When Rick and A.J. arrived at the designated meeting place, Janet's car was out on the driveway, and the garage door was open although Rick hadn't instructed her to do so. Smart girl.
"We're meeting with Janet at Myron's home?" A.J. sounded anxious.
"Yeah, but don't worry about him. He's out of town for a few days. Family emergency."
Rick pulled the station wagon into the garage, and before he killed the engine, Janet walked in from the inside and closed the garage door.
Rick got out of the car to greet her, "Hi, gorgeous. Thanks…"
Janet walked right past him and went straight to the passenger side where A.J. was standing.
"…for your concern," Rick finished though he seemed to be talking to no one at that point.
"A.J., are you…?" Janet gasped when she saw A.J.'s face. "Oh, my God! What happened to you?"
"Hey, I'm all right, Janet. You know what they say about an eye injury—it usually looks worse than it really is." A.J. smiled ruefully.
She started fussing over him and practically dragged him inside the house, leaving Rick standing alone in the garage.
"Can I come in too?" Rick's sarcastic question fell on deaf ears.
Once she calmed down, Janet demanded information. Rick and A.J. had agreed that it would be safer for her to not know the details, but she expertly coaxed out bits and pieces of information by skillfully asking right questions. There was no doubt in the brothers' minds that she would make a fine lawyer someday.
"So, while repossessing a truck, you two found this secret message." Janet recapped the Simon brothers' story tapping her legal pad with a pen.
"Yeah, that's right," affirmed A.J., who was sitting next to her at the kitchen table.
"It's not like you to take someone else's personal item without a just cause, especially when you don't know what and who it's for."
"Well, we didn't know the message was in our possession at first."
"You didn't? How could that be? Was it stuck on the bottom of your shoe or something? How could you not know?"
A.J. took a quick glance at Rick across the table and saw that his brother was not about to provide the information voluntarily, so he reluctantly replied revealing as little as possible. "Because it was hidden."
"Hidden where?" Janet was as tenacious and single-minded as a Bloodhound tracking the scent of a criminal on the lam. Cornered in a tight spot, A.J. had no other choice but to answer honestly. "In a pack of cigarettes."
"A pack of cigarettes? But you don't smoke, A.J."
A.J. did not respond, but by then, Janet had already connected the dots.
"You took it, didn't you, Rick?" She sounded like a prosecutor questioning her defendant on the witness stand.
Rick looked like a schoolboy who had been caught red-handed in the middle of a prank.
"So, you're the one who's in trouble." Her tone turned more accusatory.
"Hey, it was an honest mistake. I didn't realize I still had it on me when I left the truck."
"You lied to me. Just give me one good reason why I should help you. You're in trouble because you were careless and irresponsible."
Rick glanced at his brother with pleading eyes.
"Look, Janet. He wasn't lying—he just didn't tell you the whole truth. Rick's in a pickle, for sure, and so am I. We're a package deal. Besides which, we all know in our hearts that he didn't swipe the cigarettes intentionally." A.J. hoped to God he was convincing enough to persuade Janet though his words sounded hollow to his own ears.
"We're desperate and really need your help. There's no one else to turn to."
Janet was still giving Rick the evil eye.
"Oh, please, Janet. Please, please, pretty please?" A.J. turned up his boyish charm a few notches and flashed a disarming, ingenuous smile, which worked like magic on a big chunk of the female population just as effectively as a puppy taking wobbly steps.
Only a puppy would never come between you and a dream girl you're dying to go out with, Rick thought idly as A.J. pleaded and begged on his behalf. Maybe I was onto something when I insisted Mom send the baby A.J. back to the hospital and get me a puppy instead after she brought my baby brother home for the first time.
On the other hand, A.J. was a valuable tool when dealing with nubile women. As smart as she was, Janet was not entirely immune to his power of gentle persuasion. Rick gave her five seconds. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…
"All right, I'll do it, but I intend to collect on this one. Big time." Janet sighed and finally caved in.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I knew you'd come through for us!"
A.J. leaned over and gave her a hug and a peck on the cheek.
"Now, here are a couple of things we'd like you to do…"
S&S S&S
"Hello, Mr. Bergman? I'm Jackie Fullerton of M.D. Fowler Corporation. Richard and Andrew Simon gave me your name and phone number as a reference… Oh, this is our standard vetting procedure for hiring contractors. Would you be kind enough to answer a few questions…?"
Janet was smooth as silk, and one could hear a smile in her voice. As she cheerfully chatted away with Harry Bergman, she really was smiling, but her wide smile vanished as soon as she hung up the phone. When she turned to face Rick and A.J., her countenance had grown serious.
"What kind of problem are you two dealing with?" She sounded worried.
"What did Bergman say?" asked Rick.
"That an FBI agent showed up while you were at the bank."
The brothers' reaction was tepid at best.
"You know the FBI is involved?"
"We know the bureau and Bergman made a contact at one point, but we didn't know an agent showed up during our meeting at the bank," replied A.J.
"I bet Bergman was asked by the Fed to keep us in the office as long as he could. Did he tell you that?" asked Rick.
"Yes, as a matter of fact. How did you know?"
"You remember his secretary interrupting our meeting and Bergman stepping out of his office for a few minutes?" Rick asked A.J.
"After he returned, he started offering refreshments and was overly courteous," said A.J. nodding. "I assume he was stalling for the FBI agents so they could search the truck and my car."
"For what?" Janet no longer sounded like a prosecutor—she was just a concerned friend.
"At this point, it's only speculation, but we may have stepped in the middle of a sting operation. And the message we found seems to be the focal point."
"You mean you two are being targeted by the FBI and the mobsters?" Janet stared at A.J.'s face and shuddered.
"Like I said, we're only speculating." A.J. tried to downplay the whole situation.
"But just to be on the safe side, we'll keep in touch with you through Carlos from now on till this is all over," said Rick. "So, stay on the same drill—when the phone stops ringing after two rings, go to the nearest pay phone and call Carlos. If you have any urgent message, call him anytime. All right?"
"And please don't forget to check on Trans-Global Trading on Park." A.J. reminded Janet. "Dig deep and find out the owner, affiliates, subsidiaries, finances, the usual and more if possible."
As she scribbled a few more lines on the legal pad, Janet asked without looking up, "Why don't you stay here for a couple of nights? My father won't be back from the East Coast for several days."
Rick laughed a humorless laugh.
"I'm serious, guys. He wouldn't mind." He wouldn't mind what he doesn't know, she mentally corrected herself.
"Like hell he wouldn't. I know what he calls us behind our backs."
Oh no, you don't, not entirely, Janet felt like telling Rick. Some of the words her father used to describe the Simon brothers, Rick in particular, were unprintable in newspapers. Her personal favorite was Lady and the Tramp, but she had never said so to the boys so as not to bruise their ego, A.J.'s in particular.
"Look, we appreciate your offer, Janet, but it's best that you don't know where we are and what we're up to," said A.J. "Just in case…"
"Oh, one more thing," Rick raised his index finger to attract Janet's attention. "Did Bergman tell you the name of the FBI agent by any chance?"
"Yes. Yes, he did." Janet picked up her notebook to look for the name. "Anthony De Luca. Bergman later looked up the phone number of the FBI in the phone book and checked him out to be sure. The bureau confirmed De Luca's credentials."
Thus, the phone number on Bergman's daily calendar, the brothers reached the same conclusion almost simultaneously.
A.J. noticed Janet was glancing the wall clock surreptitiously.
"You have to go back to your office, don't you, Janet? I'm sorry, we didn't mean to keep you here this long," he apologized. He got out of his chair and helped her get up.
"We should be going too," said Rick rising from the chair.
"I won't leave the office until 5:30. Call me if you find or need anything, okay? And please be careful."
Janet threw her arms around A.J.'s neck and hugged him tightly. After several seconds, she reluctantly let go of him. Rick was standing by his brother with open arms, expecting a hug from her. She picked up the legal pad and hit him with it on the arm.
"Hey, what was that for?" Rick protested.
"Don't ever lie to me again! And if you get into trouble next time, leave A.J. out of it!"
Rick saw A.J. cover his mouth to hide a gleeful smile, and, for a fraction of a second, he felt like punching him to wipe that smirk off his face. Mom really should've given me a puppy instead of a little brother.
Janet returned to her father's office leaving Rick and A.J. behind. Peerless Detectives that Myron Fowler ran was a thriving private investigation agency staffed with many operatives and administrative employees. Janet was used to running background checks and other investigative researches for him, but Rick and A.J. wanted to play it close to their vests for her safety.
Rick called Julius instead to ask for another favor. What the brothers were looking for was personal information on Anthony De Luca. Julius, who was one of the contacts at DMV, narrowed the search within the San Diego Metro area and came up with five Anthony De Lucas.
Rick and A.J. eliminated three individuals right away—two of them were too young, eighteen and twenty-one, and the third was too old at seventy-two. Which meant the man who had shown up at Harry Bergman's office could be Anthony P. De Luca, age forty-one, who lived in the Linda Vista neighborhood, or Anthony M. De Luca, forty-four, in Point Loma Heights.
Rick found the white pages in the kitchen and looked under De Luca. He and A.J. assumed that an FBI agent would not want to have a listed number, and they were right. Unfortunately, this process could not eliminate either one of the remaining two—the only Anthony De Luca found in the phone book was the seventy-two-year-old.
"Which one do you want to try first?" A.J. asked his brother.
"Well, Point Loma is closer," replied Rick. "Maybe he's at work at this hour."
"His wife could be at home if he's married."
"If that's the case, we can always wing it."
Rick's devil-may-care grin made A.J. a little nervous.
"We certainly can. That is, we, as in you and I…"
Rick smiled secretively—it was so easy to push his little brother's buttons.