Dire Means

by Geoffrey Neil

  In the living room, an antique coffee table given to him by his mom doubled as his office desk. It had a cleared space for his laptop between a notepad and some tourist magazines on California—an inadequate attempt at an aesthetic touch for the rare occasion he had company other than Todd.

  Each evening at six o’clock he cleared his coffee table of any client-related paperwork without fail. It helped him maintain his strict line between his personal and business lives.

  The kitchen had a stove and refrigerator included with the rental. He kept the vertical blinds drawn on the living room window facing the courtyard. Having no privacy for his entrances and exits, Mark was determined to keep his inner apartment completely private—even at the expense of the two hours of morning sunlight his unit got. This opened him up to ribbing from Todd, but Mark didn’t care.

  More than anything now, he simply wanted to take a shower and change, but decided to first top off the delicious pizza slice he had with Uncle Leon. His stomach had returned to grumbling.

  As he opened the fridge, he noticed the blinking light on his answering machine that sat on the countertop within arm’s reach. He pressed the play button. A female voice said, “Mr. Denny, this is American Express calling to confirm a charge of twenty-one hundred dollars on your card at 11:13 a.m. today. Please contact us to verify this charge. Thank you.”

  Before the next message could begin, Mark hobbled to his bedroom, leaving the refrigerator door open to swing shut on its own. He grabbed the phone and called American Express from the caller ID.

  At first he was concerned only about the inconvenience of losing his wallet. Now he was afraid the problem may have grown to affect his financial and possibly his physical safety. Ty and his accomplice had his home address information, birthday, and more than enough information to steal his identity if not stake out and burgle his home.

  Mark closed his eyes to concentrate. He tried to visualize the contents of his wallet. He carried a health insurance card and two other credit cards—a MasterCard and a Visa bank check card. Mark now assumed they would soon be maxed out if they weren’t already.

  After wading through a series of automated prompts, an American Express human picked up. She helped him cancel his card and assured him of non-liability for any fraudulent charges. Mark’s worry subsided only a bit, as he spent the next hour calling his bank, insurance company, the DMV, a car rental agency, his other credit card companies and the client with whom he had an appointment that morning.

  While waiting on hold, he turned on the television. Police had no leads on the seven people who had gone missing in as many days. It was not only the number of disappearances, but also the regularity with which people had disappeared that had brought this story to the front of the local news broadcasts. Last year Santa Monica had six missing-persons cases. Now seven in one week was big news.

  Mark had missed the press conference on this story, but they were about to show the highlights. The camera showed a long table with several families sitting behind it. A reporter announced that family members of each of the missing people were present and that each family would have an opportunity to say a few words to the public regarding their missing loved one. One by one, with wobbly voices and long pauses, they took turns between the fumbling, sniffling, and adjusting of microphones to plead for the safe return of their loved ones.

  Near the end of the press conference, a reporter asked the last family member if there was any chance that their twenty-year-old daughter had simply run away. The father jumped to his feet and pounded his fist on the table, rattling the mics. He jabbed his finger toward the reporters, saying, “Don’t you dare try to make this into something it isn’t. She wouldn’t do that! I’m her father—we talk three times a day!”

  The man’s wife whispered consolation into his ear as she pulled him by the arm from the press. Her words failed to calm him. “My daughter would have called!” he shouted as he backed out of the room. “She would have called.” He said this again and again until he was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  MARK’S LAPTOP SAT on his coffee table opened to an identity theft assistance web page. At a little after three o’clock, he fell asleep. An ice pack he had alternated between his lip and eye lay melting on the couch beside him. It was made from a re-sealable plastic bag filled with a clump of ice cubes melted and refrozen together after several power outages that plagued the apartment complex. A pounding on his screen door startled him.

  “Let’s go, Buddy. I’m starving!” Todd’s voice reverberated throughout the courtyard like an intercom announcement. Back from surfing, his still-wet hair was slicked back. Mark heard two windows slam shut outside followed by Todd shouting, “Sorry ma’am!” even louder.

  Mark stood up and winced from the pain in his ribs. He was stiffer and he felt new bruises on his legs. His left knee felt like someone had injected acid under his kneecap. He groaned his way to the door. “Look, I’m a little tired, I’m going to pass,” Mark said through the screen door.

  “Aw, c’mon, Buddy! You need to get out. Let’s run to Bonfiglio,” Todd insisted.

  Mark opened the door—more to end Todd’s courtyard shouting than to be hospitable, and Todd marched in.

  “Da-yum, Buddy! What happened to your mouth?” Todd said, laughing with disbelief.

  “I was attacked,” Mark said. He eased back down onto his couch.

  Todd stopped laughing and looked sideways at Mark, skeptical.

  “I offered to help some guys that needed gas and got the crap kicked and punched out of me. They took my wallet and car.”

  “No way! Your ride too?”

  Mark nodded, staring at the floor.

  “Buddy, I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  For a moment Todd had nothing to say. He just shook his head while examining Mark. He broke his silent spell by saying, “C’mon, let’s get something to eat, Buddy. It’ll be good for you. You need some food.” He held the front door open, gesturing for Mark to exit.

  Mark wasn’t in the mood for Todd’s loud company, but his fridge held nothing appetizing and waiting until tomorrow to get cash and groceries wasn’t an attractive idea. “I just told you I’ve got no wallet and no money and I don’t feel like walking anymore today…”

  “I’m paying. I’m betting that the rest of your story is gonna be worth whatever our tab is,” Todd said, waving harder for Mark to go out the door. “Do you want me to drive you three blocks? Or Old Man Robins downstairs has a wheelchair—I bet he’d let us borrow it.” Todd laughed loudly at his own joke.

  On the slow, three block walk to Bonfiglio Café, Mark relayed the experience of the two men and the empty gas can as he kept his upper body stiff and moved his arms little to avoid pain.

  “Look, I’m sorry you got hurt, Buddy, but I could have told you that gas-money scam is old. In fact, I think I saw it on TV once.”

  “Thanks for that. Apparently everybody knew about it except me.”

  They rounded the corner onto Abbott Kinney Boulevard and saw Bonfiglio Café, a mom and pop eatery run by Henry and Althea Bonfiglio. Its appearance resembled a cottage more than a restaurant, with its clean white exterior, neatly railed sitting porch and shake roof. The age-worn green neon sign jetted out from above the front door with two letters burned out. The Open sign and the patrons standing in line outside the door at meal times were the only indicators that Bonfiglio Café was a commercial establishment. Inside, Henry and Althea had made a decent attempt to decorate it with a surfing theme complete with long boards hung on the wall blending into a wallpaper mural of a beach with sand.

  The Café had grown to enjoy local fame. One could tell rough time by the grill exhaust venting over the nearby streets. Long before the café opened, the aroma of Althea’s fresh baked bread wafted from its ovens, through the vents and into the windows of early-risers blocks away.

  By 11:30 a.m., the aroma shifted to grilled onions, peppers, steaks and soups to go with the
bread.

  Dinner time brought the hearty smells of the café’s famous chili and Henry’s Tequila-Jalapeño marinated steaks seared with his secret surf ‘n turf rub.

  A television mounted near the ceiling had instigated many a heated argument in Bonfiglio Café since Henry insisted that it stay tuned to all news, all the time. Politics was the most common reason for debate in Bonfiglio Café, but Henry would always keep the tension from becoming physical by yelling, “Hey! Guys, take it outside. We got kids in here.” He’d say this whether kids were present in the café or not and it always seemed to work.

  All seats in Bonfiglio Café were counter seats featuring a red vinyl rotating stool and chrome menu rack at each place setting. The counter wrapped around the cashier and grill so that each patron could see their food preparation from beginning to end. Althea and Henry Bonfiglio worked full time with only a chef named Mario as an employee.

  It was 4:20 when Todd and Mark entered—just ahead of the dinner rush. Todd sat at his favorite stool and made it a point to greet each of the patrons in his usual style—with too much volume. Most of the café’s regulars acknowledged Todd’s greeting with a nod or a simple “hello.”

  “What happened to you? Car accident?” Henry asked Mark. He paused from his grillwork and peeked over his partly-steamed bifocals to examine Mark’s face. Mark had cleaned up as well as possible after his shower, but it would take a week or more to hide the injuries to his face.

  “Good Lord! You look like a train hit you, Darlin’!” Althea chimed in as she stepped over for a look too.

  “He kicked some ass today,” Todd answered for Mark. Some the diners turned their attention from the TV to Mark.

  “Todd, please...” Mark said, lifting his hand to silence Todd. “I was assaulted today and got some souvenirs out of the deal.” Althea gently touched Mark’s chin and he turned his head slightly for a better look. Althea had a maternal air about her—especially with the younger men like Mark.

  “Thank God you are still alive,” Henry said. “Did they catch the guy?”

  “It was two of them, and no, they got away,” Mark answered, raising his hand again for Todd to be quiet and let him answer.

  Todd obliged him, but then said, “Yeah, but not before Markie cracked open a can of whup ass on one of them though.”

  Henry said, “Listen—we feed sick and afflicted here. No charge for your dinner tonight. Whatever you want.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Mark protested. Henry pressed his hands against his ears and turned his head as if he didn’t want to hear it.

  “You want the usual? I just made a new batch, Hon,” Althea said to Mark as she stepped to the cash register to swipe another customer’s credit card.

  “Sure, thank you. I appreciate it,” Mark said.

  “Steak and lobster, my friend,” Todd said. He ate steak almost every day.

  Three years earlier, when Mark first began dining at Bonfiglio, he overheard Henry venting to one of his patrons about a computer problem. Apparently, Henry had suffered a computer crash that had rendered much of Bonfiglio’s business data inaccessible and the computer unusable. Henry lamented that they would need months if not more than a year to reenter their financial and inventory data into a new computer—if that was even possible.

  Mark apologized for butting into the conversation, and offered to take a look at the crippled computer for him. Henry agreed, wary at first because he didn’t know what Mark might charge him.

  That evening, Mark spent over an hour, after closing, pounding commands into the sick computer’s keyboard and plugging in external devices to reconfigure and reset settings. He managed to recover all of the Bonfiglio’s computer data and actually fine-tuned their computer to work better than it ever had.

  When Henry and Althea saw their monitor display their inventory and bookkeeping information on the screen Henry yelled, “Bravo,” clapping and cheering with his hands up high. Althea clutched a dishrag to her face, nearly in tears with gratitude. Mark’s refusal to allow them to pay him launched the Bonfiglios into a tirade that Mark couldn’t escape without at least accepting a free meal the next day.

  Henry knew Mark as a regular and it hadn’t taken long for him to notice that Mark was vegetarian. He put together a new vegetarian recipe composed of some fresh, leftover ingredients he had on hand at the Café that day. Mushrooms, olive oil, macaroni, several types of cheeses, seasoning and other vegetables combined to make a spicy baked macaroni dish.

  The next day Henry gave Mark a sample and after Mark pronounced the dish to be absolutely delicious, Henry put it on the menu, naming it Mark’s Macaroni Madness. Althea made sure to keep enough of the ingredients in inventory to have a portion prepared and ready for Mark at least a once a week.

  “Another person gone,” Henry said. He slid napkins and clean utensils in front of Mark and Todd and then pointed up to the television where the rest of the Bonfiglio diners were focused. “Somebody’s pickin’ folk off,” he said, and then pursed his lips at the gravity of it all. He grabbed his exclusive remote control from under the counter and turned the volume up.

  The anchorwoman recapped the few known details of the first seven disappearances as a square graphic appeared displaying all seven photos in a grid with names superimposed under each.

  “Keith Mendalsen, the founder of Mendalsen Investments was the first person reported missing a week ago. He was last seen by his secretary as he left his twelfth floor office in the ALCO Development building. His phone service provider has been able to confirm that since that time, his phone has not been used. They also indicated that Mendalsen’s phone signal was turned off approximately two miles from his office at 8:42 a.m. With the phone not in use, it is impossible to get a trace on the phone’s location, according to his service provider.”

  The news report continued, reviewing where the next six victims were last seen in Santa Monica.

  Brandon Chargon and Jackie Dunbarton, the second and third missing persons were last seen by coworkers at their respective office buildings. The cars of both were found in their assigned parking spaces, untouched.

  Police found the cars of Dana Erweiller, a registered nurse, and Lucy Carabello, owner of a nail salon, abandoned on opposite ends of Ocean Avenue overlooking Santa Monica Beach.

  The subsequent disappearances were reported from various parts of Santa Monica and involved people of widely varying professions and residential locations, with no common thread. The cars of the missing persons had all been recovered. Neither the vehicle condition nor the location was abnormal. The eighth and most recent disappearance was a postal carrier whose abandoned postal truck was found after being missing for twenty-four hours.

  The anchorwoman encouraged anyone with information about these missing people to please call the 800 number shown on the screen. She urged calm and reminded the public that any lead, no matter how small, was important. “If you see something, say something,” she ended.

  Henry turned the TV volume back down to its normal level, triggering a buzz of voices speculating on the disappearances.

  “Surf and Turf, baby!” Todd shouted as Henry placed his food before him. Todd’s excitement about his food seemed misplaced and caused scowls from nearby diners.

  Althea served Mark a melted cube of the delicious, gooey macaroni dish named after him.

  “I sure hope it’s not a serial killer,” she said from behind the counter. “It’s so many dear souls so quick. I hope nobody’s killing ‘em.”

  “Naaaa,” Henry argued. “Serial killers want the same type of victim again and again. These missing people are too different from each other.”

  “Dead!” an old man at the end of the counter hollered. He was another local regular who was practically a fixture at Bonfiglio Café. His nickname was Mashy because on any given day he could be seen eating mashed potatoes at the counter, After having a stroke last year, Mashy spoke in only one- or two-word sentences. Henry and Althea had taken a stron
g liking to Mashy and fed him meals in exchange for the minimal amount of help he could give them sweeping up their supply room after hours.

  “DEAD!” Mashy said louder. “All.” He lifted his hands in the air and raised eight crooked fingers. For a few moments everyone stopped and considered the proclamation.

  Althea broke the silence. “Well, you can’t know for sure, and me and you both hope you’re wrong, don’t we, Mashy?” But he just shook his head and went back to eating his potatoes.

  The November sun had all but disappeared, dragging dusk over the city and darkening everything on Mark and Todd’s walk home. They walked in silence—unusual for Todd. Both of them kept a watchful eye as they passed the few buildings and alleys that lined their route home.

  As they approached their apartment complex, a sick feeling developed in Mark’s gut—a feeling that became stronger each time he remembered the loss of his car, keys, identification, and credit cards. A stranger had them.

  They turned to walk up the sidewalk to the base of the apartment stairs. Mark slowed and checked over his shoulder, scanning the cars on the street to see if anyone was sitting, waiting, or watching him. What if Ty was staking out his place?

  “What’s your problem, Buddy?” Todd said. “Who are you looking for?”

  “No one,” Mark said. At the top of the steps they headed down the walkway to their units. “Listen,” Mark said to Todd, reducing his voice to a whisper, hoping Todd would do the same. “Those guys this morning—they took my ID. I think they may come back to rob my place.”

  “Chances are slim to none. Your car is in a million pieces by now,” Todd said, resting his wrist on Mark’s shoulder.

  Mark stepped away and closed his eyes.

  “Look, I’m sorry to give you bad news, but that’s what they do—they call ‘em chop shops. You got insurance?”