Chapter 5
It was late when Howie returned to his Los Angeles hotel room. He had drunk too much, stayed out too late and his body was craving sleep. He saw that the message light was blinking on the phone when he first came in but was just too damn tired to mess with it.
Later, as he laid in the bed, remembering how good she felt in his arms and praying for the sleep that wasn’t to come, he glanced over at the light that was blinking continuously. He sat up on the edge of the bed and pushed the message light to see who had called.
"Hey, bro!"
It was Kevin and he wasn’t in the mood to hear his lecture about being out late and partying. He was about to delete the message when something in Kevin’s voice caught his attention.
"Um...Howie...you need to come home. Don’t worry - nothing bad has happened to anyone in your family but I’m at the club with your brother and you need to be here tomorrow night to handle some business. Get a flight and call me when you get into town. It’s important ‘D’. I’ll see you when you get home."
Normally Kevin didn’t call him ‘Howie’, atleast not often, which raised a red flag. And why was he at the club with John? Why hadn’t John called himself? Something was up and he suddenly become worried. He picked up the phone, got a flight to Orlando and started packing his bags for the flight back to Florida. He had thought about calling right away but decided against it due to the hour. Knowing that Florida was three hours ahead of Los Angeles and that it would be a long flight, he decided to forget about sleeping now and wait till he was on the plane.
Arriving home, Howie exited the plane tired and irritable. He retrieved his bags and headed towards the car that was waiting to take him to his house in Cocoa Beach. Once in the car and away from the airport, he opened his phone and dialed Kevin.
Kevin’s phone rang and he recognized the number immediately. It was Howie’s cell phone.
"Hey bro. You in town?"
"Yeah, Kev. Now, you want to tell me what was so important that I had to fly in?"
"I can’t do that just now, ‘D’. I’m in the middle of something. Meet me at the club around 8 PM tonight. John and I have something important to show you."
"Why all the mystery?" he asked irritably.
"Just trust me. This is something you don’t want to miss. See you at eight!"
"All right, later!" he said as he hung up the phone.
Kevin looked at John, more nervous than he could ever remember.
"He’s either going to love us for this or he’s going to be really pissed" John said.
"To be honest, once he sees her-I don’t think we are going to matter. But you do realize that he’s going to find out about how you’ve been paying her under the table, right?"
"I know. I know. I’ll deal with that when he calms down. So, what’s next?"
Kevin smiled mischievously