I awoke to my stereo blasting out Duran Duran through my custom made Bose speakers. With my head pounding to the beat of “Wild Boys”, I knew I had made a mistake in ordering the 100-watt woofers.
I was still dreaming of the bump and grind gyrations of Tina Turner, when my phone started ringing off the hook. At first I thought I was back at my parents’ house and that it was my alarm clock ringing in the new day, so my natural response was to pick up the receiver and say, “Okay, okay Mom, I’m awake.”
Big Louie Travanti was not the kind of guy who liked to joke around, unless your idea of a good time was to call someone who stood six foot five, weighed two hundred fifty pounds and who could crush cars with his bare hands, Mom. Big Lou responded with his usual repartee, “Okay Stranger cut out the fooling around, unless you want to spend the rest of the day with the fish at the bottom of the river.” I had to think about that for approximately two seconds. I got the point and got right down to business. “Lou, a real pleasure to hear your voice, what can I do for you?” The trouble with talking with Lou is that the big guy usually answered so slowly that you got the feeling that you could ask him a question, go out for a newspaper and come back inside before he could finish what he was saying. But as they say patience is the better part of virtue, so I decided to stay put and see what he had to say. “It’s my sister, Angela.” Immediately my thoughts turned to a vision of loveliness, a living angel with the best proportions in town and boy could she cook. How she and Lou could ever be from the same family must be due to a mistake at the hospital. “Okay, Lou,” I spit back, “What is it this time?” During the inevitable lapse, I chewed off a hand nail that had been bothering me for some time. “I’m really worried about her, she’s been missing for days, I don’t know where she’s gone and I’ve got the feeling somebody nabbed her. I had to smile to myself, even I’d had that thought float around in my head for days on end, but I would never had tried to get any ransom from Lou, in fact I couldn’t think of anyone in their right mind who would try to do something as stupid as that. I leaned back on my chair, but lost my balance and the receiver squirted out of my grasp and onto the floor. I hastily picked up the phone but didn’t notice the piece of gum that had attached itself to the phone. “Lou, did you receive a ransom note,” I asked. The pause that followed seemed like an eternity, but finally he said, “Who would be stupid to do something like that?” Lou always gave the impression that I owed him plenty of favors, so I figured that helping him out would be a good way to pay him off. Actually, I had stopped counting the number of favors that I had already repaid and even though we were basically even, who was I to question Big Lou about something like that. There was always the chance that he might take my inaction the wrong way and then I’d really be in trouble. So to simplify matters, I told Lou that it would be a pleasure to look into his sister’s disappearance personally.
Cherry was a good friend of Angela’s and almost as good-looking, so I decided to drop in at her house and see if I could dig up any information. Now talk about your ritzy neighborhoods, Cherry’s was the type where her doorman made more in a week, than I could bring home in a month and that was just from his tips. Too bad I had failed that doorman aptitude test, oh well. Anyway, I thought I’d try and make a big impression on the doorman, so I expertly maneuvered my 1959 Cadillac El Dorado to a screeching halt in front of the apartment. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the distance from the street to the curb and ended up parking almost completely on the sidewalk, not to mention, puncturing my rear left tire. Leaving the doorman to attend to my car, I sneaked into the lobby, jumped into a waiting elevator and made my way up to Cherry’s apartment. My cat-like reflexes sensed that there was trouble waiting for me down the hall.
I was right about the trouble, but wrong about the direction, as suddenly I felt a sharp object butt up against my back. I spun around and leapt up at the same time, only to find a housemaid on the verge of a heart attack.
There’s nothing like trying to make your best impression on someone and having cleaning fluid stains on your best suit, but that’s the way Cherry first saw me that afternoon. She was the best looking woman I had seen that day, of course she was the only woman I had seen that day, except for the cleaning woman, who come to think of it, was kind of cute. I seemed to be staring at Cherry for what seemed like five minutes, when I broke my reverie by saying, “Hi there, you’re Angela’s friend Cherry aren’t you. Now this is a coincidence.” Needless to say, she looked at my like I was the world’s biggest pervert and who knows maybe I was at that moment. I could see that she was more than a little put off by me, so I blurted out, “Stranger,” but before I could finish re-introducing myself, she cut me off. “Stranger, I’ll say, stranger than fiction” and with that she backed away from me extremely suspicious. “Wait a minute, I’m Charlie Stranger, remember we met at Big Lou’s party a few months ago. Her sigh of relief nearly blew me down the hall as she relaxed and said, “Oh right, you did seen familiar, but I couldn’t place your face and I thought you were just another creep trying to get into my pants.” I gave her my best paternal grin and explained to her that I just wanted to ask her some questions about Angela Travanti.
Cherry told me that Angela had raved about a new band that she had gone to see at the Bath House, a popular hangout for the glamorous new wave. I figured it was logical to go there and follow up on the lead that I had just gotten.
The Bath House was a former burlesque house on the strip that had been renovated by a group of hippies in the late sixties. Those same hippies were now involved in a multi-million dollar industry that ranged from personal artist management to huge concert promotions. As I approached the Bath House, I altered my walk to that of a man who had something to sell, although I made a side trip to a local burger stand to grab myself a quick fatburger with everything on it. Before I knew it, I was standing at the entrance to the Bath House and I realized this was my first time back at this grand old establishment since 1968 when I had participated in a Jimi Hendrix look a like contest. The difference between seeing it now and then was like night and day. The day-glo posters, fruit crate seats and black light interior had been replaced with expensive prints hanging on the walls, mirrored ceilings, plush carpeting and fine oak dance floors. The lighting system alone must have been worth over three million dollars and there were enough bars to make even the most desperate drinker happy.
I was checking out the dance floor when I heard loud voices approaching fast. “Hey man, watch out, we got heavy equipment coming through here.” I whipped my head around in time to see a gargantuan flight case bearing down on me. Damn roadies. One of the lowest life forms that inhabit the music world, with record executives of course being the lowest. But when it came to handling equipment you really couldn’t trust anyone else and besides there really wasn’t anyone else who would do it in the first place.
Luckily the flight case only grazed my shoulder and I was able to get away from the bulk of the blow in time. This certainly wasn’t helping me digest the fatburger,which by now had lodged itself like a concrete block in my intestines. Before I could think any more about my stomach problems, a huge paw fell on my slightly bruised shoulder and a voice that sounded like stones rubbing up against sand paper, rasped out, “Can I help you pal?” Now when I say I looked up, I mean up. The man standing in front of me has to be at least seven feet tall, in fact he would be the type of guy to make someone like Big Lou change his name to Tiny.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem as though he was going to make any threatening moves, so I thought I’d take a chance and ask him some questions. “Yeah, the names Pretzel, Elvis Pretzel, Rolling Stone magazine.” I flipped open my wallet and closed before he could get a good look. “We’re interested in knowing who was playing here last week.” You know it’s amazing sometimes how an innocent question like that could really upset people, because the giant heard my request, grabbed me, spun me around and pushed me to one side of the bar. There I expected him to beat me to a bloody pulp, well maybe not bloody, the carpets looked as if they had been recently cleaned, but when I opened my eyes, I realized I was standing in front of the club’s schedule for that month. “Thanks a lot.” I said, but the words just trickled out. With a grunt, the giant rumbled off to do some damage in another part of the building and as my confidence returned, I scanned down the schedule. The names read off like an FBI description of the most wanted list; “Bloodshot & the Flesh Eaters”, “Pissed Off & The Sheetheads”, “The Liver Stompers” and my favorite “Dirty Panties”. I was beginning to think that I had come to the end of a wild goose chase, when my eyes came across the words, ‘hot new group from London’ – “Address Book” The schedule told me that the group had played the club the previous Friday and Saturday nights which figured correctly into Angela’s disappearance. My next step was to seek out the group’s management, but I didn’t fancy the idea of a lot of overseas phone calls, so once more I ventured over to where the giant was helping the roadies. The roadies were all sitting around drinking beer, while the giant was tossing around three hundred pound speakers as if they were cardboard boxes. I looked at the giant; sweat pouring off him like Niagra Falls and started to think twice about any more painful information, but a little bell went off in my head reminding me of the potential cost of those phone calls.
