun came on display at the same time. They all looked at us especially the Uzi.
“Dudes,” I said. “Ever seen an Uzi in real life? Isn’t it fucking awesome? So small, yet so powerful. You know they were developed by the Israeli military to kill fuckers like you and can shoot 30 rounds a second. Isn’t that cool?! The Secret Service uses them to protect the President of the United States! Imagine that! The actual fucking President of the United States! Once my buddy here starts firing, you’ll have less than a minute to live. Have any last prayers you want to say?”
Not surprisingly, they all started talking amongst themselves until macho wannabe up on the porch started to aim, and I had to shoot him between the eyes.
He dropped like a two-bit whore falling onto a bed.
“Who’s next?” I asked.
“Nice shooting,” Ryker said. “Ragan will be on your ass about that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I look at the rest of them. “Anyone else? Bueller? Bueller?”
They didn’t get the joke.
“So, where’s the boss?”
“Ain’t no boss here, bro. I’m the boss,” said Teardrop.
“The fuck you are. Who’s the boss?” I raised my Glock and put it between his eyes.” “You want to be next?”
“I’m telling you, man, there is no boss. I’m the boss. The orders come to me and I deliver them.”
“How?”
“Burners dude. Are you totally clueless?”
I wasn’t and nodded. A dead end.
We waited until Ragan and the homicide squad showed up to clear the scene. He wasn’t pissed.
“Thanks for the help cleaning up the streets.”
I nodded. “Can we split?”
“Yeah. Be available later for questioning. Your clock is ticking, by the way.”
Like he had to tell me.
Chapter 16
I went back to my office that had thankfully been scrubbed clean by a commercial cleaning service that the cops recommended for crime scenes. I needed to think things over leaving Ryker behind to answer questions and clean up the mess when my door opened again without a knock.
I looked up to see a chiseled jawed, well-built individual who looked like the spitting image of Marvel Comics Sgt. Fury from the ’70s wearing a $3,000 custom made suit.
He looked like a guy who could eat a bar of metal for lunch and be shitting nails in the afternoon. He sat down in my guest chair.
“Nice suit. Hugo Boss custom?” I asked. “I have one or two of those, but I prefer Ozwald Boateng out of London. That’s in England, you know.”
He just sat there looking at me with dead eyes.
“And how can I be of service, today?” I asked. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Oh, I’m not in trouble. You are.” And Chiseled Jaw soldier boy looked at me.
“Oh, why?”
“My boys asked you nicely to stay away and you killed one of them.”
“Well, that is an interesting question since you asked it. I did not kill him. Ryker killed him, but then again, he drew on Ryker. That was his big mistake. Even I wouldn’t do that. However, I suppose, you could technically say, I killed him since he was in my office trying to kill me and my friend. So, yeah. Okay, Sgt. Fury, I guess I killed him.”
“Do you think this is a laughing matter?”
“Oh no. I think this is very serious.”
“Really? Why?”
“Gosh, Sergeant. May I call you Sergeant?”
“I’m not a fucking Sergeant!”
“Really? Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Marvel Comics’ Sgt. Fury in their comic books in the ’70s? Seriously, you look just like him. You know, that was my favorite. A lot of my friends liked Spiderman and the Fantastic Four and the others, but Sgt Fury was always my favorite. You ever read him?”
“No, I never read Sgt.-fucking-Fury, and fuck you! I’m not him and I’m no fucking Sergeant!”
“Oh gosh darn, please excuse me. I guess I was confused by that “death before dishonor” tattoo you have over there on your arm. Special Forces. You know, Ryker, who your man, Fireplug, drew on, has the same tattoo: Army Ranger. He spent a lot of time in the deep jungle. You?”
“Fuck you, asshole. Yeah. I did. Now listen to me, I’m telling you this is going to stop right here and now. I now understand that my boys were under-matched for you. My mistake. I underestimated you and you have my respect, but you are now going to deal with the big boys and this is over. Got it?”
“Sergeant, no. I’m sorry. You killed Courtney Tilson’s family, made her an orphan, destroying her life in an attempt to make even more illegal money. I am going to track you down and either see you in prison for life or kill you and everyone involved as the dogs you are. No mercy. I’m going to get you and you are a dead man walking.”
“I killed no one,” he retorted. “Listen to me you stupid fucking fuck, if I were you, I’d watch my fucking step because I sense a fucking funeral coming up very, very soon.”
And Sgt. Fury turned and left.
Chapter 17
I met with Ragan, Walker, and of course, Ryker in one of the back booths at Art’s Deli in Studio City in the Valley where “Every sandwich is a work of Art.” Art’s is nearly all booths and very private because it is mostly show business and everybody is too concerned about themselves. I saw Annette Bening and her kids with Warren Beatty in one booth. Jamie Cromwell in another. I waved hi. He was a client a few years back, and Mark Wahlberg in the large corner booth with what looked like his management team. I didn’t wave hi, since he is an asshole.
Our orders came.
“I’m telling you this is the Elizabeth Taylor of corned beef sandwiches,” I said.
“I thought you preferred Langer’s pastrami,” Ryker said.
“My good man, you cannot compare pastrami to corn beef. That is like trying to compare a fine cabernet sauvignon to an award winning pinot noir, a Picasso to a Rembrandt, Sofia Vergara’s breasts to Scarlet Johansson’s ass. A true connoisseur appreciates them all.”
He had ordered a hot dog.
We started to compare notes. After all, they were the actual homicide cops on the case. I filled Ragan and Walker on everything so far including Sgt. Fury’s office visit.
“Did you get him on camera?” Ragan asked.
And I flipped the stills to him.
“We’ll run this guy local, state, and national. If he was Special Forces, we’ll find him. Downtown, you still thinking this I-beam thing?” he continued.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. COVID has screwed up the supply chains. Tilson gets the two big contracts, the interstate, and the stadium, and because of the political pull of both, he’s going to the top of the queue on materials coming out of the San Pedro docks.”
They both nodded, Walker taking notes.
“Hong was the materials broker. Deep Southeast Asian roots and connections. The perfect mule for the I-beams. Higgs was dirty and on the payroll, that’s why they had to kill him. Loose ends. The Tilson family were collateral damage. He was the target. I believe they figured without him the company would fold. It’s an old story. There was a big-deal developer out of San Luis Obispo named Madonna who helped to build the town. Not the singer. He built the Madonna Inn on the 101. He died and a bunch of his country and city projects laid there like a latka for years because his company went belly up, and they had to start the bidding process all over again. Kill Tilson, the contracts dry up and the I-beams start to flow.”
“Hey!” Walker said. “My wife and I have stayed there. In the men’s room, you pee into a giant clamshell.”
“Yeah. That’s the place.”
“Okay,” said Ragan. “That passes the smell test and sounds right. What are your thoughts going forward? It would be good to be on the same page.”
“Look, this stuff is being stored in a warehouse down by the docks somewhere. Probably one of those setups where one side of the warehouse is bonded and still considered “international” and the other side is the USA. Those places have a customs station in them. When it passes into the other side, it’s here. Find me Sgt. Fury and his property holding or whereabouts, and we’ve got the motherfuckers.”
“You know that is a matter for law enforcement,” Ragan said.
“Yeah, but can you get a warrant?”
“Probably not.”
“Figured, that’s because your badge isn’t as shiny!” and I smiled.
Chapter 17
I filled the good counselor in on the developments so far since she was footing the bill and had nice legs on our way over to the Tilson Building in the Brown Bomber to do the same for Courtney, having nothing to do with her money or her legs.
Ryker and I were with her in her office on the 55th floor. I brought her up to speed, gingerly, including Ms. Hong, my visit from Sgt. Fury, and what the cops and I have been talking about.
That’s when the attack came at the end of the day. Two of them, dressed in black with knit watch caps, and plastic reflective masks to thwart facial recognition from the cameras. One came through a side door on the south, the second from the north.
They popped both of our guys guarding the downstairs lobby with one in the head, from behind before they knew what hit them. Then for no reason killed the married cutie at the reception desk. Damn, I liked her and now her husband was a widower. I hoped there were no kids.
They went to the bank of elevators and punched them all to the 55th floor, and then worked their way up the stairways, instead, also both sides. Got to hand to them. These guys were fit because they made it up 55 flights in no time flat.
But we were ready for them. They didn’t know that we had wifi-two-way body cams on everybody and our four guys had taken positions watching the elevators and other access to the floor.
Just in case, we had run a few drills with all personal from secretarial to Courtney on what to do if something like this happened. The alarm sounded and everyone took their safety positions, scared and shivering.
I made sure Courtney was in her safe place under her desk. We had used corporate funds to get a bullet-proof metal desk for her with a nice wood patina before she went back to work.
Joining the troops, Ryker and I also positioned ourselves strategically using the doors for cover.
The elevators arrived at the 55th floor and opened, seemingly empty, but one of our guys had to go in to clear them and make sure while we covered. The two assassins surprised us arriving from the stairwells on the sides instead and one of them killed him. Hitting him square in the back, before the assassin was blown away by Ryker and one of our other three.
His partner wasn’t so lucky. He barely made it around the corner before I hit him with the standard LAPD three-shot pattern in the chest sending him to his heavenly reward.
The devil got his money’s worth that night.
We went to investigate the scene. “Reflective masks,” I said as I pulled one off. I reached for his sleeve, pulled it back to reveal a tattoo.
“God damn, I think this might be our guy!”
“Why not body armor?” Ryker wondered.
“I’m guessing too obvious in downtown during the daytime. I mean, would you?”
“I wouldn’t need it.”
I shook my head, “Nope, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
LAPD showed up shortly. Ragan and Walker weren’t far behind.
“You thinking that’s our guy?”
“I am.”
“Maybe Christmas came early. I’ll get the lab guys to get the Feds involved in this too.”
He looked at me, “You know, the body counts getting pretty big on this one, Downtown.”
“Tell me about it. I’m looking forward to a nice, quiet divorce case where the only shooting is his dick in the other woman.”
After all of the appropriate things and words, and the cops were done, we left the team, and the company employees, because we had Courtney to deal with.
Ryker and I sat in her office in the conversational grouping.
“I should give everybody the option to go home,” she said.
I nodded, “Probably a good idea.”
She did.
“If you would prefer to go home yourself we will take you,” I said.
“No. I won’t let them chase me away.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“You promised me that I was safe. Was I safe?”
“You were,” I reassured. I’m very sorry about your receptionist downstairs. I liked her and feel bad for her family, but all of the bad guys are dead. As long as I am alive no one will get to you.”
She nodded her head about the receptionist and looked relieved regarding herself.
“Do you want us to escort you home to recover? This must trigger a lot of fresh feelings and memories.”
“No, I’m here to run this company and see this through and that is what I’m going to do.”
And she looked me square in the eye.
“And to hell with them, if they think they are going to scare me. I’m not going to let them!”
I was surprised, impressed, and delighted.
“Good. We will bring in fresh troops, you will be safe.”
“Do you have anything on my family’s killer?” she asked plaintively.
“I think we got him.”
“Really?!”
“Yeah, I think he is dead on the carpet outside your door.”
“I want to see him.”
“I’d advise against that, Courtney,” I cautioned.
“I want to see him!”
And she got up and walked outside to the hallway looking at a phalanx of cops and folks from the coroner’s busy around the scene.
“Which one is he?”
I pointed him out.
Courtney walked over to him. A uniformed police officer held out his arm and said, “Sorry ma’am, you can’t go in there.”
“The hell I can’t,” she snapped. “I own this building and you are standing in my hallway. Get the fuck out of my way!” and she barreled in with us following.
The coroner looked up.
“Is that him?”
She lifted her skirt. She was going commando! Bent down, and pissed on his face. A damn river! — until the shocked coroner shouted, “No!!!”
As they pulled Courtney away she turned back and shouted, “Burn in Hell, fucker.”
Chapter 18
Everyone else had gone. I was sitting with Courtney on the couch softly talking things over, her anger and adrenalin slowly melting away. Reality was finally settling in about another traumatic experience. I was waiting for that. She leaned into me.
“Well, that made a statement. Feel better? What happened to your underwear?”
“I peed in my pants before.”
“It happens to everybody. Don’t worry, you are not alone.”
“I hate him.”
“I know,” and put my arm around her.
“Anthony, is this going to be okay? I have no one left to talk to,” and she started crying.
“You can always talk to me.”
I let her sob.
We stayed like that for a while. I brought her a few tissues.
“Here. You’ll need these.”
A few nose blows and eye wipes later she was back into my chest with my arm around her shoulders.
“You know, I have no one to love me anymore.”
“Sure you do. You have your extended family, your friends, the folks who work here. Of anyone I know you have the most folks who love you.”
“But no one to love me!” and she squeezed my chest harder. “I need someone to love me. Will you love me, Anthony,” and she looked up into my eyes.
“If you are saying what I think you are, that is not a good idea, Courtney.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t know what to do, and I have no one to turn to but you. You are my knight in shining armor. My bodyguard. I need you. And I need you now!”
And she moved up and kissed me.
I gently pushed her away.
“Really, this is not a good idea.”
And she dove back in and shove her tongue into my mouth desperately like someone finally drinking water after days in the Mohave Desert.
“Make love to me, please. Make me feel good. Please make me feel good. I need someone to love me. Only me.”
She kissed me some more and started to move all over me.
“Make me feel good, I need to feel good again. Will you please make me feel good, Anthony?”
Courtney’s hands were everywhere. Her voice was desperate. Her lips were begging. My hands were roaming as I started to respond.
She leaned back against the couch, jutting her chest out, offering herself to me.
“Love me, please. You said you’d take care of me. Won’t you make me feel good?”
Against my better judgment, I began to kiss her back. Her lips were sweet and tender. Her breasts were young and needy as was her body.
With her skirt up to her waist, her pussy was wet and yearning. I kissed her again, looked at her, and said, “Are you sure you want this?”
Her eyes said yes. I entered her tenderly, slowly sliding completely inside her velvety warmth.
“Still okay?”
She answered pulling me in for a long, deep, everlasting kiss and we made love on her couch as “Oh yes, so good. Make me feel good,” she continued.
I think I did.
Chapter 19
The next few days were filled with paperwork and looking into the little things.
Life had calmed down at Tilson and was slowly getting back to normal, the Feds came through and it was our guy. Ragan was right. After he left the Army, our guy had become an international hitman paid by Bitcoin, wanted all over the western world. Ragan was fielding calls from London to Sydney. It looked as if I was a hero in the international secret agent and spook ecosphere.
Damn, finally made the Hall of Fame!
I was shuffling paper waiting for Ragan to submerge from the international flood to give me some hints on the location of the possible warehouse.
So I asked Courtney if she’d like to have dinner.
We were sitting at a window table at Geoffrey’s in Malibu. Great California-style cuisine seafood with waterfalls spilling into the ocean, and spotlights in the surf. Maybe the finest seafood restaurant in Malibu and I didn’t even have to slip the maître d a hundred since I had helped him a few years back.
“Hi, Anthony.”
“Scotty, I hope everything is cool and you guys are doing okay.”
“Yes, we are. Thanks for chasing the son-of-a-bitch out of town. I took her back.”
I was happy to hear the news.
“I have a nice ocean-view booth for you.”
“Thanks,” and they led us to the table.
Courtney ordered a lemon-drop martini — yuck — and I ordered my Maker’s on the rocks.
“It’s good to be with you in a normal life situation,” I said.
“Yes,” she sighed and melted into the booth.
“Then let’s have a normal life like time tonight. What do you say?”
She nodded.
The appetizers came. I sprung for the seafood tower. Three layers of the finest shellfish on earth from lobster to shrimp to scallops, to crabs and oysters.
“Oh my!” she said and dug in.
It was nearly as luscious as Courtney.
We spent the rest of the evening talking like people, not private eye and client, getting to know each other.
She was wise beyond her years and had taken a year off for the Peace Corp. Started by JFK and thanks to Reagan a forgotten thing, but still a thing. She had been inland in Libya for a year.
“Do you know over three billion people, three billion! cook on an open fire in their homes? Many of those homes are simple huts. Imagine the danger to their life and health, let alone the pollution to global warming. A simple, small stove can feed and save an entire African family. The Grameen Bank, Nobel Prize winners, started an international micro-loan program to provide that. No collateral. Trust. A small loan that can buy a stove, or a goat, or two new water buckets. Things as simple as that can change and save lives over there.”
I was listening enthralled by her brilliance.
“The Cookstove Project is doing just that. Believe it or not, they all have cell phones. It makes sense. There are no phone companies and cell service is changing the world. The Peace Corp put me in Libya for a year all over the country to try to get the population to download the Grameen Bank app. I did with 1,000s and that is saving and improving lives over there right now. They are wonderful people. But I was pulled out because it became too dangerous with the civil war brewing.”