Happy Ending

by J. Sterling

  “Think he’ll come alone again?” Nick asked, and I realized that it hadn’t even occurred to me that he might come with backup.

  Nerves tied my stomach in knots. “Do we have a plan? What if he shows up with the whole damn mob or something.” I had no idea what the hell we were going to do when the guy stormed back into our bar and demanded the keys to it.

  Grant’s sarcastic voice broke through our otherwise hushed tones. “What are you girls carrying on about back here?”

  “Nothing,” I said, hoping that would be the end of it. But this was Grant we were talking about.

  He pounded a fist on the bar top, drawing unwanted attention toward us. “Boys. Get over here right now and tell me what you’re talking about. I might be able to help.”

  I exchanged glances with my brothers. Nick’s eyes widened a little and Frank shrugged, so we wandered over to where Grant stood, his expression almost murderous. Frank nodded at me to speak for us.

  “Some scary-ass guy came in here,” I told Grant, “saying that he owns the land the bar’s sitting on. He wants to close it and tear it down.”

  Grant stayed silent for a beat, working his jaw. “What’s this fellow look like?”

  “Scary,” Nick and I said in unison.

  “Like mob scary?” Grant asked.

  I cocked my head to the side. “What do you know about it, old man?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Grant shook his head as a sly smile formed. It was the last thing I expected to see at a stressful time like this.

  “Why are you smiling?” Frank asked, sounding as irritated as I felt.

  “Because I know what the fella wants.”

  When Grant didn’t say anything more, I nearly lost my temper. “Are you going to tell us what that is?” If I had to drag the information out of him by force, I would.

  He put an aged hand in the air and looked down, that stupid smile still on his face. “In a second. I just can’t believe everything that old geezer said was true.”

  The three of us stood there staring at him, our hearts in our throats as we waited impatiently for him to explain.

  “If you’re not going to help,” Frank huffed, “I don’t have time for this.” He turned to go.

  “Wait a damn minute,” Grant shouted, and a sliver of shock coursed through me as Frank complied.

  Grant looked behind his shoulder to make sure no one else could hear, then waved us closer. “I used to come here a lot. Got to know Sam Jr. pretty well, long before you boys bought the place. He used to tell me all kinds of stories, but that’s what I always thought they were . . . stories that he made up. They sounded so farfetched, but I guess they weren’t.”

  “I need you to start making sense, Grant, because you’re not making any,” Nick said, clearly as anxious as the rest of us.

  The old man glanced over both shoulders again, seeming nervous. “He told me that an old mob boss had asked his father to hold some things for him back in the day. The mobster said he wasn’t sure when he’d come back to collect the items, but that they’d better be waiting for him when he did. Sam Sr. knew the guy was serious, so he hid the stuff for him. And Sam Jr. told me they were still right where his dad left them all those years ago. He was terrified to move them. Told me he only even looked at them once, then never looked again.”

  “He didn’t tell you what the guy gave him?” I asked.

  Grant shook his head. “He had no idea. He said his dad put it away and they pretended that it never existed. Only talked about it once or twice. I reckon whatever that guy gave Sam’s father is what your guy is after.”

  “Wait.” Frank held a finger in the air to stop all conversation, like this was something too insane to be true. “Why would the mob be in Santa Monica? And why would he ask Sam’s father to hold something for him? It makes no sense.” Frank looked about as unconvinced as I was.

  An annoyed grunt came from Grant. “Do you not know anything about Santa Monica’s history? The mob used to come here all the time. It was their getaway spot before they turned their sights on Vegas. They hung out a lot at the Georgian Hotel right down the street. There was a speakeasy in the basement that they used during Prohibition. Apparently, this particular guy knew better than to try to keep whatever he wanted hidden there. He told Sam that the Georgian was too obvious a choice, it would be found in a heartbeat, but that no one would suspect Sam’s Bar. He said they’d never even think to look for it here.”

  “Until now,” I said with a huff.

  “Until now.” Grant nodded. “But this is the first time anyone’s come looking, as far as I know. I didn’t believe Sam when he told me, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

  “Do you know where it’s hidden?” Frank’s suspicious expression was gone. I knew he now believed everything Grant was telling us.

  Grant’s smile grew even wider, if that was possible. “I do.”

  “The hell, old man? Get up and show us.” I glared at him, giving him a moment to move his ass before I hopped over the bar and moved it for him. Our livelihood was on the line, and I was tired of playing games.

  “Do you have a safe in the office?” Grant asked, as if he didn’t know the answer.

  A full-sized safe was in the back office when we bought the bar. It was way too big and we didn’t need it, but it weighed a million pounds, so we figured it was easier to keep it than to try to get rid of it or move it. Plus, it was cool as fuck to look at, and we liked it.

  We filed into the office and stared at the safe like it was a brand-new addition instead of something that had been sitting here since the bar originally opened.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” Grant barked.”One of you dummies open it.”

  Frank shot him an annoyed look and then spun the combination lock. He pushed the large lever down, and with a loud click that echoed in the small room, the safe door swung open. “Now what?”

  We stared into the darkness, the three of us all too familiar with what lay inside. It was mostly empty at the moment, just a few important papers, some extra cash, and small boxes. We locked up the cash from the till, the credit card machine, and our business laptops inside the safe after closing each night, but that was about it.

  “Sam said there was a false back.” Grant pointed toward the rear of the safe, where you couldn’t really see anything in the darkness.

  “A false back?” Nick asked. “Like a fake panel that can be moved?”

  I glanced around the office, convinced we were being punked. There was no way in hell this craziness was real. But then I thought about all the things we’d been through as a family, and realized that this was no more farfetched than the rest of our lives had been so far.

  “Get in there, Nick, and check,” I demanded, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Why do I have to go in? You go in,” he shot back.

  Frank and I both yelled at him in unison, “Get in.”

  Nick groaned but did as we asked. As he crouched into the safe between the shelving, I shined the flashlight from my cell phone into the darkness. He inspected the back wall, feeling along its edges.

  “Shit,” he said, and we all craned our necks to see what he was looking at. “This moves, I think.”

  With a click and a small crash, Nick turned around to face us, a black steel panel in his hands. I shined my light around his shoulders and noticed a hole chiseled in the brick wall behind the safe. It looked like something out of a prison movie, where they started to try to dig their way out.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered as Nick put the panel on the floor and snatched my phone from my hand so he could see in the hole.

  “That old son of a gun,” Grant said, grinning. “He wasn’t lying.”

  “Is there anything in there?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “There is.”

  He shined the light into the makeshift hole as he reached into it, his arm almost all the way in to his shoulder. When he pulled it back out, he held three dus
t-covered cloth bags.

  “Hold on, there’s something else back there.” He handed us the bags and shoved his arm back in the hole again.

  Frank and I dropped the old bags on top of the desk and focused our attention back on Nick. His entire arm was inside that hole as he struggled to reach whatever it was that only he could see, his body wiggling and stretching. When he pulled back out, he had a faded piece of paper in his grasp.

  We huddled close, struggling to all read it at the same time.

  “It’s a deed,” Nick said, his brow furrowed as Frank asked to see it.

  “It’s the deed to this land.” Frank sounded shocked as my confusion kicked into full gear.

  “But that man had the deed,” I said, remembering that I’d clearly seen the word deed on the paper he showed me, but refused to let me touch. “Unless it wasn’t the deed for here. Or even a real deed at all.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. The mob doesn’t usually play by the rules,” Grant said. “They’d lie, manipulate, and murder to get what they want.”

  “So we have the deed to the land then?” I asked again, stunned. “And that guy doesn’t.”

  “We have it. But I bet he wants whatever’s in these bags.” Nick gestured toward them, then grabbed the plate and secured it in the back of the safe again.

  Frank reached for one of the old twine ties around one sack and gave it a tug. The fabric was brittle with age, and flakes of it dropped off as it practically fell apart in his hands.

  “Go slow,” the rest of us cried out.

  Frank glared at us. “I’m not an idiot.”

  Opening the bag, he spread the top part wide so we could see inside. I peered in, finding exactly what I’d expected to see inside—stacks of cash money and mounds of jewelry. I had no idea how much money was there. The bills were old and looked almost fake, unlike any dollars I’d ever seen.

  “We’ve got to call the police,” Nick said, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans and leaving dirty handprints on them.

  “What are you guys doing back here?” Jess, Claudia, and our mother stood in the office doorway, staring at us curiously. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “And that’s my cue,” Grant said as he moved to leave the room. “I’ll go make that phone call.” He moved past the women and closed the door behind him.

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked.

  They knew we were keeping something from them, so we asked them to sit down while we explained everything. Our mom and Claudia took the office chairs while Jess perched on the edge of the desk, their eyes widening as our story unfolded.

  “I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell us,” Claudia said when we’d finished. She narrowed her eyes on the three of us, and then her disappointed gaze landed squarely on Frank.

  “And we could have helped,” Mom added. “Your father and I can always help.”

  When Frank shrugged, looking uncomfortable, I stepped in. “That’s just it, Mom. You couldn’t help. Not with this. We called our lawyer, and he’s been working on it, but there’s only so much he could do. We could barely even talk about it with each other, let alone anyone else.”

  Frank spread his hands wide. “We never want to let you down, and we didn’t know what was going to happen. Until we knew for sure, we just kept it between us three.”

  Even as he said the words, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. There was no reason good enough to keep something this big from the people we loved.

  “You can’t do that,” Jess said, clearly irritated. “You don’t get to pick and choose what to tell us and what to leave us out of.”

  “Yeah. We’re your teammates, right? Your partners?” Claudia asked, her eyes piercing Frank’s, making me thankful that Sofia had already gone home for the night. “Then you share everything with us. Even the hard stuff.”

  “Especially the hard stuff,” Jess added, her voice firm. “We have a right to know what’s going on.”

  “When was this deadline?” Mom asked.

  I swallowed hard. “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” the three of them practically shouted in unison. They jumped up from their seats, becoming more riled up by the second.

  “I can’t believe you kept this from us.” Claudia paced angrily back and forth in the small space. “I’m so mad at you! And you.” She shot me a look that made me want to crawl into the safe and hide. “Sofia is going to kill you.”

  “I’m aware,” I managed to say.

  “You just proposed to me, you jackass!” Jess stepped toward Nick and poked him in the chest. “This isn’t what we do. We don’t keep things from each other.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, babe. It won’t happen again,” he said sincerely, and she poked him again, still pissed.

  The three of us tucked our proverbial tails between our legs and apologized. After we all promised to never keep something like that from them again, their anger seemed to fade.

  A knock on the office door interrupted us, and Grant poked his head in. “The police are here.”

  “Already?” I asked.

  “Must be a slow night.” He held the door open, revealing two cops standing in the hallway.

  The office was too small to hold everyone, so Frank asked the ladies to step outside with Grant as we ushered the cops in and closed the door behind us. The three of us explained to the policemen what we knew and answered all their questions while one of them took notes, writing down everything we said.

  It took less than twenty minutes for them to hear our story, then walk out of the bar with the three bags of valuables and the original deed.

  But not before we copied it first. I tried to get them to let us keep the original, but they said it had to be entered into evidence. I made five photocopies of the deed, just in case I lost the first four.

  “What? I’m a little paranoid. Sue me,” I said when Nick gave me shit as I copied it more than once.

  “We’re pretty sure you can have this back.” One of the cops held up the deed once I was done with it. “Just give us twenty-four hours to process it. Then you can file a request to get it back.”

  “Will you find out where the money and jewelry came from?” Frank asked.

  The cop shrugged. “We’ll do our best, but no guarantees. Anything we find out that we can share, we’ll let you know.”

  “Sounds good.” Frank gave them each a firm handshake and moved to see them out.

  Alone with Nick, I turned to face him, the weight on my shoulders I hadn’t even realized I was carrying suddenly lifted. Inhaling deeply for what felt like the first time in weeks, I felt so light. I wanted to jump around and high-five everyone in the bar.

  “I guess we get to make more memories here after all?” The smile on my face wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  “Hell yes, we are! I’m so relieved, Ryan,” Nick said, and I pulled him into a brotherly hug.

  “Me too. Me fucking too.”

  “And I’m engaged!” He gave me a shit-eating grin.

  “That you are, little brother.”

  “I’m going to go find my fiancée and make sure she doesn’t want to kill me.” He gave me a sly nod and moved toward the door. “You gonna call Sofia and fill her in?”

  “I probably should, huh?” It wasn’t really a question.

  “I’d tell her before one of the girls does.”

  He was right, but I waved him off. “Go. Enjoy being engaged. I’ve got this handled.”

  Mob Heists

  Ryan

  The next day, the three of us waited all afternoon for the guy who threatened our livelihood to walk through the door. We knew he could arrive at any moment, and that moment couldn’t come soon enough.

  My stomach twisted in anticipation and dread. Even though I knew we held all the cards, I had no idea what a man like that was capable of. I couldn’t imagine him simply accepting the news. No, a guy with ties to the mob would most likely refuse to walk away emptyhanded.

  “Did
you tell Sofia everything?” Frank asked in a hushed tone as we continued to stare at the door.

  “Yeah, I told her last night.”

  “Was she mad?”

  “She was mad.” I nodded, thinking about how hurt she’d been that I’d kept something so big from her. “She said all the same things that Jess and Claudia did. I swear, it’s like girls have some kind of book they read out of. Then she reamed me for making her feel like she wasn’t important enough to confide in.”

  Frank and Nick both opened their mouths, but before they could say exactly what I had been thinking, I held up a hand.

  “I know, I know. It’s the exact opposite, and I tried to explain that to her, but she said after everything we went through and how we both almost died, we didn’t get that luxury. We don’t get to keep secrets and leave each other in the dark. She made me feel about yea big.” I closed my finger and my thumb together until they were almost touching.

  “They have a way of doing that, don’t they?” Frank asked. “Claudia chewed my ass.”

  “I guess we had it coming.” Nick dropped his chin into his hand like he was tired of waiting. “Speaking of, is this jackass ever gonna show up?”

  The second the words left Nick’s mouth, sunlight poured in through the front doors, followed quickly by the absence of it. The door slammed shut but no one walked through it, and the sound of thumps and shouting replaced the quiet.

  My brothers and I hopped over the bar top and sprinted toward the door, unaware of what was happening on the other side of it. I tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Something’s blocking it,” I exclaimed. “Help.”

  Frank and Nick both put their shoulders against the door, readying to push, but hard pounding came from the other side.

  “Stop!” called a voice from outside the door. “It’s the police. Stop pushing.”

  We did as they asked and exchanged glances, dying for answers we didn’t have.

  “The police must have been waiting for him,” Frank said.

  “Maybe they know where the money came from?” Nick wondered out loud.

  “Maybe they know who he is?” I added.

  We moved away from the door and told the agitated customers who had gathered behind us that everything was fine. Pasting on big smiles, we offered everyone a drink on the house, which made them forget the entire ordeal. Free drinks tended to make people happy.