"So, what now, Joanne?" Scorpion Queen asked. It was leaning against the wall with its arms folded across its chest.
"We're gonna look for this asshole's boss," Joanne said, motioning at Mista, who lay crumpled on the floor.
"That is a horrible idea," Scorpion Queen said.
It stood up from where it was leaning on the wall and walked over to Joanne, standing next to her and tilting its head to look down at Mista.
"First of all," it started, "might I remind you that he is already looking for you? I'd really prefer it if you could not make yourself any easier to find. And second of all, we wouldn't have the faintest clue where to start looki-"
Joanne, completely ignoring her Stand, bent down and stuck her hand into Mista's right pocket.
"What are you doing," Scorpion Queen sighed, not even bothering to phrase the sentence as a question.
"He said something about his boss being at a hotel," Joanne replied. "I'd bet good money that he's got a room key or something else that'll let us figure out which one, and where in it, somewhere on him."
She pulled her hand out of his right pocket, tossing a few spare bullets out onto the floor, and then checked his right one, coming up empty-handed besides an extremely outdated phone.
"Oh, come on!" Joanne shouted. She grabbed Mista's limp, unconscious body by the shoulders, shaking him around in frustration. "Where is it, asshole?! You've gotta have something on you somewhere!"
As she shook him, something fell out of his hat and clattered across the floor, stopping short of sliding under the oven. Joanne stood up and dropped him, then walked over to the object, crouching down to look at it. It was a room key for a two-bedroom suite at the Baccarat Hotel. Joanne picked it up and turned to Scorpion Queen, holding it up.
"Hey, Scorpion Queen," she asked. "Do you know this place? The Baccarat?"
"If I say that I don't, will you drop this awful idea and try to avoid this man's boss instead of rushing off to try to find him?" Scorpion Queen asked right back.
"Nope!" Joanne said, smiling widely at her Stand. "I'll just ask random strangers on the street for directions or go to a public library and use one of their computers to look it up or something. Which'll still have the same results, buuut it'll also be a waste of time."
Scorpion Queen let out a long sigh.
"Then yes," it said. "Yes, I know the Baccarat. Because unlike you, Joanne, I actually pay attention to my surroundings."
"I pay attention to things too!" Joanne protested.
"Only when they interest you," Scorpion Queen replied, hands on its hips.
"Well, yeah," Joanne said. "Cuz things that don't interest me are boring, duh."
Scorpion Queen sighed again, burying its face in its hands in annoyance.
"So, lead on! Which way's this fancy-ass hotel anyway?" Joanne said, starting to walk towards the kitchen's back exit.
Scorpion Queen grabbed her arm, bringing her to a halt.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" it asked.
"Uhh, hypothetically, let's say I was," Joanne said. "What would the thing I'm forgetting be?"
Scorpion Queen jerked a thumb toward Mista, who was still slumped over on the floor.
"What are you planning to do about him?" it inquired. "You shouldn't just leave him there."
"Why not?" Joanne replied. "The staff'll get here in ten or fifteen minutes. When they do, they'll see that the room's damaged, that he's all beat up, and that he's got a gun, and they'll call the police. That should work out fine!"
"That's…" Scorpion Queen started to say. "You know, that's actually a surprisingly solid bit of thinking ahead coming from you. Especially considering it's a plan that can essentially be summed up as 'do nothing and it'll probably work out in the end'."
"Thanks!" Joanne said. "Now are we gonna go to that hotel or what?"
"Fine," Scorpion Queen said. "But I'm still worried about the whole thing. We know nothing about this 'boss' besides that he's trying to find you, and that he's fine with sending a trigger-happy idiot to do it. Please promise me you'll be careful, at least."
"You know me way too well to believe me for a second, even if I do promise that," Joanne said, walking out of the kitchen and allowing the door to swing closed behind her. She turned and walked out of the alleyway, waiting for Scorpion Queen to show her the way to the Baccarat.
When the restaurant's staff showed up twelve minutes later, they took one look at the state of the kitchen and, as Joanne had predicted, immediately called the police.
The Baccarat Hotel is a five-star hotel located only a few blocks away from the Museum of Modern Art. It's contained within a sleek building, and the rooms and amenities are considered some of the finest in New York City. The hotel prides itself on its otherworldly interior and luxurious experience, and also boasts a fine selection of wines, as well as a private art collection that contains many incredible pieces from the 18th century to modern times. There are many large rooms and suites within its walls, and many businessmen and politicians have stayed there in the past.
Giorno Giovanna didn't care about the history and luxury of the hotel, though. Actually, he'd have preferred to stay somewhere a lot subtler and less expensive. Even with all the money he had at his disposal as the boss of the Passione, he didn't like wasting money on frivolous things like fancy seven-person suites in five-star hotels in cities that he'd only even be spending a week of his life in.
But Mista and Trish had begged him, and after a long discussion that lasted the entire plane ride to New York City, he'd finally relented. Normally, a room at a place like the Baccarat was something you had to book a good while in advance, but Giorno had connections, and he was willing to pull quite a few strings to keep his friends from whining at him for the entire week they were in America.
Right now, however, he wasn't thinking about that. As he sat on the white couch in the central room of his suite, looking out through the large window at the streets and tall buildings of New York City, he was thinking about something completely different. The glass table in front of him was covered in various scattered papers, from hospital records to criminal files to a death certificate, and in his right hand he held a picture- a copy of the same picture that Mista had used to recognize Joanne.
"All these years…" he muttered to himself, glancing down at the photo and tapping the fingers of his other hand on the table.
"Is something the matter, Giorno?" came a French-accented voice from one of the suite's bedrooms. Giorno turned to see a turtle with a golden key embedded in its back slowly walk through the door and into the central room.
"No, I'm fine, Polnareff," Giorno said. "Tell me, where are Mista and Trish right now?"
"Well, last I saw Trish, she had just come back from searching all night, and said she was going to go get a massage to unwind." Polnareff answered. "As for Mista, he left just after Trish got back, a little over two hours ago, to continue the search in her place while she takes a break."
"I see," Giorno said. "And, before leaving, was Mista informed very clearly, in no uncertain terms, that Joanne is not to be harmed, or even brought major discomfort if at all possible?"
"Err…" Polnareff stammered. "Yes, of course. I made that abundantly clear to him."
Polnareff had done no such thing. Actually, the only thing he'd said to Mista as he left was "If you run into a man by the name of Joseph Joestar, tell him that Polnareff says hello."
What Giorno doesn't know probably won't hurt him, though, the turtle thought to himself.
"That's a relief," Giorno continued. "You know how he gets when people piss him off, and from what my intel states, I'm afraid it's the same for her. I wouldn't want anything to happen to either of them."
"Remind me again why you're looking for this girl, boss?" asked a third person, who stood in shadow, leaned against the wall of the room farthest from the window.
"Oh, I didn't see you there, Focaccia," Giorno said, though he didn't sound very surprised by the man's presence at all. "I thought you were out doing your rounds."
"I wrapped up early," Focaccia stated. "Actually, I even had time to grab myself a drink on the way up. I got you one too, if you want it."
He tossed a bottle over to Giorno. The Mafia boss's Stand, Gold Experience Requiem, caught it effortlessly and set it down on the edge of the table. Giorno inspected it. It was a bottle of dish soap.
"No, that's alright," he said.
"Your loss," Focaccia shrugged, unscrewing the lid of a second bottle of dish soap in his hands and putting it up to his mouth. "Hotels always have the best quality of this stuff, you know."
He tilted his head back and took a long sip, dumping the blue liquid down his throat.
"Well, anyway," Giorno said, steering the conversation away from the flavor of dish soap with the masterful skill of someone who had years of practice in that very area, "to answer your question…"
He tented his fingers and sat up, looking down at the photo of Joanne, which he'd set down in the dead center of the explosion of papers that covered the table.
"What kind of father would I be if I didn't at very least explain everything to my daughter?"